No One Is Coming to Save You....And that's GOOD News!

✨ Episode Summary: In this fiercely empowering episode, Cheri Flake dives deep into the illusion of control and the ultimate truth: you are the master of your life. Through reflections on Lucinda Williams' haunting lyrics and personal stories from her therapy practice, Cheri explores how we give our power away—and how to take it back. She challenges us to stop waiting for permission, resolution, or the perfect moment, and instead embrace radical responsibility for our healing and joy. The episode wraps with a powerful guided chakra meditation to help you turn inward and reconnect with your innate light. 🧠 Three Key Learning Points:

• 🌪️ Control is an Inside Job: Real empowerment begins the moment you take 100% responsibility for your life—no exceptions, no blame.
• 💡 Joy Isn’t Lost, It’s Buried: Stop searching “out there”—happiness lives within, waiting to be uncovered through stillness and silence.
• 🔥 Unresolved Isn’t Always Unfinished: What you can’t fix might be sacred. Acceptance can be the most divine protection of all.

📣 Mentions & Shout-Outs:

• 🎸 Lucinda Williams – Her song “Joy” is a soulful metaphor for the search we all do outside of ourselves.
• 📚 Wayne Dyer – His teachings on radical responsibility helped shape this episode’s core message.
• 🧘‍♀️ Silent Retreats – Cheri shares insights from her mountain retreats and upcoming offerings.
• 📍 Georgia Retreats – 🍂 September 2025 in the Blue Ridge Mountains & 🏖️ Jekyll Island retreats: meditation, yoga, and transformation in stunning locations.
• 💌 Join the mailing list at ilovetherapy.com so you don’t miss a thing!
• 📲 Instagram: @thestresstherapist
• 🐦 Twitter/X: @estresstherapy

🎧 Production Credit: Big love and thanks to 🎧 Owen Flake for producing and editing this episode with care and clarity.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, beautiful people. So today we're going to be talking
about what you actually have control over. It feels like
things are out of control, it feels like you can't
control anything. But I have great news for you. You are
the master and commander of your destiny, and I'm going
to prove it to you today. Hey, beautiful people, it's

(00:32):
time for some Stress Therapy, a podcast about how to
meditate and get better at stress for people living in
the real world. Finally a place to park my twenty
five plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist
in the mental health field, and now your host me
the stress therapist, Cherry Flake. Hey, beautiful people, what's up? Okay,

(01:05):
So today we're gonna be talking a little bit about control,
but it's more than that. It's so much more than that.
I'm using that as the teaser because it's like something
we can kind of grasp onto and see. But what
I'm talking about is a little more ethereal, a little
more esoteric, a little bit more you know, it's ineffable,
but I'm gonna try anyway, right because if anybody can

(01:29):
explain it or talk too much about it, you know,
it's me. Okay, So today I have on a T shirt.
It's from a Lucinda Williams concert and it's a lyric
from one of her songs. One of my all time
favorite songs is called Joy and Just I mean, they're
just so good now. I do think she's the epitome
of cool. I don't know if there's anybody really as
cool as her, except for maybe I don't know somebody,

(01:50):
but she is just so cool. Right. So she's up
there and she's singing, you know you took my joy.
I want it back, you took my joy. I want
it back, and then she begins to name all the
places that she's gonna go and visit to try to
look for her joy and get it back. I mean,
she's like, I'm gonna go to Slide Down look for

(02:11):
my joy. I'm gonna go to Memphis and look for
my joy. I mean. And she is matt her heart
has been broken. There's so much emotion in it. And
the best part about this song side note, is that
the guitars are just superb. There are so many cool
guitar parts going on. One of these guitar parts could
have made the song great, but they're all going on
at the same time. They mesh so well together. I

(02:32):
can't recommend the song enough. However, one of the cool
things about this song is that it really illustrates well
how we are often looking outside of ourselves in order
to be happy. Okay, And this is where you know
all the cliches and money can't buy you happiness. I mean,
I think money can buy you happiness, but only for
like this long, just like being right in an argument

(02:55):
can buy you happiness, but only for like this long. Right,
So we need to be careful when we're looking outside
of ourselves for joy, because I have news for you,
whether you think so or not. It ain't out there, man,
It's inside, okay. And that's why we spend some time
being quiet, facing ourselves in meditation. That's why a silent retreat,

(03:18):
which I always recommend, is a great idea. On my
retreat in the mountains, we will spend a little bit
of time in silence, just so you can get an
idea of what it's like. But it's more than just
being quiet. It's having custody of your own eyes, not
looking at other people. It's not writing or reading or
taking pictures or creating art. It's sitting there facing yourself,

(03:40):
just being with yourself and what do you have to
see there? And if you're looking for happiness and you're
miserable on the inside, it's not gonna work, okay. And
she does a great job of this search for happiness.
You know, she's looking all around for happiness and she
can't get her joke back. And further, it implies that

(04:03):
she gave the power to this outside resource, this man
presumably who took her joy right, who was able to
take it from her, And you can kind of hear
the frustration, and she's mad at herself that she let
this happen, and now she has to go out find it.
She has gone find your joy and get it back.

(04:24):
And it's just a lot less work, and it's also
much more successful journey if you bring yourself inward. Okay.
So when I first learned this, I was like, yeah, whatever,
I was reading the power of positive thinking. I was
on my own little spiritual journey, probably twenty years ago,
listening to Wayne Dyer talks, going to Wayne Dyre talks,

(04:45):
taking his classes, and he would say that he would say, listen,
you have one hundred percent responsibility for your life. You
cannot blame anything outside of yourself. And I'm like, come on, dude,
Like what are people who have like the worst to
circumstances that they're born in into Like that doesn't have
anything to do with them. And the short answer to that,
which is actually super long and complicated, is this idea

(05:08):
of karma. But the idea of karma is very complicated,
but it's kind of not okay, and we're going to
get into that in just a second, okay, But the
idea that you're one hundred percent responsible for your life,
for what happens to you, how you live it, who
you are, and for your personal reality makes a lot

(05:31):
of sense. So just bear with me for a second.
When I first opened up my practice, I was taking insurance.
I was really hungry. I would see anybody who wanted
to see a therapist because I was open and ready
for business and excited and hungry and all those things right,
And of course, I think every therapist kind of learns
that they're only good at a couple of things, but
you try out a lot of things at first. And

(05:52):
what I found first and foremost, sort of like right
off the bat, without anyone telling me, is that the
folks that use their insurance to see me. I'm just
gonna say this blanket statement. They did not get better,
and people who paid every time they saw me more
than a copey got better. And it did seem like
an investment thing. And I mean, of course I wanted

(06:14):
to be successful and get people to get better, and
that was one of the reasons why I came off
of insurance. For sure. It's also not the most private thing.
So many people need to know. And you know, I
don't know already did that. I spent a lot of
time working in social services, so like it was just
something different to do. But I did notice that people
who paid me upfront my fee got better, which I

(06:37):
found interesting. And then I noticed that people who made
a decision that they were going to come in and
do the work that I suggested. Because there's a big misnomer.
You know, therapy in the old days one hundred years ago,
was all the work was done on the couch in
the room. Right you would free associate or explain your
dreams or whatever is happening would all happen. The magic

(06:59):
happened in the therapy room. Now you have to take
things that we do together and take them home and
do them meditate or try this, you know, craving exercise
or whatever it is that we're working on. I'm giving
you things to do that you have to try in
your own time when the event happens. Maybe it's on
a daily maybe it's a few times a day, but

(07:20):
like I'm not there with you. You have to make
the decision that you're going to try the things that
I give you. And I had a client years and
years ago and she was amazing and wonderful and awesome
and super smart. And she finally came in and was like,
I'm not getting any better because every time I leave here,
I don't do any of the things that you tell
me to do. And I was like, ding, okay, and

(07:41):
she was like, I'm going to leave until I can
make that decision. And this was so smart. She wasn't ready.
And the clients that I have that come in and
say I did this, I did this, even if they
only did it once, even if they only tried it,
even if they only did part of their homework, it's
something to celebrate and try because they otherwise would not
have those tools. The idea is the people who get

(08:02):
better are the ones that recognize that they are in
charge of their life. This is their life, and what
happened to you is could be terrible and awful, and
you are responsible though, for the healing for that no

(08:23):
one else is. Okay, So whatever's happened to you in
this lifetime could be absolutely terrible, okay, and I could
empathize with you and we could go over it. We've
learned now that that's pretty re traumatizing. But you are
responsible for that healing. You cannot lay it on the
hands of other people or on the work of other people,

(08:45):
even if it's their fault, right, even if whatever, And
people who do believe in the idea of karma would
say that's exactly perfect, because whatever you need to do
to heal is what you need to go through to
get at her and to become who you already are,
right this perfect and divine and beautiful, creation and creative person.

(09:08):
So in that light, it's really important that you walk
about your life feeling much more empowered because you are,
rather than defeated. I met this girl the other day
and we were just hanging out and talking and she said, oh,
you know, I'm an accountant and I hate every minute

(09:28):
of it. And it's absolutely miserable, and I just try
to get the job done and come home. And she
had this like really fake smile. There's a cool name
for smiles that reach all the way to your eyes.
This was not This was not one of those smiles.
And she was really miserable in this job. And maybe
she has golden handcuffs. I don't know. Maybe she's just
doing it for the money. You know, she works there

(09:48):
full time, and that's what her life is going to
be like Like I had so much overwhelming empathy for her,
Like this is her one life, this is your one life.
Who are you gonna be? What are you gonna let
get to you? And the thing that you can't resolve,
the thing that you cannot find your way around, the

(10:10):
thing that you are stuck in the mire? And believe me,
I have one of these things, okay, But the thing
that you're like, why do I wake up still thinking
about this? Why can't I resolve this? No matter what
I do, I can't. Like I have tried to take control, Sherry,
I've tried. I can't take control. I can't resolve this thing.
Maybe maybe you're not supposed to resolve that thing. Maybe

(10:31):
you are being divinely protected and you don't even know it. Okay,
If you have a family member that you're estranged from
and you wish like anything that you were tied again,
and you wish like anything that your relationship was good,
or you're embarrassed to talk about it, or do you
feel weird around other family members or you feel singled out,
or whatever it is, maybe after numerous attempts to try

(10:55):
to work it out with them, maybe that's not what
it's supposed to be. Maybe it's possible that you are
being divinely protected and that in this lifetime that is
not supposed to work out, and that is your karma path,
the acceptance of being okay in a gray area or
an ugly area, or in a place that hasn't been resolved,

(11:20):
or that you're constantly thinking in the future, this is
gonna happen, this is how it's gonna be in the future.
I've news for you. It's not that nothing's gonna happen
in the future. It's all gonna happen right now. Nothing
ever happened in the past. It happened right now, this second,
this moment is all you have. This is it okay,

(11:42):
This is it, and now this and like this moment
right they keep coming and coming and this is it.
Everything is going to happen right now. So who are
you gonna be? What are you gonna do? How are
you going to live your life? Knowing this is the moment.

(12:02):
You don't have to wait for something life altering or
horrific to happen to you to realize the meaning of life.
You don't have to fall into a depression or lose
somebody before you realize how fragile life is. You can
make the decision now to be in control of your life,

(12:28):
to decide I don't care, I'm doing this anyway. And
maybe that's how it is for that person, or that's
how it went for this person, but you have to
make the decision that you're going to be the exception.
If it's something that's frowned upon or something where you
don't feel a lot of support, okay, because you can
do things without support. You eventually got you up and

(12:52):
walked across the room. Even though you fell down time
and time again, some drive inside of you knew that
you needed to be upright and ambulatory, and it got
you on your feet and you walked across the room,
or you actually spoke that full sentence or whatever it is.
You're an expert at changing and evolving, and it's no

(13:15):
one else's fault. And if you have to go through
some kind of forgiveness, like clearly Lucinda Williams needs to,
that is a favor to you, not to anyone else.
You do that so you can relieve yourself of the
giant boulder bawling ball in your backpack that you are

(13:40):
carrying around. You are in control of your entire life.
You are one hundred percent responsible for your life, one
hundred percent, and the second, the minute that you accept
that and decide to believe it, is when everything magical happens.

(14:02):
I used to be a miserable person. I was miserable.
I was sick all the time. I finally had to
make a decision that I was going to change, because
it was kind of like change or die. I was impulsive,
I was rude, I was unkind, I was always mad.

(14:23):
I was always raising my voice. And when I decided
to take one hundred percent responsibility of my life, that
all didn't dissipate immediately. But I will tell you what
immediately happened. I was on a mission to change and
be better and live the best life that I possibly
could in this lifetime with the karmic path that I

(14:45):
had been given or created in my previous lives. Okay,
and you can believe this or not believe it, but
your life is going to be so much easier if
you just walk and going I'm responsible for this. I
am one hundred percent responsible for my own life. And
it gives you this beautiful gift of volition, motivation, empowerment,

(15:12):
and you begin to feel like you really can do anything,
whereas in a victim role, you feel like you cannot
do anything, and it's a terrible feeling. And I empathize
with you if you're there, because I have been there.
But you can get yourself out. You can. I promise
you that you can. I promise, And one of the

(15:37):
easiest ways to do that, the simplest, and you don't
even have to tell anyone you're doing it. You can
keep this private. You don't have to tell anyone your business.
You can keep it completely and totally private. But you
can begin to get quiet, to practice meditation, to find

(15:58):
the joy that already resides in you, that like an onion,
you just have to kind of let the layers fall
away and be like shracking right, because it's already there,
that silence and that joy. You don't have to look
for it. It's not outside of you, it's already inside
of you. You have to allow it, You have to

(16:18):
let it bubble up. You have to free yourself from
what seems to be keeping you from everything. But the
only thing that's keeping you down and holding you back
is you. It's just you. So let's meditate together and

(16:40):
look for realize the beauty, the lovely, the bliss that
already resides in every single one of us. Okay, so
let's take a moment to find a beautiful space to
sit in, to be still. Allow your chin to be

(17:09):
leveled to the ground. Relax your head, your jaw, your
neck and shoulders, your limbs, your heart, center, your belly,
your entire spine, both of your legs. Allow your hands

(17:31):
to rest on your knees, and for this meditation, perhaps
you open them up. Put the backs of your hands
on your knees, sitting up, not leaning back or forward,

(17:56):
And in your mind's eye, for a moment, I want
you to bring your attention to the very base of
your spine. To your root chakra, imagining that you can
breathe into this area red a red, healing breath, lighting

(18:19):
it up, feeling safe and sound, coming into this root chakra.
Just imagine your breath as it comes in and it
travels all the way down down, clearing out, brightening a

(18:53):
beautiful red light of breath and healing. Now allow yourself
to move upward a couple of inches below your belly button,

(19:13):
breathing into this space, breathing in your orange breath of passion,

(20:23):
of creativity. This is a space of your sexuality. Your
organs are located here, breathing and healing into this space
with your breath, your beautiful orange breath, right under the

(20:43):
lower abdomen, under the belly button, and now coming to

(21:20):
and residing and staying a few inches above your belly
button to the solar plexus. This is yellow breath, so
bright like sunshine, like a crown over the other two
lower chakras. This is your place of drive, of confidence,

(21:48):
of motivation, And just allow yourself to imagine a beautiful
yellow breath coming in each time, filling and clearing out,
healing and bringing forth your best self, your best decisions,

(22:15):
your best projects, your best ideas your best energy. And
as you visualize your breath yellow and bright, coming in,
going out, just watching it light up this specific chakra
and this space and your beautiful body. I'll leave you

(22:39):
with it and I'll be back to guide you out.

(24:39):
Love all of this yellow and beautiful, beautiful breath, lighting

(25:22):
up this lovely chakra. Allow this visualization to leave your awareness,
coming back to the breath, emptying your lungs and taking
a long, slow, deep breath in your nose, letting it
all go out of your mouth. Again, one slow, long,

(25:48):
deep breath in your nose, letting it all go out
of your mouth. Let's do it one more time, one long, deep,
slow breath in your nose, letting it all go releasing

(26:08):
a out of your mouth, and when you're ready, you
can open your beautiful eyes. Thank you so much for
being with me today. I hope that this uncovers a
little something for yourself and when you're feeling stuck, you'll

(26:29):
come to you rather than outside of yourself for the answers,
because that is where the truth lies. That's where it
is people. And if you like this show, it would
be great if you could rate it, review it, tell
me what you think, tell me what you want, how
I can help, how I can make things better. I
would love to hear from you, and I would really

(26:51):
love to have you on one of my retreats. If
you're ready, come on a retreat with me. We have
one twice a year, one in the beautiful Georgia Mountains
in September twenty twenty five, where you will walk away
with this meditation habit in your pocket, and the food
is just unbelievable and the space is beautiful. It's just

(27:14):
absolutely stunning there, and we'll do some yoga to help
it make it easier to sit longer and look inward.
And then I have one at Jekyl Island, which is
off the coast of Georgia, and there we're just in
these amazing beautiful spaces where it's just it's almost impossible
to not drop it into some sort of lovely meditative
experience there while we do yoga and the most beautiful

(27:37):
beaches in the South. And I would love, love love
to have you, so rate review, subscribe until next time.
Have a lovely, lovely day. Hi y'all feeling after that
stress therapy session good awesome. Check out the show notes
to connect with me the Stress Therapist on social media,

(27:59):
at the stress Therapist on Instagram and at stress Therapy
on Twitter. You can always go to I loovethapy dot
com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and
other offerings that I have there. If you live in
Georgia and you're ready to be one of my clients,
go to my website to find out how you can
sign up for a free face to face consultation with
me at the very least, Jump by my mailers so

(28:21):
you don't stress or miss one thing until next time.
Have a lovely, lovely day,