September 23, 2025 • 47 mins
Season 2 of The Lonely Road begins with a powerful message: your diagnosis is not your destiny. In this episode, we dive into breaking free from labels and embracing the limitless potential within you. Learn how to reclaim your narrative and redefine what’s possible for your life. 🎯 What You'll Discover: How to see beyond your diagnosis and take control of your story Practical tools for building a life that aligns with your true self Strategies for turning limitations into opportunities Empowering insights to fuel your growth and resilience 💥 Special Offer: Partnered with Gfuel – Use code RMTS at checkout for 20% off! 👉 Subscribe & Transform: Don’t miss this season’s expert advice and inspiring conversations about breaking boundaries, embracing personal growth, and becoming unstoppable. Like, share, and subscribe to join the journey! 💬 Let’s Connect: How have you rewritten your story beyond a diagnosis? Share your experience in the comments to inspire others. 🔗 Follow for More: Stay motivated and empowered daily @HotloadsZac on X. Accountability, Personal Growth, Mental Health, Resilience, Self Empowerment, Overcoming Limitations, Rewriting Your Narrative, Emotional Resilience, Diagnosis Awareness, Life Transformation, Inspirational Stories, Personal Development, Growth Mindset, Self Belief, Season 2
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Boys, we're back. This is season two, episode one of
The Lonely Road. Obviously, as always, you guys don't have
to watch every episode. Every episode's going to be different
and it's not like a story thing, So you guys
don't have to sit there and follow through with every
every little thing that's talked about, So doesn't have to
go aware that listen to the ones that you need to,
don't listen to the ones that it will hurt you
or make you feel uncomfortable. But as always, we're on
(00:22):
the journey to heal, whether we're by ourselves and trying
to make ourselves a better human or trying to make
everybody else around us kind of step up to the
level that they need to be. We're going to be
here and we're going to help you guys through as
many things as we possibly can. This is going to
be a very different show though. We're going to go
on a deep dive of grief and mental health and
all of that stuff in between, whether it's stats and
kind of in depth trying to explore everything. We're just
(00:45):
telling stories and trying to trauma dump and kind of
figure it out so you guys can be in a
better place. Too, as always used code rmts to check
out for g fuel twenty percent off. That stuff's beautiful.
How have you been kJ, it's been a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, yeah, it has been quite the break. We needed
it though, you know. I mean we were going to
finish off season one, you know, with a nice wrap
up about accountability, and I thought it would be wonderful,
but I uh, I had a I had a real
(01:18):
bad scare with my dog. And let me just tell you, you
don't think sometimes you don't think that they mean as
much as they do. But let me it's an integral part,
an integral part of the family.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's weird. It's weird how much they they like kind
of touch base, whether it's to your heart or your
mind or like even the consistency day to day. Yeah,
I remember. I remember a weird story that my mom
used to tell when she went out to see you.
I think you were actually coming home and She's like,
every day I woke up and was like, do you
guys need cereal? Do you guys want breakfast? You guys
want coffee? And I'm like, fuck yeah. Those like those
(01:53):
little consistency things just like kind of pull on your heartstrings.
A little bit to kind of like fuck up your
day almost and it's fair.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, So we took a little sabbatical,
decided to end season one early short season, but we
have a nice, nice array of ray topics up on.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
The Honestly, even with you know, seven eight episodes that
we did in season one hitting almost twenty thousand viewers
in the first month and a half two months, that's good.
That's fucking awesome. And regardless of it was gonna be
you guys or not, I want to say this across
all shows. I said it on my other show as well.
Thank you this year, I hit one point four million
(02:33):
views in a year, like, regardless of what happens at all, Like,
this is not what I expected. So regardless of what
happens next, it's it's cool. So thank you. Regardless of
how much of a part you guys were a part
of that, that feels fantastic.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
So that's awesome. That congratulations.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's been a cool year. Even as hard
as life has been this year, it's still I can't
say that it's uniquely just a horrible fucking year, which
is insane to me.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So yeah, yeah, and you know, it's me. It's not
even about the views or the clicks. It's about how
I impact somebody. You know. I don't even care, Like
even on my TikTok, I don't care about likes. I
don't care about the amount of music gets except for
the fact that it may reach with more views, that
may reach the person that it needs to reach. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
No, it was always weird to me when it would
hit like, oh, this is ten thousand views. Now I'm
getting around to the size of my hometown. Oh this
is one hundred thousand views. That's this region, and that
to me probably autism level or ADHD level. But it's
always just like interesting to compare it to something like
you're impacting or you're being seen by this many people,
and that's just it touches you in a way you
(03:43):
don't really realize for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
It's crazy to think about it really is. And you
look at each individual, you know video and you don't
really think it's doing that much, but you look at
it compiled with all the shorts and everything else that's
going out exactly, and it really does that up.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
When you're you're pushing like twenty K a week or
twenty five k a week, just between shorts and a
long form video. It feels fucking weird. It just does
like everybody's like, oh you can do this, good luck,
And to me.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
It just satisfies the creativity out of me. You know,
I mean it like I when I just I just
kind of tweaked my own news ish page and it
it was interesting to me because I'm not doing it
to satisfy other people. I'm doing it to satisfy me.
It's like my personal diary. It's where I put my
(04:33):
create you know, my creative outlets on that page. So
people you don't catch on, they catch on.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
That's exactly why. And the other show with a story
from my life or something crazy that's happened or something
like that, because you know, at some point my kids
are going to want, you know, those stories. There might
be a day where I can't talk. There might be
a day where I fucking become incapacitated and not be
able to do anything, and having that backlog or having
availability to tell them stories without being able to tell
(05:02):
them right in that second, might be huge for them.
Who the fuck knows. Yeah, it's interesting, that could be insane.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great time capsule, if you will.
I find that, you know, with most of my main
news content on TikTok, with what's coming up with TikTok
or evident with TikTok right now, I needed to switch
it to a different a different place, because all my
videos are going to go away if I don't. So
(05:30):
I got to figure exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And it's been really weird, you know, within a month,
Facebook has now started growing. After Facebook was originally going
to back urmts and and they offered like five thousand
dollars in order to start up the show, and then
they looked at the URL and they're like, it has
a bad word in the title. We can't back this.
Now all of a sudden monetized on Facebook. I have
(05:53):
no idea how the fuck this works. If you're telling
me you couldn't do it at the beginning, but now
all of a sudden, it's like I don't understand, but
you know, we're here now.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Facebook's funny because they one day want we'll do something
and stand for something, and then the whole next day
it'll be like a three sixty or one.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, with you know, actual people at Facebook, and then
you know they're like, nah, it has bad words in it,
and then all of a sudden they're like monetized and
I'm like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Okay, well, congratulations on that too.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, it's been. It's been a fun it's been a
fun little bit, even even with you know, dealing with
life and kind of just trying to be consistent and calm.
It's been. It's been an interesting time.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yes it has, Yes, yes it has.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And it is triggering my ADHD through the fucking roof
because every day it's something fucking new.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Well, let me tell you that, you know, the anxiety
of the holidays with me, it was really interesting to
get through the holidays because you know, this year is
last year to twenty four was really you know, pivotal
for me in my journey of of you know, getting
through and through most of this grief and kind of
(07:08):
compartmentalizing each piece and going through it. And it was
interesting that I was able to get through the holidays
without much incident. There were a couple uh not days.
There were even a couple of partial uh you know,
a couple hours at a time where I was felt
affected or felt overly angry, But for the most part,
(07:29):
I was able to push through it and you know,
form new traditions and and and take the old ones
and and and amplify them. It helps. Uh. I don't
know what it was, but something turned for me this years.
It was kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, I had a really I had a really weird
realization when we were putting up the Christmas tree. And
I wasn't really sure if I was going to talk
about this at all, or or here and nowhere or what.
But uh, we were putting up the Christmas tree with
all the kids and I didn't go through all the
ornaments and stuff after my divorce got put through and
everything else, and you see all the family ornaments and
(08:05):
everything else, and the baby picks up a picture of
all of us and she's like, look, there's me, and
there's mommy, and why is Daddy there? And it was
just and then my oldest and my son were like,
this doesn't go on the tree anymore. And the baby's like, yeah, oh,
this goes on the tree. And I'm like, I don't,
(08:26):
I don't. What do I do?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Right? That's still I do. That's really tough.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And like my girlfriend handled it so fucking she handled
it better than I did. I went into the other room,
and I took five minutes for myself because I was like,
I have a baby who doesn't understand and never saw
the family together. I have two kids that are like, no,
this is not happening anymore. I'm gonna be happy, And
it's just like, fuck, how how do I answer this
(08:57):
at all? How do you how do you draw the line?
I'm gonna just be like, what is the answer? And
I told my mom. I was like, I don't know
what the fuck the answer is, but I feel not
only guilt, but I don't know how to fix it.
And she's like, well, you have to do the right thing.
It's like, what the fuck is the right thing? What
the fuck is the right thing? It's like, you know,
(09:17):
this grief, this viability of whatever that was before obviously
is gone. But that doesn't change everybody or how everybody's impact.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Right and her Felix are just as valid, as important
as the other two children and yours. Yeah, I'm sure
that was interesting to gavigate. So did you end up
get off the tree or did not?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And I didn't And I looked at I looked at Brien.
I was like, hey, this is me showing your respect.
Because she has to see that it's okay on both sides,
not just.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
To do with the order.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I put it back with the other one so that
we didn't put on the tree, like I can't throw
it out. That's not the right answer. I cannot do anything.
It's just like it's frozen now, like there's nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But yeah, yeah, And also, you know, with her reaction,
she may want that ornament in the future, you know,
one or you know, one of the kids may want that,
And that's for you to keep as a momentum for
them because at the end of the day they may
be having whatever trials and tribulations that they're having individually
and collectively, but at the end of the day, when
(10:35):
all said and done and things boil down and they
grow and they heal, they may want that momentum exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And and especially with Ava, there's there's so few family
things or anything that she will ever realize or like
have those things that include her that it's hard to
like put those pieces together. Obviously, the timeline of ever
thing obviously is so much more complex and what anybody
really can know rate at this second.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But it was hard.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It was hard because it's like, okay, so how how
do I do this right?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You have to get your wits together because you weren't
ready to see that, and you didn't realize it was
in there or remember that it was in there, you know,
and so you got hit with it too, and instead
of speaking out of your emotion, I think it was
awesome that you were able to you know, hey, babe,
I need a second, take five minutes and go over
the scenario in your head to not you know, take
(11:35):
Ava's feelings out of consideration. And the other two obviously
are at a different point right now with that situation
than Ava, and you know, because ABA's too young and
hasn't been weathered as much in it, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, honestly, I looked at Brian. I was like, I
know that I have to do this to respect you,
and you give me a lot of leeway in a
lot of respect with a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
She's a champ.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
So I was like, I know I have to do this,
but I need you to understand that this feels odd
like and I'm trying to figure it out and put
the pieces together and I'm not one hundred percent yet,
And she's like, no, I completely understand, but that You're
not alone with the holidays being rough, because goddamn it
was fucking rough.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
No. No, I've got especially a fresh off here wound.
You know, it's it's difficult the first year after anything,
you know, any main major trauma, you know. Never mind
me thirteen what thirteen years after the fact, fifteen, I'm
still trying to navigate how to move forward, you know,
(12:48):
now that I'm done running from my bullshit.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It's weird when it finally hits you in the face
because you don't like realize what's going on until it
genuinely does.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, I mean you kind of have. I mean, you
could be told a million times something, but in eve like.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In your day to day bullshit. But like unless something
from somebody else hits you it it really just.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
It's gotta make an impact. Yeah, in my in my case,
you have I have to feel it. I could have
been told a trillion times something by my mother, but
until I felt that, I wasn't gonna And I wish
I would. I wish I would. I wish humans human
nature was was to listen and to act accordingly in
but it's not you. Me particularly, I tend to think
(13:36):
that I know better and that's something that I'm able
to now look within and say, yeah, maybe I'm I
might not know better, you know, And in most times
I I don't because I'm not. I'm not the adultiest
adult in the in the adult world.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Every day, I promise that there is not a single
fucking day that I don't go past with something fucking
failing me, sitting on my ass for twenty minutes longer
than I probably should. You know, It's just one of
those things. Life is life, and at some point you
kind of got to just, you know, resonate with the
things that you have because that's about all you got.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, you kind of got to focus in on what's
in front of you, you know, and not let uh
not let the trivial things or the labels in life
define you. You have to be able to live your
life day to day and focus on what's in front
of you in order to get ahead in your life
and not be distracted by that which they would like
(14:39):
everybody to be distracted by.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And honestly, I thought that that shit was so hard.
Like when I was diagnosed with ADHD, it was a
relief to me because it like I remember when I
was little and they were looking at Bella, my little sister,
for ADHD and everything else. And my mom was like,
even if she's diagnosed, I wouldn't I wouldn't treat her.
I wouldn't give her medication to change this. This is her.
(15:04):
So like I went through about twenty five, I started
realizing that, you know, my caffeine consumption is the only
way that I can get through the day. And when
I tell you this number of milligrams of caffeine that
I consumed on a daily basis, everybody's going to tell
me I'm lying.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I just believe it because I've watched what you could assumed.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I was over a thousand milligrams of caffeine on a
daily basis.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And I wonder why ADHD was bouncing off.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Of course, yeah, I was, you know, crushing crazy amounts
of energy drinks or GFU at the time or whatever
pre workout I found on the shelf. It was like, Okay,
this is cheap enough. This is thirty servings. Guess what
this is fifteen days, that's what that is. It was
(15:55):
six hundred milligrams of caffeine at a time, having one
or two caffeine pills before I went to work, just
to feel like I was okay enough to put my
mind together to do something that was just menial bullshit. Yeah,
and uh when that diagnosis came, I was like, oh,
holy shit, So what you're saying is is you know
(16:16):
this isn't normal. It's not normal to be able to
consume all of that. There'd be no heart problems or
anything like that. I remember going in for appointments for
my neck and they would take my blood pressure. They'd
be like, how much caffeine did you have today? I
was like, six hundred milligram so far. It's eleven o'clock
in the morning. Why is your heart rate low? I
don't know. We're like, you are the healthiest person we
(16:40):
see here every day, and don't. Like I don't understand
where you're coming from. I genuinely don't. They're like, obviously,
obviously it help you in some way.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah. No, It's like it's the same thing like when
you have an issue, you know, or you don't have
an issue when you're taking medication like a meta for instance,
riddle and some people take it because they need to
calm down because they have the ADHD issue, and other
people take it because they need to ramp up and
not sleep and all that other stuff because they don't
(17:09):
have the problem and they're taking it for another reason,
you know. So sometimes I feel like, you know, whatever,
it could counteract, you know, you like to like you
and the caffeine, caffeine, the ADHD is going to counteract
that caffeine.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I remember the craziest thing. When I would go to
my actual sperm donor father's house, he would buy me
six two liter bottles of soda for two nights. And
when I when I would get ready to go to
sleep at nine o'clock at night, he would say, okay,
drink this and hand me a two liter bottle of soda,
and I would just be allowed to go to sleep
(17:44):
whenever I was, you know, ready enough to go to sleep.
You drink as much of it as you want. It's
a dollar to go to sleep. It's not that bad.
But now realizing that as a parent, it's like, fuck, man,
a lot of fucking sugar to go to sleep at
nine o'clock at night, nine years old, here years and
(18:05):
two leader go to sleep.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Now, But uh, like it's weird looking back, like all
the little things that I'm like, oh well, that would
have changed so much.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, I find that a lot of people, you know,
I mean, it could go both ways and also be encompassed.
Like you get a diagnosis and you can go one
of two ways or like I said, a combination of
an angle with it. But you can feel relieved because
(18:38):
you now know what's going on and you can do
things to combat that. On the other hand, some diagnoses
are give people grief. You know, they have to get
over that first level of grief in order to get
through to the answer and what will help them moving forward.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I help two people with some of the hardest fucking
diagnosises I've ever seen people with, and like I fought
again some of my own, and you know, I know
they're not right, but I help to people enter the
same exact diagnosis for both of them. They're both relatively different,
different people, which is the funny part. It's like you
watch somebody be diagnosed with something and it just hits
(19:19):
them on the chin of like, oh my god, I'm
fucking depressed because they say I'm this, and it's just
like those letters don't matter, they don't they don't fucking matter.
I remember being diagnosed with complex PTSD and being told, hey,
This will never change. You cannot change this. You can
(19:39):
change how much it affects you, but you can never
You will have nightmares for the rest of your life.
You will have panic attacks for the rest of your life.
It will not change. And it's just like, Okay, do
you know how much baggage people put in those fucking letters?
(20:00):
And the fact that I didn't get them from wearing cameo.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
No. No, There's a lot of baggage that come with
diagnoses because diagnoses come from some level of trauma, you know,
and that's where you're going to have. You know your
you can get Like I when I was in my
(20:28):
early twenties and I went out of Salt Lake, it
threw me for a loop. I not only became homes
If I would have followed the signs, I would have
come right back because it was my whole body and
everything in me was telling me that I was That's
not where I was meant to be, That's not where
I was supposed to be. But I did it, and
I made it, and the experience made in a lot
(20:50):
of ways, made me who I am today. But it
was it was something that if I would listen to
my internal compass I would have turned around and come back.
But that being said, that was when I went out.
There was when I went to the doctor to get
(21:10):
to figure out, you know, because I was, I was,
I was. It was. It was grief. Looking back at it,
it was absolute grief, and I didn't understand it at
the time. I was moving on with my life and
I was moving forward, and I thought that was the
right thing to do. But when I got the diagnosis,
you know, and I got the prescriptions for medication, I
got on the phone with my mom and I was like,
(21:33):
you know, I mean, do I continue to cry day
in and day out at the drop of a dime
over anything, or do I try to take these medications
and see if it'll help me through. It was a
really big decision because I wasn't I wasn't raised on
any kind of medication or any kind of diagnoses or
(21:55):
anything like that. I I went to counseling once when
I was a kid. It was a family issue that
happened when I was oh maybe twelve thirteen years old,
I don't even remember, but it was it was something
that my mom wanted me to go to the counseling
for and make sure that everything was okay, and I
(22:16):
did and it got buttoned up real quick. But I
let the the medication defined me for quite a bit
until I shook myself free of the medication. And it
was a really good It was too long, way too long.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And I don't know if this is a positive, a
normal occurrence or not. So when I went through and
I was diagnosed with everything, and I finally went to
the therapist and a psychiatrist and stuff like that, they
diagnosed me with ADHD, suicidal ideation and complex person complex
(22:56):
PTSD and they gave me that for my suicidal ideation
and ADHD, which was an SSRI and I don't condone
anybody doing this. I took it for a week and
all of my emotions was gone, just all of them.
Like there was no happiness, there was no anger. I
was going through a divorce and everything fucking crashing, and
(23:19):
for some reason, I couldn't feel anything, not even sadness.
It just felt like life didn't exist. So I took
myself off the medication. I'm like, I'm not fucking taking this,
but this is useless to me. This Zoloft that is
in this bottle literally made me feel like the worst
person I could ever possibly be. As I said, don't.
(23:42):
I don't tell anybody to do that. I would not
do that for anybody else that I care about. Then
I got on with my psychologist or whatever the medperson is,
and I'm like, m I'm not taking that anymore. Don't
don't it's on the script. I'm not I'm not fucking
taking And she's like, what the fuck are you doing?
(24:05):
Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
You're you're supposed.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
To be taking this. I was like, yeah, and I
also want emotions. My job is living off of emotion
and kind of being entertaining and kind of wearing my
heart on my sleeve and being able to show people
how to handle things and do things and everything else.
If I'm not feeling anything, nobody cares. So she's like, oh,
(24:30):
you're bipolar. I'm not fucking bipolar. I don't know where
the fuck you got that from. So I fired her.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, it goes back to my distrust of of of
of the medical profession and psychology in particular. You know,
there was a situation a few years ago where you know,
I mean, my wife went to a counselor and she
was trying to get through some things in her life.
And one of the things she was trying to get
(25:02):
through was a codependency that she had with her children,
and they were growing up and moving out and she
was having a hard time with it. And so she,
you know, got with this counselor and they were talking
for a little while. Well, this counselor, at the end
of the day, had convinced her that she needed to
leave her marriage and be completely alone for at least
a year or two so that she could get through
(25:24):
and over her her Yeah, I mean completely wanted her
to blow her whole entire world up instead of figuring
out how to you know, set up the boundaries and
work through them. And it just threw me for a
loop and made me, made me distrust, you know, So
along the lines of what you said, you know, when
(25:46):
I was going through it in my twenties, that's what
it did for me. It numbed me out so that
I could get through the day without crying all the time.
But what it really was doing was masking or dampening
my raw emotions which were telling me what I'm what
I needed to do. But I needed something to to
(26:09):
shut it up so that I could do what I
wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
And it just it's like nowadays, when when everybody's learning
therapy words or or all of this ship, everybody is
so quick to just assume that a therapist or somebody
tells you to break off a relationship or do this
or do that, that you're supposed to fucking listen to them.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
They're not supposed to tell you what to do. They're
they're supposed to be there to bounce things off of
and give you the options in life and how you're
supposed to think through things. They're not supposed to do
that kind of thing. They're not supposed to like.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And I don't know if this is just you know,
the big manly version of me that sees this ship
all the fucking time. But it's not a very unique
story to hear. Oh, you know, my girlfriend went to
therapy and now all of a sudden she's single and
now cuts her hair all off and everything else and
makes these drastic changes to her life because she finally
saw a therapist. It's like, guys, that's not what therapy
(27:11):
is supposed to be. Therapy is not dictating and changing
everything that you're doing right now, because there are positive
things that you do every day. Regardless of what you
made it through one hundred birth percent of the days
that you already painted through, you are still fucking here
because you're the person you are. If you're working through something,
that doesn't mean change who the fuck you are. That
(27:33):
means figure out what the fuck the problem was, figure
out if you are the cause of the problem, and
fix the fucking problem. If you're not a change and
dictate life.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
No, but yeah, some changes may be necessary. If you're
not the cause of the problem. You may need to
change some of your surroundings and maybe the people that
you are, some of the people that you're associating with,
or maybe some of the places that you're going that
are bringing out those bad habits. But you as a
as a whole does not need change. And your intuition
(28:03):
is specifically for you, and it's telling you what you
need to hear. There's just ways that you need to
learn how to hear those things. Now. I'm not saying
medication isn't a necessity, because I'm met a lot of
medications necessity for a lot of people. For me, I
needed to take myself off of it so that I
(28:25):
could continue to go through. I was on it for
a good twenty twenty five years, but I needed to
take myself off it so that I could get through
what I was, what I'm going through, so that I
could grow, so that I could turn the corner.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
You can't numb yourself to the world to fix.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Something, No, you can't. That was the illusion that I
was under.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Honestly, you know it might be, it might be weird.
My therapist visits my therapy appointments that I have every
single week, and I go to them and I have
not missed one, other than for appointments for when we
were pregnant or things like that. Like that are not
my thing. I have not missed one in three years.
You want to know what those therapy appointments are. How
(29:09):
are you doing today? Is everything okay? How's work? How's
your neck doing? And everything else? You don't know what.
We haven't talked about any of my past child abuse,
any of it because making sure it stays in the
fucking rear view mirror means I can keep looking at
the windshield and keep going. If you sit here in
cycle on everything that you dealt with for your entire life,
(29:33):
that trauma that you're trying to get past and get
through is never going to fucking leave you. No, you're right,
just to stay right next to you.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Absolutely, it's true that you need to sit with it
in order to get through it, but as far as
continuing to traumatize yourself with it over and over and
over and over and over, and you know, that's what
I was doing on the anniversary of my mother's death
every single year, as I was continuing to re traumatize
myself with the event, uh and the situations leading up
(30:04):
to the event, it was crazy. It's crazy. I had
to get out of the situation. Yeah, I had to
get out of the cycle. It's a cycle.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
And it's so hard now when when so many letters,
whether it's ADHD, autism, depression, bipolar, even borderline as it's
getting bigger, are now becoming like fucking participation ribbons in life,
and you're like, I have all these things wrong with me.
And it's just like, dude, if you label yourself it's
(30:33):
just a group of fucking letters, you're not you anymore.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, yeah, it's true, it's true. And then there's the
rampant undiagnosed UH self diagnoses of all the letters and
phobias and whatever it is, Well, all the diseases. You
don't even see a doctor, you're not even going to
a counselor. And you're telling me that you have X,
(30:58):
Y Z, you know, and and your lip. I mean
you may be look, you may be educated, you may
have red stuff, but you're not diagnosed and and and
there's a lot of people that are using And I
just find in the participation trophy society that we're in,
(31:19):
it's almost like a participation trophy to have these things,
you know, to have an autism ribbon, and to have
an adhd Adhd ribbon, and to have any.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
On Twitter, you go on Tender, you go anywhere, fucking anywhere.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It's no longer.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
It's no longer your fucking name. It's I have ADHD,
I have autism, I have fucking anxiety, and I'm I'm
bipolar too. It's like, bitch, you're you're unwanted dead. Not
trying to be mean, but like, don't lead with that,
don't lead with that at all. Like you are a person.
If you just want to be a diagnosis, then why
(31:56):
why are you a human?
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Then? These are just names you're doing. These are just names.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You're taking your humanity, your experience, from your everyday life
away from you. Those things change how you see the world,
not what the fuck you are exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
It's not you. It's how you see the world. And
that's just a name for how you see the world.
And that's just a name for overactivity. Or it's just
a name for how you go from one subject to
another subject, or it's just a name for that you're
crying every day and you don't really know why. Or
it's a name for a heightened heart rate and anxiety level.
(32:31):
It's just a name, but it's not you. And you
can take those things and use them as stepping stones
to make you a better person, but don't define yourself
with them. They should not be in biography.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
The one that drives me the most insane actually is
an anxiety. It's social anxiety, and it's so fucking frustrating. Yes,
I understand I have a microphone in front of my face,
but you want to know what every single chance I
get I make my kids go into uncomfort situations of
talking to people and being a person. Yep, you want
(33:04):
to know why you have social anxiety because you won't
put this down and talk to the person that's in
front of you. That's why. That's the biggest fucking difference. Yeah,
you want to know why you feel uncomfortable going into
a boardroom meeting and having a conversation, It's because you're
not fucking working the skill. It's you are losing a skill.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yep, it's not.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
It's not a fear. It's not a I don't want
to do this. It is either you are too lazy
to fix the skill or you do not want to
do the skill. So then your skill gets worse and
you get afraid of failing because your skill is not tested.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
True again that it's based in fear, and and that
being said, there's nothing that you can do with a fear.
If you remain swimming in that sea of fear. You
need to to do that thing that you're afraid of
in order to get through that thing. And you're right.
The cell phones are huge in you know, all they
(33:55):
do is communicate through the cell phone. They don't look
at people in the eye or they're not you know,
having the conversation or ordering dinner when they go to
a restaurant, or doing the uncomfortable thing because the parents
are doing it for them. They don't want their kids
to be uncomfortable like they were made to be uncomfortable,
so they're going the whole other end of the spectrum
(34:16):
and doing everything for them.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I actually have a fucking story about this, and I
love this fucking story, and I'm so happy I did it.
And watching my kids faces light up at the end
was literally the payoff to the entire fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Go.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
We went to the Monster trucks and we're fucking everybody's
loving it. Eva even is actually sitting there for half
the time without like just bouncing off the walls. She's
actually enjoying it for a bit. She's asked numerous times
since to fucking go again. And Uh. The night wraps
up and we're getting a souvenir for each one of them,
and Nick looks at me. He's like, Dad, can I
(34:49):
get this signed? Can you go get it signed for me?
I'm like no. Matty looks at me, Hey, can I
get this? Can you go get this sign for me?
I said no. I said, you're gonna sit here with
me and we're gonna wait and we're gonna get it signed.
They said really like yes. It starts raining and they're like, Dad,
we're still getting this stuff signed. Yes, we're fucking getting
(35:11):
it signed. As to get it signed. We're gonna get
it signed. It doesn't matter if it's fuck it raining,
We're still doing.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
This dance in the rain. Baby.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
So they ended up moving where they were signing everything
because it was raining and stuff like that. So we're
standing there, we're last and fucking line, cause you know
that happens. They moved it all the way down underneath
the bleachers and everything else. So we're last. We're waiting
to get this shit signed. And uh, Maddy got a
specific cat from one of the drivers or whatever. She
(35:40):
liked the colors and she was like, I want that one.
Instead of just getting it signed by that specific driver,
she gets it signed by everybody. Because Nick was last
in line. He got his flag signed by every single
person and then got to take pictures with the person
who won and was handed a fucking flag that was
on the truck because he was the last person that
was there.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I look at him.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Experience.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
This is why it's not Dad, go do it. This
is why it's let's go do this.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
You need the experience how you do this. This is
how you get experiences in life.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yes, we walk out and uh, Nick threw me for
a loop. He looked at Maddie and said, Maddie, the
only place that we could ever do this is with that.
If this was four years ago, Maddie, we would be
walking into getting screamed out for the next hour and
a half. This doesn't happen anymore, and this is okay.
(36:37):
And he wrapped his arms around his sister, gave her
a hug, and they ran into the car.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
There's a level of anxiety they know they don't have
to deal with anymore in certain situations, you know.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
And you know, when both of them want to do YouTube,
both of them want to create content. Both of them
Nick is creating content. And it's so it's so cool
to watch the like bubbly personality that he has very
very simmarize.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
It's so different.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, and it's just like you watch them kind of
just use the skills that you're kind of forcing them
to learn, and it's just like you're you're knocking it
out of the park. I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's so cool. It's full circle. It's great to watch.
It's amazing to watch on a lower level, you know,
you're sitting here and I have grandchildren two and three
years old, three of them, and you know, it's interesting
because I would sit there and I would sing ABC's
(37:38):
to them while they laid down for their nap every
single day, every single day since they were babies. They
couldn't you know, sing back or anything. Just every day,
nobody sings with me. Everybody just goes to sleep and
Grandma sings ABC's. Well last it was right for Christmas
(37:59):
or whatever. They're in the living room and they are,
you know, playing the It was the two and three
year olds like the they're they're very I mean, the
three year old's a little more advanced. Obviously there's a
big difference between two and three year olds. But the
(38:20):
two year olds they do so much. They they they
beat feet to keep up with their brother, the three
year old. And so it was it was interesting because
we were all talking, the adults were talking, and the
kids were playing. And the next thing we know, we
hear the now I'm not talking, I'm not talking part
of it. I'm talking. We hear the whole ABC song
(38:43):
saying they're singing it together all the way through, and
they don't even skip Elemental p they just they just
say it fast, elemental like they they It was amazingly
astounding because it was like full circle to something that
I taught this little soul, you know, and and it
(39:06):
was just just amazing on that small and large of
a level, just to experience that it's.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's I've shared. I've shared a little bit of that
stuff with you, guys. Aila has gotten to be such
a little spunky ship. I love that kid so fucking much.
And uh, anytime I play hurting songs, she will just
start singing them like I used to when I was little,
and it's just the cutest fucking thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
And so.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I have I watch wrestling. So one of my favorite
songs for like the past year and a half two
years has been Kingdom. I don't even remember who it's by.
It's Cody Rhodes's entrance team song, and it's essentially like,
you know, dealing with the social anxiety of doing something beforehand.
This is my Kingdom. And Ava has started singing the
(39:59):
entire first verse of it, except sometimes she decides that
it's Maddie Rose instead of Cody Roads. And that's fucking
adorable to me. It just is because she's like, make
a smart ass to be like yelling this fucking song.
And then she'll be like, Daddy, can we watch Cody Roads?
And she'll watch wrestling with me and think that it's
all Cody Roads because that's what the song says. And
(40:21):
it's just it's so cute. That personality that kid has
is so like it just lights up a room and
it's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Their personalities are so amazing, and it's so important for
us to take these things that we're learning how to
manage our emotions and how not to allow letters or
diagnoses to uh to define you as a human being
or even be in your biography. To just use it
as a stepping stone to make yourself, to make yourself better,
(40:50):
to make yourself more appropriate, to make yourself more meaningful
to the world. But it's it's up to us to
pay that forward, to make it so that we don't
have to They don't have to do the research and
the the the work. I mean, they're going to have
to work. Obviously, everybody has to work to be good.
They're great at anything. But like our parents didn't teach
(41:14):
us these soft skills because they weren't taught these soft skills,
and for those of us that are learning them and
making our life better and turning it around, taking that
to the next generation is of utmost importance.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I remember the conversation I had with Maddie before her
appointment when she got diagnosed with ADHD and autism, and
they looked at her and said, I don't care. I
don't care what the answer is after this appointment. I
don't care what the what the answer is of how
we move forward after this. I've got your back. It
doesn't matter what they think this is or that is,
(41:51):
or how we fix this or how we make you
into a more sharp, more perfected like version of you.
It does not matter. I've got your back and nothing
changes from here. Us having the answer of what is
going on and how we can help you is the
part that matters. Can they be right absolutely? Can they
be wrong? Absolutely? And it doesn't fucking matter. But if
(42:15):
we have an answer of how to fix it, it's
going to be okay because we're going to get it together.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, that's right. That's the point of being the family,
you know, the family sticking together rather than being pitted
against each other. It's very important to make that and
you are with your kids, making that known that you're
a study and a constant that they can count on
(42:42):
not having to be anxious around or having to worry
about what's going to happen next or reading the room.
You know, they don't have to worry about that because
you take the time, like when you took that ornament
out of the box, you take the time to get
your own feelings under control, take those chords that have
(43:02):
been strung and let them rest for five minutes before
you go and deal with your child with instead of
dealing out of pure emotion. That's a lesson for everybody,
specifically me, Thank you Gods son to learn, you know,
absolutely is invaluable.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And not to stroke my own ego. But honestly, like
I have autism in ADHD, my answer is to impulse.
It took me thirty years to learn how to give
myself five minutes to be able to recenter myself. I
don't expect anybody to know how to do that.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Well. No, like you were telling me the other day,
there's a default, and you know sometimes it's a losing battle,
but you know right there is proof right there that
it's not a losing battle. It is a choice. You
just have to realize the trigger. And then when you
realize the trigger, right before the trigger, take yourself away.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Well, what I would saying there was is it's within me.
There is never a I can choose in between being
asshole Zach and perfect Zach. And I don't use perfect
as like I'm a perfect person, but like the person
the version.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Of Zach I want to be refined.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Either I can either be the version of Zach I
want to be and give everything the five minutes to
rest and attack the situation in whatever way I need to,
or I can be the impulse Zach and just react,
which it's hard because sometimes that's needed. So there's no
fifty percent either way. I either has to be completely
(44:36):
impulse and I have to give it and hope that
it's the right answer, or it has to be methodical
in depth, you wrecked, breakdown effective. You know what I'm saying,
just just being the the turtle and the fucking rabbit race.
But at the same time, guess what I'm gonna win?
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Well? Yeah, but do you know what works hard?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Trying to figure it out?
Speaker 2 (44:55):
He works? Well, you know what works for what situation
you're in. You know, you can always some of the time.
You can't always turn on asshole ZAC. I can't always
turn on asshole kJ because it's not going to land
where it needs to land. You can only turn on
that asshole when you've exhausted, you know, the methodical, wait
five minutes, figure it out, try to work through it.
But at least me, I try to exhaust those efforts
(45:18):
before I turn into asshole. And if I turn into
asshole right off the jump, I always look inwards because
I don't. I don't want to land that way anymore.
You know, I don't. I don't. It's not fun for me.
But I mean, obviously, if you're not close to me
and you're not in my family and you take a
shot at me, out of my element and out of
(45:39):
my safe spot, all bets are off.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, And you know, it's been it's been an interesting
time teaching myself that in front of a camera. I've
said this on my show multiple times. It's like a
lot of these shows have been some of the worst
times of my life. Not the show itself, not this show,
but like as a whole. Having this camera in front
of me holds me accountable in a way that most
(46:04):
people will not understand.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
That's exactly what I was gonna say. It's a way
to hold yourself accountable. You turn around me.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
To hold myself back together even in times when I
can't fucking put my mind together. Bree told me, she's
like your passes don't even know that you lost a
baby the day before you had to go back to work,
and you were back to work and on camera the
next fucking day. You didn't give yourself time to rest,
and you fucking did it, and you accomplished things that
(46:30):
most people cannot. And guess what, they don't need to
know that, but if they did, they would give you
so much more respect than anybody ever really should ever have,
because you deserve it, because you're doing the thing and
you hold yourself accountable in ways most people cannot.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
They know that in other ways, and the people the
person that that needs to know that. Brie knows that.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yep, exactly so, guys, as always, I know it's a
lonely road. I know it's a hard way to keep going.
Some days you have to keep going, And God damn it,
you're a beautiful person.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Don't let the letters define you.
Boys, we're back. This is season two, episode one of
The Lonely Road. Obviously, as always, you guys don't have
to watch every episode. Every episode's going to be different
and it's not like a story thing, So you guys
don't have to sit there and follow through with every
every little thing that's talked about, So doesn't have to
go aware that listen to the ones that you need to,
don't listen to the ones that it will hurt you
or make you feel uncomfortable. But as always, we're on
(00:22):
the journey to heal, whether we're by ourselves and trying
to make ourselves a better human or trying to make
everybody else around us kind of step up to the
level that they need to be. We're going to be
here and we're going to help you guys through as
many things as we possibly can. This is going to
be a very different show though. We're going to go
on a deep dive of grief and mental health and
all of that stuff in between, whether it's stats and
kind of in depth trying to explore everything. We're just
(00:45):
telling stories and trying to trauma dump and kind of
figure it out so you guys can be in a
better place. Too, as always used code rmts to check
out for g fuel twenty percent off. That stuff's beautiful.
How have you been kJ, it's been a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, yeah, it has been quite the break. We needed
it though, you know. I mean we were going to
finish off season one, you know, with a nice wrap
up about accountability, and I thought it would be wonderful,
but I uh, I had a I had a real
(01:18):
bad scare with my dog. And let me just tell you, you
don't think sometimes you don't think that they mean as
much as they do. But let me it's an integral part,
an integral part of the family.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's weird. It's weird how much they they like kind
of touch base, whether it's to your heart or your
mind or like even the consistency day to day. Yeah,
I remember. I remember a weird story that my mom
used to tell when she went out to see you.
I think you were actually coming home and She's like,
every day I woke up and was like, do you
guys need cereal? Do you guys want breakfast? You guys
want coffee? And I'm like, fuck yeah. Those like those
(01:53):
little consistency things just like kind of pull on your heartstrings.
A little bit to kind of like fuck up your
day almost and it's fair.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, So we took a little sabbatical,
decided to end season one early short season, but we
have a nice, nice array of ray topics up on.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
The Honestly, even with you know, seven eight episodes that
we did in season one hitting almost twenty thousand viewers
in the first month and a half two months, that's good.
That's fucking awesome. And regardless of it was gonna be
you guys or not, I want to say this across
all shows. I said it on my other show as well.
Thank you this year, I hit one point four million
(02:33):
views in a year, like, regardless of what happens at all, Like,
this is not what I expected. So regardless of what
happens next, it's it's cool. So thank you. Regardless of
how much of a part you guys were a part
of that, that feels fantastic.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
So that's awesome. That congratulations.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's been a cool year. Even as hard
as life has been this year, it's still I can't
say that it's uniquely just a horrible fucking year, which
is insane to me.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So yeah, yeah, and you know, it's me. It's not
even about the views or the clicks. It's about how
I impact somebody. You know. I don't even care, Like
even on my TikTok, I don't care about likes. I
don't care about the amount of music gets except for
the fact that it may reach with more views, that
may reach the person that it needs to reach. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
No, it was always weird to me when it would
hit like, oh, this is ten thousand views. Now I'm
getting around to the size of my hometown. Oh this
is one hundred thousand views. That's this region, and that
to me probably autism level or ADHD level. But it's
always just like interesting to compare it to something like
you're impacting or you're being seen by this many people,
and that's just it touches you in a way you
(03:43):
don't really realize for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
It's crazy to think about it really is. And you
look at each individual, you know video and you don't
really think it's doing that much, but you look at
it compiled with all the shorts and everything else that's
going out exactly, and it really does that up.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
When you're you're pushing like twenty K a week or
twenty five k a week, just between shorts and a
long form video. It feels fucking weird. It just does
like everybody's like, oh you can do this, good luck,
And to me.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
It just satisfies the creativity out of me. You know,
I mean it like I when I just I just
kind of tweaked my own news ish page and it
it was interesting to me because I'm not doing it
to satisfy other people. I'm doing it to satisfy me.
It's like my personal diary. It's where I put my
(04:33):
create you know, my creative outlets on that page. So
people you don't catch on, they catch on.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
That's exactly why. And the other show with a story
from my life or something crazy that's happened or something
like that, because you know, at some point my kids
are going to want, you know, those stories. There might
be a day where I can't talk. There might be
a day where I fucking become incapacitated and not be
able to do anything, and having that backlog or having
availability to tell them stories without being able to tell
(05:02):
them right in that second, might be huge for them.
Who the fuck knows. Yeah, it's interesting, that could be insane.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great time capsule, if you will.
I find that, you know, with most of my main
news content on TikTok, with what's coming up with TikTok
or evident with TikTok right now, I needed to switch
it to a different a different place, because all my
videos are going to go away if I don't. So
(05:30):
I got to figure exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And it's been really weird, you know, within a month,
Facebook has now started growing. After Facebook was originally going
to back urmts and and they offered like five thousand
dollars in order to start up the show, and then
they looked at the URL and they're like, it has
a bad word in the title. We can't back this.
Now all of a sudden monetized on Facebook. I have
(05:53):
no idea how the fuck this works. If you're telling
me you couldn't do it at the beginning, but now
all of a sudden, it's like I don't understand, but
you know, we're here now.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Facebook's funny because they one day want we'll do something
and stand for something, and then the whole next day
it'll be like a three sixty or one.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, with you know, actual people at Facebook, and then
you know they're like, nah, it has bad words in it,
and then all of a sudden they're like monetized and
I'm like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Okay, well, congratulations on that too.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, it's been. It's been a fun it's been a
fun little bit, even even with you know, dealing with
life and kind of just trying to be consistent and calm.
It's been. It's been an interesting time.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yes it has, Yes, yes it has.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And it is triggering my ADHD through the fucking roof
because every day it's something fucking new.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Well, let me tell you that, you know, the anxiety
of the holidays with me, it was really interesting to
get through the holidays because you know, this year is
last year to twenty four was really you know, pivotal
for me in my journey of of you know, getting
through and through most of this grief and kind of
(07:08):
compartmentalizing each piece and going through it. And it was
interesting that I was able to get through the holidays
without much incident. There were a couple uh not days.
There were even a couple of partial uh you know,
a couple hours at a time where I was felt
affected or felt overly angry, But for the most part,
(07:29):
I was able to push through it and you know,
form new traditions and and and take the old ones
and and and amplify them. It helps. Uh. I don't
know what it was, but something turned for me this years.
It was kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, I had a really I had a really weird
realization when we were putting up the Christmas tree. And
I wasn't really sure if I was going to talk
about this at all, or or here and nowhere or what.
But uh, we were putting up the Christmas tree with
all the kids and I didn't go through all the
ornaments and stuff after my divorce got put through and
everything else, and you see all the family ornaments and
(08:05):
everything else, and the baby picks up a picture of
all of us and she's like, look, there's me, and
there's mommy, and why is Daddy there? And it was
just and then my oldest and my son were like,
this doesn't go on the tree anymore. And the baby's like, yeah, oh,
this goes on the tree. And I'm like, I don't,
(08:26):
I don't. What do I do?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Right? That's still I do. That's really tough.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And like my girlfriend handled it so fucking she handled
it better than I did. I went into the other room,
and I took five minutes for myself because I was like,
I have a baby who doesn't understand and never saw
the family together. I have two kids that are like, no,
this is not happening anymore. I'm gonna be happy, And
it's just like, fuck, how how do I answer this
(08:57):
at all? How do you how do you draw the line?
I'm gonna just be like, what is the answer? And
I told my mom. I was like, I don't know
what the fuck the answer is, but I feel not
only guilt, but I don't know how to fix it.
And she's like, well, you have to do the right thing.
It's like, what the fuck is the right thing? What
the fuck is the right thing? It's like, you know,
(09:17):
this grief, this viability of whatever that was before obviously
is gone. But that doesn't change everybody or how everybody's impact.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Right and her Felix are just as valid, as important
as the other two children and yours. Yeah, I'm sure
that was interesting to gavigate. So did you end up
get off the tree or did not?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And I didn't And I looked at I looked at Brien.
I was like, hey, this is me showing your respect.
Because she has to see that it's okay on both sides,
not just.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
To do with the order.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I put it back with the other one so that
we didn't put on the tree, like I can't throw
it out. That's not the right answer. I cannot do anything.
It's just like it's frozen now, like there's nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But yeah, yeah, And also, you know, with her reaction,
she may want that ornament in the future, you know,
one or you know, one of the kids may want that,
And that's for you to keep as a momentum for
them because at the end of the day they may
be having whatever trials and tribulations that they're having individually
and collectively, but at the end of the day, when
(10:35):
all said and done and things boil down and they
grow and they heal, they may want that momentum exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And and especially with Ava, there's there's so few family
things or anything that she will ever realize or like
have those things that include her that it's hard to
like put those pieces together. Obviously, the timeline of ever
thing obviously is so much more complex and what anybody
really can know rate at this second.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But it was hard.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It was hard because it's like, okay, so how how
do I do this right?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You have to get your wits together because you weren't
ready to see that, and you didn't realize it was
in there or remember that it was in there, you know,
and so you got hit with it too, and instead
of speaking out of your emotion, I think it was
awesome that you were able to you know, hey, babe,
I need a second, take five minutes and go over
the scenario in your head to not you know, take
(11:35):
Ava's feelings out of consideration. And the other two obviously
are at a different point right now with that situation
than Ava, and you know, because ABA's too young and
hasn't been weathered as much in it, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, honestly, I looked at Brian. I was like, I
know that I have to do this to respect you,
and you give me a lot of leeway in a
lot of respect with a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
She's a champ.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
So I was like, I know I have to do this,
but I need you to understand that this feels odd
like and I'm trying to figure it out and put
the pieces together and I'm not one hundred percent yet,
And she's like, no, I completely understand, but that You're
not alone with the holidays being rough, because goddamn it
was fucking rough.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
No. No, I've got especially a fresh off here wound.
You know, it's it's difficult the first year after anything,
you know, any main major trauma, you know. Never mind
me thirteen what thirteen years after the fact, fifteen, I'm
still trying to navigate how to move forward, you know,
(12:48):
now that I'm done running from my bullshit.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It's weird when it finally hits you in the face
because you don't like realize what's going on until it
genuinely does.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, I mean you kind of have. I mean, you
could be told a million times something, but in eve like.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In your day to day bullshit. But like unless something
from somebody else hits you it it really just.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
It's gotta make an impact. Yeah, in my in my case,
you have I have to feel it. I could have
been told a trillion times something by my mother, but
until I felt that, I wasn't gonna And I wish
I would. I wish I would. I wish humans human
nature was was to listen and to act accordingly in
but it's not you. Me particularly, I tend to think
(13:36):
that I know better and that's something that I'm able
to now look within and say, yeah, maybe I'm I
might not know better, you know, And in most times
I I don't because I'm not. I'm not the adultiest
adult in the in the adult world.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Every day, I promise that there is not a single
fucking day that I don't go past with something fucking
failing me, sitting on my ass for twenty minutes longer
than I probably should. You know, It's just one of
those things. Life is life, and at some point you
kind of got to just, you know, resonate with the
things that you have because that's about all you got.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, you kind of got to focus in on what's
in front of you, you know, and not let uh
not let the trivial things or the labels in life
define you. You have to be able to live your
life day to day and focus on what's in front
of you in order to get ahead in your life
and not be distracted by that which they would like
(14:39):
everybody to be distracted by.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And honestly, I thought that that shit was so hard.
Like when I was diagnosed with ADHD, it was a
relief to me because it like I remember when I
was little and they were looking at Bella, my little sister,
for ADHD and everything else. And my mom was like,
even if she's diagnosed, I wouldn't I wouldn't treat her.
I wouldn't give her medication to change this. This is her.
(15:04):
So like I went through about twenty five, I started
realizing that, you know, my caffeine consumption is the only
way that I can get through the day. And when
I tell you this number of milligrams of caffeine that
I consumed on a daily basis, everybody's going to tell
me I'm lying.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I just believe it because I've watched what you could assumed.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I was over a thousand milligrams of caffeine on a
daily basis.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And I wonder why ADHD was bouncing off.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Of course, yeah, I was, you know, crushing crazy amounts
of energy drinks or GFU at the time or whatever
pre workout I found on the shelf. It was like, Okay,
this is cheap enough. This is thirty servings. Guess what
this is fifteen days, that's what that is. It was
(15:55):
six hundred milligrams of caffeine at a time, having one
or two caffeine pills before I went to work, just
to feel like I was okay enough to put my
mind together to do something that was just menial bullshit. Yeah,
and uh when that diagnosis came, I was like, oh,
holy shit, So what you're saying is is you know
(16:16):
this isn't normal. It's not normal to be able to
consume all of that. There'd be no heart problems or
anything like that. I remember going in for appointments for
my neck and they would take my blood pressure. They'd
be like, how much caffeine did you have today? I
was like, six hundred milligram so far. It's eleven o'clock
in the morning. Why is your heart rate low? I
don't know. We're like, you are the healthiest person we
(16:40):
see here every day, and don't. Like I don't understand
where you're coming from. I genuinely don't. They're like, obviously,
obviously it help you in some way.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah. No, It's like it's the same thing like when
you have an issue, you know, or you don't have
an issue when you're taking medication like a meta for instance,
riddle and some people take it because they need to
calm down because they have the ADHD issue, and other
people take it because they need to ramp up and
not sleep and all that other stuff because they don't
(17:09):
have the problem and they're taking it for another reason,
you know. So sometimes I feel like, you know, whatever,
it could counteract, you know, you like to like you
and the caffeine, caffeine, the ADHD is going to counteract
that caffeine.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I remember the craziest thing. When I would go to
my actual sperm donor father's house, he would buy me
six two liter bottles of soda for two nights. And
when I when I would get ready to go to
sleep at nine o'clock at night, he would say, okay,
drink this and hand me a two liter bottle of soda,
and I would just be allowed to go to sleep
(17:44):
whenever I was, you know, ready enough to go to sleep.
You drink as much of it as you want. It's
a dollar to go to sleep. It's not that bad.
But now realizing that as a parent, it's like, fuck, man,
a lot of fucking sugar to go to sleep at
nine o'clock at night, nine years old, here years and
(18:05):
two leader go to sleep.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Now, But uh, like it's weird looking back, like all
the little things that I'm like, oh well, that would
have changed so much.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, I find that a lot of people, you know,
I mean, it could go both ways and also be encompassed.
Like you get a diagnosis and you can go one
of two ways or like I said, a combination of
an angle with it. But you can feel relieved because
(18:38):
you now know what's going on and you can do
things to combat that. On the other hand, some diagnoses
are give people grief. You know, they have to get
over that first level of grief in order to get
through to the answer and what will help them moving forward.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I help two people with some of the hardest fucking
diagnosises I've ever seen people with, and like I fought
again some of my own, and you know, I know
they're not right, but I help to people enter the
same exact diagnosis for both of them. They're both relatively different,
different people, which is the funny part. It's like you
watch somebody be diagnosed with something and it just hits
(19:19):
them on the chin of like, oh my god, I'm
fucking depressed because they say I'm this, and it's just
like those letters don't matter, they don't they don't fucking matter.
I remember being diagnosed with complex PTSD and being told, hey,
This will never change. You cannot change this. You can
(19:39):
change how much it affects you, but you can never
You will have nightmares for the rest of your life.
You will have panic attacks for the rest of your life.
It will not change. And it's just like, Okay, do
you know how much baggage people put in those fucking letters?
(20:00):
And the fact that I didn't get them from wearing cameo.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
No. No, There's a lot of baggage that come with
diagnoses because diagnoses come from some level of trauma, you know,
and that's where you're going to have. You know your
you can get Like I when I was in my
(20:28):
early twenties and I went out of Salt Lake, it
threw me for a loop. I not only became homes
If I would have followed the signs, I would have
come right back because it was my whole body and
everything in me was telling me that I was That's
not where I was meant to be, That's not where
I was supposed to be. But I did it, and
I made it, and the experience made in a lot
(20:50):
of ways, made me who I am today. But it
was it was something that if I would listen to
my internal compass I would have turned around and come back.
But that being said, that was when I went out.
There was when I went to the doctor to get
(21:10):
to figure out, you know, because I was, I was,
I was. It was. It was grief. Looking back at it,
it was absolute grief, and I didn't understand it at
the time. I was moving on with my life and
I was moving forward, and I thought that was the
right thing to do. But when I got the diagnosis,
you know, and I got the prescriptions for medication, I
got on the phone with my mom and I was like,
(21:33):
you know, I mean, do I continue to cry day
in and day out at the drop of a dime
over anything, or do I try to take these medications
and see if it'll help me through. It was a
really big decision because I wasn't I wasn't raised on
any kind of medication or any kind of diagnoses or
(21:55):
anything like that. I I went to counseling once when
I was a kid. It was a family issue that
happened when I was oh maybe twelve thirteen years old,
I don't even remember, but it was it was something
that my mom wanted me to go to the counseling
for and make sure that everything was okay, and I
(22:16):
did and it got buttoned up real quick. But I
let the the medication defined me for quite a bit
until I shook myself free of the medication. And it
was a really good It was too long, way too long.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And I don't know if this is a positive, a
normal occurrence or not. So when I went through and
I was diagnosed with everything, and I finally went to
the therapist and a psychiatrist and stuff like that, they
diagnosed me with ADHD, suicidal ideation and complex person complex
(22:56):
PTSD and they gave me that for my suicidal ideation
and ADHD, which was an SSRI and I don't condone
anybody doing this. I took it for a week and
all of my emotions was gone, just all of them.
Like there was no happiness, there was no anger. I
was going through a divorce and everything fucking crashing, and
(23:19):
for some reason, I couldn't feel anything, not even sadness.
It just felt like life didn't exist. So I took
myself off the medication. I'm like, I'm not fucking taking this,
but this is useless to me. This Zoloft that is
in this bottle literally made me feel like the worst
person I could ever possibly be. As I said, don't.
(23:42):
I don't tell anybody to do that. I would not
do that for anybody else that I care about. Then
I got on with my psychologist or whatever the medperson is,
and I'm like, m I'm not taking that anymore. Don't
don't it's on the script. I'm not I'm not fucking
taking And she's like, what the fuck are you doing?
(24:05):
Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
You're you're supposed.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
To be taking this. I was like, yeah, and I
also want emotions. My job is living off of emotion
and kind of being entertaining and kind of wearing my
heart on my sleeve and being able to show people
how to handle things and do things and everything else.
If I'm not feeling anything, nobody cares. So she's like, oh,
(24:30):
you're bipolar. I'm not fucking bipolar. I don't know where
the fuck you got that from. So I fired her.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, it goes back to my distrust of of of
of the medical profession and psychology in particular. You know,
there was a situation a few years ago where you know,
I mean, my wife went to a counselor and she
was trying to get through some things in her life.
And one of the things she was trying to get
(25:02):
through was a codependency that she had with her children,
and they were growing up and moving out and she
was having a hard time with it. And so she,
you know, got with this counselor and they were talking
for a little while. Well, this counselor, at the end
of the day, had convinced her that she needed to
leave her marriage and be completely alone for at least
a year or two so that she could get through
(25:24):
and over her her Yeah, I mean completely wanted her
to blow her whole entire world up instead of figuring
out how to you know, set up the boundaries and
work through them. And it just threw me for a
loop and made me, made me distrust, you know, So
along the lines of what you said, you know, when
(25:46):
I was going through it in my twenties, that's what
it did for me. It numbed me out so that
I could get through the day without crying all the time.
But what it really was doing was masking or dampening
my raw emotions which were telling me what I'm what
I needed to do. But I needed something to to
(26:09):
shut it up so that I could do what I
wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
And it just it's like nowadays, when when everybody's learning
therapy words or or all of this ship, everybody is
so quick to just assume that a therapist or somebody
tells you to break off a relationship or do this
or do that, that you're supposed to fucking listen to them.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
They're not supposed to tell you what to do. They're
they're supposed to be there to bounce things off of
and give you the options in life and how you're
supposed to think through things. They're not supposed to do
that kind of thing. They're not supposed to like.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And I don't know if this is just you know,
the big manly version of me that sees this ship
all the fucking time. But it's not a very unique
story to hear. Oh, you know, my girlfriend went to
therapy and now all of a sudden she's single and
now cuts her hair all off and everything else and
makes these drastic changes to her life because she finally
saw a therapist. It's like, guys, that's not what therapy
(27:11):
is supposed to be. Therapy is not dictating and changing
everything that you're doing right now, because there are positive
things that you do every day. Regardless of what you
made it through one hundred birth percent of the days
that you already painted through, you are still fucking here
because you're the person you are. If you're working through something,
that doesn't mean change who the fuck you are. That
(27:33):
means figure out what the fuck the problem was, figure
out if you are the cause of the problem, and
fix the fucking problem. If you're not a change and
dictate life.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
No, but yeah, some changes may be necessary. If you're
not the cause of the problem. You may need to
change some of your surroundings and maybe the people that
you are, some of the people that you're associating with,
or maybe some of the places that you're going that
are bringing out those bad habits. But you as a
as a whole does not need change. And your intuition
(28:03):
is specifically for you, and it's telling you what you
need to hear. There's just ways that you need to
learn how to hear those things. Now. I'm not saying
medication isn't a necessity, because I'm met a lot of
medications necessity for a lot of people. For me, I
needed to take myself off of it so that I
(28:25):
could continue to go through. I was on it for
a good twenty twenty five years, but I needed to
take myself off it so that I could get through
what I was, what I'm going through, so that I
could grow, so that I could turn the corner.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
You can't numb yourself to the world to fix.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Something, No, you can't. That was the illusion that I
was under.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Honestly, you know it might be, it might be weird.
My therapist visits my therapy appointments that I have every
single week, and I go to them and I have
not missed one, other than for appointments for when we
were pregnant or things like that. Like that are not
my thing. I have not missed one in three years.
You want to know what those therapy appointments are. How
(29:09):
are you doing today? Is everything okay? How's work? How's
your neck doing? And everything else? You don't know what.
We haven't talked about any of my past child abuse,
any of it because making sure it stays in the
fucking rear view mirror means I can keep looking at
the windshield and keep going. If you sit here in
cycle on everything that you dealt with for your entire life,
(29:33):
that trauma that you're trying to get past and get
through is never going to fucking leave you. No, you're right,
just to stay right next to you.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Absolutely, it's true that you need to sit with it
in order to get through it, but as far as
continuing to traumatize yourself with it over and over and
over and over and over, and you know, that's what
I was doing on the anniversary of my mother's death
every single year, as I was continuing to re traumatize
myself with the event, uh and the situations leading up
(30:04):
to the event, it was crazy. It's crazy. I had
to get out of the situation. Yeah, I had to
get out of the cycle. It's a cycle.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
And it's so hard now when when so many letters,
whether it's ADHD, autism, depression, bipolar, even borderline as it's
getting bigger, are now becoming like fucking participation ribbons in life,
and you're like, I have all these things wrong with me.
And it's just like, dude, if you label yourself it's
(30:33):
just a group of fucking letters, you're not you anymore.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, yeah, it's true, it's true. And then there's the
rampant undiagnosed UH self diagnoses of all the letters and
phobias and whatever it is, Well, all the diseases. You
don't even see a doctor, you're not even going to
a counselor. And you're telling me that you have X,
(30:58):
Y Z, you know, and and your lip. I mean
you may be look, you may be educated, you may
have red stuff, but you're not diagnosed and and and
there's a lot of people that are using And I
just find in the participation trophy society that we're in,
(31:19):
it's almost like a participation trophy to have these things,
you know, to have an autism ribbon, and to have
an adhd Adhd ribbon, and to have any.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
On Twitter, you go on Tender, you go anywhere, fucking anywhere.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It's no longer.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
It's no longer your fucking name. It's I have ADHD,
I have autism, I have fucking anxiety, and I'm I'm
bipolar too. It's like, bitch, you're you're unwanted dead. Not
trying to be mean, but like, don't lead with that,
don't lead with that at all. Like you are a person.
If you just want to be a diagnosis, then why
(31:56):
why are you a human?
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Then? These are just names you're doing. These are just names.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You're taking your humanity, your experience, from your everyday life
away from you. Those things change how you see the world,
not what the fuck you are exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
It's not you. It's how you see the world. And
that's just a name for how you see the world.
And that's just a name for overactivity. Or it's just
a name for how you go from one subject to
another subject, or it's just a name for that you're
crying every day and you don't really know why. Or
it's a name for a heightened heart rate and anxiety level.
(32:31):
It's just a name, but it's not you. And you
can take those things and use them as stepping stones
to make you a better person, but don't define yourself
with them. They should not be in biography.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
The one that drives me the most insane actually is
an anxiety. It's social anxiety, and it's so fucking frustrating. Yes,
I understand I have a microphone in front of my face,
but you want to know what every single chance I
get I make my kids go into uncomfort situations of
talking to people and being a person. Yep, you want
(33:04):
to know why you have social anxiety because you won't
put this down and talk to the person that's in
front of you. That's why. That's the biggest fucking difference. Yeah,
you want to know why you feel uncomfortable going into
a boardroom meeting and having a conversation, It's because you're
not fucking working the skill. It's you are losing a skill.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yep, it's not.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
It's not a fear. It's not a I don't want
to do this. It is either you are too lazy
to fix the skill or you do not want to
do the skill. So then your skill gets worse and
you get afraid of failing because your skill is not tested.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
True again that it's based in fear, and and that
being said, there's nothing that you can do with a fear.
If you remain swimming in that sea of fear. You
need to to do that thing that you're afraid of
in order to get through that thing. And you're right.
The cell phones are huge in you know, all they
(33:55):
do is communicate through the cell phone. They don't look
at people in the eye or they're not you know,
having the conversation or ordering dinner when they go to
a restaurant, or doing the uncomfortable thing because the parents
are doing it for them. They don't want their kids
to be uncomfortable like they were made to be uncomfortable,
so they're going the whole other end of the spectrum
(34:16):
and doing everything for them.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I actually have a fucking story about this, and I
love this fucking story, and I'm so happy I did it.
And watching my kids faces light up at the end
was literally the payoff to the entire fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Go.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
We went to the Monster trucks and we're fucking everybody's
loving it. Eva even is actually sitting there for half
the time without like just bouncing off the walls. She's
actually enjoying it for a bit. She's asked numerous times
since to fucking go again. And Uh. The night wraps
up and we're getting a souvenir for each one of them,
and Nick looks at me. He's like, Dad, can I
(34:49):
get this signed? Can you go get it signed for me?
I'm like no. Matty looks at me, Hey, can I
get this? Can you go get this sign for me?
I said no. I said, you're gonna sit here with
me and we're gonna wait and we're gonna get it signed.
They said really like yes. It starts raining and they're like, Dad,
we're still getting this stuff signed. Yes, we're fucking getting
(35:11):
it signed. As to get it signed. We're gonna get
it signed. It doesn't matter if it's fuck it raining,
We're still doing.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
This dance in the rain. Baby.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
So they ended up moving where they were signing everything
because it was raining and stuff like that. So we're
standing there, we're last and fucking line, cause you know
that happens. They moved it all the way down underneath
the bleachers and everything else. So we're last. We're waiting
to get this shit signed. And uh, Maddy got a
specific cat from one of the drivers or whatever. She
(35:40):
liked the colors and she was like, I want that one.
Instead of just getting it signed by that specific driver,
she gets it signed by everybody. Because Nick was last
in line. He got his flag signed by every single
person and then got to take pictures with the person
who won and was handed a fucking flag that was
on the truck because he was the last person that
was there.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I look at him.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Experience.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
This is why it's not Dad, go do it. This
is why it's let's go do this.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
You need the experience how you do this. This is
how you get experiences in life.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yes, we walk out and uh, Nick threw me for
a loop. He looked at Maddie and said, Maddie, the
only place that we could ever do this is with that.
If this was four years ago, Maddie, we would be
walking into getting screamed out for the next hour and
a half. This doesn't happen anymore, and this is okay.
(36:37):
And he wrapped his arms around his sister, gave her
a hug, and they ran into the car.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
There's a level of anxiety they know they don't have
to deal with anymore in certain situations, you know.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
And you know, when both of them want to do YouTube,
both of them want to create content. Both of them
Nick is creating content. And it's so it's so cool
to watch the like bubbly personality that he has very
very simmarize.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
It's so different.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, and it's just like you watch them kind of
just use the skills that you're kind of forcing them
to learn, and it's just like you're you're knocking it
out of the park. I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's so cool. It's full circle. It's great to watch.
It's amazing to watch on a lower level, you know,
you're sitting here and I have grandchildren two and three
years old, three of them, and you know, it's interesting
because I would sit there and I would sing ABC's
(37:38):
to them while they laid down for their nap every
single day, every single day since they were babies. They
couldn't you know, sing back or anything. Just every day,
nobody sings with me. Everybody just goes to sleep and
Grandma sings ABC's. Well last it was right for Christmas
(37:59):
or whatever. They're in the living room and they are,
you know, playing the It was the two and three
year olds like the they're they're very I mean, the
three year old's a little more advanced. Obviously there's a
big difference between two and three year olds. But the
(38:20):
two year olds they do so much. They they they
beat feet to keep up with their brother, the three
year old. And so it was it was interesting because
we were all talking, the adults were talking, and the
kids were playing. And the next thing we know, we
hear the now I'm not talking, I'm not talking part
of it. I'm talking. We hear the whole ABC song
(38:43):
saying they're singing it together all the way through, and
they don't even skip Elemental p they just they just
say it fast, elemental like they they It was amazingly
astounding because it was like full circle to something that
I taught this little soul, you know, and and it
(39:06):
was just just amazing on that small and large of
a level, just to experience that it's.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's I've shared. I've shared a little bit of that
stuff with you, guys. Aila has gotten to be such
a little spunky ship. I love that kid so fucking much.
And uh, anytime I play hurting songs, she will just
start singing them like I used to when I was little,
and it's just the cutest fucking thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
And so.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I have I watch wrestling. So one of my favorite
songs for like the past year and a half two
years has been Kingdom. I don't even remember who it's by.
It's Cody Rhodes's entrance team song, and it's essentially like,
you know, dealing with the social anxiety of doing something beforehand.
This is my Kingdom. And Ava has started singing the
(39:59):
entire first verse of it, except sometimes she decides that
it's Maddie Rose instead of Cody Roads. And that's fucking
adorable to me. It just is because she's like, make
a smart ass to be like yelling this fucking song.
And then she'll be like, Daddy, can we watch Cody Roads?
And she'll watch wrestling with me and think that it's
all Cody Roads because that's what the song says. And
(40:21):
it's just it's so cute. That personality that kid has
is so like it just lights up a room and
it's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Their personalities are so amazing, and it's so important for
us to take these things that we're learning how to
manage our emotions and how not to allow letters or
diagnoses to uh to define you as a human being
or even be in your biography. To just use it
as a stepping stone to make yourself, to make yourself better,
(40:50):
to make yourself more appropriate, to make yourself more meaningful
to the world. But it's it's up to us to
pay that forward, to make it so that we don't
have to They don't have to do the research and
the the the work. I mean, they're going to have
to work. Obviously, everybody has to work to be good.
They're great at anything. But like our parents didn't teach
(41:14):
us these soft skills because they weren't taught these soft skills,
and for those of us that are learning them and
making our life better and turning it around, taking that
to the next generation is of utmost importance.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I remember the conversation I had with Maddie before her
appointment when she got diagnosed with ADHD and autism, and
they looked at her and said, I don't care. I
don't care what the answer is after this appointment. I
don't care what the what the answer is of how
we move forward after this. I've got your back. It
doesn't matter what they think this is or that is,
(41:51):
or how we fix this or how we make you
into a more sharp, more perfected like version of you.
It does not matter. I've got your back and nothing
changes from here. Us having the answer of what is
going on and how we can help you is the
part that matters. Can they be right absolutely? Can they
be wrong? Absolutely? And it doesn't fucking matter. But if
(42:15):
we have an answer of how to fix it, it's
going to be okay because we're going to get it together.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, that's right. That's the point of being the family,
you know, the family sticking together rather than being pitted
against each other. It's very important to make that and
you are with your kids, making that known that you're
a study and a constant that they can count on
(42:42):
not having to be anxious around or having to worry
about what's going to happen next or reading the room.
You know, they don't have to worry about that because
you take the time, like when you took that ornament
out of the box, you take the time to get
your own feelings under control, take those chords that have
(43:02):
been strung and let them rest for five minutes before
you go and deal with your child with instead of
dealing out of pure emotion. That's a lesson for everybody,
specifically me, Thank you Gods son to learn, you know,
absolutely is invaluable.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And not to stroke my own ego. But honestly, like
I have autism in ADHD, my answer is to impulse.
It took me thirty years to learn how to give
myself five minutes to be able to recenter myself. I
don't expect anybody to know how to do that.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Well. No, like you were telling me the other day,
there's a default, and you know sometimes it's a losing battle,
but you know right there is proof right there that
it's not a losing battle. It is a choice. You
just have to realize the trigger. And then when you
realize the trigger, right before the trigger, take yourself away.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Well, what I would saying there was is it's within me.
There is never a I can choose in between being
asshole Zach and perfect Zach. And I don't use perfect
as like I'm a perfect person, but like the person
the version.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Of Zach I want to be refined.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Either I can either be the version of Zach I
want to be and give everything the five minutes to
rest and attack the situation in whatever way I need to,
or I can be the impulse Zach and just react,
which it's hard because sometimes that's needed. So there's no
fifty percent either way. I either has to be completely
(44:36):
impulse and I have to give it and hope that
it's the right answer, or it has to be methodical
in depth, you wrecked, breakdown effective. You know what I'm saying,
just just being the the turtle and the fucking rabbit race.
But at the same time, guess what I'm gonna win?
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Well? Yeah, but do you know what works hard?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Trying to figure it out?
Speaker 2 (44:55):
He works? Well, you know what works for what situation
you're in. You know, you can always some of the time.
You can't always turn on asshole ZAC. I can't always
turn on asshole kJ because it's not going to land
where it needs to land. You can only turn on
that asshole when you've exhausted, you know, the methodical, wait
five minutes, figure it out, try to work through it.
But at least me, I try to exhaust those efforts
(45:18):
before I turn into asshole. And if I turn into
asshole right off the jump, I always look inwards because
I don't. I don't want to land that way anymore.
You know, I don't. I don't. It's not fun for me.
But I mean, obviously, if you're not close to me
and you're not in my family and you take a
shot at me, out of my element and out of
(45:39):
my safe spot, all bets are off.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, And you know, it's been it's been an interesting
time teaching myself that in front of a camera. I've
said this on my show multiple times. It's like a
lot of these shows have been some of the worst
times of my life. Not the show itself, not this show,
but like as a whole. Having this camera in front
of me holds me accountable in a way that most
(46:04):
people will not understand.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
That's exactly what I was gonna say. It's a way
to hold yourself accountable. You turn around me.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
To hold myself back together even in times when I
can't fucking put my mind together. Bree told me, she's
like your passes don't even know that you lost a
baby the day before you had to go back to work,
and you were back to work and on camera the
next fucking day. You didn't give yourself time to rest,
and you fucking did it, and you accomplished things that
(46:30):
most people cannot. And guess what, they don't need to
know that, but if they did, they would give you
so much more respect than anybody ever really should ever have,
because you deserve it, because you're doing the thing and
you hold yourself accountable in ways most people cannot.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
They know that in other ways, and the people the
person that that needs to know that. Brie knows that.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yep, exactly so, guys, as always, I know it's a
lonely road. I know it's a hard way to keep going.
Some days you have to keep going, And God damn it,
you're a beautiful person.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Don't let the letters define you.
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