Episode 23 - Vicarious Trauma with Dr. Falisa Asberry

Welcome to Outside the Line - the podcast for cops who are learning to stay anchored to the real world.

This week I'm joined by Dr. Falisa Asberry - a retired detective, now a practicioner and founder/ CEO of Peacock Training and Consulting.

Dr. Falisa talks about navigating the beginning of her career as a single mother with a newborn, facing her own challenges with vicarious trauma, and how she uses her life experience to coach and train others. 

Connect with Dr. Falisa:

https://peacocktrainingconsulting.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/falisa-berry-asberry/

Connect with me:

https://www.instagram.com/outsidethelinepod

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-campbell/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Outside the Line, a podcast with conversations about keeping cops anchored to what really matters: life outside the thin blue line. I'm your host, Dina Campbell, an active duty NYPD detective on a mission to normalize conversations around resilience and mental health and help cops develop self-awareness and an identity outside their career so they can enjoy life and thrive in the real world. Outside the line. Today I'm here with Dr. Felicia. She's a retired law enforcement, she's a retired detective who's now a practitioner and the founder and CEO of Peacock Training and Consulting. Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Felis. Thank you for having me, Dina.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to speak on your platform.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Oh, I'm so excited for this conversation. When we had that phone call, I just I could tell right away I loved your energy. And I'm like, this is going to be a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I think so. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

You're welcome. So tell us how did you get into law enforcement and how long were you active?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

So I was um law enforcement for 27 years, 26.10 to be quite exact, 27 years. And um I work for uh a suburban uh municipality. Um so I'm not sure if you are familiar with Cleveland Heights. This is Cleveland, in Ohio. It's a suburb of Cleveland, um, in Ohio. And I um transitioned through the ranks just from you know what I did to I I retired as a detective. Um, so that's what I mean by the ranks. Um, my opportunity for the ranks. And while I was there, of course, I did road work, detective work investigations, I ran our diversion program, just things like that. Not too much, not too heavy.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

How old do you mind if I ask? Were you very young when you came on the job? Were you like early 20s? Was it your first real job, or did you have a career prior?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Well, it was my first real job. Um, I was employed prior to becoming an officer, but um nothing like that I could retire from or call a career. Um so I was early, I was mid-20s, 24, 25, somewhere in there. And I had just had had uh had my daughter. So we'll get back to that in a bit. But yeah, I just had my daughter, and the opportunity came up a year after I actually took a test, took the test. And so it wasn't in this city, it was a different city, but this is where I ended up, um Cleveland Heights is where I retired. But the other city, it was one year um there, and then I I got laid off, went to the other place. So pretty much two departments in my in my career.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Um that's amazing, and God bless you for taking the job and having a baby. I couldn't even imagine. I mean, I had my children while I was on the job, but I couldn't imagine going through it with a with a newborn.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

It's interesting because we don't think about what's required as a mother, but what's also required as a police officer. So we have that intersection of what's required, the nurturing, the connection, all of that as a mother, but as a police officer, we are um we have to kind of shut that stuff down, if that makes sense. That does make sense, and I didn't know this until later in my career that this was actually happening. While I was in it, I was just going through it, like we all do, right? Through whatever we need to push through.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

So the reason I ask how old you were when you came on the job is because I find a lot of people that I talked to who came on very young had a difficult time staying anchored to the real world, maintaining an identity outside of their profession. But you being a mother, do you feel like that grounded you outside of work, or do you feel like you just kind of got absorbed into it pretty quickly?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, I agree with the identity uh um misidentity, I'll call it, if you come on very young. I agree with that. Um, I experienced some of that, and um, I think having a newborn that I was solely responsible for um helped me to stay grounded as well. So I needed both in order to not be consumed by the work. I still experienced it, don't get me wrong. And that's how I ended up finding this uh peacock, is because of what happened to me as a young officer, young mother, and in um 27 years of service. So it's it's it's quite um it's quite the challenge trying to maintain your identity if you're not clear on who you are. And that's what I find in my research that people aren't very clear when like when you say they come on, we come on very early into this job or this career, this path, and we take on the identity of the role that we're playing. So it's a little bit tricky if you're not if you're not aware. It's a little bit tricky.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Even when you are aware, it's still tricky.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

You have to be, I would say you have to be very present. You gotta kind of stay present in who you are, continuously asking yourself, who am I? And be able to answer that clearly without just being able to stop at I'm a police officer, I'm or I'm law enforcement, or I'm EMS, or whatever it is that you do. You're way more than that. But we get so consumed in the work that we do or the roles that we play that we we we lose sight of that, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Is that something that you consciously did throughout your career? Were you like checking in with yourself regularly? Or is it like is it something that you made an effort to do, or you just did it and you weren't aware of it?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Well, no, I I wasn't aware of any of this, Dina, until later, um, after my final crash out. Because I had little crash outs throughout my career, but didn't recognize that what it was. And so after the final one, that's what prompted me to study what what I uh specialize in now, which is vicarious traumatization and law enforcement. And so, no, absolutely not. I had no idea. Do you do you mind sharing about your crash outs? Oh, absolutely. I'm I'm I'm I had the crash outs to be able to share that. So absolutely. So the little crash outs, I was just like thinking, I'm just angry, or something prompted me to feel the way I was feeling, which is true. But after the final one, I felt like I had a this is the biggest one, which I I call the final one. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. The person that I saw in this incident was not me. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not the me that I'm aware of, right? So what we what what I what I found in my research and also what we do as human beings is we suppress, we suppress, we suppress, we suppress, we suppress, right? But we're still accumulating all of this trauma vicariously, but it's such an invisible vapor that we don't feel it until it's too late. And that's that big crash out that I had. And so at the time I was in graduate school and I was learning about, you know, doing some psychotherapist stuff, and I heard the term vicarious trauma, and it was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And so it became a thing I was very curious about, and it just matched what I was feeling. I was unable to have those deeply connected relationships. I was like, um, well, I'm gonna tell you, I was described by a group of people who I was doing a leadership thing with as disconnected, ice queen. Those things aren't me at my core. So that told me I'm showing up as the role that I'm playing, right? So all of this together allowed me to connect the dots on what this vicarious trauma thing is. It's not just like burnout or compassion fatigue or those things that we often hear in trauma-informed spaces. It's not that, it's absolutely something else. It changes the way you think, it changes the way you see the world, it changes the way you see yourself in the world and the work that you're doing. Is it meaningful work for you anymore? So we it's a little deeper than what we are trained to believe it is. That's what helped me to understand that this work impacts us in such a way that it can destroy you. You can absolutely lose yourself. And so um, fortunately for me, my crash outs were in a safe space. It wasn't in the public view, which a lot of people who have what I call crash outs, and the young people call crash outs now is that public outburst of anger and seemingly uncontrolled. Yeah, and unfortunately, it's on video, and it's on video, and and people don't see it as a person, a law enforcement officer, um experiencing what he has or she has been through. What they see is this officer's out of control, yeah, who has lost himself, and this person has who is being victimized is the result of what this work does to you.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

And you brought up a couple good points there that I want to unpack because in the nature of our work, we have to compartmentalize while we're at work. We have to get through the day, we have to get through the job and go, you know, from one call to the next call throughout the day.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

But like process, right? And so then we get we we have all of this unaddressed, unaddressed trauma. Thank you. This unaddressed trauma that we walk around with, and it doesn't go anywhere, it's still in there.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Did you so you were in graduate school while you were still active, correct?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yes. I actually I'm Dina, I went to school the whole time that I was. I did because I found that first of all, I needed to um go to school to get the next to get my bachelor's in order to take the the civil service test and boom boom boom. That was the process here. And so um I started out just so I could be able to be civil service qualified for their civil service first service exam. And I figured they paid for it, so why not go to the next level? And then at some point I stopped and I felt the stressor of the job way heavier than I needed it, than it could be. So I used one stressor, the stressor of going to school and balance the stressor of the job to keep me balanced. But the um after I finished the master's degree, I was, you know, I was done with school, I thought. And then it came to me that I went on a call, and um, I won't bore you with the the details, but it prompted me to think about what we are trained to do as police officers. We don't have enough information to support the people that could benefit from our services if we had a little bit more information. And so there were, it was a su it was a young woman who had taken her own life, and um I thought to myself, what what if I had would have come here yesterday and had the right words to keep her from doing this? Which ultimately pushed me into I I need to understand human behavior better. So I did the doctoral program to be a better police officer, and I think it worked. I absolutely think it worked.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

That's amazing. Do you find that these skills that you learned, whether it's you know, communication skills in the nature of your job or you know, after going to school and getting it gaining a deeper knowledge, do you think it helped you? I know you said it helped you in your police work, but what about communicating in your personal life and understanding people in your personal life?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Absolutely. And and here's the thing I recognize, Dina, is we are who we are, both professionally and um personally. It's all one, right? We carry ourselves every space we go into, right? It's just a matter of what you allow people to see. But what I train people to do now, well, not train, but I support people in transforming into being the highest, most authentic, most powerful versions of themselves, no matter where they are and what they're up to. Understanding what is your goal, what do you want here while you're here on this earth? Be it law enforcement, be it a mother, be it whatever you want, understand what it is that you're up to. So that's what the basis of what I do now, because of what I've seen on the job and by the people who do the job. You know, we're all human, right? And we're all on the same team. So, I mean, not not, you know what I mean by saying that. We're all human, right? So that's the part where I feel like if we understood each other better, be it be a police, citizen, citizen, police, community, whatever it is, us as humans, we would be in a lot better, a lot better space. Because right now, all of us are experiencing vicarious trauma. It's just, it's not just high responsibility people, workers. That's a great point. It's all of us. Yes. And our nervous systems are way, way overwhelmed because we don't, we're not, we don't, we didn't have all this accumulation of trauma that we currently endure, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

And even like you said, even if you're not in, if you're not a first responder, you're not in law enforcement, just scrolling through your phone, the things that come up in your feed, you know, like we were never meant to absorb a constant influx of information 24 hours a day.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah. Yeah. And so what we what we see now, and I know you've noticed it, the public crash outs at the most the places where you wouldn't expect it, which is everywhere, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

So now when you had your what when you called it your final crash out, after that, what steps did you take to start learning about what led you to that point? Did you seek like professional therapy? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Well, um, we had a process in where I had to go through um um a fit for duty situation, okay, which was over a period of time, right? And so um from there I I started to understand vicarious trauma. Um, I went to a program, and this was on my own. I started to do my own developmental work because um I wanted to feel better, I wanted to be better. And vicarious trauma is not one of those things that you can just say, I want to be better and take some time off and it and it changes you. It's not that. You have to go through a whole process where you change the way you think, change the way you do the world. And so I had to go through that, and that's really what I teach people to do now. Um, you got to go back to yourself, basically. You go back to your yourself. And so I don't know what what was your question?

unknown 16:35

I forgot the question.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

No, that's okay. You answered it. And the question was, how did you what resources and how did you start helping yourself? But I love that that's how you phrased it because it doesn't mean that you're broken. It doesn't mean you know what I mean, you're just you're reconnecting with yourself. I love that. Yeah. So let's talk about Peacock. What led you to found Peacock? How did you come up with the name? What what's your mission? I I checked it out on the website, but for people who haven't seen it yet, let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Well, my mission is to help people to be better people. Point blank, period. Help people to be better people, especially people, regular people who don't necessarily have a diagnosis or anything like that. They're just doing this thing we call life, right? So, um, what I've decided is vicarious trauma is my niche, and it is one of those things that I recognize can cause people to lose themselves, end up in prison, or whatever the case may be, when it initially was their thought to help protect and serve, right? So I developed something to help people to learn the skills that'll keep them safe from this work that we do. I also go into businesses, organizations to help. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, you're fine. My daughter's in the room. Okay, to go into spaces to make sure we have things in place to help people not be in survival mode by themselves. Help the organizations to have uh check-ins with people, certain questions that we ask, certain ways of leading, certain ways of communicating to make sure that people are safe in those spaces. We they do this work for an organization. So why not the organization not have them fend for themselves? Right? So that's what I'm up to at Peacock right now. I also have small group coaching where it's like this on Zoom, where I'm coaching people around whatever it is that they're up to. First responders, I have a couple of groups, but I have them uh specific to whatever, whatever it is they're up to. I have slip slide launch, which is for young adults who who didn't quite get a fair share in life and they want to get on track to developing those foundational skills that'll help them get to the next level. Responding first, which are is for first responders, so we can talk about vicarious trauma. We talk about the things that are heavier on you, and I support people through that. All of these are six-week programs, and I do individual, I mean uh group coaching, not individual coaching. Just teaching new skills, communication, um, self-awareness, things that are gonna help you through your career. But I only put them on certain times of the year. I don't do them all the time.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

So they would have to check the website or watch for me on social media to see when I'm offering those uh course, those six-week um coaching programs.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

And I'll definitely link everything at the end so people can just click the link and connect with you. Okay. Now, back to, and this is just like the peer supporter in me, back to your career. Yeah the buildup of vicarious trauma. Did you have did your department have like some sort of critical incident debriefing program when you were active?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Not when I was there. They do now. Okay, that's good. But here's the issue that I I find with that. It's fine to have it in place, but are officers safe? Do they feel safe enough to reach out to those to those opportunities? Because if they don't, then it's just is it is irrelevant, it won't matter. So we have to make it where they feel comfortable, and that's where we got to have uh leadership understand that leadership has to um make it okay to say that I'm not okay. If leadership is walking around as if they're okay, and uh the subordinates are feeling like they can't say they're not okay, then they'll walk around not okay until something happens that's totally out of their control. Yep. We are only human, right? And not only are we doing the vicarious trauma, we're doing the childhood trauma, we're doing the post-traumatic stress disorder trauma, all of these traumas coupled with how are you communicating with your family and your friends and your whomever, how are you feeling about you in all of this that you do? You get what I'm saying? So it's all interconnected.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

And that's there's something that I wish more departments in general would understand is it doesn't have to be either or. It doesn't have to be the internal resource or the external resource, it should be whatever benefits the member the most. And maybe that's both resources, maybe that's just external resources because that's where they feel more comfortable. It shouldn't be these are the only resources we're gonna give you, so you have to use one of those. And if they don't work, then too bad. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

And that's where we leave people feeling uh alone. Yes, and that's where we lose people. I mean, you got to look at the stats, the data. What's the commonality amongst us? Vicarious triumph. Working with people who suffer vulnerable populations. So I mean we don't have whole a whole lot of options. We're either gonna teach people how to do this work and make a safe space for them to do this work, or we're not.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Absolutely. And I just had a thought and it left me. But oh, so and the reason I was looking at your website and I and I love your mission because just be it's not about I don't it's it's not about going through life avoiding adversity, it's about equipping us with the tools to overcome whatever adversity that we're going to inevitably face at some point to come out stronger on the other side. To build resilience. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yes. And that's really what I'm about. I teach skills that are going to support you in your resiliency wherever that is. You get to choose. You get to choose what it is that you want to do. I have one program that I call leveling the field, where we go back to the foundational things. So, you know, we we often in Western culture, we take on uh what we've been told other people have told us who we are and what we are, what we're up to, right? So I leveling this field, I take you back to the foundational things. You get to choose what you want. You get to choose who you are, you get to choose how you're pretending like something is not what it is. You get to be honest with yourself, right? So I give you foundational things. From there, I can coach you into who you want to be. But until you know that, I can't coach you. I don't know what to coach you on. We're spinning in circles if you don't know who you are and what you want, what you're pretending not to know.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

So, could somebody theoretically start at that level program and then go through your other programs as they progress in self-awareness and maybe their goals change?

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's really why I put it together, because I was, Dina, believe it or not, I was running into people and I'm asking, well, who are you? And they start to tell me what they do because that's what we've been conditioned to believe. But there's way more to you than that, right? What we focus on grows, right? So if you're solely focused on your career, that's what grows. And if you're observing, absorbing all of this trauma vicariously, that's what grows. That's what's going to make bigger in your life. You see what I'm saying? So we have to we have to be aware of all of us, not just that piece that goes to work.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

And just because we're predisposed, you know, depending on your background or your line of work, some people are predisposed to more vicarious trauma than others, but that doesn't mean that we're powerless because there's people like you in this space equipping people and saying, listen, like, you know, he you you there, it is a journey, but here are the tools and here is the process and here is the support system to be able to get through this.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Absolutely. If this, in fact, is what you want to do, right? I chose to be a police officer. Now that I know what this work does to you, I share that information for those who still want to be a police officer. Because we can do this work, and you've proven to yourself you can do hard things. It's just a matter of understanding what it is in you.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Exactly. So, what would you say to somebody who's struggling and they don't know where to start?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Are you referring to maybe a first responder or just in general?

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Um, however, whichever way you want to take it. I was thinking first responder when I asked it, but I know you work with all populations.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

So how would I answer? I would start by answering those four big questions, I call it my four big questions. You can answer the questions on your own. I can support you through the questions is however you want, but I think once you can answer these four big questions, I think you'll be on um on a road to recovery. Because imagine this your nervous system has been um overwhelmed. Most of us, our nervous systems, are overwhelmed. You see so many people calling out certain ways of feeling. A lot of people call it anxiety, but you know what I mean? They feel something different. And so I would first slow down and figure out what who are you? What is it that you really want? Is this what you really want? Because if it's not, you got to figure out what you want. And then you have to be honest with yourself and ask yourself, am I what am I pretending that I don't know when I know I know, but I'm acting like I don't? You know what I mean? And how do you want to show up? How do you want to show up in the world? Right? If you are in first responder work, how do you want to show up? Do you want to show up in a way that's um that is not a way that you want to show up? I want to keep it at, I want to just you get to choose how you want to show up, right? And so, and we don't, we never know when it's gonna be over with for us. So we don't have tomorrow to just say, Oh, you know, I'm gonna show up well tomorrow because we don't know. We don't know. And I want people to be very aware that we get just today, we get this moment right now, right? And not to be stuck on, I'll do it later, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll take care of this tomorrow, I'll check with a doctor tomorrow, or I'll connect with a coach next week. You gotta take your the reins of your life, take the reins and ride it. I mean, be in what consciously conscious of what it is that you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

I love that because you're right. The the longer you spend from me personally, from my personal experience, the longer that you that I spend overthinking, the less likely I'm gonna take any action. I just think myself in circles. And then I wonder why nothing's changed.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, you got. I mean, I feel like we all have to do this internal work, no matter what. No matter what, no matter how scary it is, no matter what. Think about once you get on the other side, how much better you'll feel once you can get rid of the baggage, you know, the things that no longer serve you.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yes. And there are different seasons in life because you may have worked through something in one season, and then now you're in a different season of life and you need support again, and that's okay. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

I mean, it's supposed to that's we we in we evolve, we should constantly evolve, constantly grow into the highest, most authentic versions of ourselves, most powerful versions of ourselves. And that's whatever you say it is, not me. I just walk alongside you when you when you when you decide something.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Well, that's the thing, because we were never meant to do this life alone. And especially when it comes to growing and doing that deep work, you know, that's learning.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

It's a matter of learning. Who are you? You get to decide that. Nobody else can tell you that, right? But unfortunately, the way we were um brought up in on this in this part of the world, we that's all they they stopped us at that, pretty much. People telling you who you are until you decide otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

And it it becomes so ingrained on us from such a young age that so many of us, again, speaking for myself, I spent so many years on autopilot, not realizing that I did get to choose. Yeah. Because I spent my whole life defining myself by what everybody how everybody else saw me. And I was like, I guess this is just who I am, you know?

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah, but you really get to choose. It's easier to go by what people say, of course, because we're always trying to fit in somewhere, connect with somebody. But unfortunately for us as first responders, that gets cut short because we are in survival mode, trying to protect our own selves and to continue to do this work. So it's like you're you're you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So that's why I want to bring awareness to it. I did my doctoral research on um uh factors impacting like uh factors impacting vicarious traumatization and law enforcement. I I I uh surveyed uh Ohio officers, and I found that people don't know what it is. They know the words, but they don't know what it is, they don't know the impact that it has on your life. And that there, ma'am, is the problem because I feel like like if we knew what it was, we could be aware of it, we could do something about it, right? Yes, but my research showed me that people aren't aware of it, they don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Even if I had this information in the police academy, I wouldn't have had the life experience yet on the job to put any of it into practice. You know what I mean? You need to you just need that life experience before any of it makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, you have to be the police to know how to be the police, yes, right? And you have to be the police in order to know how you've shut your shit down, being the police. Yeah, you know, and so that's what I had I try to help people connect the dots, connect the dots, and it you can connect it with anybody, not just law enforcement, right? So, and that's how I got to discover that we are all under the same thing, the same umbrella of absorbing other people's accumulative, I mean, other traumas, other stuff, right? Yeah, so we just have to be aware of it. That's I mean, be aware and then take necessary steps to mitigate, to protect yourself.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Yes, because a lot of times we say, like I'll tell people, it's okay to not be okay, and we're not gonna stay in this space. Now the next conversation is gonna be talking about solutions and coming up with a plan because you're not okay and that's all right, but I'm not gonna let you stay there.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Unless you want to.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, because you know, shit, if you want it out, that's what am I gonna do? How did you come up with the name peacock? Interesting. Uh, you know, what do you what do you think about a peacock? I I mean when you think of a peacock, you just think of them like spreading their feathers and just like being big and full and you know, brightly colored, beautiful beings, they have their own sense of beauty, the poise, the proudness, the peacock, how they carry themselves. Yeah, so that's my idea behind us as individuals. We have our own, our own spray of beauty, and we get to shine, radiate in the world.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

I love that so much. Dr. Felisa, where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

I'm on social media, all of them pretty much, under Peacock Training Consulting Group. You can Google me, Dr. Felisa uh Asbury. Um, I'm everywhere, girl. I'm everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

I will link. LinkedIn is good.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

I said I'll get all your links and I'll link everything in the notes so people can just click and follow.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Yeah, my website is probably the best way to um sign up. Like if you want to uh do a call or something like you know, something like that, it would be my website.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Okay, and again, that's not just for law enforcement, that's for anybody.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Anybody. Um, actually, I um yeah, it would be anybody, specifically spouses of law enforcement, um, because they too don't understand this thing that they are they signed up for. Yeah. Um, I'm support I'm I I thank God every day for my husband being able to hang in there with me. You know, uh we celebrate 30 years this year.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Thank you. He he hung in there with me, and I'm telling you, it's more than a notion to be married to somebody who's in the in the in law enforcement or uh first responder because, like I said, we have to shut some of that stuff down that's necessary to connect, even with our kiddos, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yes, you know, sometimes it's how was your day? And you're like, Oh, I saw something today that I don't even want to remember, let alone think about. Like, I'm I, you know, you want to protect them from that, but then that becomes a communication issue.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah. And that's why I say awareness, just understanding it, being aware of it, and being able to communicate it is um is how we save souls. Is that's how we save each other?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yes, I love that so much. Um, my last question before we wrap up sometimes these topics get heavy, so I always like to end on a high note. What is your favorite karaoke song?

SPEAKER_00 35:20

My favorite most recent karaoke song is um Whitney Houston. I I don't know the name of it, Dina, but I think is The Children Are Our Future.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Yeah, um I think that's great. Maybe what is it?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

I I don't know, but the words say, you know, the children are our future. I'm gonna look it up real quick.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

No problem.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Whitney Houston.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

You are so much braver than I am, I wouldn't even attempt a Whitney Houston song.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Well, you know, it's karaoke, so that's true.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

It's fun.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

It is fun.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Um while you're doing that, I'm just going to make a list of so Peacock training and consulting on all platforms. I'll link to your website. Are you on YouTube too?

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Yeah, I do have one. Um, but I don't really put any videos out there, but they can be on the lookout for it because I'm gonna put some out there. Greatest love of all. That's it. Greatest love of all. There it is. Okay. Yep, greatest love of all by Whitney Houston.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Dr. Felisa, thank you so much for coming on. I'm so glad that you reached out to me on LinkedIn. I really appreciate your time and I truly loved this conversation. Yeah, guys, thank you again for tuning in this week. Please connect with Dr. Felisa Asbury. And in case you haven't heard today, you are loved, you matter, and you are not alone.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dina.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

Thank you. Thank you so much for stepping outside the line with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing with a friend or to your social media network. And if you do, please tag me so I can reach out and thank you. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are personal opinions, not reflective of the host or guest's department. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with your mental health, please seek professional health. Resources are available. In case you haven't heard today, you are loved, you matter, and you are not alone.