The Solo Dad Podcast
Your Wife is Gone. You’re Still Dad. Now What?
SoloDad is a podcast created for widowed fathers navigating the unthinkable—raising children while grieving the loss of a partner. Each episode dives into the raw, unfiltered reality of solo fatherhood, offering honest conversations, practical advice, and stories from dads who’ve been there. Whether you're searching for guidance, connection, or simply reassurance that you're not alone, SoloDad is here to help you rebuild your life, one day at a time. Together, we find strength, purpose, and hope in fatherhood.
The Solo Dad Podcast
Episode 2.11 Jay A Widower and Now Mindset Coach
Content warning: this episode talks about suicide and parental/spouse death.
“It's not the loss that causes your pain. It's your thoughts and feelings about it,” says Jay Deutsch, who joins the podcast, serendipitously, on the birthday of his late wife, Larissa. Her battles with depression ultimately lead to her taking her own life, leaving Jay a widower with two young children. He discusses the effects and consequences that grief had on himself and his children.
After an encounter with Larissa at her gravesite, and later with a woman he described as his “twin flame,” Jay underwent a major spiritual epiphany and set a brand new course in life. He began to learn about Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and the power of using positive self-talk to change one’s thought patterns. Jay uses this and other techniques in his mission to help others deal with their grief, by way of his work as a mindset coach.
We all have the same power to heal ourselves by learning to change the way we think. Jay and Matt discuss the different schools of thought on the nature of depression, the benefits and limitations of grief counseling, and whether grief and happiness can coexist.
Quotes
“Neuroscience says that only 5% of disease is actually hereditary. And the other 95% is caused by environmental and emotional influences. And basically, all of our thoughts are just electrical impulses in the brain, whether they're positive or negative. And the brain then sends a chemical cocktail into the body to create a feeling. So everything that we feel in life is based on our thoughts.” ( 6:51-7:18 | Jay)
“I see a lot of time, people, once they lose their soulmate, they say things like, ‘I can't wait to be with them again. I give up on life. I'm never going to be happy again. I'm never going to be in love again.’ And when our kids see us thinking and saying these things, they feel a sense of impending doom for themselves.” (46:56-47:14 | Jay)
“Grief is defined as the suffering due to the loss of a loved one. I'm not suffering. It would be like comparing starvation to hunger. If you're suffering from starvation, you're gonna die. If you're hungry, you’ve got days to go before you're dying. Grab a sandwich. Grief is starvation for the person you lost.” (1:19:16-1:19:46 | Jay)
Links
Connect with Jay Deutsch:
https://selfloveandmindsetcoach.com/about-me/
Books we mention:
The Untethered Soul:
Hey there, friends and family and followers, both near and far. You can't forget our tribe of allies. Wanted to give a bit of a pre-show announcement on this one as a trigger warning or as a heads up. This conversation is an open and honest conversation with my friend Jay, whose wife was death by suicide. There was postpartum depression. There were different ways that they discussed that we'll talk about how they self-medicated. So wanted to let you know about that. Also, if you or someone you know is in crisis, there is the new 988 national help hotline. So if you need that, that's available as well. So as always, we hope you find this insightful, honest, and useful. So here's the conversation. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Solo Dad Podcast. I am super excited to have, I'll go ahead and call him my friend. We're definitely acquaintances and we are connected through grief. Um, not in the real world, just in that grief world. Jay Deut Deutsch. Is that right? Deutsch. Jay Deutsch. Um, I think we've probably been connected for over a year now, bud. Is that right? Yes. At least it may have been a couple now. And it's I'm so thankful as always for anyone who wants to join the Solo Dad podcast and share their journey uh into grief through grief and where they're at today. Uh, I will mention this a couple of times. I want to make sure anyone listening knows that Jay has a website where he does um he'll explain more, but I'm gonna butcher it right now and do uh self-love and mindset coaching. And it is self-love and mindsetcoach.com. So, Jay, thanks for being here, man. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01:I'm doing great, uh, considering everything that's going on today, and I appreciate you having me on the show.
Matt:Well, I think the universe kind of wanted you on today because I know we had something scheduled, and then I bad parenting forgot I had to be at a pumpkin patch. So we moved it. Thank you so much for being flexible. Today is uh your late wife's birthday, Larissa.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Well, we were never married, we worked together for 26 years, though we had two kids. But yes, today is her 52nd birthday and our eighth birthday without her.
Matt:Wow. Well, I we all know how these days go, both uh the kind of happy, sad. How's today been so far for you?
SPEAKER_01:It's just another day for me. I mean, uh, I am remembering the love and the good times, but it's just a Wednesday. I try not to associate dates and events with bad memories.
Matt:Yeah. I think that that's also something you you're eight years out, right? Is what you said.
SPEAKER_00:Seven years out.
Matt:Seven years out now. Um how did you and Larissa meet?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, we met in college on a bus on the way to my fraternity house for a party.
Matt:Perfect.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we were both 18. She was with a couple of friends, and we just made eye contact. And uh, told her that it was my house they were going to, and we just started talking on the walk up the street, and we kind of hit it off.
Matt:And how many years were you together? 26 years. Wow, that's fantastic. And you've got um two kiddos, two kids, 10 and 20. 10 and 20 now. Oh, you're almost like me. I have a nice long gap between mine as well. Gives you a chance to relax, and then you start over again.
SPEAKER_01:I had a built-in babysitter for many years.
Matt:Yeah, yeah, that works. Um, and then just so we can warn some folks, um, Larissa passed away, uh, death by suicide. Is that correct? Right?
SPEAKER_04:Yes, it was in 2015.
Matt:In when 2015. Um, so why don't why don't you tell us you so you met in college? Uh why don't you kind of give us a you know a little history of the relationship? Um uh and then kind of your, you know, as I guess I can say unfortunate, but the the introduction into loss and grief, and we can just kind of talk about that and and where what led you to doing what you're doing now, which is amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Uh well, like I said, we met uh we were both 18 at the time. She had another boyfriend, and uh things weren't working out with them, they weren't getting along. Uh she ended up breaking up with him, and we got together. Uh she moved in with me uh at my apartment, and you know, we had a great first run. Uh things were great between us, it was love at first sight for both of us. Um I mean, things were just really good at first, and her depression didn't really come into play as much until many years later after our first son was born. We were living in Costa Rica at the time. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, that was great. She had a uh a cousin who ran an offshore betting company and invited me to come out there and run the internet department because I used to be a web designer developer.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:So things were, you know, typical relationship. We had our ups and downs, and after our son was born, she had a manic episode of postpartum depression. And that kind of really kicked off her depressive state and set the tone for the future. Um, she did get some help at first and then turned to self-medication. We both drank a lot, we both smoked a lot of weed, and that kind of became her way of coping with her depression, which she kept very silently to herself. She did have uh some family members who also suffered from depression, and what they say is that it is hereditary, and you know, depression is usually caused by the inability to cope with negative thoughts and feelings, and the negativity builds up in our cells and can be transferred through DNA to our children.
Matt:And we talked about that pre-recording. Uh dive just a little bit deeper on how that how that energy, I think, is we talked about too, right? Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01:Neuroscience says that only 5% of disease is actually hereditary, and the other 95% is caused by environmental and emotional influences. And basically, all of our thoughts are just electrical impulses in the brain, whether they're positive or negative. And the brain then sends a chemical cocktail into the body to create a feeling. So everything that we feel in life is based on our thoughts. And with people who suffer from depression and other forms of mental illness, they do not have a healthy coping mechanism to process negative thoughts. So what happens is the negative energy and negative stress chemicals from those thoughts collect in the body and create an imbalance. And uh, in the early years of psychiatry, they actually called depression a chemical imbalance. Recent studies with the uh introduction of new techniques in neuroscience, they have found that to be false because the serotonin levels are actually normal in over 90% of the people that do suffer from depression, and there's no way to actually measure negative energy in someone who is just negative or has a negative mindset. So the inability to cope with this negative energy and negative thoughts causes the energy to build up in the body and can actually do the same type of damage that cancer does, except to the cognitive thinking portion of the brain.
Matt:That's an interesting correlation. Yeah. So and then it does it, um, so for her was when when did you did you know like the postpartum part?
SPEAKER_01:Did you know that that was I mean, I I I hate saying this, but honestly, for the most part of a relationship, I just thought she was one of those bitchy girls. Wow.
Matt:Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01:I just I just thought she had an attitude all the time. You know, she would say, I need alone time, she would start arguments over nothing and then just walk away. A lot of times her her apologies after an argument would be I'm sorry, but dot dot dot. Right. So a little bit of a narcissistic tendency, which is uh usually common in people who suffer from depression and mental illness, where they don't feel responsible for their thoughts or actions. They almost feel like it's something they have no control over. Sure. Yeah, that cycle. Yeah. So honestly, I really didn't understand depression as a mental illness. You know, I thought being depressed was being sad and you'll get over it, haha. So for a major part, if not all, of our relationship, I just thought that she was just a negative person and always in a bad mood. Wow. So not until she had the uh manic episode of postpartum depression did I even realize what depression was. She ended up flying back to Florida for a couple of months, leaving me with our newborn son, and she got some treatment. And when she came back, she was all her bubbly, happy old self again, told me everything was fine. And of course, not knowing what depression was or understanding it, I believed her.
Matt:Right. Would you would say and this may be a bit of a a jump, but is it is depression kind of falls into like a uh addiction where it's like it you're not really ever cured from it, but you're really always working well, it depends on on what train of belief you are.
SPEAKER_01:In Western medicine, because of the way the medical and psychiatric industry works, they say there is no cure for depression, there's only treatment. And I thoroughly believe that that is a complete falsehood because everything that happens in the brain is caused by our thoughts, our beliefs, and our mindset. Now, not to say that things like schizophrenia or bipolar, you know, serious mental illnesses aside, but they say that over 40% of people can be healed from regular depression. And that's just learning to change your mindset and to look at things in a different way and recognize what you're thinking, why you're thinking it, and how to stop.
SPEAKER_04:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Matt:Yeah. Well, and I think like a little bit with my rudimentary understanding of like, again, just very briefly of like alcoholism, right? When they go like, you know, every day is a recovery, right? And so uh they it's it's changing that, like you're saying, like changing their mindset from like, why did I drink? How come I had to feel the drink? What was the reasoning, right? And then every day going like making the decision of like, well, let me change my behaviors that led me to drink. And I think, you know, I know AA has their 12-step program and stuff, but like I think a lot of people find recovery in changing that because they're changing glossing over their why behind they were doing it, right? Like, oh, I was drinking, I was drinking because I wanted to be social. Okay, well, go be social just without the booze this time because you're not a good person to drink with or whatever, right? Like, I right like there are the we all know someone who you're like, you should not have another glass of wine ever again.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Um, similarly with depression, it's it's just I I describe it to my clients usually as putting on a pair of colored sunglasses. If you put on a pair of pink sunglasses, everything you look at is going to be pink. No matter, no matter what you look at, it's gonna be pink. And the same thing is true for a person who has a negative mindset or suffers from depression. Everything that they look at in life is through that lens of either victim mentality, as why did this happen to me, or what is going to happen next that is negative. And once they get into that that state of overthinking, it takes over them completely.
Matt:There's a very, and I know we're we're I man, I'm I feel like we're segueing too quickly, but you know, I'm sure you've heard this story and I've heard it told in different ways, but the one about uh I think it's a Chinese proverb. So this is kind of right, the guy that um uh uh has a has a son. His son is uh all strong and fit, and the village goes, Wow, you have like the best strong and fit son, and he goes, Maybe we'll see. Uh his horses run off, uh, but then they come back and they like they when they run off the the the village people go, Oh, how terrible is that? You lost all your horses, and he goes, Maybe we'll see. And the horses come back, like a whole flood of them, like, wow, I have the greatest breed of horses. Then the inscription Chinese army come, or excuse me, his son's riding one of those new stallions and he breaks his leg, and like the village goes, What a tragedy! Your great and wonderful son is now crippled, right? His leg doesn't work, and then the inscription people come to take people to the military to die in a war they don't want to fight, right? And they're like, and they go, they're not gonna take his son, and they're like, How lucky are you? He goes, Maybe we'll see, right? And it's this whole idea of like, it's not good, it's not bad. It really depends on a a little bit of what happens next, but also how you view it, right? Like exactly, hey, having a bunch of whole stallion of horses is great, but my son broke his leg. So are the horses bad because my son broke his leg? No, I don't know. It's a maybe we'll see, right? And and I've heard it told a couple of different ways from Covenant with people, but it a lot of it kind of like changing the mindset, and maybe not so much a maybe we'll see, but more of a, you know, a little more of like, I don't like it is what it is because I feel so um that's actually it's one of my favorite phrases. And I it just feels so I wish there was a little more that had a little more, a little more tender love in the will, like it is what it is. Like I just something a little more, you know, a little warm. It just feels very uh sterile, very like clinical, right? Like, oh, it just is what it is. I'm like, it can just be like it is what it is with a hug. I gotta for me personally, I don't hate the phrase. I just I'm like, can it just be a little more empathic or a little more a little more feeling in it, right?
SPEAKER_01:But so anyway, your your opinion of the phrase goes back to the moral of the story you just told. Everything in life is based on our personal perception, right?
Matt:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:I mean it is my yeah, it's I don't think it's in neutral and we either judge it as good or bad based on our personal beliefs. Yeah, we judge it as good based on our personal beliefs. You know, some people look outside and see that it's raining, and right off the bat they say, Oh, today's gonna be a crappy day, my hair's gonna get wet, my clothes are gonna get wet, there's gonna be traffic, people are gonna be driving slow, and other people look outside on a rainy day and say, Oh, thank God my flowers are getting watered.
Matt:Yeah, because you're absolutely right. Most of the people I know around here when it rains, they're like, Oh, I get to wear my big sweater and have like two-hand coffee, right? Or the two the Folgers commercial? I'm like, Yeah, that's that's it. And you know what's interesting? And I don't I want to make sure to go back to, you know, and I like we think we can get back to it. I think part of it too, and I'll I'll I'll kind of throw this question to you, is at what point does a little bit of distance from any event does perspective help you maybe change the pair of glasses? Right? Because some events happen and it's hard, it's it's we it takes a lot of emotional strength to be able to put on a different set of perspective glasses, if you will, if we go with that. I don't want to say rose colored because that that again has a connotation to it. But well like what do you think? Like in time, we both know that grief isn't time related, but like you kind of get with the question of like, like, how does that play into it? Do you think?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, coming from where I am now, it's easy for me because I have that mindset of positivity and it is what it is. But there's some work involved to get there, yeah. It yeah, it took me about two, two and a half years of learning awareness and mindfulness, and learning that I am not my thoughts or feelings, I'm just experiencing them. Can you say that again? I am not my thoughts or feelings, they are just experiences that I am having. And many, many people, in fact, about 95% of society believes that they are their thoughts. So that it's that's where I am.
Matt:So there's a big distinction between, and I'm thinking about this as a parent to a little when we express our feelings, uh rather, rather, because this is one minor word shift I am angry versus I am I am feeling angry.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly. And the the way the mind works that's fascinating.
Matt:That's one word difference, and it changes the entire context of that sentence.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. That's the reason behind positive affirmations and why they work. One word can change the meaning of a phrase in our minds. I'm not fat, our minds believe our minds believe everything we tell it. And the same thing, the same thing with grief. I see a lot of people say my grief and they claim it as a part of them, like my hand or my leg or my foot, my grief becomes them. I refer to it as the grief or when I was grieving or the feelings I was having because of grief.
SPEAKER_03:That's nice.
SPEAKER_01:It's just a matter of association, and just like the emotions that we are experiencing, if we say I am angry, it creates a new filter in the reticular activating system of our brain that creates a mindset of anger.
Matt:And that's that that's in that Disney movie with the girl with the emotions in her head. That's a little red guy who creates him. Do you know the movie I'm talking about? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, inside the little red guy that runs around. Exactly. And basically, the the whole meaning behind that movie is when we allow an emotion to take over our mindset, it becomes everything we think, do, say, and feel. And grief has a way of doing that to people where they identify as the grieving widow or the grieving widower, and their brain only allows them to think in terms of the emotions associated with grief. They're essentially looking at the light at their lives, at their futures through black glasses.
Matt:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, how many times have you heard someone who's grieving say, I'm never gonna be happy again? I'm never gonna find someone who loved me as well as this person did, I'm never gonna have my chapter two, I'm I'm never gonna laugh again, I'm never this or I'm never that. And they're actually looking into a future that doesn't exist through a lens of negativity.
unknown:Yeah.
Matt:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I did that, I mean, I did that for for almost five years. I spent four and a half years hating myself, hating my life, hating my future, hating happy people.
Matt:Well, I think everyone. I'm always happy when my friends are happy. No, friends getting engaged.
SPEAKER_01:I see a lot of people who say, you know, I hate seeing happy people. I hate seeing married couples with children. And jealousy is a very normal part of the grieving process.
Matt:Right. And I think what would I think just even switching hate to jealous would change, right? Because hate something that you never want to be. You're going to hate something you don't want to be, right? I whatever. I hate racism, right? Like I don't want to be a racist, so I hate it. But being jealous of someone happy is like, well, now I want to aspire to maybe be that, right?
SPEAKER_01:Use jealousy is a tinge of well, the the when we judge others, we judge what we dislike about ourselves or what we want to aspire to become.
Matt:Which is I I mean, I've been jealous of tall people my whole life. So I don't know how to fix that. Like, oh, just to be six two would be great.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen an uh an ad on Facebook for a pair of shoes that'll give you two.
Matt:Okay, well, maybe maybe I'll get those. Now it's gonna show up. Now we're having this conversation. So um coming back around. So go to when, and I think this is a good way we can do it. Well, we'll so first kid was born, uh, boy, right? Yes, exactly. Okay. And then what you now know is her depression, I don't want to say showed up because it may have been there before, right? You said it in different forms, but the post postpartum really kind of kicked it into gear. So you guys obviously uh working at whatever relationship you're having or not having. And then a little while later, uh well, and you tell me what happens leading up to um the the young lady that I now get to see on Facebook who just says darling.
SPEAKER_01:Um we we ended up we ended up moving back from Costa Rica back to New York, uh, because living in a third world country with uh an American baby was not safe. There were a lot of kidnappings and situations like that. So we ended up moving back to New York, and things were actually great between us. Uh, she loved being a mom. My son brought joy and happiness into her life. Uh, and things were good for a couple of years, and then her depression started to show its ugly face again. We ended up getting into arguments all the time over things that were in her reality but not in reality. So she was having some manic episodes where she would wake up from dreams and think they were real and wake me up in the middle of the night arguing with me about who I was talking to or where I was or who I was.
Matt:That classic, I think we've all seen the meme on social media now, where it's like, don't you love it when you're in trouble for something you did in your wife's dream, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like that exactly, exactly. That started to happen a lot. Uh and I mean I had a rough childhood. I was a child of divorce, the divorce lasted five years. Oh man. Uh, my mom and my sister were both very narcissistic. My mom ended up using me and my sister as weapons against my dad throughout our childhood to get even with him for leaving. So I was a pretty angry person myself, which is probably why Lucas and I got together and got along so well. Um, so you know, we would fight a lot, and it got violent at times, and we ended up breaking up. I ended up moving out and uh leaving her and my son, excuse me, and that went on for probably about four months before we reconciled and got back together. And we were at a neighbor's party when my daughter was conceived. I remember the night exactly. And uh, we had our daughter in 2012, Emma.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that episode of postpartum became the the downfall of her completely.
Matt:What what's the tying? Is it just and I don't want to say chemical because I know, but is it a is it a chemical thing just post-preg? I know first off, universe bless, God bless women for carrying children and doing the magic that is creating another human. So I don't like I can only imagine the unholy havoc that wreaks on a body to do that. But like with where you're at now and you look at it, is it because it's interesting. Like, I choose to believe that my wife's cancer literally grew like wildfire through her pregnancy because her body was so busy maintaining herself and growing this other human. And you can't really run tests on that because how would you give two pregnant ladies cancer and then see which it doesn't work? So it's kind of a theory, but definitely with the emotions and in the in the hormones and everything. Do you like what's what have you learned about postpartum with an underlying of depression or vice versa, postpartum, and then it kicks off depression, if you will. I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, her depression was pretty strong at this point. Uh she had lost her mother to cancer. Oh man. Um, I lost my father to lung cancer a month before my daughter was born. So we were both in a in a pretty bad place at the time. And they say that the proteins and enzymes and hormones that their bodies have become addicted to during the pregnancy just stop being made. So it's almost like coming coming off, you know, a drug or an addiction, cold turkey. Yeah, it creates manic states and elevates depression levels immensely, and it affects people who have underlying depression much worse.
Matt:Yeah, almost like exasperates, right? The condition.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Exactly. So within, I think my daughter was six months old when I received a phone call from Larissa at work, and she told me that I needed to come home. It was an emergency, and she hung up. So I told my boss that I had to leave. I was working at a uh car dealership as their internet manager at the time. So because I wasn't in sales, I was able to come and go as I needed. Uh, when I came home, I walked in the door and I saw her standing in the kitchen. And when she turned and looked at me, I didn't see her in her eyes.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:It was almost like I walked into the wrong house. It was like Bizarro Superman. It was an alternate universe, it wasn't her. And she looked me square in the eyes and said, You need to take care of the kids. I'm I'm leaving. There's nothing left here for me or for us. And she grabbed a duffel bag and stormed out the door, got in the car and left. Whoa, you said Emma was about three months-ish. Yeah, about three, four months old. And I grabbed her, put her in the car seat, and followed after. And we had a I mean, literally a chase until she ran off the road in the Jeep into a ditch, and uh, she grabbed her duffel bag and ran off into the woods. And we lived about a mile or two through the woods to from the house where she grew up in, which was vacant at the time. Okay, and she ended up sneaking in there. Uh the state police came, the local police came, they had helicopters, dogs, quads. I mean, it was literally a manhunt for her. Um when she was getting out of the car, I managed to wrestle the bag away from her, and it was filled with beers, a steak knife, and a bottle of uh Percocet. Oh, wow, wow. And she had driven out to her father's house and stolen the uh the prescription. And you know, I pretty much knew that things at this point were pretty serious.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And uh the police, of course, the detectives grabbed me and questioned me and asked me what was going on, what was going on in the room. You know, I'm immediately the suspect.
Matt:Yeah, yeah. It's unfortunate, but that's yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I had to tell them, you know, we drink, we smoke weed, you know, she suffers from depression, she just had a baby, this and that. And they had the search party out all day and all night. And then the next day at about three o'clock in the afternoon, she just came strolling up the driveway like nothing was wrong.
unknown:Whoa.
SPEAKER_01:Her whole family was there, the police were there, and you know, she pretty much just walked right past everyone into the house and slammed the door. And the uh the EMTs went in to talk to her and convinced her to go to psych for an evaluation. And uh unfortunately, her older brother was a prison guard at the time and feared that if the family name got into the system, it would affect his job. So he kind of coached her on what to say to be released. Oh boy. Which was probably one of the worst things that happened for her. Sure. Well, yeah. I mean, here she is in the middle of a massive yeah. So they gave her a uh a pill, I don't even remember what it was. I think it was a muscle relaxer or something to calm her down and sent her home. Wow.
Matt:And then that'll happen within like that. Was a less than 24 hours. Well, 20 in within 24 hours, that'll happen.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. And uh, we were living in a house that her father and I had renovated. He was living upstairs and we were living downstairs with the kids, and he immediately blamed me for her depression, the argument, the for all of it. Sure.
Matt:So he threw us out, and we had So you have you have Zach and Emma, so Emma's like three, four months, and Zach would be like nine, ten. He was ten, yeah. Wow, oh boy.
SPEAKER_01:So we had to find an apartment and move out literally within days. Oh wow, and uh things kind of just stayed at that level for another three years until the last argument we had, which was a pretty bad one. A lot of lot of things were said back and forth out of anger and rage and frustration. And the last thing I said to her was drop dead. She ended up walking out at 11 30 at night, and that was the last time I saw her. Oh man.
SPEAKER_03:Oh boy.
Matt:Um, so even hearing it the second time, that's a lot. Um so at this point, you've got Emma would be almost three, three-ish. Yep, she was three. Zach was 13. Zach was 13. Um and it sounds like you guys were not living together.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, we were living together.
Matt:Back back to oh, okay. Just at a dad's house.
SPEAKER_01:Just at a dad's yeah, we had moved, we had moved together into a new apartment in another town.
Matt:Um, so then she walks out at 11:30. We're quick, at any point were you guys just just to as a question, were you guys at all in any sort of therapy? You yourself by yourself or her? No, okay, not not yet. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:She actually she was receiving treatment from her primary care physician for medication. They were just writing her scripts for sleeping pills and Xanax.
Matt:Yeah, but not nothing, no sort of like therapy.
SPEAKER_01:She was put on a year and a half waiting list because our local healthcare system only had one psychiatrist on staff.
Matt:Oh man.
SPEAKER_01:And from what I heard, that was the the common practice in the area that everyone was put on a waiting list. So I I mean, I didn't think anything was wrong with me. I was trying to deal with things the best I could. And being a dad, I was working full-time. My job was less than a mile away, so I would walk home at lunchtime to change diapers and feed the kids and take care of things around the house while she was playing video games or disengaged from reality.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So uh I actually thought that she was going to her to walk to her brother's house. He lived about two miles away.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So I didn't really think anything of her leaving. She had done it a couple of times before and showed up in the morning and said, I'm sorry. You know, I didn't mean this, and you know, let's try again. And this time I re I woke up to uh the police banging on the door at 6 a.m. with a picture of her tattoo and an empty bottle of Xanax.
SPEAKER_04:Oh man.
SPEAKER_01:Apparently she didn't make it all the way to her brother's and sat down on the side of the road in front of my son's school and died on the side of the road.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, okay. Okay, so there's still three, three and ten, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Three and thirty, uh, yeah, three and thirteen.
Matt:Three and thirteen. Sorry, bad math on that one. Um let's I want to pause for just a minute. Let's talk about Zach's older, so let's talk about what was that like for Zach.
SPEAKER_01:Zach was a mama's boy. He always was. He loved his mom and she loved him. And it it destroyed him. I mean, you know, right off the bat, I'm very open and honest and authentic with my children. I hide nothing from them. So the moment I mean the moment the police dropped the news on me, my first thought was to grab the cops gun and join her. And I heard the kids upstairs playing, and I just, you know, I snapped back and said, you know, I gotta go upstairs and be with my kids. The cops came in and right away I I told them what had happened, I told them the truth, and my son just he fell apart.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man.
SPEAKER_01:My daughter being three didn't really understand the uh what was going on, what was happening or why. Right. So, you know, she was okay, but my son, he was he was just a mess.
unknown:Oh man.
SPEAKER_01:As was I, of course.
Matt:Yeah, yeah. And usually I also see like the when they're that young too, when they're three like under five, they all they really know is something bad has happened, and they see the people that are their providers, their protectors, they're their teachers, their mentors, right? Or their adults, their their older siblings having an emotional response. So they they're somewhere in life are we un-tune our children to emotion somehow, but they're definitely in tune. They're reading the room, they know.
SPEAKER_01:Like, yeah, I mean, there were there were police in the house. Uh they immediately called uh the Department of Child Child Protective Services to come and interview the kids to make sure that I was a fit parent. Oh, yeah, yeah. The police took me into custody as a suspect. Oh so I was questioned for about three hours while they you know navigated the scene and collected their information. Yeah. Oh man.
SPEAKER_00:How old how old was Larissa when she uh uh we were both 44.
SPEAKER_03:44 um that is I can't even imagine. Um so what what was the kind what was the I will rule just because we're just talking about the kids.
Matt:Did Zach did Zach get some did you Zach and and Emma get some some counseling, some the the state sent us?
SPEAKER_01:I don't see I just asked there's a year and a half wait list, so it seems kind of like a rhetorical question, but well the uh I did call to try and get my son some help, and they gave me the same, you know, there's a year and a half wait list story. Oh man. And being the type of person that I am, I immediately asked for the director of the hospital.
Matt:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I threatened to call the newspaper and expose the story as to what happened and why.
Matt:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:My son got an appointment that week. Uh good for you. Okay. And which I was against, but my his primary care physician, who was seeing him since he was six months old when we moved back from Costa Rica, said that it was probably a good idea because of the family history of depression and that it would help him get over the hump.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Uh the state sent us a social worker who came to the house once a week. Really did it, really did nothing. We sat around Uno and she asked us how we're feeling, and then she left.
Matt:Yeah, it's really it unless you're really, really lucky, those social workers, that's not really their their lane, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. And they she came once and said they're they're moving me to another department, they're closing this department, so I won't be coming anymore. Yeah. So I ended up bringing my children to the children's bereavement group sponsored by our local hospice.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:And Emma was too young at the time because she was only three, their minimum age was six. Yep. So my son ended up going for three and a half years, and Emma went for the last three months.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And they do have uh basically kids who have lost any anyone.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And they teach the kids, they read books about loss. They had a break room where they could go in with a baseball bat and hit stuff to get their anger and frustration out.
Matt:That's fantastic. We need that as adults, by the way.
SPEAKER_01:We definitely do. I mean, you know, we'll get back to that about negative energy and and getting it out of the system. But so the uh the parents would all meet upstairs in a separate room and discuss their stories.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01:And there was a grief counselor there, and it was basically just round robin. Hi, my name is Jay. I was with Larissa for 26 years and she killed herself every week. Oh, wow. Okay, so no, like because there were so many different parents, it was just uh hi, introduce yourself and tell your story, and then you know, every week or two there'd be a new family to tell their story. Yep. And the one that broke me was a young couple who had a six-month-old son who was just learning to walk by using his hands, holding along and walking along. Boy, and he was in the kitchen and he was walking, holding on to the uh the the linen, you know, what do you call it? The uh the cabinet that held all the dishes, and it fell over and crushed him. At that moment, I stood up, I excused myself, and I walked out and I never went back.
Matt:Yeah, that's there's yeah, there's certain areas I I don't, I don't, I can't.
SPEAKER_01:And I mean, you know, I being an empath, I I felt it. Yeah. Oh I felt the whole thing, and it just it was probably two and a half years in, and I just everything came rushing back, all of my feelings and emotions and thoughts about it, and I just came to the conclusion that this was not helping me in a productive way, yeah. By reliving it and telling my story every week and listening to others, which is I feel a big problem with most of the support groups on Facebook, is that it's just a group retelling of horror stories. Yeah.
Matt:Well, it's interesting. So I wanna I wanna do a quick comparison, and I wish off the top of my head I can remember it. But several of my connected widows out of the Denver area, there is a a a grief house. I don't know what else to call it, because it's not just cancer related. And basically, they do it so you don't do what you just described. They have a rule, it's something like you have, and it's a random, like uh I'm okay. I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm just gonna say it's 14 months, so you have to be. Like a little over a year. There is really no age limit for the grief. It's definitely kind of parent kid focused, but there's probably some other stuff. But they break it and they do it in like I'll make it up 12-week segments. So you can only go into this group and they either have it's either terminal, so like cancer or something like that, or I'll use the word tragic, suicide, accident. Right. And I know inside of that there's some some nuances. But so they do two different camps and they won 12 weeks and that's it. Because they don't, because this is you're right. This is one of the problems, is every so often you have someone new that comes in and you want to give them the space to share their story. Absolutely. That's what grief support is about. But it's almost like you said, some of us get sucked right back. So it's not, I want to say like a step backwards, where you're like, oh, I'm feeling all these things again. Here I go. And then we go to the present moment. But it's also this thing of like, there's not enough repetitions. And I'm going to use a workout analogy here in a second to make progress. It would be like every week you pick up the 15-pine dumbbell, and then all of a sudden, randomly, someone hands you the 12s, and you're like, but wait, I was using the 15s. And like, just use these for today. We'll go back to the 15s next week. You're like, but I'm not making progress. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So it's that all goes back to the to the to the neuroscience behind how we change our mindsets.
Matt:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Neuroscience says that it takes approximately 12 weeks or so to rewrite the neuron pathways in our brain to change our mindset. And if you're in a healing mindset and you're constantly reminding yourself of day one, you're essentially making zero progress.
Matt:Yeah. Which so I wanted to, I kind of wanted to for people who are going to listen to this, not all, and that's a you said hospice, right? And that's again an area where hospice has some wonderful services. They really do. And they're better than sometimes no services at all, right? For sure. Yes. But there does come a point where your uh grieving and your, and I just was hearing something about how journey is not the right word, but so I'll now also say journey or struggle because life is a struggle. But anyway, it's a whole thing I listened to with the guy today and I was like, gosh darn it. Anyway, guess why you didn't like the word journey, but anyway, um, that you might get put pulled backwards because hospice isn't not all hospices, the one you were at, but a lot of them are literally just open form for support, which works early on. But like you said, there comes a point when you're like, wow, we're really just kind of rehashing these stories over and over again because someone new comes in and you want to give them that space, right? And I I I do when I heard my friends talk about this one in Denver, I'm like, wow, I really like this concept where it's almost like you're in a boot camp. And if you're in the military, you can't go back to the boot camp. You go in the boot camp, you graduate, and off you go. And the new boot camp comes in and they have their experience, and then you keep doing that boot camp over and over again, but it's a new group of people, so they have their experience and they move forward into what they're going to do next, which I kind of like that concept.
SPEAKER_01:But on the other side of that spectrum, the one thing that I will say is it saved my son's life. He went for three and a half years and he went in as a miserable, broken, depressed child. And by the end, they actually asked him to stay on as a junior counselor.
Matt:Oh man. Well, he definitely from the from the pictures you share, he definitely looks like he is in a spot of thriving for sure. Yes, your family in general looks that way, but yes, he definitely looks that way. Um, so you you uh and uh Emma went for a little bit, you said, or she went for about six months towards the end, and she was already in a happy place.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You know, after her mom passed, I got her enrolled in daycare, and that was a new experience for her. So she pretty much adjusted very well to the change. Yeah. And because she was so young, I feel that you know it didn't really affect her as much as it did her brother and I of course, yeah.
Matt:I mean, which is yeah, which is I think a fair assessment. I mean, I think about my my youngest Blair, and I go, you know, she was 14 months when her mom died. It's like you know, people again, perspective, people like, oh, that's so tragic. Is it? I was 11 when my dad died. I don't is one better than the other? I don't know. They'll affect you, but I don't like I don't like, and depending on the soul, I'll say the person, it can impact them very differently. Some people, it's you know, they will go through their whole life with a uh a hole in their selves that they're kind, and other people will completely heal and they'll have a different thing going on. So I think it's again, it goes back to that little perspective and a little bit of like, I don't know. It's just is it better to have been with someone for 26 years or inside of five like me? I don't I don't know which is better or which is worse. It's the one I always use is what hurts more, you hitting your shin or me hitting my shin.
SPEAKER_01:Neither, they both hurt the person, like exactly all it's all in all perspective, it's all in perspective, it just hurts like heck.
Matt:So, okay, so you being the empath you are that I've gotten to know as well. So you're in the therapy, you're you're you've got the kids doing the a little bit of the group therapy, and which I also want to make sure people hear there are a couple of really amazing camps. One is like Camp Ketemska, Kakumska, that is literally every summer, and it's like, and I think some of the kids become junior counselors, and it is, I think some, I think it is a little bit of you have a parent that's terminal, is one, I think, and then you've lost a parent. And so, and like some of these kids have been going for like their their parent got diagnosed and they're there, and then they're there the summer after mom dies, and then they're there three years later, and it's it's almost like it's that shared, like you get one week where every kid gets it, like they get you because they've lost like, and so there's some really like I think Zach flourished in that area, right? He's around kids.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's that's the biggest thing about healing for children is as parents, we're programmed as children to think, you know, boys don't cry, don't be sad. We hide our grief from our children, we put on a mask and pretend everything is fine, we go to work, we go grocery shopping, we do everything, and then we hide in our bedrooms and cry in our pillows. And that sounds about right. What the amps and the therapy does for the kids is it exposes them to other children who are thinking and feeling the same thing, and it gives them a chance to not feel judged.
SPEAKER_03:Very true, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I think it I think it's great.
Matt:So any so anyone that's I listening, because I don't want to throw like everything out the window as it being bad, because I don't think it is. I think there's some really good things, especially if you have a uh child that is really struggling and you haven't quite found some things, I would encourage you to find kids-centric, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like, not just like really hard for us to help our children process the way they feel when we are miserable and hating life and angry and bitter and don't want to go on.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I see I see a lot of time. People, once they lose their their soulmate, they say I can't wait to be with them again and I give up on life. I'm never gonna be happy again, I'm never gonna be in love again. And when our kids see us thinking and and saying these things, they feel a sense of impending doom for themselves.
Matt:Absolutely. That very true, and they also, I think, like we said, going back to they read they like I think obviously I believe kids are all born into some level of empath, and either it grows or it slightly gets diminished because there's too many times when you like you look at these little kids and they just they just know. Yeah, like you watch these, you watch these three-year-olds walk in a room and walk right up to the person that looks okay and just give them a hug, and they're like, they know that person's actually deeply sad.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Yeah, we're all born with gifts.
Matt:Yeah, I think it's amazing. So here you are at the at this point. Uh Zach's going, going. You had that moment where you're like, it's at this point, it's not helping me anymore. And it's too much for me to keep taking in these tough stories to hear, and also bringing you back to where you're at. So you say, Thank you, sir. I won't have another. And I'm gonna step, I'm gonna step away for now. So, how many, where were you at? How many years out were you at that point?
SPEAKER_01:Uh that was about three years, two and a half, three years. And at that point, I was going to the bar seven nights a week, drinking, smoking pot, getting into fights. And that was my therapy. Which avoidance.
Matt:Right, which I think, um, I think that that's a that's a thing. Do you think I know I know you had, and you touched on, I know you had a a a difficult uh child of divorce situation for yourself. And um do you think that you not seeking well, and also like our age generation and stuff, it's very it's an interesting spot to be in. But do you do you think not seeking out more therapy or that like kind of the baseline of like back then boys don't cry, we don't talk about our feelings?
SPEAKER_01:I I was not like that at all. I mean, my dad, I went to live, and you know, my dad was very emotional and very open about his feelings, and never, never told me don't cry or don't be sad, you know, it was always why are you feeling this way? What can you do? Awesome, you know, hugs, saying I love you. It was a big part of our family. But uh, while my parents were going through the divorce, uh, I was sent to a child psychologist, and within the second or third time I went, it became he labeled me as having the problem, and there was something wrong with me. And I needed therapy, I needed medication, and my dad stepped in and told the guy he's crazy, you know, his parents are getting a divorce, he just needs someone to talk to.
Matt:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I feel that happens a lot in the industry is they have their textbook of medical terms, and it's their job to label you as suffering from a condition so that they can send a bill to the insurance company.
Matt:Yeah, and it's hard, it's right, like they treat the label, right? That's I mean, it's exactly.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, how many people are suffering from PTSD?
Matt:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And we all have PTSD.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:By definition, PTSD is the inability to cope with a trauma or a bad memory. Everybody on the planet suffers from some form of PTSD.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But do we need medication for it? No, of course not.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Once a medical professional tells you what you're suffering from, you have an aha moment and you say, Oh, that's why I feel the way I feel. And then we say, My PTSD.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And the brain clicks a new lens, a new filter is created, and everything we experience is now the fault of our PTSD or our ADHD or our depression or whatever other label that the medical industry puts on us.
SPEAKER_03:Do you uh going back to the the my part?
Matt:Kind of you said also my grief, where um, and you've done the work, so I want to before I almost put the cart in front of the horse. So there you are, we'll go three years out drinking, making really good choices at bars, right? Um, angry. We've talked you and I've talked about this. Very angry, and rightly so, right? And rightly so. And this doesn't like, I'm not even gonna say this isn't like a stage of grief, folks. Like, uh, I think that poor book gets relabeled and reused the completely the wrong way. But there you are, feeling one of the feelings that happens through while grieving, right? You're um, and so you talked about, and tell me if this is a good spot to where you talked about there was a you had a night or you had a moment. Um, and I think it's kind of ironic that we're or serendipitous we're doing it on Larissa's birthday, but you had a moment, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So uh I had lost my job about three days after she passed, and I had to move the kids again uh back to her hometown. Uh Larissa came from a very large family. She had, I think, 14 aunts and uncles, many cousins, her father, two brothers. So I literally moved the kids back to her hometown thinking that they would be involved in the kids' lives and help. And literally after the first Christmas, they stopped calling us. We walk past them in supermarkets like strangers, and uh pretty much haven't heard from any of them in the last seven years. So uh at the time, one of her younger cousins was uh a pot dealer, so he was my guy. And I was driving home from picking up weed one day, and uh, as I'm passing the road that leads to the cemetery, which I hadn't been to, I maybe went once in the uh four and a half years or so because I I hated her. I didn't want to see her or visit her, and you know, she killed herself and left me with two kids. So uh I don't want to say I blacked out, but I had one of those moments where my subconscious took over and I was just in the zone. And when I came to, I was sitting in the car across from her grave in the cemetery.
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SPEAKER_01:And I was kind of bewildered as to what I was doing there. And I sat in the car crying, punching the steering wheel, yelling, cursing for about 15 minutes before the anger built up in me so much that I got out of the car and I just started screaming at her and yelling at her, telling her how I feel, telling her how angry I was and how much I hated her and how hurt the kids were. And I mean, I was pretty much letting out four and a half years worth of grief, negativity and anger that had been building up in me and made me, you know, not a person that I was happy being. And mid-sentence, a gust of wind blew over me, and I just felt her hugging me and saying, I'm sorry. And at that moment, it was almost like a complete release of everything that I was feeling just left my body, and I was left standing there just feeling love and being grateful for the time that I had with her.
Matt:When you reflect back now, like right now, and you reflect back on that moment, do you think that moment could have happened a day sooner?
SPEAKER_01:Not at all. I mean, you know, the shift happens when it happens, and it wasn't something that I made a conscious choice to do until after I had that moment of clarity. And that was the moment that triggered my healing. Where I mean I was still grieving, I was still sad, angry, upset, upset, I still went to the bar every night. But I was able to talk about it in a different light. And the the hate, I mean, I I forgave her at that moment. I forgave her. I forgave myself all of the blame and thinking that it was something that she chose to do. I mean, basically, I just I snapped out of victim mode and started to take responsibility for the things that I was feeling.
Matt:That's I mean, that's so beautiful. Can someone do the same thing and j through the lens of sadness?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but I don't know about in the same way.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Because it was I mean, I was in a fit of rage.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I was over.
Matt:I guess there's an yeah, there's not really a fit of sadness, is there?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I guess there could be, but but that was also the time where I stopped crying every day because part of the sadness, well, all of our emotions are a a different frequency. Right. It's almost like a ladder where grief being one of the lowest and joy, happiness, and love being the highest. So I went from the frequency of grief and hate up a little bit to anger while I was letting it out, and then up a little bit more to the next emotion. And when I reached sadness is probably, you know, where the shift happened where there was just such a huge release of negativity that sadness was a good place to be, which is why it took me another two and a half years to actually heal. That makes sense because I was no longer that miserable, angry, hateful person. I was just sad. Yeah. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a a good place to be compared to hate.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And my vibration rose so much that I had a spiritual awakening which changed my entire life. I mean, I was never religious as a kid. I didn't believe in God. I believed that you're born, you live, you suffer, you become dirt, and that's it. And through this spiritual awakening, I read, you know, a bunch of books on spirituality and neuroscience and biology and you know how the brain communicates with the heart and the body. And so much made sense to me and resonated with me that I ended up walking away from my career, uh, changing my lifestyle. Um, I stopped going to the bar. I walked away from everybody that I associated with. I mean, my friends, my circle was the guys who went to the bar seven nights a week and we played pool and darts and fought. And I literally walked into the bar one night and turned off the jukebox. And gave everyone the double finger salute and turned around and walked out. Perfect. And they they still talk about me and they still hate me and judge me and think that I'm crazy. And I literally could care less. Right. Because of my my new shift in mindset. You know, I don't care what other people think, do, or say. You know, this is my life, my journey, and my purpose was my new purpose, should I say, was to help other people to see the light at the end of the tunnel that I finally found.
Matt:So with so two and a half more years, what was do you remember what was like the first kind of either book or um I don't like what led you to start gaining knowledge to become um the self-love and mindset coach?
SPEAKER_01:So after the uh episode at the bar where I told everyone to uh have a nice day, I went to a different bar, which is just down the street, a uh a restaurant, and I met somebody, and I was not looking for a relationship or looking for love. And uh it was one of those magical once-in-a-lifetime experiences where my heart opened up and lit on fire before I even saw the person. Wow, we just had a soul connection, and uh she had a boyfriend at the time. She got up and walked away from him, came over to me, we started talking, we went outside to have a cigarette together, and we could literally feel each other's emotions. Uh, she moved in with me and the kids. We got engaged, we planned our future. I mean, this was it was mind-blowing how quickly things between us escalated. We could literally sit on the couch and stare into each other's eyes for hours like time was standing still.
Matt:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:And uh about halfway through our relationship, she had mentioned the term twin flame, which is something that I had never heard before. And I began to do a little bit of research in it. And essentially, from what they say is when the soul is created, uh, it is split in two to a divine masculine and a divine feminine energy. Uh-huh. Basically, the definition of yin and yang. So we were both uh totally convinced that we were twin flames. Uh-huh. And what they say about the twin flames is they meet, have a brief encounter, and then one disappears because the connection is so overwhelming and wakes up so much uh trauma because you're basically mirror people, you're you're mirrors of each other. So uh I had found out that a month before we met, her father uh committed murder suicide. Oh man, and we both had you know suicide in the family in common. And when she uh moved out, it was a week before Valentine's Day in 2020, and it reawakened all of my grief and trauma, and it caused what they call Dark Knight of the Soul, which is your lowest moment in life. And because I was doing all of the research on Twin Flames, which is a spiritual connection, I read a book by Eckhart Tole called The Power of Now. Great book. And uh I put it on a USB stick and I listened to it to and from work every day. And when I finished that book, I started on The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.
Matt:Another great book.
SPEAKER_01:And these two books basically woke me up to everything that I believe now, as far as I am not my thoughts, I am not my body, I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. And that experience can be anything I want based on the thoughts I choose to have.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And over the next two and a half years, I've just been doing research. I got my certification in coaching. I walked away from my career. I studied NLP, which is neurolinguistics programming, and how to rewire the neuron pathways in your brain and essentially change your mindset and the mindset of others. I got certified in Reiki Energy Healing, and I've just been reading books on spirituality, self-love, self-help. Uh I started a new Facebook page. I was a member of a self-love group that was already established, and the uh the admin of the group wanted to leave it, so she gave me that group. I started my own group for grief and healing, which is a group based solely in positivity and healing and love, and not in the suffering and the storytelling and the ruminating. And I also started a group just I was just posting, you know, spiritual memes and quotes of the day. And within a year, the group grew to over 3,000 members. And I started coaching clients and talking to people, and I hired a coach for myself to help me narrow down my business and to help me get into it. And uh, you know, he said to me, and this is one of the one of the things that really helped me, is when you speak to many people, few listen.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:But when you speak to a few people, they all listen. So I she said he said flat out to me, you know, what part of your life are you the most knowledgeable of? And I said, Healing from grief. Because, you know, here I am and I'm proof, I did it. So I decided that the best thing for me to do to help people, which was my new purpose in life, was to focus on people who are stuck in that mindset of grief. And when I tell them that I'm healed, they either don't believe me or they want to be there and just don't know how.
Matt:I wanted to ask you with your NLP stuff, um, does E and I don't know if I have this right, does E DMR, E R M, the light therapy?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That's I I am taking a certification in that as well. Yep. But that's more of a uh stimulating the senses, okay. And thinking about a happy place, uh tapping, or you know, the uh exactly motion stimulation, and basically that does it's it's a technique of NLP.
Matt:Yeah, NLP is I figured there's a correlation, that's why I wanted to ask.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly. So the neuro in NLP is of the brain, linguistics is communication, and uh P is programming. So basically, what NLP is is it's using stimulation by either communication, which EMDR is a type of communication, it's not necessarily vocal, correct? But it's using other forms of stimulation to reprogram the way the brain thinks.
Matt:Yeah, I've heard several, and it it um I had to do a quick survey in my head. It seems to me several of my widow and widower friends who view their who either had like tragic traumatic loss, like jolting, right? Like here at five o'clock, gone at 501 type loss, right? Not like in my wife's situation where it was terminal. Um, or they or they they look at the passing of the person, even if their terminal was very, very traumatic for them, like how it happened, um, how they see that. I there's been a lot of positive um feedback when they do the the EDMR. So and I figured with the neuro thing, there was a tie-in. So I just wanted to bring that one up. So glad you're glad you're glad you're happy, should say glad, but happy that you're pairing that up because I know that when it's a when people view it as trauma, there seems to be a really good um that that's a really good tool to break that that it's trauma, right? Like that EDRM seems to do a really good job of that.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. I mean, essentially, you know, any form of PTSD is just not knowing a healthy way to cope with something that's traumatic. Right. And the EMDR and NLP teaches the the client or the the patient basically how to refocus their thoughts and their attention. Almost like I use this this analogy a lot. It's like looking up into the clouds and seeing a cloud that's shaped like an animal. As long as we focus on that one cloud, all of the other ones are just little fluffy, blurry things in the background. Our thoughts work essentially the same way. And when we have a thought and we focus on it, it be it gets 100% of our attention. But whether that thought is something that happened in the past, something that's happening in the present, or something that may happen in the future, the brain doesn't know the difference. To the brain, it's an experience. So when we have a thought about a traumatic experience, the brain releases the chemicals into our body that put us into fight or flight mode as if that experience is happening in the now. What EMDR and NLP do is they teach us techniques to refocus and look at a different cloud.
Matt:But I really liked Elephant Cloud. No, I know, right? Exactly. Yeah, no, exactly. Well, and I just I like I I've heard, and you know, maybe some folks have done some MLP NLP, but they didn't realize what they're doing because I do know that there's, you know, my therapist does a really good job of going, like, you know, kind of that, is it good? Is it bad? And why are you thinking it's one way or the other? Like what's what's bringing what's bringing you to the like through the it's a bad lens. And I'll go like, well, this, this, and this. And again, kind of, is that really bad? And then all of a sudden I'm like, I guess it's not actually bad. It just kind of is, and I don't like it. And he goes, Well, now what are you gonna need to change?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly. And what that does is And that's again, that's more neural, right? Exactly. It creates a new a new spark in the brain. You have an aha moment, and that aha moment creates a new neural pathway in the brain, and essentially, neural pathways in the brain memories are just like highways, and our thoughts travel down these highways to get you know, to get where they're going. And once you create a detour, some of the thoughts will start pulling off at that detour, at that new thought or that new aha moment that you just had. And the more frequently that memory is used, the stronger it becomes.
Matt:Makes total sense. Which is interesting too, is is um the whole idea of I it it kind of, I mean, the I've it's been a while. I should probably go back and reread it because I actually read the power of now way before my loss, which is funny. Um, right? Is that Eckdorf's book, right? Power of Now? Or is that yeah? I read it way before my loss, so I should probably go read it post-loss now. Um, but what's interesting too is like the whole, like it's a little, I think it's a you still have to put in work. I want people to understand to me.
SPEAKER_01:It's not as simple as you know by itself.
Matt:There's some of that, what is it, that that I don't want to say pamphlet therapy of like, if you just think happy, you'll be happy. There's a little more to it than that.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that's where that's where the term toxic positivity is being thrown around a lot lately. Yes.
Matt:And I think this is where I want to get into there are times, and you and I've talked about this already, that there's a misunderstanding when you present um some of your uh guidance, I think is a fair word to use, where people miss the is it was about five years, right? Of and I wrote down dark the dark, was it I want to say dark night, but that sounds like a Batman thing. Dark Knight of the Soul. There we go. I knew there was more to it. People miss that part in the work that you've done. So let's real quick, um, oh I didn't sorry, I can't interrupt. Was there is there any other um uh certifications of training you want to mention that either you have or you're working on as far as like your coaching stuff? Sorry, I didn't want to. Okay. So as far as like let's go to the toxic positivity thing, because you and I both we've talked about, and we've even talked about it on Facebook too, where it's like, hey, you know, you know, people take it this way or people take it that way. And so kind of kind of go like talk about the toxic positivity, talk about like the work that both you had to do and that what you can talk about with like your clients, the work that is done to get to that shift.
SPEAKER_01:So essentially what I do in my posts is I try to summarize my journey from beginning to end. And many people will skip through the post and just get to the end where I say, I chose to be happy and positive, and you have to make that choice as well. And I get, you know, a lot of negative feedback. I've even been banned from some support groups where people say you can't just turn grief off, you can't just choose happy thoughts. You know, that's toxic positivity. And I actually wrote a post recently that stated a lot of the things that people miss from my posts is I was in that deep dark pit of despair for almost five years of my life doing the work, taking care of my kids, learning to be a solo dad with a three and a 13-year-old, working a full-time job, putting my kids first before me, doing and feeling all of the things that they were feeling too.
Matt:Meeting somebody and having that person leave, we kind of cut that out. Like you went through a heart, like of falling in love and losing again. Like there's a lot in there. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, a lot of people will just look at the end result and forget about all the work that I put into getting where I am now. And a lot of times with that toxic positivity, they'll accuse me of saying, Well, you know, you're saying just be happy, just choose happiness, choose not to grief anymore. And because of the mindset of grief and the lens that we're looking through, there is a lot of bitterness and jealousy. And people will look at me and say, Well, then you didn't love her. Or if grief doesn't last forever, then you know, you're wrong. Grief does last forever. I will never be happy, I'll never stop grieving my person. I don't ever, I can't see myself falling in love again.
Matt:You know what's interesting is I'm thinking of some of the training I've been through recently, some of the people I choose to follow that are like I don't want to say leaders in the space. That sounds weird, but we'll just go most published, right? That deal with grief. And there's that new book that came out with the science of grief, and she did all neural studies and stuff. And it's it's heavy, but man, it's it's good. But um, like the Kessler, which is a you know an offshoot of uh Kubler Ross, and just just the way they never any of the people that I'm thinking off the top of my head, the girl that wrote Modern Loss, um, all these lost grief people, they never once say they that they things can't coexist. I I'm literally trying to find a time when any of them say that you can be happy and grief can still exist. Like I like even in the science mind one, they were that she talked about memories and like like part of the reason why it feels like just yesterday and it's still like 10 years ago, or whatever the time, and they talk about the neuroscience of why that happens, and it's like it never will stop because your brain's wired, and that's okay. It's a thousand percent okay. But at the same time, the choice of how to view the loss, though, is what they talk about, how you can change it. But exactly, it's still there, that memory is there, right?
SPEAKER_01:Is it's not the loss that causes your pain, it's your thoughts and feelings about it. And while we are in the mindset of grieving, all of our perspective is through that lens of grief and suffering and misery. Once you get to that shift where you start to look at things and look at life through a positive lens, I don't really think that as technically grieving anymore. Because I I don't believe that grief and happiness can coexist.
Matt:Yeah, well, I think what I'm referring to is where they talk about like not at the exact same moment, more like it's it like I'm thinking of all the people I follow, and it's like it like almost like what's what's the one where they talk it's the flip side of a coin, right? Like you can't have one without the other, but you can't look at the two sides of the coin at the same time. Exactly. Right? Essentially that's what I'm saying. Well, you know, one that's what I guess what they're kind of saying is like it exists, but it doesn't have to present itself. I guess is probably what they're saying, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like that's sort of it's kind of how today being Larissa's birthday. I'm I'm in a great place right now. I'm happy, I'm having a great day, I'm enjoying talking to you about it. I it's not bringing any sadness. I'm not crying, I'm not feeling upset, but you know, sitting on the couch tonight alone watching TV, I'm I'm gonna cry. I'm gonna miss her.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna be upset. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not grieving. That's that's love.
Matt:Dave, you've seen the one of who's the guy, the actor, when Stephen Colbert asks him something and he says, and this is I know this is again a little pamphlety one, but they're like, grief is the inability of love on love unable to be expressed, or something like that, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like I really don't agree with that because I still express my love to her and I still feel her love for me. Seven years later, love always has a place to go. Gotcha. Okay. Love is something that we create inside of us, it's not something that anyone can give us or take away from us. It's something that we can share and express. And a lot of people think that grief is love with nowhere to go. I still love Larissa no more, no less than if she was sitting next to me right now. And I believe that her energy is still with me and my kids. I have had experiences to to back that up. And if I want to give her love, Larissa, I love you. It doesn't have it's not that it has no place to go, it goes wherever I direct it. And because I am not in that mindset of suffering, I mean, grief is defined as the suffering due to the loss of a loved one. I'm not suffering.
SPEAKER_00:It would be like comparing starvation to hunger. If you're suffering from starvation, you're gonna die. If you're hungry, you got days to go before you're dying to grab a sandwich. And grief is the starvation for the person you lost.
SPEAKER_01:And my kids and I, and all of my clients are not in that stage of misery and suffering and hopelessness anymore. We are Happy, enjoying life, 99% of our day is happy and positive and you know, sunshine and rainbows because that's what we choose to create in our lives and the thoughts we choose to focus on.
Matt:Uh real quick, and it's a little back to the Eckhart thing, Dr. Joe Dispenza.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, Dr. Joe Dispenza is a pretty famous neuroscientist. And uh he is also a spiritual leader and he does uh shows across the world where he teaches meditation and healing through uh self-healing and spirituality. And his story is he was in a uh a bike race, uh decathlon, I believe, and there was a police officer directing traffic who was telling a car to turn, and he mistakenly made a turn and flipped off his bicycle and broke his spine. He uh shattered three vertebrae, and they told him he was going to be paralyzed and would have to leave his practice and he returned to work in 10 weeks. Healed. And the doctors that were treating him said that it is impossible to regenerate uh spinal tissue. And they did scans and x-rays and MRIs, and they saw that he was healed. And he currently does to similar to Tony Robbins, he does these big expos where people go and they meditate together, and he has videos on Facebook for anyone to go look where people talk about healing themselves from stage four terminal cancer. Uh healing, they had one lady who came out in a wheelchair and said that she was diagnosed with some rare disease where she was told she would never walk again. And halfway through her speech, she stood up and walked across the stage and said, you know, here I am, you know, six months later I'm walking. And essentially, you know, according to the placebo effect, where uh I believe UCLA and Harvard both did separate studies with antidepressants, in fact, where they gave the sugar pill to half the people, and half the people they gave antidepressants, and the people who were given the uh sugar pill had zero side effects and I believe a 60% higher uh success rate. And essentially, you know, nothing happens in the body without the mind's control. And they say that the mind can create any drug on the planet.
Matt:I was just gonna say there was a podcast or something years ago I was listening to, and they're like, the holy grail of medicine is that urine brain, because any any pain medicine, advil, opioid, doesn't matter, is a chemical that we already have in our brain that our body can produce. And they're like, if we can figure they're like the the the holy grail is to be able to, in some weird fashion, if I remember this podcast right at least, to unlock that medicine cabinet because you never have to prescribe drugs. You literally just go, like, oh, you need opioids. We're gonna tell your brain, whatever pink elephant one, two, three, four, and you're gonna have opioid thrown through your blood system for the next 24 hours. Like you're like, that's in when you act, but it makes sense. You're like, oh yeah, it's chemicals, and our brains can create the holy whether it's a blocking chemical or a new chemical or an overdose of chemical, whatever it is, right? Like it's crazy. And I remember I remember some, I don't know what podcast it was, and I was like, Well, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's it's insane. I mean, I suffer from degenerative disc disease, which my father did as well, and I used to have intense pain in my neck. I was also in a uh motorcycle accident while I was living in Costa Rica and crushed my lower lumbar muscle and broke my pelvis in three places. So I've had lower back pain for the last 20 years, and in the last two and a half years since I started meditating and listening to Joe Dispenza meditations, I'm literally pain-free. That's fantastic.
Matt:Man, there's there's no doubt that the body-mind connection that there is a whole area of places that we have yet to really tap into for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, in current studies, they've found out that not only is the brain the thinking part of the body, but the heart and the gut are made up of neurons as well. And when they say listen to your heart, your heart actually thinks and sends messages to your brain through the uh central nervous system.
Matt:There's and there's a huge push now in cancer research, all the way down to the microbiomes of the gut to figure out how to unlock certain things or lock certain things in a focus of cancer treatments. Like the Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:They say that 70% of our serotonin is created in our gut. Serotonin is the happy chemicals which destroy the negativity that causes and feeds cancer. Pizza is nothing but serotonin.
Matt:I mean, for me, for me, it's not that's for me personally. The cheese steak would bake. That's right. Yeah. I mean, everyone, I mean, obviously, that's just a whole plate of serotonin. No, so Joe, I just because he was on the notes, I wanted to mention him real quick. So, what would what would be a couple of things you tell people? A, I know you've helped people and I've seen it too. What would be if someone decides to follow you? Um, what would be a couple of things for you to to kind of lay some groundwork for them or like I don't want to say with a grain of salt because that's not the way.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's funny. It's actually funny you say that because I've had a lot of people recently who have commented on my posts where they've pretty much come out and said flat out, when I first started following you, your post made me very angry. And they would go on to explain that you know, now that I am a few months, six months, a year into my journey, I get it. And what I would say to people is that I did the work. I suffered for I wasted my my forties in the pits of hell suffering. I hated every aspect of life except for my children. And you know, most people say, Oh, I'm only living for my children, I'm I'm I'm only doing it for my kids. That I that's who I was. I was living for my kids, and the minute they were out of the room, I was hiding under the coffee table crying or at the bar drinking myself unconscious for four and a half years before I had that aha moment and started to do the work. And the work, which is also called shadow work in the spiritual world, is turning around and looking at our demons and not healing them, but making peace with them because there cannot be light without dark. We live in a duality. There cannot be happiness without sadness, there cannot be up without down, there cannot be happiness without grief and learning to separate the two and doing the work and allowing yourself to cry, allowing yourself to, you know, if you are going to work and you say, you know, I I go to work and I put on the happy face and I I pretend, you know, that's that's toxic positivity by definition. You know, if your body is telling you, I need to cry right now, you get up, you excuse yourself, and you go in the bathroom and you fucking let it out because it gets stored in our DNA. And that's what antidepressants do, that's what putting on the happy face does, that's what staying busy and distracting yourself. That's those are all forms of avoidance. And avoidance prolongs grief.
Matt:Not on per well, not in the sense of to avoid grief, but we talked about, I mean, I was moving, I was like, I was busy, like it wasn't busy for busy sake, like I stuff. And I realized about a year after I settled into the house, I'm like, oh, I'm picking my grief box back up again because I just I didn't have the energy to deal with it at the time because I was building a house and setting up a house and moving, and right, there just was not enough energy in my tank. Real quick, you said let it out and coming to peace with the demons. You mentioned also at the at the at Larissa's grave site. How I don't want to I don't want to give away anything that uh to to I don't want to give away too much, but also coming to peace with it, how does how what would be something you'd say if someone has the they're in the depths? How does one get rid of the negative energy?
SPEAKER_01:What's a couple of things that you I actually had I had an 80-pound bag hanging right here behind me up until a year ago.
Matt:So and I was like, you know what, that's probably way better than uh not hitting anything or getting mad at an abdomen object, or gosh forbid, being a level nine angry in a situation that deserves a level one frustration dealing with your children, if you will. So what would is a heavy bag a good way to do it like what would be a heavy bag is a great way.
SPEAKER_01:Not only does it allow you to to to get the anger out on an inanimate object, but it also it's an exercise, which these it releases endorphin, serotonin, dopamine, it releases the negative energy and it gets the positive chemicals flowing in the body. I also suggest you know, a lot of people don't talk about it, they keep it in. Talk about it, you know, talk about how you feel. Allow yourself to feel the feelings you're having without judging them as good or bad. You know, as kids, we're programmed, our parents tell us, don't be sad, be happy, and they dangle candy or a toy in front of us. You know, I did I used to do it with my daughter. Whenever she'd cry, I'd tell her, think of a box of fluffy kittens, and she'd start laughing. Now I say to her, you know, why are you feeling the way are you feeling? What are you thinking? What is causing you to have these thoughts, feelings, and emotions? And speaking about them, I mean, just getting it out engages your senses. You feel the words coming out of your mouth, you hear them, you see the person's response, and that's how the brain works. Everything is based on our our sensory perception. So by exploring new ways of getting these feelings and thoughts out of the body allows you to process them and heal them.
Matt:What do you think the difference is between when I say out versus in or big versus small? So some advice I got early on in grief was like you're at a point in your grief, it was early on, that this person's advice was you do not need to go reflect inward. It's too dark. They're like, be out in nature, be big, and a little later go in and reflect. So out versus in, like you're talking about speaking outward, like when when are some times when like reflecting inward?
SPEAKER_01:Well, reflecting inward is the shadow work. And that's that's part of that's part of healing that comes after you make that shift. I mean, when you're in it, when you're in that pit, you got to do whatever you can do to get it out. But once you're at that point where you can recognize, okay, this this is me and my thoughts and the way I'm thinking, that's when you go inside and look at yourself and say, okay, now why am I thinking the things I am?
SPEAKER_00:What part of my childhood caused me to have these abandonment issues?
SPEAKER_01:Why why do I feel I'll never find another soulmate or or fall in love again?
Matt:I want I'm glad you just said that because remember in our pre-chat when we say what type of insanity, if there's whatever, I should have Googled it, eight billion people on the planet and you bumped into one of your soulmates that you don't think they're you can't find happiness again. Is it gonna be slightly different?
SPEAKER_01:If your significant other is the one in a million that you found, statistics show that there are three thousand or three thousand nine hundred and seventy others others that could be the one, right? Your other one in a million, right?
Matt:And the other thing I think too is and speak to this part. So you've gone through a healing journey, you are you're a new version of yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, absolutely.
Matt:Every time we wake up, we're a new version of ourselves, and so that new version of yourself post the work, whether it's through grief or through trauma or whatever, your needs, wants, and desires are completely different than the person that met Larissa on that bus when you were 18.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I mean, we hit it off because we both had similar childhoods. We were both new to college, we were both on the way to a fraternity party. I mean, things just meshed at that moment, and then we continued to build a relationship over 26 years. And since then, I've been in love, I'd say four times, where it's bit I don't I don't hook up, I don't date, I don't go out and play the field. I'm looking for connection, and I have found connection with other people. It does happen.
Matt:This and I think this is actually we'll put a pin in that because there's a whole thing that I'd love to have a conversation about. Uh, intentionality. I the words I'm using right now around dating are being honest with yourself and having intentionality.
SPEAKER_01:And that all comes to authenticity.
Matt:Because I think that a lot of people go out thinking one thing, but and and it's it's hard to be honest with yourself if you've been in a relationship for 26 years and you haven't dated in 29 years or whatever, and you're like, well, I'm just gonna I'm gonna go find my next person. Are you? Are you really? Or do you need to just go on some dinner dates to have someone tell you that you're handsome or pretty? Like, that's okay. That's being on just be honest with yourself. I'd suggest maybe being a little honest with the person you're on a date with, but but but that's okay. That and I think so many people get hung up with like, well, no, the last date I ever went on was with the person I wanted marrying. Yeah, I'd hope so. I hope you weren't dating while you're well, different strokes for different folks. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01:That's I I see that I see that a lot in the support groups. I see people saying, I want to meet my chapter too. Yeah, how about just go meet people and communicate again?
Matt:Yeah, because you're again, I go back to I someone else posted this one time and I really liked it. You're version 1.0 of yourself when you met your person, you're version 1.1 to use the software, right? You're your version 1.1 release while you're with your person, and then now you're version 1.2. That's a whole new ball game.
SPEAKER_01:But we also left out having kids, changing jobs, right? All of that. But we learn and we grow so much in life. Everything happens for a reason, and everything's a lesson.
Matt:I think that some people get really stuck in, and hopefully, this is true for most people that they were mostly happy in their relationship and they reflect back and think of all the good is in the per in their person and have a positive light on their person, and and that's that's okay um to a certain level. Like I wouldn't, no one's perfect, but then they forget that like you you can be happy again. I just it really breaks my heart when I see people truly think and happy, and I don't we're like really running, I don't care, but happiness is like it comes in all shapes and forms, it doesn't have to be another 30-year committed relationship. You can go on a cruise and meet someone that you enjoy their time with. What's wrong with that?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
Matt:But if you're walking around saying I'm never gonna be happy again, guess what's gonna happen? You're not gonna be happy, you're never gonna be happy again.
SPEAKER_01:And that is what leads to depression and prolonged grief disorder and complicated grief.
Matt:Which is a new thing. They just not is it's relatively new. They just labeled that, didn't they?
SPEAKER_01:The American Psychiatric Association has labeled it as a diagnosable form of mental illness.
Matt:Which is it, there's a that's a whole nother conversation.
SPEAKER_01:And if we get back to the cause of depression, yeah, it's the the buildup of negative energy without the ability to process it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's what grief does to some people. They say one in ten people never dig their way out of the hole.
SPEAKER_03:It's a big hole, and it takes it takes, and I what I would say is in that hole.
Matt:I believe, I choose to believe, that it either takes a very special person to reach down into that hole and help you climb out who hasn't been in that hole before. It doesn't have to be the same hole. It's almost like the fox, it's almost like the foxhole mentality, right? Where like I didn't, I didn't ever I I was never in the military, and I never really I never really bothered to try to understand until I saw my roommate who was in the Navy and did two tours in Afghanistan, bump into like a Korean War vet. And because of the just the way he walked, he knew that he had been in the Navy. And he comes up to him, and instantly, even though there was like a 30-year gap in their service, right? It was like two guys knew exactly what they like because they both went through the same boot camp. They both had been like in a Pacific tour. And I'm just like, oh, this is the shared, and this is before my grief, right? My well, my current grief, if you will, lost. Um, and I was like, oh, this shared experience all of a sudden is a bonding that happens and that someone can like pull and you can pull on each other, you lean, doesn't have to be exactly the same. And I'm not saying that there aren't therapists that have haven't lost their spouses that can't be helpful, but I just think that when people are down in that that darkness and that that that really dark place, they need to be able to look up and know that they they need to stop looking down and look up and see there is a ton of people, whether they're having posts like yours or they're like some of our other friends we have that are just showing posts of them out living a normal, happy, I always say happy, just a normal damn life. Like they're just right, and look up and be like, oh, maybe, just maybe I can be that way again. It may not be tomorrow, may take five years, like like you're saying for you. And I think that's one of the things people miss too, is that like there's I wouldn't would you say the oh man do you think that time in the darkness equates to depth of the hole, which means longer work, or that's really irrelevant?
SPEAKER_01:I I think it's irrelevant because I mean I've had clients that are six months out and they're dating and living a happy life, and I've had clients that are years out and still don't see it coming. Gotcha.
Matt:So it's yeah, okay. That's that's I kind of I think it just has to do with probably the work and the person and the whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Um before I kind of how much you focus on the limiting beliefs and how much belief you put into them. Say that again. It's how much you believe your limiting beliefs. All of these, the negative self-talk. It's it's how how negatively you talk to yourself and what you tell yourself that creates your future. You know, if you wake up in the morning and you say, you know, today's gonna be a real one of those days, of course it is. But if you wake up first thing and you jump out of bed and you say, today's gonna be the best day of my life, I'm gonna do this, this, and this. I'm gonna be happy, I'm gonna whistle on my way to work, I'm gonna listen to music in the car. I don't care if anyone drives slow in front of me.
Matt:Go back to the very first thing you said. I would be ecstatic if I could just jump. My poor ankle is still the Achilles is killed.
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm I was the first thing I do every day when I wake up is I do a morning meditation for positive positive thoughts and positivity.
Matt:Is it guided or is it just a kind of your own thing? I do guided meditations.
SPEAKER_01:I also create them. I have a bunch on my YouTube channel that I've created myself. And the the binaural beats, the music in the background. And the person talking, it just helps me to not focus on my thoughts. I mean, they're still there. The thoughts are still there. They never go away. I mean, there's there's a big misconception that meditation is silencing your mind and being in total stillness. And that's that's not reality. You know, the mind is only still when you die. Right.
Matt:So I've always thought meditation was more just a shift of focus.
SPEAKER_01:It is. It's shifting your focus from the thoughts that you would normally have a conversation with to just getting into a meditative state, which they call theta brain waves, which is very similar to hypnosis. Yep. And it allows the messages in the guided meditations or your subconscious mind to come to the surface and get past all your worries and fears.
Matt:Say that again because that was you're talking about. And I think it's really important because I think people miss out on that part where they can lit literally listen to like background noise, and it changes like your whole brain chemistry setup.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. A lot of the uh the meditations that I have created, you use different frequencies of binaural beats.
Matt:That's what I was looking for.
SPEAKER_01:Essentially, uh our brains operate at a frequency, everything has a vibrational frequency. And when from the moment the born uh the brain is formed in the womb till about seven years old, children's brains operate in theta frequency, which is why there's why they're sponges, why they say that kids repeat everything they hear and why it's so easy to teach kids new things. And then what at seven years old, the brain shifts to alpha frequency, which is normal everyday thinking. And what binaural beats do is they combine two different frequencies, one in each ear, uh, to create a third frequency in your mind. Uh-huh. And that frequency, whether it's theta for relaxation, delta for sleep, or alpha for awareness. Right. And then there's other frequencies called salfeggio frequencies, which stimulate other parts of the brain. And you could essentially put a pair of earbuds in and fall asleep in three minutes if you have insomnia.
Matt:He was it was interesting. He was his the one I was listening to, but I he mentioned, but he didn't go into it because his focus of this talk was how you can put in those earbuds for like five minutes, take them out, and like really focus on your work because you've shifted it where your brain's at. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:And they actually, if you search YouTube, they actually have videos for concentration where it's just music and you put in the earbuds and you do your work, and it creates an environment in your brain for focus.
Matt:You might need to go listen to some beat. You may have to do a guided meditation. You might need to talk to somebody about why you're viewing it through this lens. Like you can journal all day long and never figure out why I am looking at you through this way. So I think there's there's a lot to unpack there. That was a lot. Self-love mindsetcoach.com. Sorry. Uh Jay is an amazing guy, has obviously been through a lot. I have a massive amount of respect for what he posts. Um, I think that people do overlook the work you have done and do pick up the wrong nuggets at time. Um, so I think that I would encourage people to, when if they're going to follow you, to just know the read the whole darn thing. Uh, don't scroll to the end. This is one of the times just scrolling by isn't gonna work for you. I try to, and I'm trying to do a better job of ending the conversations with a couple of questions. Um, one of the uh to you would be what um what are some of the favorite things about Larissa since it's her birthday today? What were some of your favorite things about her?
SPEAKER_01:Uh she loved animals. Uh we had, I think, 32 cats at one time.
Matt:That's that's a lot of love.
SPEAKER_01:I'd say 30 of them were outdoor cats. The other two were indoor cats, but she loved animals. Uh for the most part, aside from her depression, she was very happy and fun-loving. Uh, we traveled a lot together. Uh, you know, we we met in school in Boston, we lived in New York, we lived in in the city, we lived in Costa Rica, we did a lot of traveling.
SPEAKER_00:Um, she was just such a such a wonderful person.
Matt:What is something that you make sure you relay? Because this is something I want to hear for from me, for my little what is something you relay to your kids about Larissa? Well, I know Zach probably knows. Emma, what do you like about it?
SPEAKER_01:It's not a taboo subject in my house. We talk about her like she's in the room, and uh I remind Emma all the time of how how much she is like her mother with her mannerisms. But we could be sitting eating dinner and she will do something. For example, when we used to have steak for dinner, Larissa always used to pull the steak plate to dip her pieces in the in the juice. And Emma, being three years old and younger, would have no memory of this. And one day we're sitting at the table eating dinner, and Emma pulled the steak plate and started dipping her pieces in the juice, and it just threw me through a loop. And she's like, What? And I told her about it, and it just made her so happy to know that she was like her mom.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I see it all the time, every day. I mean, my daughter recently had her hair dyed blonde, and I was standing there in the in the the hair place crying because I saw her mother.
Matt:Yeah, there's I get looks for sure every now. Not looked at me, but like you know how it is, like that side look, or just it's not even it's like three quarters of a second. Like it doesn't like it comes and go, it's really amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, like I said, their their thoughts, feelings, and emotions travel through the DNA.
Matt:Yeah, for sure. I think uh you've already said it, but I'll end with these last two. If you could say something to Larissa, what would you say?
SPEAKER_01:I love you and I miss you.
Matt:And if if you could hear something, which I think you already have a couple of times from Larissa, what would you like to hear?
SPEAKER_00:I'd like to hear that I'm doing a good job. She already told me she loves me and she's sorry.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
Matt:It's you know what's interesting that I find with the dad thing is no matter how long we are with the mother of our children, there's an affirmation that is yearning for sure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
Matt:Because I I that's I feel that one a lot. I go, like, just tell me I'm doing all right. Yeah. Because you don't we don't get that at right? We don't get that at the end of the day of like, you know, in bed as a normal, happy couple. So true. Jerks sitting there going, like, you did a good job today, honey. Thanks, honey. Um, Jay, man, uh, I wrote down a couple of things that I'd love to have you back on, and we can at a later date maybe talk more about dating, maybe talk about some other stuff. Um, man, I really appreciate it, buddy. And um, thank you for sharing this special day with me. Um, I think it was very serendipitous. Um, everybody, Jay Deutsch Deutsch. Man, I'll get it right. I'll spell it right. Uh, self love mindsetcoach.com. And I think is everything else on Facebook kind of self self-love mindset right?
SPEAKER_01:Yep, it's facebook.com slash face uh self-love and mindset coach.
Matt:Yeah. And so I'm in his group as well. So if you follow me, come check it out. Um, a lot of great good, really good healing and not toxic, just positive stuff to help us all move forward. Jay, I appreciate you so much, man. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much, Matthew. Take care.