Your Thoughts Your Reality
Welcome to "Your Thoughts, Your Reality with Michael Cole," the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges. Michael Cole, a Certified Elite Neuroencoding Specialist, dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life. Join him as we delve into the profound realm of Neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles: procrastination, self-doubt, fear, and more. Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward.
Your Thoughts Your Reality
Healing Generational Trauma: Breaking the Cycle
What if the challenges you're facing aren't entirely your own? The burdens we carry—anxiety, anger, self-doubt—may actually be echoes from generations past, embedded in our very DNA.
In this profound conversation with transformation healing strategist Corrine Zuleger, we explore the hidden mechanisms of generational trauma and how it shapes veterans and their families. Corrine shares her own journey through mental health crises and family losses that led her to understand how trauma gets passed down like an unwanted inheritance, changing our nervous systems and creating patterns that feel impossible to break.
"What is brought to light can be healed," Corrine explains, highlighting that awareness is the first step toward transformation. Together, we dive into the neuroscience behind how traumatic experiences—both from our ancestors and our military service—create deep neural pathways that dictate our reactions and behaviors, often without our conscious awareness.
The most powerful moments come when we discuss practical healing modalities that work at both neurological and energetic levels. From breathwork that releases trapped energy to mirror exercises that build self-love, these techniques offer real pathways to breaking generational cycles. Particularly moving is the discussion about forgiveness—not of harmful actions, but of the people (including ourselves) who were simply doing the best they could with the awareness they had at the time.
You'll discover why isolation is your greatest enemy on the healing journey and how connection serves as medicine for the wounds you carry. Whether you're a veteran struggling with reintegration, someone carrying familial patterns you want to release, or simply seeking deeper understanding of how trauma works, this episode offers both compassionate insight and practical tools for transformation.
Ready to break the cycles that no longer serve you? Connect with our veteran community at empowerperformancestrategies.com and download Corrine's free workbook on reconnecting to love at corinnezuleger.com. Your journey toward healing starts here.
Welcome to your Thoughts, your Reality with Michael Cole, the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges. Michael is a dual elite certified neuro encoding specialist in coaching and keynote training presentations dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post deployment life. Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles procrastination, self-doubt, fear and more. Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello, hello everybody. So today we have my friend Karine Zuliger on here. She is a Duel Elite Certified Neuroencoding Specialist. She's a Transformation Healing Strategist dedicated to guiding individuals through deep healing, specialized in addressing generational trauma-affected mind, body and spirit. And that's what we're going to really dive into today and I'm super excited about this. So she comes from a strong military family, giving her a deep understanding of veterans' challenges, and focuses on holistic well-being, integrating spiritual, mental, emotional and physical healing. My friend Corrine, tell us a little bit more about yourself before we get started Well.
Speaker 3:Thank you, michael. Thank you for having me here today. Really, my mission, my passion, is to help people heal, simply as a conduit, and when I say heal, there's so much that goes on into healing right. So healing in, like you said, the mind, the body and the soul. I want to have a holistic healing approach, and so my goal is to put people in front of as many tools, give them as many options as humanly possible, as many options as humanly possible to connect them.
Speaker 3:Even I have a podcast as well, and for me, I know that what is brought to light can be healed. So when we continue to push things down inside of us that can cause dis-ease within us, and whether that is on a physical level or a mental, emotional level or a spiritual level, even we need to talk about those things and I want to give people tools in in also. I know that there's 8 billion people on the planet. I am not everybody's cup of tea, so I like to expose people to a lot of other you know healing modalities and other people who are on the same sort of path, if you will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely love that. And you know, it's so funny how, through I think both of us could say this with our work so many people don't realize the generational trauma that we're going to, we're going to talk about today, how that really affects your body and spiritually, and all those different things.
Speaker 2:So I'm really excited that we were able to get you on here we had some reschedules and things, so we're in for a treat today and I'm really excited. Before we get started, I want to remind everybody. On the top right-hand corner there's a blue QR code that takes you to empowerperformanceancestrategiescom Again for people listening on the podcast forums. Later on it's empowerperformancestrategiescom Takes you to all the podcasts and our Facebook groups for veterans and their families, some free eBooks. We've written all kinds of resources, so please check that out, become part of our community and join the mission. So, with that said, karine, you ready to get started? I am. I am so ready, fantastic. So I want to start off with how did you start in the personal development field? What drew you into this?
Speaker 3:I would say the very first thing that got me into personal development was my own mental health crisis. Um, I had a nervous breakdown and so, um, it was after that that I started to really take a peek at what was going on, and it would, it would help me along in the journey of cause. You know, a few years after I started that journey, I lost my dad to substances and then, five years after my dad, I lost my brother to a combination of opiates and alcohol. And it was after the loss of my brother where I was like you know what this crap ends? Here I stood in the funeral home and just was like literally, y'all hear me, we're done, this family is done, we're not losing any more of us. And it took me into a deep dive of really learning and understanding generational trauma and understanding the love of self and the things that we do to ourselves when we feel we can't be forgiven or, you know, we we haven't released the secrets. Well, it's been a journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, and thank you for being vulnerable and discussing that, you know, so long as that's not easy. And again, when we do talk about those things, I know when I talk about it too, I get the best feedback of oh, I understand and I'm connected to that and I can relate to it, which is the most important part, I think, of what we're doing, you know, on this show and your podcast and just as coaches and empowering, you know, strategically helping people. I think it's super important, so thank you for doing that. So, with that said, I've been here what, in your experience, what are the first signs that someone is truly ready to heal their mind, body and spirit? And then we're going to get into what generational trauma is a little bit.
Speaker 3:Okay, in my experience it's been curiosity, right. When somebody starts to really look, they have an awareness, right, like all of a sudden there's like why am I behaving this way? Or maybe it's how can things look differently? I don't really understand. And they start to. They start to question you know, and is healing even possible for me? But they're, they're just genuinely curious. They start to really look at something here is different. Maybe they heard somebody speak, they saw something, but they're looking for something different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think that that is it. You just nailed it for sure. When you're gone, man, something's not right. Why am I drinking so much? Why am I doing this? Why am I angry all the time? You know things like that, I think are. Again, I think you just nailed it. It's something's not right, get curious.
Speaker 2:And then where do I go from here? So let's talk about generational trauma. So you know something's wrong, whether it's generational or just something you're dealing with. I think some of these skill sets that we're going to talk about today will help regardless. So, generational trauma for people that aren't familiar with the term, I don't know what it is. Why don't you talk about that for a minute? With the term?
Speaker 3:I don't know what it is. Why don't you talk about that for a minute, if you will? So generational trauma is really what it sounds like. Right, it's something that gets passed from generation to generation. I would say. Typically there's a lack of awareness that this is something that's happening. Right it's.
Speaker 3:We've we've, always behaved this way. You know, the response mechanisms in our house were like where I grew up, you know, if you were mad about something, you blew up. You know you blew up and then you like, either punch somebody, or you punched the wall, or you, like, you know, flipped out on somebody and then you, but you moved on right. And in some families it might not be that they might be. If they're angry, they might suppress it and push it all down and sweep it under the rug. Or you know, like my dad would be angry at us and then he would be like, look what you made me do, and now I'm going to go to the bar and I'm going to go get drunk and everything was our fault, right.
Speaker 3:So that was what was modeled, and so generational trauma can really look like it looks like that. It's like this is the model that I've had and how to behave, this is how we do things in our house and then it gets passed on. With generational trauma we actually can physically change our DNA and so that is in epigenetics. We can turn off DNA sequencing based on those sorts of behavior, based on the way we behave, and that can cause a whole other host of issues within us. But what we're really looking at are, you know, as far as the control, what we can do within it in generational trauma is, is that modeling you know from you know the way we, the way we handle conflict, if you will, in our house, to how we treat our spouses, to how we treat our children, um, how we treat people out in the world, um, that all gets handed to us yeah, absolutely, and so and it's not just things we necessarily and see, if you agree with this, that we necessarily just see, um, but it's literally within our dna, right?
Speaker 2:you know that we don't even realize. So I was laughing I'm just going to go back for a second, because I started laughing because you talked about punching walls and that kind of stuff, and I'm like, god knows, I've seen that, and it's interesting how we don't realize in the moment. Again, sometimes it's just us and whatever we're dealing with, but a lot of times it is someone from the past that has conditioned us, trained us to see that as normal, right, and what is normal really is what is normal for you, though, because what I saw in my childhood is not what I do in my adult life. So that generational trauma and that generational patterns have been broken and we have the power to do that, which I think is absolutely fantastic as well. Can we talk a little bit more about how generational trauma gets embedded in our nervous system and our DNA? If you can talk about that a little bit more?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's through repetition, right. So I look at I like to use car analogies. I don't want to ask me why so these just work for me. So, when I think about the wiring of the brain, and then ultimately, because you know the brain is what's telling the, every cell in your body what to do, it's it's like you know how you, when you get stuck in the mud and you know you're just hell bent on, you're going to get out of it by gunning it, right. So I'm just gonna, I'm going to hit the, I'm going to hit the accelerator and right. But the more I do that, the more it digs me in deeper. Okay, so I look at trauma that way. So it's, you know, I have these thoughts, I, you know. Then I, those thoughts create the feelings, right. They create the behaviors that I do, right. And then they become these belief systems. And the more and more it gets ingrained in me, the more I do it, the more our family does it. That tire groove gets deeper and deeper and deeper into us and now the DNA sequencing has changed and epigenetically then it's passed on.
Speaker 3:So we hear things like that you know that alcoholism is a disease and this is how it becomes a disease. Right, this is how we get disease in our body. I am a person who I would like to say that I'm on a healing journey of an autoimmune disease, that all autoimmune disease stems from a lifetime of adverse childhood experiences, right? So it wasn't, it's not, it wasn't just one thing. It was being exposed over and over and over again, right? So within us, things get changed. The hippocampus, which is a part of the brain, that part will shrink. We see that happening in traumatic childhood environments, so from birth or even in the womb until about five years old, and then also in situations like PTSD, and that's where we're talking for military families. The PTSD can also shrink the hippocampus and also the prefrontal cortex. So, again, those are other ways too that right now we're looking at brain chemistry, we're looking at the dynamics of how the body functions and that also getting changed of how the body functions and that also getting changed Right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So how do I want to say this? So you know a lot of these things that we don't realize. And I go back to a movie with Matt Damon and, oh, I can't think of the movie. Oh yeah, oh, it's one of my favorite movies. All of a sudden, I can't think of it. Anyway, he's going to a therapist, robin williams, and um, what's the name of the movie?
Speaker 3:I totally forgot it. Uh, goodwill hunting.
Speaker 2:Thank you love that movie, but you know, he goes in there and at the you know, towards the end, when he has the breakthrough, it's. It's it's not your fault will, it's not your fault, you know. And the realization that makes that such a dramatic change. And that's not just a movie, guys, that really happens. I've seen it. I've seen it a lot, because you're creating a new belief system and that helps with PTSD as well, because when you get rid of those negative and the trauma thoughts that are in your brain and you, you change it to a positive and a different leg on that table for support, that belief system changes and so does PTSD and we can talk. Well, people have heard me talk about it before. We'll talk about it again.
Speaker 2:I don't want to take up too much time here, but it's absolutely fascinating and it has been since I first started learning about this stuff how that works with generational trauma and so forth. So, if we can, we're about halfway through. So, if we can, let's start getting to the light side of it. Right? How do we come to the light of this? There's always going to be light in the darkness. You just have to see it. So how do we pull back the curtains and let the light?
Speaker 3:in. There's so many different methodologies out there. Obviously, neuroencoding we work with, working with, we're working with accessing subconscious memories. Right, because most of the time, we don't necessarily know that we're behaving this way or this. This thing exists. This could be something that stems back to childhood In regards to the military.
Speaker 3:You're trained to behave a certain way, you know, and so, in that, the reaction that you have is a set point within you that has been created on purpose. Right, because you know we need you to hit the ground at a certain point. Everybody goes. You know we need you to hit the ground at a certain point. Everybody's everybody goes. You know we need you to, you know, be disciplined in a certain manner in order to keep everybody safe. And then, right, they come out into the, you know, and try to reacclimate into civilian life, and nobody else is doing this, right, like it's, like this looks different, and so you know how, how do we do that? How do we change the, the way we think?
Speaker 3:And pattern interrupts are a big thing, because you know, if this thought comes up, you know, we know that we can do a pattern interrupt. We can find the things that bring us joy, right, and then thankfulness, gratitude, right, but what I find really helpful is breath work. Right, so that we're talking about what kind of things can we do to increase the good energy that comes into our body, because we are all energy. We're energy beings. Absolutely, we are all energy. We're energy beings. We take in the energy and so if I've been exposed to say I was exposed to war or violence, and that energy is kind of trapped in my body, I want to find ways to release it. And things like exercise right, get your dose, get your daily dose, your dopamine, your oxytocin, your serotonin and your endorphins. So moving your body physically, breath work, helps that trapped energy. Things like Reiki not everybody is into that sort of energy work but I really do enjoy it to help you move the energy through your body because it's stuck in there. We want to get it out, get it moving.
Speaker 3:Journaling Journaling is a great way to get the words out onto paper of the things that you're experiencing. Forgiveness that's another big piece is can I look at myself in the mirror and forgive me? Forgive me, forgive others. You know we're doing what we believe is the best. I believe that even as a parent, like raising my children, I was operating at the level of awareness that I had at that time, and so, therefore, I would like to believe, and I do believe, that I was always doing the best I could with the information I had at that point in time and maybe it wasn't the best right, so maybe it wasn't the best. I can seek forgiveness. I don't need another body to get involved, I don't need anybody else, but I got my direct plugin to source and I can sit in a tone, undo anything.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because you use the same exact way that I learned to forgive not only myself but other people. I'm not forgiving the act necessarily, but you literally said exactly the way I do it. I I was doing the best I can for who I was at the time and I truly believe that. I truly believe that, at most, most people, you know that's just who they were at the time, you know. So again, I don't forgive the acts necessarily, but I do, you know, forgive the person or myself. And because you can go back, right, I mean, let's, let's all be real for a second.
Speaker 2:If we can, we can all go back and say, oh man, I can't believe I did that when I was 15 or 21 or 35 or whatever the case may be, you know, or last week, and you can go back and I teach this to my clients as well, I do trainings on it is when you can do that. You can then look yourself in the mirror. It is shocking to me the mirror exercise that I give I'm assuming you do it as well. You talked about doing it, so it's shocking to me how many people struggle to look at themselves and I mean look in the mirror and try this everybody, and do this for yourself. Look in the mirror, in your eyes, in your soul, and say, mike, I love you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you know it's.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely transformational over time.
Speaker 3:Do a step further, because this is my husband and I went to a retreat with Don Miguel Ruiz and the boys, jose Ruiz, and they had us. You put your hands on your face and literally hold you, hold yourself right and, you know, say right, I love you, I am the love of my life, right? We're so conditioned to put somebody else in that that kind of front runner spot, and I just remember like doing that and just sobbing and being like I am the love of my life. It's like this is, you know, this is so amazing and we forget that, we forget to to really cut ourselves some slack. And I look, you know, I talk about like circle of responsibility and you know.
Speaker 3:So, what I think, what I feel and what I do, those all fall within the circle of responsibility. Those are my responsibility, and I could project blame all day long on to he made me, she made me, it made me, this made me, blah, blah, blah. Be do this way, right, and it's easy, and it's easy, it's so much more fun too. I'm like you know it was. It was so much more easy to be to not hold myself personally accountable, right, but within that circle of responsibility, then those are my things and then every choice I make from there is my responsibility and I get to hold me accountable. And so when you're looking at, you know changing behavior right, you know. So it's like when we're pointing at someone, they say there's a reason why when you point at someone, there's three fingers looking back at you right, it's true, it's true and it's and it's.
Speaker 2:You know I love the holding yourself thing and I also have clients sometimes hug themselves you know, and that's just the beginning part, because once you do that and then you can have real conversations with yourself too, you know, and kind to yourself with empathy not you know you're an asshole or whatever, you know that kind of thing but or you know why are you doing this, but really doing that and celebrating yourself, because when you start doing that you fall in love with yourself again and so many people don't realize where they are and how they talk to themselves, right, the two most words you'll ever say to yourself are I am, because what you put behind I am are.
Speaker 3:It's a declaration, right, so I am, and we know this with our identity statement. And I am, in and of itself, is a full stop sentence I am and so because I am, therefore I am worthy. Right, I was created here at this time. And this whole process that we're on this whole journey is a simple remembering, right? We're remembering that our soul is here on this journey and we're here to experience life, which means, because we are human, we're going to make mistakes, right, and so we can seek forgiveness and we can offer forgiveness and we can look in and I can love a human, and not necessarily, like you said, like the behavior, right, I don't have to be okay with the fact that this or this happened to me as a child, but I can look at my mom or my dad and I can say they were operating at their highest level of awareness at that point in time and did they always mean to have my best interest at hand.
Speaker 3:They did Like when my dad didn't want me to cry and like you know, because I'm an emotional, watery, syrupy, lovey-dovey human and he would see that as weakness, right. So that vulnerability in me he was trying to make sure that I wasn't going to get hurt out in the world Because as a man, as a man that did prison time for him, that vulnerability, that weakness that got you hurt, yeah, you know. And so that when we can look at that and say he was just trying to keep me safe, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's the beauty of doing the best we can for who you are at the time. There's a reason why I was rubbing some dirt on it. You're going to be fine, just rub some dirt on it, don't cry.
Speaker 2:Our generation anyway. Yeah, and I just want to, and we're getting close on time but you brought up something very important about, you know, making mistakes, being hurt, those kinds of things. Ladies and gentlemen, that's how we learn, that's how we move forward, that's how we grow, that's how we generationally whether it be trauma or whatever the case may be we set a new bar, because the people around us see how we are, how we're acting, where we are in life, all those things, and we're drawn to. You know, those people are drawn to us when they're in a positive way. Yeah, don't be scared to let your kids learn.
Speaker 3:Right, they need to because they're here on their journey as well. Right, I mean, we're here to kind of guide them and you know, not necessarily we don't want them getting eaten out in the wild and all that kind of stuff and they're going to.
Speaker 2:Where do you live?
Speaker 3:We do have wolves and different things out here, believe it or not, but recognizing that that this is a journey, that they're going to continue to move forward. I am growing all the time. I am not the same person I was six months ago. I'm continually looking at how can I evolve, how can I be a better human, how can I be the best representative of love that I possibly can. And it might sound kind of hokey to people, but that energy, that energy that I give, is what I'm going to get back. That's magnetic and I'm looking to get all the love I can get back, because that's a high vibration and I'm authentic. I mean, what you see is what you get with me. I'm like a no BS person and I, you know, it's important to me because when we hide again, right, when we hide, that's when things people don't know. Right, like don't suffer in silence. Like don't suffer in silence. Right, we, this skin, was made to be touched. We, as human beings, as spiritual beings in this human body, were made to connect. Right, we were made to help each other feel safe and feel connected and also to understand our worth. Right, this is.
Speaker 3:Those are three, three really big needs that we have, and when we isolate, we isolate because that's a form of punishment. I'm going to punish me and I'm going to isolate myself because I, for whatever reason, don't believe I'm worthy or I don't believe that I can connect with other people, or maybe it doesn't feel safe to connect with other people, right? So it's really important to just get out there, get into a support group, if you know. If coaching isn't for you, then get a therapist. Yeah, yeah, it's important.
Speaker 3:I just can't say it enough to actually articulate and I am a big one too right, let's heal it and move on, because we feel it in our physical body and if it's in the backside of my body, it's in the past. If I'm depressed, my energy is all squishied. I need to do the things that are going to help me make my energy rise, and that is like get out, move my body, find the joyful things. I love sunset, sunrise, little animals. You know I love connecting with people. That's one of my favorite things to do. We have that power to rewrite our script. We can change it.
Speaker 2:I love that and we're going to end it on that. So, cause that's, that's perfect, because we do have that power. So thank you for saying that, and I just want to also say what you said about isolation, punishing yourself, all of those things. That's when we get in trouble, guys. Yeah, you know, veterans, families, civilians, humans alike when we isolate, that's when the trouble begins and that's why we get in trouble, guys, you know, veterans, families, civilians, humans alike when we isolate, that's when the trouble begins and that's why we have the suicide rates we have in the veterans.
Speaker 2:There's people out there. Connect on a Facebook group, you know, in a good way, not sitting there talking crap, but in a good way, raise yourself up with the people around you, you know, because your energy and you do have worth. You may not realize it right this second, but when you start talking to people and you start getting out there, you'll find it. You just have to lean into it and look for it a little bit and sometimes people will tell you hey, you're great at, or, wow, I love talking to you and you know what? Listen to those things, don't deflect them. That's something I work on all the time. Kareem is, you know people compliment and it's like, yeah, okay, but you're fantastic too. I'm really working on absorbing it. You know myself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can say thank you or you can say I received that. Right, it's just like thank you and I received that. And yeah, you know, as far as like going back to isolation, don't self reject. I was a self rejecter. Don't do that Right. Stay away from that. Connect with the people. Connect with people. There's, like you said, there's a lot of ways to do that. But get out, go to a coffee shop, be around other energy yeah, good energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, around the people that you aspire to be.
Speaker 3:Yes, not only them.
Speaker 2:But that energy and that energy. All right, Corrine, so we're now past time. This has been fantastic, so thank you. So, first of all, how do people reach out to you? Because I believe you have a workbook and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Yes, if you go to wwwcorinnezulegercom, so C-O-R-I-N-N-E-Z-U-L-E-G-E-R, they can. There's a page there. You can just put your email in and I will send you the workbook, and it's about reconnecting yourself to love.
Speaker 2:Love that, absolutely love that. And then, of course, if you can give us three tips to get veterans and their families further faster.
Speaker 3:OK, further, faster. Take a deep breath. Right Breath is everything. So take a deep breath, get out there, move your body. I can't say it enough. Get your daily dose Right Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. And find one thing to be grateful for every day before your feet even hit the floor. Find one thing to be grateful for every day before your feet even hit the floor Right, command yourself that today is going to be a great day, and I am grateful for X, y, z.
Speaker 2:You know I love that, because every morning I wake up, I put a smile on my face before I climb out of bed. I open my eyes and I see what exciting things am I going to do or learn today, because life is a gift and you, you if you look at it the right way and put yourself in the right frame of mind, I knew I'd get that. It's magical, it's absolutely magical. Karine, thank you so much for connecting with us, first of all, and our audience, and, of course, I always enjoy you. So thank you very much. As we all know, time is the most precious resource we have as human beings. We do not get it back. So thank you for spending time with us and a few minutes of your life with us, thank you, thank you for having me Absolutely, and, on that note, everybody we're out of here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of your Thoughts your Reality podcast with your host, michael Cole. We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you. To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit empowerperformancestrategiescom. Remember your thoughts shape your reality, so make them count. Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire. Catch you on the next episode.