Quieting The Inner Critic; Choosing Gratitude with Linda

We sit down with Linda, a counselor-turned-author, to unpack buried trauma, negative self-talk, and the daily work of choosing gratitude. Her story shows why talking to someone, seeking perspective, and practicing vulnerability can unlock growth in life and business.

• surviving sexual assault and confronting PTSD
• long-haul therapy, journaling, perspective shifts
• how negative self-talk forms and how to retrain it
• curiosity over shame as a mental model
• vulnerability, courage, and public sharing
• gratitude as a stable state, not an emotion
• why multiple perspectives improve decisions
• building a support team: coach and therapist
• vetted resources to find therapy and PTSD tools
• reframing resistance as the path to growth

If you contact me, I have a list of resources to help get you to a point where you can find yourself the therapist that’s right for you

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello there, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself the Podcast. If you're watching this, I mean if you're listening to the podcast, you can't see how crazy my hair looks, but go to social media and check out how crazy my hair looks. But welcome to the next episode. I'm so excited to be here with you guys today. And I'm very excited about our next episode with my amazing guest, Linda. Linda has an amazing track record. Um, my high school counselor meant so much to me when I was there. And um, and so I'm so excited to be here with you as someone that shared that profession. Um, so I have a lot of love for you already, just in that regard. But um please, Linda, take it away. Let us know a little bit about who you are and who you help.

From Service Careers To Author

Surviving Assault And Facing PTSD

Therapy, Perspective Shifts, And Family Strain

Honesty, Vulnerability, And The Inner Voice

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well, hi, Nicole. Thank you so much for having me on. Um, I know that uh this is this is primarily a show for entrepreneurs starting their own business. And I've always really been in the service profession. Uh, I was a I was a social worker, and then I was the executive director of a chapter of the American Red Cross for a number of years before I realized what my real calling was and went back to school um to be a high school counselor. Um, but it's it's always been service-oriented, and now I'm really starting my own entrepreneurial journey in retirement as an author. Um, I have written a book and I'm it's gotten for all of the reviews that it has, are almost all five-star reviews, and the things that people have said have really touched my heart. It's kind of hit home with more people than I really thought it would. So um I wrote a book um called Braving Therapy, Rape, Buried Trauma, and the Triumphant Journey over PTSD. Um, and I talk about my journey um being a young single woman living on my own and um being a being a victim and survivor of sexual assault, burying it, moving on with my life. And then when I went back to get my counseling degree, and we were talking about counseling and therapy and all of the things that can go wrong, it triggered my PTSD, which I didn't realize I had any issues. Uh, and I went immediately into full-blown PTSD, felt like I was going crazy. And um, so that's the journey. The book is the journey of therapy and PTSD for PTSD and the related depression and anxiety. But it's also a huge part of the book is my learning, my learning and perspective shifts about life and about myself and about relationships and about the way I thought about things. Um and so the the journey was kind of long for me. I was um married with three uh young boys and a husband, and um it was a challenging marriage. I was working full-time and attending graduate school, so life was pretty crazy. Um, so my therapy went on probably longer than it would for a lot of people with PTSD because I had so many um contributing factors to the challenges that I was having. Uh, but probably the biggest was that there were some incidents that I was refusing to talk about. I swore I would never reveal. So the book is the journey. The book is the kind of stuff you think about that you're that you keep hidden and how it affects you, and the promise of what it's like when you start actually talking to people. And the really, really interesting thing, and I think why it probably applies to everybody, including all of your listeners of entrepreneurial type people, is that as I talk about it and in the reviews, um I see people like professional people, people that are running businesses and stuff, and they're all shaking their head, yes, when I'm talking about the voice in your head. And people write about that. People in the reviews have written about how much like that learning that I talk about, the it would be kind of like the inner dialogue I was having and the re the stuff I was revealing to myself in my own writings during therapy, um, that made me have perspective shifts and realize that eventually I was not going to be um, I was not going to be the best version of myself, the most authentic version of myself if I couldn't be honest with myself and with other people, and if I couldn't be vulnerable. So it took a long time. I have a really hard head, and so me too. So I think when I gave the manuscript to my therapist, and this was this was a long ways down the road that I that I wrote this after therapy, but I think that there were a lot of, oh, that's what she was that was she is what she was ruminating about when she wasn't talking. So yeah.

Body Shame, Courage, And Public Sharing

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Um that's beautiful. I love that. Um I commend you for writing a book because so many people just don't and they have it in them and they don't do it. And so that's a big, big step that you've taken in sharing your story and being vulnerable, right? And that's what brave in in today's society, Dr. Brene Brown says bravery is vulnerability. And so the fact that you were able to dig in, um, and you're absolutely right. Um, I swore that I would never do video. I was like, nope, I remember I was in church. My pastor was like, vlogging is everything. And I was like, I will never, you will never, ever, ever see me on video. I will never do that. And that's my queen be content now is video. Um, so I I very much felt um that when you said it. Um, and I also was thinking about how it's such a common theme on this show. Um, people who find big success, they achieve those dreams, you know, like they make the money, they buy the house, they do the trips. And then what? Right. And so it, you know, my goal is not to be uh build a business, to be the best business person that there ever was. Um, no, that's that's not really what I'm interested in. My goal was to build something that would support my life, that would help me tame that inner voice, right? Because we all have that inner voice talking badly to us. Um, and you know, one of one of the first distinctions that I had to make in my thinking is if someone else talked to me the way that that voice talks to me, would I even hang out with them? And the end so it's a resounding absolutely not. Like, she's mean.

How Negative Self-Talk Takes Root

SPEAKER_00 7:57

You're saying so many things that resonate with me. So in the in the uh introduction, I talk about uh Dr. Brene Brown because I was like, I was justifiably really intimidated about putting my my story out there. Um it talks about sexual assault. I talk about my sexual assault and rape. Um I had a date rape situation that I refused to talk about because I was so humiliated I put myself in a position. I was humiliated by what happened. And I swore when I went into therapy that I would never, ever, ever talk about that. And it was years before I finally did. Um but Brene Brown uh had had taught in her Netflix special, The Call to Courage, I think it's the name of it was, um, she was talking about just living in the arena, the the Theodore Roosevelt um speech called The Man in the Arena, about just, you know, you're gonna fail, but you're gonna fail spectacularly. And when you achieve your goals, it'll be spectacular too. And I was like, oh, okay, if I'm gonna fail, then I might as well just do it. But I was still like so intimidated about talking to people that I might know about all of this. Um, and she also talked, and this was a big issue with me, about the number one women's issue is feeling ashamed of their bodies. And the whole that was the whole thing with how why it was so difficult for me is the whole being ashamed of my body, like not wanting to put any visual images of of me into anybody's mind because of that body shame that we do to ourselves. And I was sure other people would do it to me, and nobody has ever mentioned it in any reviews or talking to me or anything. But um, yeah, all of that was really interesting. But what you said about negative self-talk, um, I really started to understand that partly when I was in my graduate program and actually did a paper on it, um, but also when I was working as high school counselor, and what I would see, and people shake their head at yes at this too, when when I talk about it, is that people who are pretty highly accomplished, who had good and involved parents, and um were always trying to improve themselves, every time they get corrected as a child, start that negative dialogue of correcting themselves. And it's the stuff that you can't hear, and they continue to do it. I would see, like some of my top students would have that negative dialogue running in their heads because they're always self-correcting. And how can you look stupid? You're acting like a jerk, or you should have known better kind of stuff. And I did that to myself for years. Um, and I have really started to understand also in watching um more parenting now, where parents are being really careful in the way that they encourage and correct their small children and how loving and accomplished those kids turn out. Because I'm because I'm I'm uh retired and have lived most of my life, I've gotten to see how parents uh parent little children and what those children look like as adults. A great position to be in. Um, but yes, the negative self-talk has got to go. It will inhibit anybody that's trying to accomplish anything, who's listening to a podcast about the research that's been done on elite athletes, and that's the first thing that they um are taught to get rid of. That if you if you are um beating on yourself in your own head, then you are not going to do nearly as well as if you build yourself up and we can do it.

Retraining The Inner Monologue

Curiosity Over Shame

SPEAKER_01 12:27

So and the thing about that is is that we don't intentionally talk to ourselves negatively. Like I wasn't doing it intentionally, right? It was just it was just patterns that were repeated, things your dad said, things your your mom, I was gonna say stepmom because my, you know, um, your aunts, your uncles, like these little off-handed comments that they don't even remember. Correct. Just corrections. Yeah, and just corrections, but even things that are not even that intentional, things that were said off-handedly, and then they're just going on. Um, so I do have an inner monologue, and she's always talking, she always has something to say, even when, like, you know, your mind is blank, she's like, breathe in, breathe out. Like, there's always like no, don't do something, and she'd be like, like there's always something. Like she just she can't be quiet. Like, I don't know what it is. Um, but I had to train her to think about what I wanted to think about. So, like when you make a mistake, like the correction, right? Oh, you're so stupid. I can't believe you did that again. Like, this is why I don't let you have nice things, like you know, all the things, you know, that costs money, like all those negative things that our parents used to say to us. That's what plays. You're like, well, wait a second. What if I treated myself like a little kid, like a little stranger kid? Can't yell at them, can't smack them. Like, how would you how would you treat an innocent little kid? Be like, oh no, we spilled some milk. What are we gonna do? We're gonna clean it up. Let's go get some paper towels, having grace on ourselves. Because you know what? Cups fall over, like it's a fact of life. If your standard is never drop a cup, you're gonna fail because stuff happens, right? It's about learning to choose that positivity, learning to learning to observe it, because the first thing we have to do is observe it, right? And then we can't we can't go into the shame spiral about our thoughts. Look at you thinking you're stupid again. That's why you're so stupid. Like, oh my God, this is why you're never gonna get out of this. That's not gonna work either. So we approach it with curiosity. So, what do you think about curiosity?

SPEAKER_00 14:45

What do I think about curiosity? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yeah, like an approaching with questions versus versus just shaming, right? That's that's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

So curiosity versus shame. So funny that you say that, Nicole, because as a counselor and helper type of person, and I have to say that I was one of those lucky people that knew what my what my purpose in life was from the time that I was a teenager. I knew I felt very blessed. I had a uh I have a wonderful family. Um, but I felt like I knew that I was lucky, that I it was unusual, not everybody had that, and that a lot of people struggled, and I really wanted to even the playing field, I wanted to help people, and that's really been my purpose. I was when I finally got into um school counseling, that was the I'm already losing my train of thought. You asked me. You just asked me a question.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

It's okay, go for it, keep going. Tell us the story.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Well, no, I just I I knew what my what my purpose in life was. Um, but I I think the the the question that you were asking was curiosity versus shame. Curiosity, and I find that I am very curious about what makes other people tick. Like I am all the time thinking about that, thinking about um if I'm if I'm in a position to help them, you know, looking at things from their perspective. I am I'm much tougher on myself still. I still I I have really changed my inner dialogue, but I don't find that I ask those questions of myself as much as I should. I mean, I like that you just brought that up because um because it I should give myself the same grace I give other people. I give a lot of I give a lot of people buys because passes, because I'm always looking at their situation and how they came to that. And you know, I'll give a lot of people passes that maybe they don't always deserve, but I will manufacture a reason why they probably did something. I would never do that for myself. And I probably should ask myself, I should be more curious about myself.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yes, I love that. Good, okay. I love that that that came to you in this conversation because you you that you should like we don't no, we don't should. We don't like to should all over ourselves, right? So it is a good thing to to think about, to look into, and um you know, and just remember you are that inner kid, like you are your inner child, you just like got a little bit taller, and you have to act like a responsible adult, but deep down inside you're still that inner child, and and yeah, and she wants the grace, so like of course, that's amazing.

Speak Up: Sharing To Find Clarity

Gratitude As A Steady State

SPEAKER_00 18:03

So I think um in uh in reference to a lot of people who probably listen to your podcast, who are you know trying to build their businesses, um, be successful um in that space. I I was thinking about this, like what could I bring to them? Because for me, my book and um what I really talk about is overcoming trauma um and being brave enough to talk about it, but then I was thinking what everybody has said about it, which is just it seems to apply to how everybody operates. And the big thing is that people don't talk to other people when they should be. And I would say that for anyone, if you're like if you're trying to prove something to someone, whatever your um whatever's driving you to the reason that you want to be successful, uh that there is a place for really sharing what's going on in your head, even when it's chaotic. And in life isn't meant to be easy, life is messy, and when we start feeling down, things get even more chaotic in our heads, which makes it even harder to talk about. But that's just so vital to our success in life. And and you were talking in another podcast about joy, and just feeling that joy about life and satisfaction. Um joy will go away if you are holding on to too much negative garbage. And find someone that you can talk, you know, that you can talk to things about, um, talk talk about things, and it isn't always somebody that you're close to. I have a lady who doesn't know personally any of my family or anything, lives in my neighborhood, and I go have coffee with her. I can spill stuff with her that I don't talk about with the dearest people in my life because it doesn't matter. It's like the stranger on a plane kind of thing. But find somebody that you can just sit down and spill it to because it feels so much better to get it out of your body.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yes, that's so true. And to your point, um, something that I talk about in my book is what is in you is what's gonna overflow out of you. Um, and so we have to be intentional about focusing on gratitude, practicing gratitude to keep ourselves in joy, to keep joy as a perspective. Um, understanding things will go wrong, storms will happen, hurricanes will come, but the sun will come out on the other side of that. Like I'm I'm in Miami. Um, and so every single hurricane, no matter how bad it is, no matter how long it takes to pass over us after it's done, the sun comes out again and we can start rebuilding, and everything is just you appreciated that just that much more. You're like, oh, that tree survived. Oh, I like that tree. Or oh, that tree fell down. You know what? I didn't like that tree anyway, you know.

Pain, Dopamine, And Growth

SPEAKER_00 21:41

You know, what you talk about with gratitude and joy. Um, it it's funny because I talked a lot about I talk a lot about gratitude in my book. Um it was it it was during my dark period, which was about five years, I I couldn't feel joy. I didn't feel grateful. Um, and gratitude, uh there was an actual moment where it just washed over me in the last in the last eight to ten years. And so I talk a lot about that, and and we talk about it a lot when I'm when I'm doing book talks or with my friends. And somebody said to me, a friend of mine said to me something about gratitude being an emotion. And I I really stopped and thought about that. And I and I said, you know, gratitude is a state of being, it's not an emotion. Like I just I have struggled uh for the last three weeks with just life has gotten very heavy for me, just you know overwhelming too much and and lots of things for me to be sad about. And I and thinking about it, I was like, I still feel grateful. I'm still grateful, even when things are hard and even when even my emotions are low. But um being able to look around, and I'll tell you what it is that I felt gratitude wash over me, is for a long time I kept feeling like I wanted more, like build a house, and immediately I wanted to add a room to it. I wanted to fix up this, you know, wanted to buy something, wanted to do something, wanted to go somewhere, um, because I felt like I would feel better if I was somewhere else or doing something else. And we have my husband um and I, my and I my husband has um is is gone now, he's passed away, but it was probably seven or eight years ago, and we had bought a like shabby little cottage next to the water, so on a lake, and I was sitting out, the weather was warm and the water was calm, and I was sitting under a tree, and I just all of a sudden realized that the nature that I was sitting in was enough, and I was so lucky to have nature, and I was so grateful about it, and I came in and I just said to him, I just feel so grateful, and we had this conversation, and he's like, Well, you've worked really hard, you deserve it, and I said, No, it has nothing to do with that. It's like I don't want anything else but the warm air and to be able to look out at the water and to to just know that I'm I'm enough and this is enough, I don't need anything else. And my husband became sick four years ago with cancer, uh very aggressive cancer, and he died very quickly. And I was expecting that depression would return and that I would be struggling, but I never stopped feeling grateful for having that man in my life. And I have never lost that feeling of gratitude once I think I started looking at all that life gives us.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah, yeah, that's the power. That's the power of gratitude, and that's I talk about it in my book. I'm very sorry for your loss, by the way. Um joy, I call joy the perspective, the state of being. It's not right, it's not an emotion, it's so much more than that. And I talk about how we we we need to take time to practice when things are going good, um, so that we have it when the storms hit. So, like in your case, it would be very easy to spiral into depression. But if you can stay focused on everything, there's a whole life to be grateful for, right? And you were able to stay focused on that, and it still hurts. It's not that it doesn't hurt, it still hurts. And I'm sure you can attest to that, but it doesn't break you.

More Perspectives, Better Decisions

SPEAKER_00 26:11

You know what, Nicole? I have come to realize, and and I was in, it was 25 to 20 years ago, that period of intense therapy. So I didn't write this book until after I had retired. Um but I realized when I was in therapy, like one of the mantras that you hear people, if it doesn't uh if it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger. And I had that mantra going in my head, going, I am I am growing here. This really, really hard thing, the hardest thing I've ever done is I'm really growing. And I've since come to understand, and I I think about it in a spiritual perspective as well, that life is we're here to do hard things. That life is not meant to hand us just a good or happy time. That I look at life spiritually as this grand adventure that we get to have, but that it's hard. And that's where we learn and grow into hopefully um more evolved spiritual people, or just more evolved people, whatever your whatever your spiritual perspective is or perspective on life, that um the hard stuff is what helps us to grow.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yeah. Okay, I found a quote, John Maxwell. The very element that offers resistance to flying is at the same time the condition for flight. If everything is hunky-dory all the time, we wouldn't enjoy it as much, right? We need the bad times, unfortunately. In our human, in our flawed human perspective, the hard times is not that we need them, but that's what helps us really enjoy the good times, right?

Finding The Right Therapist

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Um well, that's the whole dopamine hit. There's this great book. Um, a great book. I think it's called Dopamine Nation, and it talks about the fact that you don't get the dopamine hits without the pain first. Like interesting. You oh, it was a fascinating book. It was actually written by a Stanford psychiatrist, and it was so I call it Hetty, but it was so intellectual that it was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to read this again to be able to absorb the depth of what she was saying. But she was explaining that that you cannot really have a dopamine hit, which is like that those happiness chemicals without having the pain first. It's like the people that take the ice baths because it feels so good when you get out. Interesting. Yeah, it's like you have to have the pain in order to have the pleasure. So, what you're saying is exactly that. And I I think that the difficulties and what we learn in them is also in the perspective shifts, right? Um, and one of the things I talk about, uh I say it a few times in my book. Um, I did a lot of journaling, especially through therapy. I was very honest with myself in journaling, but I only had my own perspective. If you don't share what you're thinking about, what's going on in your head and the way you're seeing things, you have nobody's perspective but your own. And a lot of times that is not helping. The more perspective you can get on things, the better off it's going to be. As an entrepreneur, the more people that you Bring in to get perspective, the better off you're going to be. Love that.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Um, and that's a perfect lead-in because you were mentioning that you had a very special gift for the audience. Um, so can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think this is a perfect transition into like, well, how do I find this team of people? One of the people that you need on that team, I tell this to my clients, I tell everybody, you need a coach, right? Like the coach is gonna help you with your business stuff. Like, I can help you map out funnels, I can help you with marketing, I can help you like with future planning. But I'm not a therapist. Another essential component of your team is gonna be a therapist. There's a lot of other ones, got an acting coach, got an ADHD coach, like I got all the coaches, right? Um, but talk to us a little bit about yeah, finding that therapist. Because I think you mentioned something that your resource had something to do with that. So talk to us a little bit about that, please.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Right. Um I have um if you if you um contact me and it's it's coming up, it's just um if you contact me, uh I have a list of um resources to help get you to a point where you can find yourself uh the therapist that's right for you. So um it includes this stuff is is several chapters in my book as well, but I broke it down and just bullet pointed it so you can take it and use it. Um it talks about this the myths about therapy and also the obstacles that we throw up for ourselves about what why we don't want to find a therapist. And um it talks about those and about how you know a different perspective to overcome those objections. Um there is a there is a resource sheet of where you would want to look to find a therapist, the kind of questions you want to ask and things you want to consider when you do find and as you're talking to different um potential therapists to decide who you actually want to go see. Um, and then there is a list of resources mostly related to PTSD, depression, anxiety, and they are all vetted. They're um mostly from the VA because they are the researched ones. There were a there are a lot of apps out there, and I have used and looked at some of them, but the ones that I put in this um in this gift that I have are the ones that are um through the VA because they are all vetted and because they're not uh you know what they're doing with your information. They don't collect what they don't need. But I that's very important the PTSD app. Um when I've found myself starting to dissociate, which almost never happens, but somebody asked me a very triggering question at one time, and I was like, I don't know what to do. I was in a conversation and I just stopped and said, give me a minute, and I looked on my app. They gave me like a technique, and I was like, okay, I went through like maybe two or three minutes, and I was like, okay, is your question now?

Braving Therapy And Who It Helps

SPEAKER_01 33:50

No, but that's so important and that's so helpful because there are so many apps for all of these things, and so having a resource that you know, like you said, that somebody has compiled for you, that's gonna save you a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of frustration uh on trying to find the right one. And can you mention the name of your book again for us?

SPEAKER_00 34:09

The book is Braving Therapy, that's B-R-A-V-I-N-G. Um, because you have to be brave and you have to stick it through to the end. Yes. So rape, buried trauma, and the triumphant journey over PTSD. Um, and as I can say that now, I'm I'm it applies to a lot more people than people who have uh struggled with PTSD or or severe trauma. Um, so a lot of a lot of learning and growing in there.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

And you know what? That's the beautiful thing about niching down, is when you are really good in your niche, other people who are not in your niche are gonna be like, hey, I need that too. Um so that's a beautiful lesson in in that as well. Um amazing. So signing off, can you tell us? We want to know big juicy tip. Like, what is like the biggest aha moment that you give your clients, or what's the best tip from your book?

The One Big Tip: Talk To Someone

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Uh you need to talk to somebody. Um, you need to you need to, I know this now when I start beating myself up or feeling down, I have got to talk. Um I I know that. And I think the other thing is to really um think about how you're looking at things. It is in our it's in our nature, it's it's a protective factor to see the problems and to look at the dangers and to be defensive. That's that's a protective a protective thing that we have um developed genetically from time immemorial. However, to be grateful, you have to understand that there's also all of the beautiful things that are coming at you as positives in your life, and you can choose to focus on the good stuff instead of the scary stuff, because the scary stuff a lot of times you're blowing up in your head. It's not really as bad as what you're making it. But if you start looking at the good stuff, life gets a whole lot better.

Gift Details And Vetted Resources

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yes. And it's just a change, you know, like the like the glasses from national treasure, right? Like you literally just change out a lens and you're looking at the same thing, you're just seeing something a little bit different. Um, and so you don't even have to change the whole scene, it's just about changing that perspective. I love that so much. That is so important. This has been a fantastic, amazing, wonderful episode. Thank you so much, Linda, for being here with us. And for sharing yes, and for sharing your story. And we will catch you guys next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself the Podcast. Bye. Bye, thank you.