Today Suzi is at the Craft Boxing Gym having a pow wow with several members on combining physical activity and talking to help with emotional healing. We chat about how your feelings can be better managed during intense workouts and how family dynamics influence our emotional expressions.
We also chat about navigating through the delicate balance of personal happiness and independence. We discuss the challenge of emotional detachment from family and the importance of focusing on personal goals.
So pull up a chair and take a listen as we jump into the heart of personal growth, family dynamics, and emotional healing.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Today Suzi is at the Craft Boxing Gym having a pow wow with several members on combining physical activity and talking to help with emotional healing. We chat about how your feelings can be better managed during intense workouts and how family dynamics influence our emotional expressions.
We also chat about navigating through the delicate balance of personal happiness and independence. We discuss the challenge of emotional detachment from family and the importance of focusing on personal goals.
So pull up a chair and take a listen as we jump into the heart of personal growth, family dynamics, and emotional healing.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi and welcome to be crazy, well. Well, all right. So, d, you have to come over and sit next to me, because you know how to do this. Come on over here and I'm recording this.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 2:Misty, I know, but you guys on on, not yet All right, where are you? Come on, I need to see you. Oh, I'll have to take it off the Let me take it off the preferences of hanging on. We have to go to preferences and unblur us. We're blurry, we're background effects. Ok, none, oh, there we go. Look at you, there you go. Here she goes.
Speaker 4:There she is. All right. You want to put a bench here if you want to close your yeah and oh, we have more.
Speaker 2:Should we go get the other two chairs?
Speaker 4:Oh, we got chairs over here. Yeah, grab those.
Speaker 2:So perfect, perfect. So welcome to be crazy Well, at craft boxing. We're at the craft boxing gym. This is Steve, the big DI Collin, and so Omar, right, omar, derek, ok, yusef and Jessica. So I want you to hear a little bit about Derek knows a little bit about D's story. So, d, when did you walk in this gym and why?
Speaker 4:I walked into craft last year December. I would never trade boxing, so it was I wanted to, and I just wanted to beat someone up. Right, anybody. Yeah, we're pretty easy.
Speaker 2:Anybody, that's right. You can't beat up your parents. You can't beat up your parents, right? Yeah, you just wanted to hit somebody, and me too you killed the ingrown I still do, I'm boxing gym.
Speaker 2:That's right. I mean, if we're all more honest about that, this idea that we can't express our feelings enough and we're limited to what we can do from childhood on, it makes sense that it would. There would be a place where you could physically get that out because we want to talk it out. Yeah, and I don't think talking it out actually works as well as working it out. So as a child, you start to work things out to your body. That's right. And like you work it out because you cry, you yell, you play with things Right. You try to take something from somebody, you go I want to work that out, give me that toy, right. So all of that happens through your body. And then we get older and we're told we have to do everything from here up, like, let's fix everything from here up.
Speaker 2:And Derek, you were so good when you were talking about how your dad and your family like, about talking and talking things out and how we learn in our families what we can say and what we can't say. So one side of my family, you didn't talk things out, you yelled things out Like you. Literally just no one could talk to each other. All we could do is yell at each other. The other side of my family, the English side of my family, didn't talk at all. They just lied no, I'm fine, pass the English T please. And it was all that in the Italian. It was like what's the matter for you, right that?
Speaker 2:So what's so nice about what happens when you come to a gym and we do your mental health in a gym is that you can take the emotional and the mental and put it with the physical. When you go to a, you're going to, not you all. The other guy who's here just said I'm going to do a better help. He's going to go and talk to someone online and talk about his feelings and stuff like that. And I'm thinking start talking to gift when they're punching, start talking about what's going on in your life when you're in that ring, because if you talk while you're moving, while you're doing something, you will literally take it from your brain and from your emotions and your thoughts and bring it through your body. Now it's all connected. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:So one of the things we're doing here at Craft is we're going to keep playing with the idea and doing things to see whether or not we can help a person do physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual all here all the time, because you'll have to go to your doctor's office and you'll talk about the pain in your back, but you won't talk about how you've got your entire family on your back all the time. Someone's always on your back like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, right, feeling like I get to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders and you wonder why you have a backache. So if we had more doctors and medical places where you talked about your feelings as well and did that, or more physical places like this where you talked about your feelings, we would get to the source and the issue and the change quicker and better. So that's what we're going to do here. We're going to start to try things.
Speaker 2:So one of the classes I want to do in there is while you're punching, you're going to talk about what's going on in your life, and this is a bilateral movement, is it not? It's a bilateral movement, even lifting weights. So think about this, right, think about this If I talk to you while you're doing this, you're going to work those thoughts and feelings through your body and it's going to be better. It's going to literally better, quicker, stronger, better and deeper. So you come here so you can hit somebody. That you were clear about, that right. You didn't get it until you started hitting somebody Right.
Speaker 4:I'm like, oh my God, this is so good.
Speaker 2:And what did it do for how you felt about yourself? What happened to you when you came here?
Speaker 4:I feel like mentally and physically, I was more clumber, I was more at ease because I would come here and train for an hour or two to get all my anger out and I would leave feeling much better. So I'm happier. So I've been smiling a lot at least. So I exclude that.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about getting it out. Yeah Right, I just don't. I don't want to get too physical about elimination. Getting shit out like, literally, if you're constipated, it's not fun, right. If you have diarrhea, that's not fun. That's getting too much out too quickly. So the back remains is we got to get shit out, right, and we got to get out in a healthy way. It's got to have a balance. Now, what if I told you that most of the shit that you have in you was either done to you or told to you. It happened to you through your family and through your training. So you're just going along trying to learn how to walk and yet everybody's got something to say about you mom and dad and grandparents and all that stuff. Am I right, omar? Is that your family? Is everybody in your stuff, or was everybody giving advice all the time?
Speaker 5:Advice at a younger age.
Speaker 2:Yes, Right Now. You just what do you do now that?
Speaker 5:you don't hear. So I mean because I left my family and I've said in tea, not in a negative way.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 5:It's my family's base and love and all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Our family's staying here. I've been here ever since Am.
Speaker 2:I not On your own. You left. You're the only one that left.
Speaker 5:I'm the only one that left at a young age. My little sister left later, late 20s, so you're the explorer.
Speaker 2:You're the scout, I'm just the black sheep. Yeah, just wanted out. So think about the black sheep. Black sheep of the family, black sheep of the family. You different in your family than my teenagers, that's a part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of still am, but yeah, you brought the Montana house.
Speaker 2:You're like, not like the rest of the family, am I right? Yeah, black sheep. I don't know about you, jessica, I don't know Black sheep. Ok, so there are those of us in our families that we have to leave. We have to set a new path. We have to make the new path, because if we don't, what's going to happen is this, is what we fill out here. So here's your ancestry. If you don't, what's going to happen Now? Who has their hears? That's written down. I don't know.
Speaker 4:You have your phone, we'll take you, I should have kept the one. I told you. Yeah, I told you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll do that too. So what's going to happen is, once you do this and you fill this out, then you'll see how you were trained. You'll see it in black and white, actually in red and blue. You'll see it and you'll understand why you had to leave, like you had to leave, omar. I wanted to, right, because you had to leave In order to be who you needed to be and grow and leave. It was fine for them. It wasn't OK for you. Is that right? Right? I said that right, and that's not. That's why you had to do the things you did. You said from, why all of us have to just, why you had to buy the Montana thing and do whatever you did Right, and why I moved 3,000 miles away.
Speaker 2:Because they're those of us that help the family grow and we call them the black sheep, but actually we're the scouts. So the scouts in a tribe are the people that are the best that know about the wilderness. They're the ones that know how to navigate the world, and so they leave and they come back to the family. Don't come back to stay, but they'll come back and say you know what? There's more water out there and there's more wildlife, and this is where it should be like this. We need scouts in our family and we disrupt our family. Some of it don't like that. We leave. How long did your mother cry when you left? A while, a while.
Speaker 5:The first. They were against the move. But that's a initiative, it's very engaged and it got accepted in the college. They couldn't say no.
Speaker 2:That's right. So at first they're against it and you have to push back against your family and do what's right for you. But wait, it gets better. When you fill this out and you actually see what happened to you, you are actually helping the world. That's what we don't understand.
Speaker 2:Those disruptors are the people like a guy that says I can put lightning in a bottle and I'll call it a light bulb. But that guy, a woman who walks onto a bus, who's African-American and says you know what? I'm tired of sitting in the back, I'm going to sit in the front seat now. And those are the disruptors that change everything. The guy that says I'm going to drop out of college and just build a computer in my garage. The kid that says I'm going to go do videos oh right, I'm going to go on and do this crazy thing and do that.
Speaker 2:The girl in the Armenian family that is supposed to be all dressed up, all dressed up in her finery, looking for a husband and learning to cook, is out here boxing. That's what we need. And if you guys don't like, if you don't, and this guy who walks away, you're going to see him. He's Derek. All right, he's Derek and he's Omar. He's just so, Omar, there you go. So this guy who knows nothing about horses, just recently, why didn't you tell him what you did? What did you do, Derek?
Speaker 1:I bought a horse property, but when. Up in Montana.
Speaker 2:He bought a horse property in Montana. He doesn't know anything about horses. He knows one end from the other. That's about it, and so those are the people we need to do, and you'll beat yourself up that there's something wrong with you. You'll call yourself the black sheep, as opposed to the scout, as the disruptor, the explorer.
Speaker 5:But it does disrupt family dynamics.
Speaker 2:It does. But that's their issue, not yours. You didn't do it on purpose to disrupt the family, right? You just said I've got to go now. I've got to go now. You didn't disrupt the family on purpose saying I've got to go boxing. They're like what. You're not supposed to be punching people. You're supposed to be punching dough and making cheese blinches out of your make.
Speaker 2:Out of your make Right and same for me. I did the same thing, and then what happens? We all find each other. So, jessica, I don't know your story. Why You're here? You're here, where is she? She's right there, all right. What's your family doing? And where are they?
Speaker 3:So my mom OK, so my mom's Brazilian and my dad's?
Speaker 2:Jamaican OK. Brazilian and Jamaican OK.
Speaker 3:So first my mom or my dad actually met my mom in Brazil and then brought her to the US and then started their lives in the US for a generation here. So we're a small family here. Ok, all my other families in Brazil.
Speaker 2:So where's your siblings? I don't have any, you're an only child.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's tough, it is tough.
Speaker 2:We actually talk about that a lot, about being an only child. So I was an only child, but my daughter's an only child and my grandson's an only child, so they taught me what it was like for an only child. I always joke about only children. You get all the good stuff and you get all the bad stuff yeah, everything Everything. Like you, seth, and I, we'd be in the house Like they'd be yelling at our brother or our sister and we'd go whew, it's them, that's right. Right, I'm going to cut these. I'm going to tell them my brother, not me, you had someone else right, and then when they left, you had someone else to play with, but only children. That's a whole other dynamic. I would say that you have some really good friends from school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't have a lot of really good friends. I got friendliest in high school and I don't have one friend from high school really. I mean I guess I have a couple, yeah, but you guys do. My daughter has friends from way back and my grandson too, from kindergarten, was only 19. So there's an interesting dynamic about that and what that happens. So I appreciate that you shared that and everything. I'm not putting you on unless you want to be on. You decide, you decide, all right.
Speaker 2:So what we did last week, last Tuesday, actually this past Tuesday what we did was we played a game called the Swamp and it was about a team, and I want to tell you something that happened. So George said that he wanted to start a community here and if you look around, we're all sitting here right now. We have a bunch of different looking people Like we're all, like a pretty eclectic group of people age, ethnicity, gender, ok. So we'd like to think we're a team, except that when you think about it, boxing isn't a team sport. It's you against one other person and it's nice to have classes because then you start to build connection. At the same time, it's not like a sport where you're definitely on the same team. Would you agree with that? It's still a more individual.
Speaker 2:So I got out a bunch of boards and they had to walk across that floor only stepping on the boards and if they fell off the boards or stepped off the boards, the whole team had to start over again and they had to go from one point to another. And they had to do it five times before they could become a team. People got on these boards and said I'm going, I can get across. And looked back and found half their team was just back. They're going, how are we going to get across? It was unbelievable enlightenment. Would you say that?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that they believe they all care about each other and their team. Until the competition came out, until it was seduced by the end result. And then you wonder whether you're a team player or not. And they finally got it to the end where they had to own, by the way, two of the members here, omar and Kendra two amazing people, you know Omar and you know Kendra. They kept stealing the boards. They were the alligators in the swamp. So every time they put the boards down and they would step on them, kendra would come and take one of the boards, or Omar would take one of the boards.
Speaker 2:So then all hell broke loose because all of a sudden, now they're fighting with the alligators. So now, when you fight with the alligators and you were one of them she got so captured by the alligators she wanted to push them and fight them instead of focusing on what she needed to do. That's what happens to a lot of us. This trauma that we carry around it can seduce us into looking at that and still trying to fix that, instead of looking at where we are now and where we want to go. So, as the alligators were stealing your boards, do you are getting upset with them because you don't want people to do that. And yet it took her off her course for a while until she's decided I'm going to ignore the alligators, the haters. I'm going to ignore the haters and focus on where I'm going.
Speaker 1:You mean like that?
Speaker 2:So what? Say it again. You should have said like that so that is like when you get upset, derek, about what somebody else is doing, either to you or against you, for you, even for you, somebody who is got the hook in your mouth because of your family past, so your sister or brother, or somebody that's in your family that's causing a ruckus in the family, and you focus more on that than what you're doing for you. Now it sounds kind of cold-hearted, it sounds like self-absorbed. It's really not. You help people more when you focus on what you're doing for you and you stay on your steady path. When your mother was so upset, you could have stayed. She was emotional, right, she was emotional. She was sad, sad and scared. She didn't want it, right. So you could have allowed her feelings to stop you all more. That wouldn't have helped her. Does that make me selfish? No See, that's what I want to get to. You just said the right word. Does that make me selfish? That's a thing.
Speaker 4:I feel like we don't be saying or doing anything because it makes the person in front of us feel not appreciated, I guess, like it's going to be selfish thing too Right Selfish.
Speaker 2:You're hurting them. You're making them sad. You're supposed to make them happy. You're all fired right now from making anybody else happy. You're fired. You're not supposed to make someone else happy. That's their job. That's not your job. And we're not supposed to have children or spouses or family members in order to have them make me happy. If you want something to love you and teach you that you are valuable and be grateful and happy to see you all the time, get a puppy, get a dog. That dog loves seeing you every day. Am I right, yousef? Don't get a partner, because they're not going to be happy every day to see you. I've been for a lot of years. That's right there.
Speaker 5:You got a lot of love to see you. I was going to say I was going to say I was going to love you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, they love you. So here's what we do is we teach people to think that somehow you're responsible to make your parents happy? Let me ask you this Do you know anything about raccoons? I know a lot about raccoons. I've loved raccoons. I love their hands and their little bastards. They're wonderful. They just don't give a fuck, and I love that about them. They're so wonderful and I used to have 13 to 15 of them in my yard eating kibble when I lived in Virginia, so I got to know them a lot. And then one of them the next year brought back her babies to come to the house. So they're wonderful Raccoon.
Speaker 2:Mothers don't cry when their children leave Raccoon mothers no, they don't cry when the only animal I think. Well, I will say this they will cry if they die. So elephants will cry and mourn of Cows will cry and mourn. They'll all mourn if the child dies, that is.
Speaker 1:I mean like actual tears.
Speaker 2:I don't know about the tears. I think elephants actually cry tears. We'll have to look that up. Yeah, we're the only ones that really cry. Okay, why am I saying all of that? Because the point is that the parents know what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to teach the child how to take care of itself, how to go off and live its life. It doesn't have a child to keep. It doesn't want to keep the child. It's like. No, in fact, I watched a mother raccoon Take the baby and put it on the tree, as if to say I'm up that tree and the baby let go Watch this whole thing ever she took it, she put on the tree again, we let go. Well, I didn't want to climb up the tree, wanted to be carried. She'd put the baby back on the tree and put her shoulder underneath that thing, so to good, and kept pushing it to open up that tree. So when you think about making someone else happy, you can think you're selfish if you don't.
Speaker 1:That's not what we're supposed to do what happens when your happiness Inflicts with someone else's?
Speaker 2:well, let's talk about that. What happens when your happiness conflicts with somebody else's? That ever happened to you?
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, happens to me every day like you're talking about family, parents and stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean girlfriend's, boyfriend's, yeah.
Speaker 5:That's right.
Speaker 2:Business partners, people you're driving in the on the 405 with you.
Speaker 2:What you do make that turn doesn't make them happy. So happiness is subjective. It means that what makes me happy doesn't make what Jessica's happy. And so now I got to work with her. I love her, she's my love, whatever she is to me. And now we've got to negotiate it out. What if? What if we both decided that you still get to make yourself happy, you still get to do the things you want to do.
Speaker 2:So when Jessica says I'm gonna go to the gym or I'm gonna go climb Mount Everest, I Don't say what are you gonna leave me here? You're gonna climb on? No, even that's not my job. I go. How do I help you pack? How do I help you pack? How do I help you do the things that help you live the life that you deserve to live, because I'm complete in and of myself. I hear anybody here say my better half, I'll go. If you're only a half human being, you need to get back into the womb and grow some, because you're a full-ass person and you have to develop this person. This is your person to develop.
Speaker 2:And let's talk about happiness versus joy. So happiness is subjective. What makes you happy, derek, doesn't make someone else happy. Now you get a negotiate. If you have to negotiate to the point that you don't get to do what you deserve to do for your purpose in your life, that's not love. That's being held hostage. I will definitely compromise that. The people love you. Tonight we went to have sushi my daughter, her fiancee and me and we said to the fiancee you get to pick tonight when do you want to go? Because I want to go to choose sushi. We said, great, great, right now I may have wanted to go get pasta. I offered that joy, that that ability to go and compromise. Do you know why? I did that? Because I can go buy my own thing. I did that because I can go buy my own pasta any other night that I want. I don't need that person to give me everything that I. That makes me happy. I don't.
Speaker 5:What if it makes you feel a certain way?
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about feelings. How will you train? Will you train all your life to make your parents happy by getting good grades and and picking up your room Happening? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5:No, I mean not to say, I guess you're upsetting your mother.
Speaker 2:Do you ever hear that I?
Speaker 5:mean I put my parents through a lot of things, you know, but I haven't very good. Really cool, my parents, they really love you through my thing and you put your parents through a lot.
Speaker 2:I think I'm lucky for the family yeah yeah, and you are lucky, and no parents is perfect. Therefore, when you say I put my parents through a lot, you were just being what you're supposed to be, you could, they could have just gone. Well, that's just being a parent, that's being a kid, and never get upset about it, they can do. You have kids yet, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, so you're a daughter so she's just gonna do what she does. Yes, if you know what it's like to have parents that get upset with everything and anything that you're doing you're not doing, that's from their trauma, that's from what happened to them, and they're so anxious and so depressed and so traumatized, they then need you to help Help calm them. How help emotionally regulate that? You talked about emotions. That's actually every adult's responsibility. It's not my responsibility.
Speaker 1:So do you believe in those times of conflicting happiness? Yeah, it's helpful to understand someone else's Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Go get one of these.
Speaker 1:You're an extra one for her so that you can Understand their past and help them negotiate and it will make you more empathetic.
Speaker 2:When I first met you, I told you about what you're born in the United States, you were born in Lebanon. You were born here, okay, raised there, okay. The point is your family, so, jessica. Your family, so Brazil. Right, you need to know about Brazil at the time that your father was born, or your mother, and then you need to know about Jamaica and what was going on when she was born.
Speaker 2:When you know your parents and your grandparents passed, you will have empathy for them. When you know more about your wife's childhood, you will understand more about your family. You will understand more about why she does what she does, why she's so afraid of this, why she's so strong about that. You will Know better, therefore, when you know you won't take it personally, you won't argue with it, and you'll be a little more empathetic. You'll also be able to hold the boundaries better. When I know what my partner went through and when he says I don't want you to do that, that upsets me above all, I go. I know why it does. I know that upsets you because of what happened to when you were a kid and I'm not that, that's not this and they can go. Yeah it's, it scares me and I go get it. I know it scares you and I still have to go do this.
Speaker 5:Do you think walking away but sometimes ignoring that emotion from past trauma is a negative thing to care?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, if you ignore something, let me ask you this did you ever ignore a splinter? Oh yeah, I have. I think, yeah, you have okay, and some of them worked its way out, and some of them you had to go dig in. Yeah, yeah, and so it depends, if you don't usually ignore a toothache, you don't usually ignore a toothache.
Speaker 1:A toothache.
Speaker 2:You don't usually ignore a toothache, oh toothache. Because if you ignore a toothache, chances are it's going to get worse. So here's what I would say some transgressions, some traumas you can take a look at and go okay, I get it, that happened, can't do anything about it, I'm just going to understand it, right, and and it doesn't actually affect me as much as it does my wife or my father, my sister there's others that you have to not ignore. What you ignore, like I said, a toothache can get worse and worse and worse. Not only that, you pass it down to your children, you can pass it down to your children. There is trauma that can get passed down through generations and we know that.
Speaker 5:What I mean by sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, we love this. Go go over Go.
Speaker 5:Oh man, I'm sorry. So what I mean by ignore is if you notice a pattern. For example, you know your spouse is getting overwhelmed about a situation in her personal life which is maybe for me it's ridiculous. For her it's a big situation. So I see a pattern she goes overwhelmed about a situation and I don't want it to affect me. So I kind of just let it go, because I know in two hours it's like it never happened. So I would just kind of have that little dome around me.
Speaker 5:Yeah it does affect it, it can.
Speaker 2:It can, until you decide to say go and give her a hug. You know that it's what's going on. You can't change it, nor can you fix it. She's got to work it through.
Speaker 5:That's from past.
Speaker 2:Nothing to do with you and you can just witness, you can empathize and you don't absorb it. You don't allow it to hurt you. So when you come from a family where everybody's hurt affects everybody else, you're at risk. Look at the smile. I laugh.
Speaker 5:I can see it.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I would say that it probably does. It does affect you on some level, right? You don't want to see your spouse upset, and it may be. I love what you just said about. Doesn't bother me, it may be ridiculous to me, right and and right. So if you ignore it, if you ignore someone who's hurt, they may come after you looking for more support. So you've actually increased the hurt because you ignore it.
Speaker 1:That's why I don't really like the word ignore. Maybe you have the experience to know that they need to do it by themselves. The word is an ignore. I think it's like willful or intentional, giving them the space and time that they need to solve it themselves.
Speaker 2:Tell them how you do that. How would you do that so that they would know the difference from not being ignored and you don't care? You don't care Right To giving them the space, derek, what are some of the things you can say or do that would let them know you're going to be there and they have to work it out?
Speaker 1:That would be the scenario. You would need some context.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we'll use Omar, I'll use one of mine. So my grandson's all upset about something and he comes to me and he goes. I can't believe that this person did that and then I don't go. What are you so upset?
Speaker 3:about.
Speaker 2:That's the first thing I don't say. I'd say that sucks. It doesn't suck to me, sucks to him. So the first thing I say is that sucks. I empathize first, I join up, I connect with him. That sucks. How many times have I said that to you? That sucks, that's terrible.
Speaker 1:You don't feel like you're affirming I'm not, I'm not going to say that.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. Well wait, I would tell you right If I could say that suck. And then I commiserate with him into the depths of despair. I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1:First, I'm going to say that sucks. And they go, yeah, and then. So now we're connected.
Speaker 4:I say that sucks in a way that they kind of understand yeah, you know it's sorry, you know what has worth. I'm not like, oh, and she just keeps talking and she'll bum herself down. That's why Sometimes, when I say I love that for you, sometimes it's sarcastic. Sometimes I actually do mean it, Like I actually do love that for you, like even if it's like something they're happy about. You know, like you know, affect me, it's not my happiness, like I love that for you, you're happy, but then they tell me something negative. I'm like I can't love that for you, Like in a way like okay, tell me more, cause I know it's going to calm you down. Yes, and they can understand it more. Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's all in context, but I definitely want people to know I heard them and I can see that they're upset, so saying it sucks, because I can see that it sucks for you and go yeah, it really sucked and I go okay.
Speaker 2:It's how you deliver it, it's how you deliver it. So then I might say what do you want to do? What do you need? So now I'm engaged, I'm willing to work, and what do you need Now? This is an opportunity for them to say, well, I need you to go call them until what my grandson does sometime, and I go oh, I can't do that, I'm sorry, I should have qualified. What I can do here, what I can do, is I can be with you when you make that call. I can stand right here with you while you do that. I said, but taking away your opportunity. My job is to help you know how to take care of yourself, and if I do it for you, then I'm not helping you and I love you too much to not help you. So helping you is I will be right here. When you have to make that difficult call, I'll be right here.
Speaker 5:I agree with that. Because I always my mother is. I mean, it's not I don't say this literally, but I'm not here to handle you for the life.
Speaker 2:That's right, because then I'm not helping you. How am I helping you if you don't know how to take care of yourself? So empathize. It's also my way of solving problems. There's another good thing to say. I said, well, what would you do? My way might not work for you. I'll tell you my way. And it might not work for you because I'm a 73 year old woman and you're an 18 year old boy. So this just be clear here this may not work the same way. And I think it's this idea that we honor people's struggle to strength. We honor people's struggles so that they get the benefit they should get the benefit of doing it.
Speaker 2:I love when you said that it doesn't upset you, but it upsets her. So here's why Do you ever have like a someone who says to you she just believe what that guy just did, and blah, blah, blah, blah like this? And you look at that person like they have two heads and go why are you so upset? And they look right back at you and go why aren't you upset? Well, we just talked about it. It's because it didn't happen to me. I didn't come from that kind of family. I didn't have that situation in my family. I have other shit that upsets me. So I never say that I never like. Why are you so upset? I never ask that unless I go tell me why you're so upset.
Speaker 5:Tell me why you're so upset.
Speaker 2:Tell me why you're so upset. I want to know, I really want to understand. That's very different thing. Why the hell are you so upset? I work that along the way. Yeah, you got to want to know why someone's upset. And then the greatest joy you give to somebody and strengthen is you don't fix it for them. You don't fix it for them. How do they get the gift if you fix it for them? I'm saying to my grandson when he was little will you do this for me, Jim? I'm like oh, you tried five times. If you can't get it in five times, I'm doing it. I got you. Why did I choose five? Because he always got it on the third try.
Speaker 1:My dad used to always say figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, figure it out is one way. That's a little more, that's distant for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a little like a thoughtless person, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I love this one too. Here's another good one. Someone says will you do this for me, because I'm so scared and I don't want to do it? And I go can you're so good at it? I love when they say that I smoke right up my ass. You're so good at it, will you do this for me? And I go I am good at it, aren't I? And they'll go yeah, now they're all excited. Yeah, you are, you're so good at it. And I go yeah, well then I don't need practice, you do, because I'm already good at it.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, there's only people who miss it. Oh my God, crazy.
Speaker 2:I want you to be curious about yourself and your trauma. I want you to be curious about other people's trauma and know that you don't have to fix any of it. First of all, you can't stop or you can't take away what happened to you. All you can do is build on it or heal it as much as possible Right but you'll never get rid of all of it. I won't get rid of all the anxiety that happens every time I do something that reminds me of when I was attacked. Let's put it that way Right, I can't get rid of all that.
Speaker 2:So I'm walking in New York City during the day, I go through this park, I'm sitting on these benches, I'm watching people with their dogs and their kids and it's beautiful and it smells like fall and I'm so happy because I miss these ghosts. Cut to that. Next day in the evening, I have to walk through the, I have to walk back to my hotel and I see the park, but now it's seven o'clock at night and I want to walk through the park and I go as much as I can kick ass. Probably not a smart thing for me as a single person with obvious gray hair walking through a park at night. Just probably not a good idea. Right, I want to, and I'm not going to do that because I want to get home and I don't want to put myself in that situation.
Speaker 2:Think if you could do that when you're hanging out with people and you're about to say something or do something and you go. You know, is it worth it? Is it worth bringing that up right now tonight, when we're both tired and right? Maybe I'll wait and do that another time. That's the compromise of doing something with someone and knowing what they're capable of at the time at the time, and knowing what you're capable of. I could never do that. If I was upset about something it had to be talked about right now, I caused more fucking collateral damage to myself and my relationship.
Speaker 4:I'm not going to mentally prefer myself for something like that. I don't know Whether it's negative or positive. Right Like to have someone, something, whether it's family or friends. I mentally prefer myself for it because I know how they're going to react, no matter what the timing is, and I just say it and they could automatically tell it from my face and they ask what's wrong. So I'm like, since you asked, this is what's?
Speaker 2:going on. I saw my face. It was so obvious you have to ask.
Speaker 4:So I won't.
Speaker 1:So far we've only spoken about, maybe, people that want to fix themselves, but there's a whole other ball game. I mean you can't fix someone that doesn't want to fix themselves, that's right. You can't help someone that doesn't.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:It's not even your job to help someone that doesn't want to help themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there are some people that don't, they can't. So I always say there's willing and able. Are you willing and are you able, right? I mean, I know some people that are willing to heal and they truly are not able at this time in their life. That I want to change, and the anxiety, the depression, whatever, is so great that they can't, they're not able at this time. I know some people who are able. These are the ones that get me going, the ones that are able and are unwilling.
Speaker 2:So there's two kinds of people in the world and right now we only have we have one, one, two, three, four, five people right now, six people and a dog. We have six of the same kind of people here. We all look very different, everything, but we've got one thing in common or we wouldn't be here it's two kinds of people people who want to know. They want to know, they want to change, they want to know, they want to figure shit out. Even when they're struggling, even when they don't want to, they still want to. They're willing to get new information, they're willing to try something new. We're disruptors. They'll start a whole new way of being on into the world.
Speaker 2:You know people like that. And then there's a whole bunch of people too many right now, I'm afraid that don't want to know. They already think they know. They think that everything that you would love them to change or they that people are telling that they need to change about themselves they're wrong and they can't change. They're not willing the worst, they don't think they have to change. It's not me, it's you.
Speaker 5:It's all you, it's the opposite Like. This is my first experience. Maybe for me it's like I'll figure that out.
Speaker 2:Well, you're sitting here now, but why did you sit in that seat tonight?
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I met you and I liked your energy.
Speaker 2:So you want to know, I want to know more about that crazy old lady. I want to know that energy. Where the fuck does that energy come from? It's delusional. I'll let you know if you're delusional. You're not delusional. I can see that. For the point being, you really do want to know. You left at 17. You said I got to go to America, I got to go back to where I was born and do this thing. You know, yeah, none of us would be here if we didn't want to know. None of us. I think.
Speaker 2:Everyone goes through trauma, but absolutely everybody does. Absolutely Everybody goes through trauma. And there's big T and little T, and sometimes the little T trauma is worse than the big T. It can cause greater depression. So here's the definition.
Speaker 2:So big T would be the obvious sexual molestation, assault, being beaten up, screened at, poverty, racism, those kinds of things you have to deal with all the time in a very chaotic and dangerous world. That would say for children would say that. And little T is what I call the yabba parenting. Oh, omar, I love your hat. That's such a great hat, but, honey, why'd you get it? Brown Brown is. You know exactly what I just did. You know exactly what I just did. It's nice, but then it's not. The minute you say but you take away the first part of the sentence, don't say but unless you're talking about someone's ass you want to talk about, you know, nice, but that's okay, I'm good with that. But I'm not okay with saying something and then but right, it's in the end. I love that hat and I liked the red one on YouTube. Two things can coexist. So that would be my answer to that is and I want to say something too If you plan to have friends for a long time like I plan on that being his, his grandmother for a long time, right, as long as I live, I'm not going anywhere, no matter what, I'm not going.
Speaker 2:So what if you made that commitment? And even when somebody does something that's irritating, you go. Well, it doesn't matter, I'm going to be here anyway. Do you see what I mean? It's only when you got one foot out the door that you argue a lot and fight a lot. It's only when you're still wondering whether you picked the right person, or you want to be their friend, or somebody else might be better out there, that you'll argue the minute you're in and you write.
Speaker 2:Now I want to say this no one gets to scream at you, no one gets to call your name, no one gets to hit you, no one gets to lie to you, no one gets to put you in danger on purpose. Those are things that are bottom lines for me. So no one's in my life like that, because the minute I see it I'm out of there. So it takes a while before you know whether people are safe. I always say Hannibal Lecter can be nice to you for the first six months, till he invites you to dinner and your dinner. So right, everybody can be wonderful for six months. And finally that facade will come down and you'll see the red flags and you'll see the real person, and then you make a decision. By then, unfortunately, you slept with them, so it's harder.
Speaker 5:I love they said that, because some of my work and I always have this conversation just generally, but it's funny. Oh, I met this guy at the school. He was like everyone's school at first.
Speaker 2:Everyone's school, that's right. Six months, roughly, is what everybody can keep on in check. Until I was just talking to a mutual friend of Yusef's and mine and he was complaining about the young woman he's dating right now and I was like thinking back when he started to date her and I realized it had just passed six months and I said to him I said, well, you've been seeing her now. I said about eight months, seven months. He goes yeah, we're in our seventh month. And I went here it comes, here it comes. Now you get to make the choice. Now, you see, right, this is it now. I love when Michelle Obama said that she didn't like her husband for 10 years, because when the kids were little I didn't like him.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is I was talking about like starting boxing. I told them, like the first six months, this huge learning curve, yeah, after six months. So at the same time, there's like these massive issues that come forth, maybe in relationships after six months. Yes, part of that is the improvement process as well.
Speaker 2:I love what you're saying right now, so with boxing.
Speaker 1:for me it took six months with that massive learning curve, and then I mean you're always learning, but there was that huge plateau in the beginning.
Speaker 2:And I think we beat ourselves up about learning because I don't know about you. Think of something that you did really quickly and really easily. So think of something you tried. For me it would be dancing. So I'm a little girl and the minute someone shows me how to do this, I'm like, oh, I got this Right. So now I've got a problem because if a lot of things come easy to me, I don't know how to wait out those six months. So it's a really important thing to do things that are hard, difficult, that they're not easy for you. They don't come easy to you. Most people stop being a beginner the Buddhist call it a beginner mind to always try something new that you can't do easily, so that you can be kind to yourself. You'll give yourself some grace and you'll give yourself some time. And it's okay not to like somebody who you love.
Speaker 3:It's okay, I know he's on camera right now.
Speaker 2:He loves you, omar's wife, if you watch this, I know. We gotta go. Everybody Be crazy Well.