Out of the Blue - The Podcast: Finding the Way Forward
Out of the Blue-the Podcast features interviews with inspirational survivors of traumatic out of the blue events who have overcome unimaginable challenges, sharing their stories of resilience and triumph. By sharing these stories, "Out of the Blue" aims to create a community where others who have faced similar hardships can find solace and strength as together, we find the way forward.
Out of the Blue - The Podcast: Finding the Way Forward
How to Responsibly Fill Our Internal Bowl with Ellen O'Brien
What happens when you've built your identity around external validation, only to discover it's all slipping through your fingers? Ellen O'Brien, a talented singer and Berklee College of Music graduate, joins us to share her remarkable journey from unconscious living to profound self-awareness.
Ellen introduces us to her transformative concept of the "internal bowl" – a metaphorical vessel within each of us that can only be filled with self-love, self-respect, self-esteem, self-care, and self-compassion. With honesty, she reveals how she spent decades trying to fill this bowl with external gratifications, only to discover that they inevitably fall through what she calls the "trap door."
Her story takes a dramatic turn when, after moving home to Boston to help with a family illness, Ellen gains 130 pounds from the consumption of externals. This wake-up call becomes the catalyst for her second chance at recovery. Ellen shares her realization with unflinching candor: "My suffering was of my own making." People, places, and things didn't need to change for her to feel better. She did.
The conversation delves into fascinating insights about brain function, the role of the amygdala in anxiety, and practical techniques for maintaining mental wellness. Ellen explains how daily mindfulness practices, morning affirmations, and consistent gratitude have transformed her from a "hollow chocolate Easter bunny" to a solid one.
Whether you're struggling with addiction, anxiety, or simply feeling unfulfilled despite outward success, Ellen's journey offers profound wisdom about finding your way forward. Join us for this deeply inspiring conversation about resilience and transformation. Discover how sometimes it's the out-of-the-blue moments that lead to our greatest breakthroughs.
Resources:
Jason Stephenson - Guided Sleep Meditation: youtube.com/@jasonstephensonmeditation
Louise Hay - 11.11 Affirm The Best Version of Yourself: youtube.com/watch?v=yQHBomPOYNE
Dr. Joe Dispenza - Use Your Thoughts to Optimize Your Health: youtube.com/watch?v=2gDr9V_vmFY
Out Of The Blue:
For more: outoftheblue-thepodcast.org
For exclusive content: patreon.com/podcastOOTB
Welcome to Out of the Blue, the podcast Platform dedicated to celebrating inspirational stories of people from all walks of life, overcoming life-changing experiences, who found their way forward. I'm your host, vernon West, and my co-host for today's episode is my daughter, jackie West, who, along with being our social media and marketing manager, is also a professional musician and Reiki healer. And I want to especially thank you, our listeners, for joining us today and giving us your precious time and attention. We know just how valuable that is and please remember to smash that like button and hit that subscribe button, because everything helps to get the word out there.
Speaker 1:This week, on Out of the Blue, the podcast, we're honored to welcome Ellen O'Brien, born and raised in Revere, massachusetts, and now based in New York City. Ellen is a gifted singer and a proud graduate of Berklee College of Music. She was living her dream, performing in nightclubs and building a thriving career until out of the blue, life took an unexpected turn. Ellen's powerful journey of survival and recovery is both unforgettable and deeply inspiring. Today, she is a renowned vocal coach with students from around the globe. Her story is a testament to resilience, transformation and the power of holding on, because sometimes the miracle is just around the corner. Hi, ellen, and welcome to Out of the Blue the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hi Vernon, Hi Jackie, how are you today?
Speaker 1:So good, yes, very good, grateful to be here. So what's your? Let's start it off with what brings you to Out of the Blue, other than you being an old, dear friend of mine. But we're talking about the actual events that you restarted this whole journey.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much for having me here and I'm so grateful and honored to be here. Actually, I've always worked in professions. I'm a singer. I've been singing in jazz clubs since I was 12 years old and I have been around people, a lot of people at once. When I'm singing, when you live in New York have to work a side job. So I was always bartending or waitressing. So the bars I worked at, the hotels, restaurants, they were always uber busy and the beauty of that is you keep seeing the same human behavior over and over again. And you know, out of the blue here with me is I could call everybody else's behavior and I could see what everybody else was doing, but I couldn't see myself. I couldn't see my own behaviors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my whole life was always about getting all the externals and this is a big thing. You know, when I coach and that's another thing I never wanted to teach. I was always nope, I'm just going to sing, I just want to sing, I want to perform. Don't what am I even going to teach anybody? It was so natural for me to do what I did and so I just thought I'd be a horrible teacher. So the fact that I actually coached during the day is funny, but I at this point could never imagine my life, so teaching was out of the blue. That's. That's number one. Um, I did not realize that for decades now. When I was younger, I wanted to be rich and famous and that's all I knew and I never really thought about it. I just wanted to be rich and famous, um, uh I. I give metaphors of visuals to my kids that they can. It's palpable for them. So I always say we all have this little internal bowl.
Speaker 2:Think of a little ramekin bowl and it can only be filled with internals by us. And so there's five internals that I tell them Self-love, self-respect, self-esteem, self-care and self-compassion. Now, how do I fill that bowl up? Because that's the next question they always ask me and I say all right, for instance, there's a boyfriend or there's a friend that I realize is toxic, I set a healthy boundary. It could be a family member, even I set a healthy boundary. Well, when I set a healthy boundary, I just put self-care into that internal bowl.
Speaker 2:And who follows? Self-care, self-love, self-respect and self-esteem. So I'm filling my bowl up Instead of beating myself up when I make a mistake or do something wrong. The person I was before would get angry. I'm so stupid and just beat myself up when I make a mistake or do something wrong. The person I was before would get angry. I'm so stupid and just beat myself up, and I don't do that anymore. I have self-compassion. So there's my self-care. You know my self-compassion. Who follows self-compassion, self-love, self-respect, self-esteem, and it's self-care. So every time I do these, you know whatever I think, whatever I say, whatever action I take or decision I make is either going to add those ingredients in my bowl or deplete it.
Speaker 1:This sounds like where you have come. You are definitely.
Speaker 2:This is your place, I think what to let our audience hear how you earned this spot, because you definitely didn't just wake up one day. Oh no, what what I realized is, all these years I was trying to fill this internal bowl with externals. So this was the second half of it. So there's a trap door for externals. Again, I'm teaching, you know younger people, so I make it palpable, so they can.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh, I get that I get that.
Speaker 2:I always say there's a trap door for externals. So I tried to fill that bowl with men, money, clothes, alcohol, weed, sugar, everything and guess what? I felt good for a while while it was going through the bowl, but as soon as it went through the trap door I needed more. I was walking around unconscious for many decades, not not paying attention to what was going on here. But again, I don't beat myself up because one of my very good friends this guy named Jay he's from Rhode Island he said to me one day you know, we live in a forward moving universe Island. He said to me one day you know, we live in a forward moving universe and I was like and he said, you know, we can't go back to yesterday, whatever day it was it was Tuesday or something. He's like it's Tuesday, we can't go back to Monday. And so I don't beat myself up for what I didn't know or what I didn't get.
Speaker 2:So, moving forward, the out of the blue, the experience that I had, that really changed a lot for me. And again, I've had a lot of out of the blue experiences over my lifetime, but the biggest thing was in 2015. So I chose to move home to Boston back in 2005 to help out with the family illness, and I stayed there for eight years. I wasn't doing well, I was getting depressed. I started eating a lot of sugar like just eating processed foods and sitting on the couch at night watching TV and I just basically wanted to numb myself because that that's the, the tool that I knew so well. Why was I doing this? And it's another out of the blue experience, which was, you know, what I finally came to realize was I was in a lot of mental pain and I was in a lot of emotional pain and I asked this of anyone, whether they have any addiction issues or they're a normal person.
Speaker 2:What do you do when you have a headache? You take something to numb the pain. You know, I? I know, unfortunately, young people that have taken their lives because they just couldn't bear the mental or emotional pain they were in. And if somebody just talked to them and said, listen, this is what's going on. So I'm a big advocate of you, know, I always and I'm glad I'm saying this right now because I've said this to numerous people. I've never said it publicly, but I got so aggravated when people were arguing about what books kids should be reading in school like Dr Seuss shouldn't be allowed or whatever the hell they were saying and I said, instead of you people arguing about what books these kids should be reading, why don't we teach them about the computer that's running, this machine that navigates them through life, and how to like, take care of it, what foods to eat to nourish it?
Speaker 2:A metaphor I give my kids once again, and I love this metaphor. I say to them think of your brain, the organ itself, like the claw that picks up the stuffed animals at the arcade, and then your conscious thoughts or your senses are the lever that moves the claw. So the claw is only going to move in the direction the lever sends it to. So if I wake up every morning, like I used to, and have thoughts like and they can be very fleeting Sometimes I don't even realize. That's why I say I was walking unconsciously, you know, walking around this earth unconsciously for so many decades. So I could have these fleeting thoughts of nobody's ever going to love me, I'm a piece of crap, I'm never going to amount to be anything. I used to have those thoughts. Well, that's where I moved the clock, you know. That's the level was going and I was moving the clock and that became my reality.
Speaker 1:So until you made the, you made a choice. That's what I'm hearing. You made a choice. That's what I'm. You made a choice.
Speaker 1:I think the thing that hits me about this kind of recovery you're talking about I've personally experienced something like that myself is that when you have that long, hard look at yourself, you're doing a self audit in a way, and you find in the things that push your buttons and you learn about the triggers in your mind and you try to alleviate them, maybe compensate for them or get rid of them through some understanding.
Speaker 1:But ultimately, after you go through all that, you're able to actually see the good things. You can't get to the good things until you get do house, get at the stuff that you've got to clean up, but when you do that, you start seeing the things that you are, that are commendable. That are the things you appreciate seeing in others. You have them too. It seems like that's what you're coming into now. You're coming into the wisdom that is really your right to have as a human being, and you found your way to it after getting through really having been brought to your knees from the working out of the character defects. I guess, right, that would be what it is.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and not getting too much into it, but my out of the blue experience. I had two major things that happened that were really a big show. Well, three major things. The first thing was I did, you know I did get into recovery, so I'll just say that right here um and yeah, and I, I literally have no shame. You know I always joke about um. You know, in what I do we don't say our last names, but I always joke that the way I am now I should be saying my last name, Cause when I was acting like an ass in a bar or you know, doing stupid crap like I used to do, you know I was like hey, I'm.
Speaker 2:Ellen O'Brien. I was like yelling my name everywhere. So what happened to me was the biggest out of the blue experience was I when I moved home. The reason why I moved home was I. The front of my brain was saying I'm going to move home and help out with this person's illness. The back of my head and I didn't get this until later on, years later was I still was looking for the externals. I physically was sober, but I wasn't mentally sober or spiritually sober so to speak.
Speaker 2:I did not grow up yet and I was spiritually weak. And so at that, it was a seven-year mark and I said and I didn't say it was in the front of my brain these are these fleeting, unconscious, subconscious thoughts that you don't even realize are happening. I'm not rich and famous. I don't have a husband and child. God doesn't know what he's doing, so I'm going to take over and I'll pull a geographic. That's basically it, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep Taking over for God. I like that one. I think we've all done that.
Speaker 2:I moved home, I quit my job Within three weeks, I did this and now I lived in New York for 10 years at that time and everybody was like what are you doing? And my sponsor even said to me what are you doing? And I was just like no, this is what God wants me to do, you know, I know. And she actually said she had to stop sponsoring me. She's like I can't watch this.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I moved home, I did get a sponsor up in boston, but, um, I still had, you know, and I, I just I keep saying this recently they only call it alcoholism because that was the major the, the, that was a major drug at the time, that was the substance that everybody was using to numb this, but the actual disease itself for me is my thinking.
Speaker 2:And my thinking is mentally painful. It's painful, it's very painful thinking. It's anxious thinking, it's negative thinking, it's fearful thinking. It's self-centered thinking. That's very fearful thinking. It's self-centered thinking, that's very painful thinking. But again, it's kind of like if somebody's gluten intolerant or lactose intolerant, they don't know it. I mean, a lot of us are eating foods we shouldn't be eating right now, but you'll never know. So this is how I realized this.
Speaker 2:I went to a doctor. His name's Dr Frank Lipman. He's realize this. I went to a doctor. His name's Dr Frank Lipman. He's amazing. A lot of people go to him from all over the world, actually, but he's based here in New York City and he's a Western trained internist, but he is huge with Eastern medicine and he's like we get to the core of the issue. There's no like take a pill. He has a bandaid. Again, I always want to say this to people I am not a doctor, and there are people that do need medication. For me, though, this, that was not the case, okay, so I always want to say that, because we are not doctors.
Speaker 1:No, we don't want to dispense any medical advice, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I went to Dr Lippman and this was back in 2000. And I just didn't feel good. I was, I never broke out my life and I was breaking out. And he took me into his office. I'm like what kind of doctor is this? There's no, you know examination room or anything. And he just just said give me your day of eating. How many cups of coffee do you drink? Um, how many hours do you sleep at night? Do you wake up at night? And he's just asking me about my life and my daily living. And I was like what the hell is that? You know, because this is back in the day when none of there was no whole foods, there was no green juices I mean, there were, but people call people that did stuff like that Crunchy granola people, right? So, um, he said, I'm going to put you on a three week cleanse no dairy, no sugar, no wheat. And I did it and my sister and my friend, jay, to this day, will say to me that is the best you ever looked or felt. And so long fast forward.
Speaker 2:I went back to him around 2016, 2015. And this time he took me off um, no processed foods, no sugar, sugar, um, so like bread made with you know anything that was processed and no dairy. So one day it was about three weeks later I was downtown in the village and, um, I was eating at this uh restaurant and I ordered some pasta that had a cream base in it. I got a sick stomach and my ankle swelled up so fast. So why I'm saying this is a lot of us are walking around sick, but we don't realize it until it's taken out of our system.
Speaker 2:There was a woman that told me during COVID she started drinking like a half a bottle to a bottle of wine every night. A lot of people did, and because there's nothing left to you know nothing else to do, so people would drink wine and um, or whatever. And this one woman said I was drinking a half a bottle to a bottle of wine and after two months I realized I'm gaining weight, I feel sluggish, and so I just stopped. And I said and there's, the physical part of that disease, of addiction, is, everyone has an on switch. Everybody can take a bite of a cookie, have a sip of wine, whatever, but an addict or an alcoholic doesn't have an off switch. So when people say to people well, what about your willpower. Well, willpower is great, but if there's no off switch, no, willpower can't do anything. If there's no off switch, right. So that's the physical part. So again, the mental part, again, that I wasn't aware of, was I was in mental pain and emotional pain and I didn't know better. So I was just grabbing at anything that would numb me, and it was sugar and it was alcohol, and it was just trying to focus my brain on something that would make me feel okay and comfortable.
Speaker 2:Going back to the substances, for years I woke up with a headache. For years I woke up with so much mucus in my vocal cords and in my nose I thought this was normal. I just thought this is, this is I'm, I'm healthy, this is how it works. And then, when I stopped putting all substances, including sugar, in my body, I cleared up. I have like no phlegm. You know I have regular amount of mucus, but you know I have a clear voice. I don't wake up with a dehydrated brain because I drank so much alcohol and dehydrated myself and I feel like somebody's putting a jackhammer on my head. I don't wake up like that anymore. But I would have never known that I had this illness or this sickness if I didn't take it out of my system for a while.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it seems like to me just to remember about out of the blue, that the out of the blue things that have happened.
Speaker 1:So you go from that point in time where you're managing the input of the physical, the stuff that you said has a trap door, and as you're managing that, you go through your life, you're managing the physical intake of things you think are going to make you, promote happiness, make you feel better, but then, as you start to wake up to the fact that this is the wrong way, this isn't happening and you still keep trying because you know that's what we do, that's our tendency, as if you're an addict or an addicted person even just some normal people like that you just think you've got to keep trying again. May well get it right, but you don't get it right. But, out of the blue, things are directing you, things are telling you oh, absolutely, what is it? That's what I'm saying. The mystery of it all is that, from out of the blue, this benevolent influence on our life starts to manifest and you made a choice to listen to it.
Speaker 1:That's the thing that I think is the takeaway that I think anyone listening should know this that you can have these things that Ellen's talking about, but when you make a choice to say you know there's a better way, there's people that found a way through this, find a way forward, then you take the, you follow those leadings and that's what look at you. You will follow those leadings. That would happen in 2015. And here we are 10 years later. The journey of getting there is what's interesting.
Speaker 2:Exactly and before 2015,. What happened? So, when I moved home to Boston, like I said, I still was going to meetings and I had a sponsor, but, again, I didn't grow up emotionally and I wasn't spiritually fit, but I was physically sober. So that I always want to make a point of saying that, because there's a lot of people that are physically sober, right, but we keep forgetting that the symbol is a triangle, because it's mental, spiritual and physical. And so what I was doing was I was making unsober decisions, going out with people that I shouldn't have been going out with.
Speaker 2:My old behavior and mental thought process was still strong. What did I do? I had a herniated disc and they gave me muscle relaxers that now are classified as D. 10 years later, they classified it, but, you know, I started taking these muscle relaxers and then, the next thing I know, I picked up a glass of wine, which probably saved my life because I stopped taking the muscle relaxers.
Speaker 2:But again, a rose is a rose by any name. A substance is a substance is a substance. You know it's like what's your trigger? You'll never catch me overeating celery sticks, but if you put a thing of Hershey's Kisses in front of me, I'll cut your hand off if you go for one of them, you know. So I just had to learn what my triggers were. So, long story short, I'm making all these bad decisions and I am mentally and emotionally in pain and I pick up.
Speaker 2:But again, I'm not drinking as much, but I started eating and the funny story is I was watching Top Chef and the hostess, pat Malashky. She's gorgeous, she's tall, she's thin, she's beautiful, and you see them trying the food and they're sitting and they have the glass of red wine. And I would sit there and I just said there was just one point that I felt like I was on a fence, like I loved all the principles, I loved all the solutions, um, but I just didn't feel like I belong there anymore. And then I'm watching people like her and you know, when I'd be out singing, I would see you know people with their boyfriend having a glass of wine. And I was like you know, I just want to be a normal person again and be able to be that person that sits with their boyfriend and has a glass of wine and a nice dinner or whatever. And so I did.
Speaker 2:But again, here's the mental insanity. I would go to Trader Joe's in Kenmore Square. I'd get their finest bottle of red wine. I'd get their finest bottle of red wine. I'd buy a block of brie cheese. French bread, um, like a baguette. Um, you know, I thought that if I and here's the the insanity you know I used to eat Hershey's bars and Skittles and stuff like that. So I was like, no, if I spend money and I get like a, um, you know, go to a fancy bakery and get like a piece of lemon meringue pie or you know a you know $20 bar of chocolate, that's much better for me.
Speaker 2:And so I was in Winthrop, in my apartment watching TV that's where I was living at the time and I would just sit, and, you know, watch TV, drinking my red wine, eating all this stuff. For like two, three hours Now was I sitting there with 20 Big Macs, like you see on TLC, on some of those shows. No, sometimes it was just throughout the day. Oh, I had eggs for breakfast, so it's 1030. I'll have a croissant. Oh, it's 12. So I'll have like a salad with some salmon on it. You know what? I had a salad with some salmon, so I'm going to have some chocolate. It's dinner time. So again, I was negotiating and and being my own pharmacist with food, and so pharmacist FARM pharmacist F-A-R-M pharmacist Pharmacist.
Speaker 3:I have an observation Even though the uncomfortability of negotiating is there, what I've observed in my own experience with these kinds of things is that that's also you inching your way out of it, because you're starting to become conscious of choosing something, even if it is, wow, choosing, you know, to do the same kind of space, um, what, what did you call it like? Like the to fill the space, kind of the internal bowl.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the internal bowl, um with with a trap door entity, you're you're becoming more practiced with how and who enters. You know that's amazing yeah, like taking your way out. I think there is something to be said about it's so, so hard to come out of addiction. You know cause you're, it's all you're. You're feeling really out of control, yeah, and I think, I think there is there's a lot with inching your way out.
Speaker 2:And and Jackie, to your point and go back to Vernon's point earlier. That's an out of the blue thing, because what he said is there's like this, this force, this you know you can't see it, they you know what. What is quantum theory? It's the study of this energy that is not seen and you can't feel it, but it is there.
Speaker 1:I just want to one observation throughout this. When you started talking about the inner bowls, the first thing that popped in my mind was this old saying by a French philosopher, pascal, and I'm going to summarize it, but it's a lot longer and a lot more wordy. He basically says and I'm going to change the inside, everyone is a God-shaped void. And what he says is really in this case, we're going to say inside, everyone is a God shaped bowl, and the only thing that can fill it is that spiritual things, spiritual things, fill it. Anything else goes right out the bottom. We'll not fill that void. So we have to, in our lives, find a way to fill that void with things that are spiritual, that are infinite, that are spiritual that are infinite, that are, yeah, absolutely great, so powerful you know absolutely so.
Speaker 2:To your point, though, about the electricity and the what you were saying, vernon, it's like there's something that was guiding. I just again was guiding you into that place, right?
Speaker 1:and I was conscious to it.
Speaker 2:But if you think of electricity, and I always say this, you know people will say well, there, there is no I, I don't feel god, I don't but the you don't feel electricity, but it's there. All you have to do is plug the light in.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, like on I might also add that I have an electrical charge as human.
Speaker 2:Everything in the universe is electric. Everything in the universe is energy.
Speaker 3:So I mean, yeah, I mean you can say the universe, God, higher power. You can also say you were living in your thoughts and what actually informed you was your heart area, your body. Your body has wisdom and telling you and if you can, if you can tune in and often tuning into your body is a wordless place- it's just breath, and I mean as singers that's, we care a lot about breath and how, how to encourage expression through it.
Speaker 3:And absolutely yeah, I mean, I just see that a lot of the, the disconnect happens from a, from a literal disconnect of brain and body.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, you know it's funny. You're saying this is my body and getting to. What happened to me is I'm sitting in this on this couch eating every night and I didn't even see it happening, but I gained 130 pounds. I gained an entire person. I was somebody that used to run Central Park six miles every day. I taught fitness classes, I was eating so healthy and next thing I know I'm sitting on a couch eating and drinking myself 130 pounds heavier, Like I was never that heavy in my life and I had that, as Vernon talked about before that second moment of clarity. Not many people get that, you know, and I'm one of the grateful ones that I got that because there is a funeral that could happen. I've been to many funerals that the people that didn't get it the second time, and so when I get a second chance, right when you get a second chance absolutely.
Speaker 1:What is so unbelievable thing, that is so great?
Speaker 2:When the doctor said to me listen, this is how much you weigh and your blood sugar is this, and if you don't get a grip off yourself, you're going to be pre-diabetic, and then there's no turning back. At that moment I walked out of her office and I said God, and before I moved home to Boston, I I had a savings, I had a job where I had a 401k and um, health and medical, I had everything. And at this point, again, eight years, uh, what was it? Uh, 2005. So it was 2012. So seven years later, I did not see how fast my life went down. I walked out the door and I went God, I don't know how we're going to do this, but the happiest and healthiest I was was when I was in New York, because this is where I got sober originally in 1996. And I said I don't know how you're going to make this happen, but I need to go back to New York.
Speaker 1:I like the way you say you don't know how you're going to make this, this happen, because that's how you got to be. When you're talking to the higher power, you kind of have to say that. You kind of got to admit you are the power, that's the power, so we just got to do the right thing. And I think you're following that gut feeling, following that, going to New York. I think that was following that impulse from out of the blue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, are you ready for the out of the blue? I think it was the very next week, it might've been two weeks later I get a phone call from a musician who I used to work with and he said I'm getting married Labor Day weekend. I'm putting my dream band together and I want you as the lead singer. So he said I'm going to pay you and I drove down. It was Labor Day weekend, 2012. And I didn't go to any meetings, but when I was here, I was like I need to come back. I went back to Winthrop within three weeks I had a and again, I'm not sober yet, so I'm not really thinking three things through. But I went back home and I had an apartment sale and basically sold everything I owned except my dog and my car.
Speaker 2:I showed up on October 1st 2012, about 30 pounds heavier than I used to be. No job, no credit. A friend, let me sleep on a sleep sofa. For a month and a half he used to be in the program as well and he wasn't. And the funny thing is, I started to see his behavior and I went oh my God, I need to go to a meeting. I don't know what it was about it. But it was like frenetic energy and I was like I need to get to a meeting and I walked into a meeting where everyone knew me, where they thought I had 17 years, and I raised my hand and I said I had one day and literally everybody had whiplash because I was that girl. That was the AA. You know, I was the poster child, sponsored people, I had a sponsor. I chaired meetings. I was at every. I went to meetings seven days a week.
Speaker 2:I was the last person you thought would go out. And again I almost went out because I'm sitting and I I'm not listening to the similarities, I'm comparing and I'm not listening to the similarities.
Speaker 1:I'm comparing and I'm not identifying. Correct, right.
Speaker 2:I was never arrested, I never had to go to rehab See, I'm not that bad Right and I almost went out and it was January 2013. And I had two months and this beautiful woman got up and she shared and she had four kids. And she said you know, I've been in and out of this program seven different times, but it took me those many times to finally realize that sobriety wasn't about my drinking, it was about my thinking. And all of a sudden, I went, I, I I've probably heard it a million times, but at that moment and I went.
Speaker 2:You mean, I don't have to have a pissing contest with everybody of who was worse than who, like this is. This doesn't think right. This always thinks anxiety filled things. This always projects negativity. This is always thinking negative. This is always saying negative things.
Speaker 2:And so when I heard that that changed, that was an out of the blue moment and yep, and so I kept on my journey. But then here I was, seven years later, like the seven year itch of marriage, the seven year itch of recovery, and it was almost COVID. It was November. I was hardly going to meetings again. I started going to my doctors, going oh, I think I need Xanax because I get very, I have a lot of anxiety and you know, and I've done this many times before, where I just don't do the work and I feel bad again.
Speaker 2:And now I'm looking for the easy way out. I'm looking for that bandaid again, that quick fix that you know, that external and the internal bowl, so I can feel better, get that inner peace that eluded me for all these years. And the best thing and I to me, because now I'm in this apartment, I have nowhere to go and we have Zoom meetings and I'm on a meeting one night and there was a guy from LA who was in Bali at the time and he was qualifying and he said I had 10 years, he was a famous DJ, he had the job, he had the money, a beautiful girlfriend, he had all the externals. And he said and I wanted to commit suicide, I wanted to kill myself, I was miserable. And he shared about it in a meeting and some old timer walked up to him and said I'm going to take you through the big book the way it was originally intended.
Speaker 1:Just for those who don't know, the big book is the Alcoholics Anonymous book. It's the big blue book of the whole program.
Speaker 2:And basically all it is.
Speaker 1:It's referred to as the big book.
Speaker 2:But go ahead, right. But all it is is it's the blueprint, it's the manual of the first hundred people. That's what the big book is. It's the first hundred and sixty-four pages. They said we finally figured out not only how to survive from this disease, but to thrive.
Speaker 1:What did they actually say? They said it's a spiritual cure. That's the way you can, the only solution to the alcohol addiction, and, matter of fact, I think that would cover just about every kind of addiction.
Speaker 2:It covers every human ailment.
Speaker 1:And let me just say the way I, because again, the only healing of filling that bowl is the spiritual healing. That's the only way.
Speaker 2:But I just want to say this because I have a lot of friends that are Muslim and Jewish and Christian and Catholic and atheists and agnostics. So I'm going to say this because this is how I describe spirituality. Spirituality, is it found in religions? Absolutely, but is spirituality religion? No, what spirituality for me is is it's how we navigate relationships and life situations. Do we come from a place of fear, ego and false pride, or do we come from a place of love, integrity and humility? So I'd always came from a place of fear, ego and false pride in all my relationships and all life situations. I now work every day, throughout my day, and getting back to that, you know what do you do throughout the day? I into. I have into woven everything that I've been taught into my entire day.
Speaker 1:So fabric of your life.
Speaker 2:It's the fabric of my life. So I I literally walk around throughout the day and at different points of the day, because, again, I started studying how the brain works and you have to exercise it. You have it's not. It's not a muscle, but you do have to exercise it like it is a muscle. And how do you exercise it? You give it an order. And so throughout the day I will walk around and I just will say, at random times I come from a place of love and integrity. I come from a place of love and integrity. I come from a place of love and integrity. The more I say that, that becomes my reality.
Speaker 2:So the one thing about the brain that people don't, you know, might not know, is you have your conscious side and you have your subconscious side. So your brain is a computer, it's a binary computer is a computer, it's a binary computer. But how I describe this? Once again, when I teach kids or whoever, what I say to them is this is what you have to remember. You have your conscious side that you have to give an order to. If you don't give it an order, you've got a best friend, You've got your security guard called the amygdala.
Speaker 2:Now the brain's primary purpose before thinking is to make sure that this machine it's running stays alive and safe. So here's your little thing. If you don't give it an order, he's over here going. Oh crap, she doesn't have a plan. I need to jump in and take over Now. The amygdala is never looking at the rainbows and butterflies, it's only going to look at the things that are going to harm you. There's your negative and anxious thinking. So here's my little, and Jackie will appreciate this. He is standing at a train platform in Manhattan. Now, over the loud speaker because sometimes it's not clear, but over the loud speaker clearly says please let them off the train before you get on the train.
Speaker 3:I really wish that they did that.
Speaker 2:Two seconds later, a train pulls up, the doors open and people are jamming onto the train before anybody gets off. So I used to sit at the 59th street station waiting for the end of the yard to go to the time square when I used to work down there and I would just go. Are these people stupid? I wanted to write a book called Are you that Stupid or you Just Don't Care, because I thought there were only two reasons why you would do something so obviously insane like that. Well, I again started studying a little layman of the brain and what I realized was it wasn't that they were stupid or they didn't care.
Speaker 2:There was no conscious thought, the order being given to the conscious part of the brain. You're going to be okay, you're going to get on the train If you let them off first, you're going to get on quicker. Everything's fine, you're good. If I'm not relaxing him or giving him an order, he's over here going crap. If you don't get on the train, you're not. If I'm not relaxing him or giving him an order, he's over here going crap. If you don't get on the train, you're not going to get to work on time. If you get fired, then you can't put food on the table for the family. That's life and death for that person. That is a fight or flight for that person, not getting fired. So the beauty of the, the not the beauty. But the funny thing about the amygdala it doesn't know the difference between physical harm and social harm. So that was a big thing for me. So a big part of going back to my daily stuff is being very mindful. I also take Buddhist meditation class every Saturday morning. I'm in my seventh year.
Speaker 2:A great form of meditation for any age group is just saying to your brain and you can say it out loud if you live alone, or say it to yourself if there's people around I'm walking to the bathroom, I'm making a cup of coffee. Just say what you're doing, just acknowledge. Say to your brain I am washing the dishes. Right now I am on a Zoom call with Vernon and Jackie. What that does is it keeps me in the present moment. So, going back to this guy that did the big book with me and he made me write this paragraph down and then he made me say it and when I read it out loud I went oh my God, this was me my entire life. And again, whether you have addiction or you don't. I know a lot of people that when I say this paragraph, to them, they go.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, that's me, in my self centered way. I think the most important thing is the way I feel. I want people, places and situations to change so I can feel better. I will go to any lengths to make things become what I want them to become so I can feel better. And there I was trapped, waiting for all these things to change so I could feel better. Therefore, my suffering was of my own making. The good news is, I can be healed or helped, and people, places and things don't have to change for me to feel better. So when I heard that, I just went. That is literally what I tried, and there was my mental pain and my emotional pain.
Speaker 2:I kept trying to change my externals so I could have internal peace. But when you are thinking that those external things are going to give you in a piece and and fill that bowl, that there's where we all get in trouble. So I never have an issue. I, I'm not one of those that, oh, money's evil and things are evil. No, what I will say is we live in a society that makes money off of us thinking we need something to make us feel happier or feel included. And so we have what I like to refer to as the hollow chocolate Easter bunny. So you know, at Easter time we have two different bunnies we have a hollow Easter bunny and a solid chocolate Easter bunny. And a lot of us have grown up being trained to just focus on the externals and none of us did the internal work. So we look good on the outside but there's nothing inside. We're a hollow Easter bunny, and so the work that I finally realized that I had to do was all internal and I'm now a solid chocolate Easter bunny.
Speaker 2:And the last thing I'll say is the reason why affirmations don't work when a lot of people do them consciously during the day is because you forget that there's this subconscious part of us that the door is only open at night, when right before we go to sleep, while we're sleeping or when we wake up stuff. Like you know, I have a strong, healthy, beautiful body. I love fruits and vegetables. I'm a successful singer, songwriter and voice coach. Even though I was consciously during the day saying it, I didn't realize that all those old tapes, what I said to myself, what other people said to me when I was younger, they were still in the subconscious part of me. So I started listening to affirmations right before sleep. Or if I don't listen at night, I wake up in the morning and I listen to it right at the morning. That's when it gets into your subconscious, that's when the doors open.
Speaker 2:Jason Stevenson he's got this beautiful Australian accent and beautiful music. Love listening to him. Louise Hay is the OG of affirmations and self-help and gratitude. Gratitude is an abundance magnet. And how do I practice gratitude? I take a hot shower in the morning. Thank you God for hot water, because most people don't have that luxury. I'm drinking clean water. Thank you God for clean water. Most people on this earth don't have that luxury. I walked down the streets of New York this shit on the streets and this is a big thing that I think everybody needs to hear too.
Speaker 2:My life isn't, you know, I'm not like everything's going great every day, but the point is and that's the spiritual heavy, you know, that's the heavy training is everybody can be grateful when things are going well, when I'm sobbing in grief cause I just lost, you know, someone important in my life, and I'm literally sobbing my eyes out to say to myself find one thing that you're grateful for right now, and to be able to say thank you, God, for allowing that soul to be in my life, for that those that time. So my stuff is practical and I do it throughout the day, and the more you do it, the stronger it gets. So for those of and I'll just say this, sorry for those of you that are having a hard time and say I can't stop thinking the way I think and yeah, it's hard at first because those spiritual muscles are weak, those emotionally mature muscles are weak. That's why you have to just keep showing up consistency and tenacity.
Speaker 1:Keep showing up that. That is the thing I would say. The biggest takeaway here is at the end. Here is gratitude, and I'm going to say, ellen, you are a poster child for not for so many things. One of them is definitely for out of the blue gratitude, because your whole life has been one long test, really, and growth experience, and it seems like the thread that connects it all is that gratitude that has led you to this place in your life.
Speaker 2:Well, Vernon and Jackie, I am grateful for you today and just to spend time with you. You both have beautiful energy and you're doing so good for the world yourselves and it's like that's why we go through those hard times. It's not because we're getting punished, it's to make us stronger. It's kind of like we get this light and we pass the torch to the person behind us and help them see that there is a way.
Speaker 1:There is a way. That's right there. That's the place. Help them see there is a way. Thank you so much for joining us on Out of the Blue. I'm Vernon West, this is Jackie West and, of course, the inimitable honored to have her, ellen O'Brien. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you from Out of the blue and I hope to see you next time on out of the blue, the podcast out of the blue, the podcast hosted by me, vernon west, co-hosted by j Vernon West, co-hosted by Jacqueline West, edited by Joe Gallo Music and logo by Vernon West III. Have an Out of the Blue story of your own you'd like to share? Reach us at info at outoftheblue-thepodcastorg. Subscribe to Out of the Blue on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and on our website, outoftheblue-thepodcastorg. You can also check us out on Patreon for exclusive content.