The Neighborhood that Shaped Us And Almost Broke Us with Diego Vargas

A conversation on trauma, marriage, and the survival patterns we had to unlearn

What happens when the very traits that have made you the most successful begin to harm the people you love most?

In this deeply personal episode, Melanie sits down with someone who knows her better than anyone, her husband and #1 coach of nearly 30 years, Diego Vargas, top criminal defense attorney.

Diego has spent decades operating in high-stakes environments, and he has litigated 150+ trials to verdict. But behind that success is a childhood shaped by trauma, instability, and survival.

Melanie and Diego unpack:

• how early experiences shape our emotional responses
• the survival mechanisms that both serve and sabotage us
• the impact of trauma on marriage and parenting
• what it really takes to unlearn patterns decades in the making

This conversation is raw, honest, and deeply human. It’s about love, resilience, and the courage to look inward, even when it’s uncomfortable.

If you’ve ever wondered why you react the way you do…
 or whether it’s too late to change…This episode is for you.

𝐀 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬: This conversation includes experiences of childhood trauma, abuse, and suicide. Please take care while listening.

If this conversation resonated, please follow, rate, and share it with someone who is doing their own inner work.

What’s In Your Neighborhood™ is a nonprofit focused on leaders developing their inner landscapes and building community dedicated to normalizing healing, reducing stigma, and expanding how we think about strength, leadership, and what it means to come home to ourselves.

To learn more, get involved, or support the mission, visit www.whatsinyourneighborhood.org.

Until next time, keep tending to your own neighborhood. It matters more than you know.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to What's in Your Neighborhood, Conversations for the Shame Shifter in All of Us. I'm Melanie Vargas. After decades in executive leadership and coaching high performers, I've learned the real work happens in the parts that we hide. Each episode, I sit with leaders, rebels, and real people who've taken off their masks to explore their inner landscape, shaping how we live and lead. If you're ready for more truth, courage, and authenticity, you're in the right place. So let's go there. What's in your neighborhood? Welcome everyone. Today's guest is someone I know in a way that no one else does. Not just as a highly respected attorney, but as a man who has walked through profound adversity. His childhood was marked by trauma that could have defined him, but instead, in many ways, it forged him. And then there's the part of the story that we've lived together. Almost 30 years of partnership, of building a life, navigating challenges, facing moments that tested everything we thought we knew about ourselves, each other, and what it means to keep choosing one another. So today we're stepping into the places that shaped him, the beliefs he had to unlearn, and the resilience that carried him forward. I'm honored and honestly humbled and oddly nervous to welcome not just my guest, but my number one coach and sweet husband, Diego Vargas. So a little bit of a background about Diego and his impressive journey and career. Diego J. Vargas is a criminal defense attorney and he has been repeatedly recognized by judges, prosecutors, peers, and clients. With over three decades of legal experience, Diego focuses his practice exclusively on representing people accused of DUI, vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, and other criminal offenses. Diego's cases have been featured on Dateline NBC, the Today Show, and local news programs. He's been recognized as one of only four criminal defense lawyers on the top 100 Washington Super Lawyers, one of the top 10 criminal defense attorneys in Washington by the National Academy of Criminal Defense Attorneys, repeatedly recognized as a super lawyer winner of the AVO Client Choice Award. Recognized as one of the top 25 criminal trial lawyers in Washington by the National Trial Lawyers Association. He is a frequently requested keynote speaker and instructor on criminal defense and dozens of legal education programs. He has litigated over 150 jury trials, divert verdict, and wins more than 80% of his trials. He is also a commentator regarding high-profile cases for local media. He puts his heart and soul into his work. And here's a recent review from one of his clients. He didn't know I added this in here. Diego helped my family through one of the most horrific times of our lives. After a tragic accident that resulted in a death, a family member was left facing both profound emotional and physical pain, as well as frightening vehicular homicide charge. As someone in the legal field, I spoke with many professionals while evaluating who we should hire. Consistently, I was told the same thing. He is the best. Our family is forever grateful that we followed that advice. Diego fought tirelessly to achieve a fair result, one that spared my brother from even greater hardship and reflected the reality that this was a terrible accident, not just a malicious act. His advocacy made an enormous difference and what could have been a much worse outcome. Beyond his skill, Diego was incredibly kind, compassionate, and communicative. He made sure we understood every step of the process and never left us feeling alone during an overwhelming time. Welcome, Diego.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

No, thank you, Millie.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

I was curious how it felt while I was reading all of that about you.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

It's been a long, long road to get to this point. You know, as you know, I come from a background of poverty and extreme physical and emotional abuse.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Wow, you're just diving right into it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

And so it's it's a it's a long journey, you know. Long, it was a long, long time getting here.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah. As I was going through the list of all of your many accolades, it was it challenging to sit there and listen to me list all those off.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, I really don't like talking about that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

So I know that's true. I could almost feel your discomfort as I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Yeah, it made me feel sweaty. I feel like yeah, yeah, I don't like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

I am very excited to dive into my sweet husband's emotional neighborhood. I know it's been quite the journey, not just from his own childhood, but also within our lives. So when you think about your emotional neighborhood metaphorically, what comes to mind for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Uh, you know, um, it's kind of interesting because when you first came up with the idea for your book and you were talking about this journey that you were taking going back and the analogy that you use for a neighborhood, I pictured my emotional neighborhood as a like a ghetto, really growing up in just a really unsafe place where you could never really fully relax. You could never really stop worrying about what's going to happen next or who you're gonna run into or what's gonna happen when someone comes home or or that sort of thing. So it's uh I don't know, it might be disparaging in some way, but that's the way I pictured my own little emotional neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yeah, that um image of darkness is what comes to mind for me when you're describing how that feels as you're walking down the streets of your own emotional neighborhood. Tell us a little bit about your story.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Jeez, like where to begin. You know, my my parents immigrated from uh Costa Rica, Central America. I was born in San Francisco when I was two weeks old. My parents moved to Houston because my dad uh got a job there, or he transferred jobs there. And uh grew up in Houston. And my parents got divorced when I was four. It was interesting because you know I did wasn't old enough to understand it, but my mother started seeing her OBGYN, who was gave delivered my younger brother, and then they were married shortly after that, after my parents were divorced, a very weird thing. And then his name was Ernesto Arseniegas, and he was with us for several years, a couple of years, and then uh he killed himself. And I was about maybe six years old, five years old, when we had come back from a park, and my younger brother and I walked into the room and we found his body. My younger brother was too young to realize what was going on, and I didn't fully understand it. I just saw this person on the couch and you know, blood, and I didn't know what it was at the time, but it was brain matter on the walls because he'd shot himself in the head. And then my mom walked into the room, and uh what I really remember from that incident was just this overwhelming scary scream and this frightening like response to that situation, which you know I I didn't understand as a kid, but was very scary to me. And, you know, it's kind of weird because now, fast forward, you know, so many years later, I realize that the way I react in certain situations, especially when someone's very emotional like that, um, I kind of shut down and pulled the plug. And it's really because of that experience as a child, because I'm very uncomfortable when people get very emotional like that. And then, you know, just growing up after that, with my mother always working two jobs, so she's never home. My sister, who was about 11 at the time, really kind of raised me and my two other brothers. And we just grew up in in poverty. It was, you know, there was never any type of real comfort. You know, my mom was always gone or working when she was home. She was always very angry and upset and very physically abusive. And so there was never like a feeling of safety or a feeling like, you know, home was a a place where you could be safe or you would be feeling at home, as they say. You know, that wasn't a good feeling for me. So through my entire upbringing. Yeah, I mean, there were so many traumatic situations along along the line, you know, like for example, when I was about five, six years old, I found the Christmas gifts that my mom had wrapped, and I had unwrapped them. And my mom reacted by getting very angry and attacking me with a a bicycle pump and fractured my skull and knocked me out, and you know, just waking up getting stitches and and being in the hospital, like having forgotten, you know, where why where I was or why I was even there and that sort of thing. So, you know, it's just that's the kind of home I grew up in. So it was never, you know, a feeling of safety. And that's why the analogy for me is like a ghetto because home, my neighborhood didn't feel safe. There was danger inside the house and outside the house. You never felt safe. You were always on your guard. You couldn't trust the people that you're supposed to trust because your parents weren't, you know, the type of people you could rely on and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

So when you think about some of those experiences from your childhood, which it doesn't seem to matter how many times I hear that story, it's my heart just aches for you just because I love you so much and um and I know the story about how a lot of this has formed you. But maybe for our listeners, when you think about those survival mechanisms from your childhood, how do you feel like it's formed you and made you who you are today?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Oh, you know, it's interesting. You know, we we've kind of talked about this before, and I've talked a lot about it in therapy. And at the one hand, you know, the things that I went through, my brothers and and sister went through as children was just horrible, right? But then again, a lot of the things that happened to me when I was young let me develop coping mechanisms that really helped me thrive in other aspects of my life, you know. Like one is I don't trust people. I don't believe people. And so uh that makes me a good criminal defense attorney because I don't believe any witness, right? I don't take them for what they say. I look at the evidence, I find more evidence, I dig deeper because I don't trust people. So that's that's a good skill I had. My mother was very physical, physically abusive because if you didn't do the thing she told you to do, then you got a severe beating. And so when I had things to do, they got done. Well, that made me carried over into the rest of my life where, you know, when I have work to do, I get it done because there's that always that that fear of not doing what you're supposed to do. That even though I know my mom's not standing behind me with a belt getting ready to beat me if I don't do my work, subconsciously there's that fear of not getting your work done, period. Um, she's what else? Doing the things you're supposed to do, when you're supposed to do them, developing those type of coping mechanisms to deal with the with you know the situation I was living in, uh, not trusting people, so verifying facts, digging in, you know, looking for yourself, those types of things. You know, all these things that you develop coping with standing up for yourself, learning how to fight back, you know, which I eventually did with my mom. You know, when I was about 13 years old, my mother was beating my sister with a coat hanger, and I finally grabbed her and took it, grabbed her arm that she was swinging down at my sister and told her if she ever hit me or my sister again, I would, I would kill her. And, you know, at that time, that 13-year-old boy meant it. And I I meant it. What I felt at that time was I would. And that was the first time I ever really stood up to my mother and really stood up to um, and you know, and it was kind of a bad situation in a way that after that point I learned by standing up because she never hit me again or my sister again. But I learned that if you fight back, you know, you punch a bully back in the nose, so to speak, then you know they're gonna leave you alone and they're gonna back down. But then every threat became a bully, and every fight became a, you know, I'm gonna go after you just as hard or harder than you're going after me, so to speak. And and which really was destructive in personal relationships, right? I mean, you know, we've had arguments before, and I can be really nasty when I argue. And it's because I learned that, you know, that's how you you stop people, you you fight back and you fight back harder.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

You know, I think any prosecutor out there that's listening to this would agree that they don't really get excited when they see Diego Vargas work at walk into the courtroom.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Well, no, I get along with a lot of prosecutors really well. So, but I I did one of the last trials I just did in Skaggett County, the prosecutor didn't no, no, was it Skaggett County, the prosecutor told me that she hopes she never sees me again. So I mean, so it can, you know, that can be the case. But for the most part, you know, the litigation's not like it is on TV where people are fighting with each other, you're being very congenial. But there have been situations where prosecutors and I have gotten you know, gone to toe-to-toe and that kind of thing. But that's I try to avoid that if possible, because I think you lose persuasiveness in a tribunal if you're acting that way, right? If you're combative.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

So we kind of like have jumped forward to your adult relationships. And some of these things that you were describing about my label was survival mechanisms that really formed you and kind of harmed you in a way. They also served you and made you very successful.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

And absolutely. They were, they were, if I didn't go, you know, like I told my therapist, I don't wish my childhood on anyone. I don't think it was fair, I don't think it was a good experience. But then again, all that trauma, all that abuse is what made me who I am today. And I like who I am today, you know, and and and I like the skills I developed as a result of that trauma, right? And then the problem was that some of those skills carrying over into my personal life didn't help with my relationship with you or the kids or or some of these other some of these other things, right? Learning, learning to recognize um when that kind of response, that kind of behavior is is being unhelpful in a situation or even detrimental to a situation, that was a hard, hard thing to learn. I'm 58 now, and I didn't really learn this until about five years ago. You know, so I don't know what to say about that. It took a long time, but you know, it's never too late to learn these things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

So in looking back over the course of our lives, how do you feel like some of this served you in our family? And how do you feel like it was harmful?

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Well, I think it it can be harmful and service at the same time. And I'll give you an example. Um, our daughter Emily, she crashed the car once. And when we arrived on the scene, she was very emotionally distraught. Um, and you know me, when I get into a situation where someone's very emotional, my emotions kind of shut down and I just go right to facts and logic, right? So, how did that happen happen? You know, calling to get the tow truck, doing this, doing that, you know, arranging what needs to be done to solve this problem while you were there giving the emotional support. So that was a very useful, very useful skill I developed as a result of my upbringing to like handle high stress situations and get things done. But at the same time, so that was very helpful in that regard, but it was very destructive because I look indifferent or like I'm not there for my daughter emotionally, right? And I think, you know, both of y'all made that clear to me afterwards that that's the way it was felt. And I was showing that I cared by taking care of the things that needed to be taken care of, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, for sure. I mean we probably have a hundred different examples of where our trauma responses are polar opposite. So yours is facts and logic, and mine is emotions and feelings. And how as a couple and in our family, it's served us in those roles, but it's also harmed us because there's um those opportunities that come up where we're almost two on our different corners. So I'm way on the fact the feelings and emotions, and you're way on the other side of getting right to facts and logic. And how what we've learned is like we have to come a little bit closer to the middle.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah, no, they and you can certainly tell by the way the kids react to us, like, you know, in the sense that when the kids want emotional support or they need some understanding, who do they go to? They go to you.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

But when they need somebody to like just get something done, right, they usually come to me, right? Because that's the roles that we've mod that's what we've modeled for them in our response to these situations, right? So um so it makes sense. But it's not like you know, a skill I wanted to have, it's just something that developed in how I respond to situations. I can't deal my brain couldn't deal with the emotional stuff before.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

At what point in your life as in our family did you have the moment of clarity where this was happening? What was your reckoning?

SPEAKER_01 18:26

You know, I kind of think I always knew that I that it was happening. I kind of, you know, personally I felt like it was a great strength, you know, that I didn't have this emotional side where I could just shut down the emotions. And, you know, I think you've c uh called it unplugging before, that emotionally I can just unplug and then just operate. You know, it's really helpful in my job when I'm dealing with cases where there's dead bodies or there's seriously injured people, or, you know, and you're having to look at videos of accidents or photographs and stuff, right? So I can just unplug, which is like, to me, that's like, wow, this is a great skill. This is like something that really helps me professionally. And it and it's like, wow, I'm like Superman, so to speak, in this thing, right? But the other side of that, it's it can be very damaging and make people you're close to feel that you don't care because you don't share that emotional response that they have, or you look unempathetic, or you look like you don't care when the exact opposite is true. I I care very much. But it just comes out in a different way that I care like that. And so I think I kind of always knew it was there, but I didn't really realize that it was a result of a trauma response until I got into EMDR therapy and trauma therapy, right? I didn't realize that, oh, this is a coping mechanism I developed as a result of this trauma I suffered as a child. And primarily that one where I unplug emotionally, I think comes from my stepfather's suicide, finding that body, and then my mom's over, I mean, I think appropriate emotional response. But in my mind, as a young boy, a very frightening, terrible emotional response, like really scared. That scared me more than the fact that my stepdad was dead with his brain blown out of the wall. You know, it was it was more terrifying her reaction than it was seeing the body. So and I think that's where I really kind of just when things are so emotional that I can't go there. And so I just unplug.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah, I know we've talked about this too, that um the I call it the unplugging, that I always envied it because my tendency is to feel, you know, I'm highly sensitive, is to feel everything in that moment. And so when something really tragic is happening, I go straight. My fight or flight response is to, you know, to feel everything. And there was times in our marriage where I was on the receiving end of this with this experience, with the unplugging experience, and I was baffled by it. Um, and so I too thought that there wasn't feelings there, but there's actually a tremendous amount of feelings underneath that because I've I've been gifted with experiencing your heart and your feelings. Um and so to hear that, hear that story, I think right now is like I I heard you tell it a little differently than I've ever heard you tell it before.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

And it's crazy just to realize that how that profound experience can have an impact on how you deal with things, like not just in the moment, but like for the rest of your life. And you don't even realize that it had that impact on you until you sit down with somebody who actually analyzes these things and looks at them and you know takes you back and and you kind of work through these issues that you have. Um it's I I mean, there's so many of them, you know, there's so many different little things, it's traumatic experience that happened in my life that had uh profound impact on me. And, you know, frankly. For the most part, I'm happy I had those experiences because it made me who I am and gave me the skill set I needed to do a lot of the things that I did. You know, I'm the only person in my family to go to college. That's because I just didn't want to be poor and I didn't want to have this life. And I knew that, you know, standing up to my mom, I knew I could just fight for what I want. If I wanted, I can just do it. Right. And so, you know, you can just do the things that you want to do and accomplish the things you want, but you have to realize that you can. And I've learned that because, you know, as a child, you had to fight for everything you wanted.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

I mean, so yeah, and I think too, it'd be helpful for for our listeners. Like, we both grew up in these very traumatic childhood experiences, which formed who we are. We both have been highly successful in our careers. We're both stand up for what we believe in. We're assertive, we're strong. Um, and so it's formed who we are and made us these amazing, successful individuals. And we've had to unlearn a lot of that in recent years because it harmed our kids and our family and our marriage. And so the learning for us, both in our individual therapy and then in our marriage therapy, has been almost in a sense of kind of unpacking how to unlearn some of those survival skills that really made us so incredibly successful and how hard it is to do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Well, and I was kind of worried about unlearning some of those survival skills, right? Because some of those survival skills are very useful in my job. And so I didn't want to, you know, I was kind of worried about, well, am I gonna be not as aggressive on cross-examination because, you know, I'm fixing this stuff? Is it gonna change me? And, you know, luckily so far, no, it hasn't been to that extent, right? So it's uh so I'm I'm I'm pleased about that. But that was a that was a real concern I had. That was a fear I had, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

It's it's softened you, I would say. And like even seeing that more, it it's almost like we have come to the middle a little bit. Like even watching certain movies, I'll see you tearing up and getting more emotional, where I I never would have seen that in the first, you know, 15, 18 years of our marriage. And also I was thinking for our listeners, our our journey, our parenthood journey has been challenging because, you know, back in the day, there wasn't trauma therapy. I mean, 30 years ago, we didn't, when I was finding recovery, there wasn't trauma therapy. And so we didn't know that we were having trauma responses when we were dealing with these very traumatic situations in our household with our kids and some other mental health situations that we've dealt with in the last 10 years have been very tragic and very challenging. And no parent should have to go through what we've been through together. And we were almost dealing from a lot of those situations. Our trauma response was to go back to the age that we were in those first traumas. So we were almost like little kids trying to deal with these very tragic, trauma, traumatic situations with our kids. Do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Oh, yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, we were, we were, we were um, well, for myself, I was never modeled how to be a parent. In fact, I was terrified of being a parent. You know, uh I didn't know how. I never saw how you parented. My dad was never there for us. My dad was, you know, he was supposed to have us every other weekend. We were lucky if we saw him a couple weekends um in a year, you know. So, you know, he wasn't really a model for us. My mother was always working two jobs. She was never around, and when she was around, she was angry. She was either very, very loving or very, very angry. Um, there was never any in between. And so there was no modeling of what you do and how you have a parent, you know, at a friend in high school whose parents were like, it was like leave it to beaver. Like they'd been married for years and years and years. They had three kids, all the kids were healthy. They were, you know, they're very sweet people. To me, when I first went over there and I first met him and, you know, started hanging out with him and his family, it was very strange. It was like leave it to beaver. You know, I was like, I didn't realize that families like that truly existed until that experience. For me, that was like such a foreign concept, such a, you know, oh, that's what they have on TV, but that's not real. But there are some like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yep. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

And yeah, but but we never had anything modeled for us how to do it. It's like learn as you do. And and parenting is one thing that you kind of don't want to learn as you do. That's our experience, I think, taught us.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Too bad they don't send you home with a little like a parenting manual from the hospital. Yeah, all the do's and don'ts. But we could probably write one of those of all the things not to do, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

I can write all the things not to do.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah. Yeah. Um so in thinking about some of the awakening moments that you've had during the parenting journey. Tell me a little about those. Going back to those moments of clarity or the defining moments where you obviously got to a point where you realized you needed to get help. What were the things, you know, that got you to that point? And that's what I mean about the reckoning.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

I think um realizing that things weren't getting better. You know, in fact, they were just getting worse. Realizing that, you know, um my way wasn't working all the way. Like it was great for work, it was great for school, it was great for all these things, you know, to get to knock out things to get things done I needed to get done, but it wasn't great for family stuff. And just to the point where it was having a really detrimental effect on our lives together. You know, we just weren't, we weren't working as a team, we weren't working as a unit. Um it was it was just not good for anyone, you know. For in fact, all of us got therapy and we're all, you know, different, so different than we were five years ago.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

We've had a lot of therapy in this household. And we're still, you know, I would say we're still healing, we're still um learning from it's like a lunion.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

It's like every time you peel up one layer, there's something else underneath there that you totally forgot about, that you totally that you aren't, you know, really awake enough and to to realize I mean, I just made an epiphany this last week with my therapist, you know. So I mean it's like, you know, just something new that you learn all the time and some new insight and some new and sometimes there's things that that you learn that you don't like about yourself, like this week, you know.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

So it's like Can you share an example of one of those epiphanies that you've had? A moment where either in your healing journey or in your therapy journey where you could see, okay, this is like I'm having a trauma response to something happening right now that isn't about right now.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

It's about Well, and it's not even a trauma response sometimes. Sometimes it's like just a belief you have. So for example, I grew up really poor, right? Um, so I don't care about material things. I mean, I don't really care about what kind of car I drive or the kind of clothes I have or anything. Yeah, you know, I'm sorry, but you didn't know that about me, did you? But you know, I just I just don't. And it really kind of, and I was very judgmental of people that cared about that stuff. I'm sure you didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

People.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Anyone who anyone, what whether it's the guy driving down the street in a fancy Mercedes or your wife, or my wife, or whoever, right? I mean, I really was very judgmental about that. Um and what, you know, what I really learned this this week is because, you know, in a sense, I have this almost intellectual arrogance about, you know, why would you buy a Mercedes when actually a Toyota is a better quality vehicle? Like it's if you look at the reviews of the cars, right? So it's it's not really a uh comment on the item itself, but like, oh, those people are stupid because they're valuing, they're paying something more, they're valuing something that's really not as good as something else that's less expensive, right? So there was kind of this, I don't know, this arrogant position I had that I didn't even realize until like this last week in therapy, right? So, and that it's okay for people to like nice things. It's okay for people to want nice things. Just because I don't value that doesn't mean that it doesn't have meaning for other people, type stuff. And that's that was a big epiphany for me. And it was something that I'm not proud of because it really um led me to believe to to see that, not believe, but to see that I was being, in a sense, arrogant about my position on things and oh, how could these people value these other things? It's just stupid, you know, me kind of being demeaning of other people who and you know, and that's just wrong. And I, you know, I I just discovered that in therapy this last really couple of weeks, um, and had a big epiphany about it, you know, just last Friday. So it's kind of amazing, you know, that you're still learning. I'm still learning stuff about myself in this journey. And it's not always, it doesn't always have to be a traumatic response. It doesn't always have to be a response to something that causes you trauma, but it can be something that you learned as a child and then like a feeling you have carrying forward for that. It's gonna be interesting to explore that some more.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

You touched on earlier in your story about how we have not modeled the things that we ship for our kids. And when you think to where we are today, what do you feel like we model well for our kids now?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Um, right now I think we model being a team more than we ever have. So I think that's good. Um, right now we model, I think there's a lot less reactivity in the household, especially on my part. And you're not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Phyllis would love to hear you say that.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

You know, so I think we're modeling that less reactivity form because uh every little thing is a big thing, you know, at least it was for us for a long time. And so modeling that, you know, this overreacting to stuff is not very good.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah, Phyllis is our trauma marriage therapist, and it's reactivity is something that we work on on a regular basis. It's it's like going from zero to a hundred in the matter of seconds, like these big reactions, which are often driven from a place of fire or flight, that you're not even realizing that you're there. And I think for most of our lives, we got up every day. Most people start at like a level five, and we would start at like a level 50. And then the minute one little thing would happen, we would just snap, right? It's like the bear is running towards you, but it's not really a bear. But we're, you know, we start.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah, I mean, well, that's what happens when you grow up in a situation where there's real possibility of violence or, you know, some real bad detrimental thing happening to you, right? That that, you know, every every perceived threat now becomes life or death. And so you start reacting. You know, the same thing that members of the military do. They go off into battle and you know, they come home and every sound they hear is potential, you know, PTSD and that kind of stuff that they have. And, you know, it's it's it's it's just you you get that baked into you when you're in that constant situation. You are in a constant state of alertness and a constant state of fight or flight. Um, you have to be or you don't survive.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah. Yeah. Um powerful takeaways from the journey. And and your environment can, you know, when these things happen in your adult life will happen very suddenly. And then it just takes you right back to those feelings that you had when you were a little kid. And we're not always aware of it, you know. It's well, you're not aware of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

I mean, you're not even conscious of why you react in the way you're reacting. You're just reacting because that's the way you're wired to react now, right? There's not even a moment to reflect.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

What are some of the tools that you've worked on in that moment to notice that reactivity?

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Well, to be kind of more aware of what I'm feeling physically, because it almost always manifests itself in like a physical feeling on my shoulders or my chest. Um, and you feel like a tightness in your shoulders or like a weight on your chest, it almost always manifests itself physically first of. So if you can just be a little bit more physically aware of yourself, that's a big help. Um, the other thing is I try to always, if I feel like I'm reacting to something, I try to ask myself before I say anything, is is this a big deal? Right? Is where is this on the no big deal scale, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

We did that with our son when he was little.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Yeah, right. So where is this on the no big deal scale? Where is it? Where can you can you put this down as like something that you really have to even get worried about or even respond to?

SPEAKER_00 34:44

So those are amazing learnings. And it's this idea of pause, right? And if we notice, as coaches, we call it embodiment that when we're feeling something in our body, it's a great cue to notice. Like I'm feeling some tightness in my chest or on my neck or my shoulders. And that can be a cue to like remind us that we have to pause in this moment when this thing is happening, that we're making a 10, but really it's probably a two. And our tendency is to make everything a 10.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

But then yeah, but we we also like we're we're we're always in a rush.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Right. That's the other thing is you're always in a rush, like things gotta be done, they gotta be done fast. Do it now, do it now. I mean, you you you've been the victim of that for me. Like, well, I'll ask you a question and you don't answer immediately. I'm like, you know, then I start doing, as you refer to, the cross-examination. Yes. You know, and so um, you know, and and I don't even know why I'm so like just boom, boom, boom, fast. But it's like you wake up in the morning and you just I'm running at 100 miles an hour, and it seems like everybody else is going like five miles an hour.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Do you agree? If you were to think about the experiences that we've had in our lives, a lot of that is happening in the world as a society, this kind of like phonetic, you know, unregulated response.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Oh, yeah. I I think I think right now it's huge, um, especially on people on social media, constantly wanting to post and comment on things or react to things and doing that things. There's I think that's I think that's one of the big problems we have as a society right now, is that kind of everybody is reacting immediately to stuff and then putting things out there. And it's one of the reasons why I got off social media because it just for me, it was just creating like a constant sense of anxiety, like, oh my God, what is this person saying? Or what is that, you know, this is all I'm I just couldn't, I don't want to even deal with it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Well, yeah, and we're dealing in the most ambiguous environment that we've lived in for our lives, where these skills that we've had almost have served us because we're used to this. We're used to the constant chaos, the constant uncertainty. Um, so again, going back to those survival skills, in many ways, we're more resilient to what's been happening because you and I are both conditioned to deal with this. Um so again, it served us, but also it's been challenging.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Yeah. What does continued healing look like for you moving forward?

SPEAKER_01 37:29

That's an interesting question. Keep doing therapy, just keep keep, you know, keep working on it. Um, there's what I've learned through this process, there's always something new that's coming up. There's always something more I'm learning about myself. Um and there's always something more to explore. Right? You know, why do I do certain things or why do certain things make me feel a certain way? And, you know, what's the cause of my response? And, you know, why do I care? It's always interesting to have these types of questions and to talk to a therapist about. Some of them lead to epiphanies and some of them lead to nothing. But you know, it's that constant curiosity about yourself and how you're reacting to things. I think it's always it's not gonna hurt me to keep exploring that.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

When you think about this transformational experience that you've had, and you know, I've been on it with you and and the kids and I, we've all discussed it, like who you are today compared to who you were before, this really impactful experience that you've had between therapy and EMDR and marriage counseling and et cetera, et cetera. Do you see it in yourself, the change?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Yeah, I do. And I I not only do I say it, but I feel it. That's the real thing. I I feel it. And that's the kind of thing that I get kind of worried about sometimes because always being on edge made me get stuff done, right? And now being a little bit like I never really felt like I could relax before. And now I feel like there's times that I can relax. And it makes me worried because am I gonna get all my stuff done? Type thing, right? So I don't want to lose my edge, but I want to lose my edge if you if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

I know exactly what you mean. I mean, when I went through my journey, as you know, I I was a runner for 10 years. I ran marathons. I would, you know, and I every morning I was up early in the morning doing a long run, and it was a lot of it was driven from this fight or flighty feeling that I always had to feel like I was doing something. Um, and sitting in the moment of discomfort was almost impossible, even though I know through my own recovery that you have to sit in the discomfort. And so what I noticed post transition is this feeling of being so settled that it's almost like, am I feeling demotivated? No, actually, I'm able to be still now, and I wasn't able to be still before. I remember asking you that question one time if you had ever once just sat still, like on a park bench. Yeah. Um, and we did that not too long ago. We walked down to Beaver Lake, which is a lake by our home, and we went and just sat on a bench. And what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 40:26

It was kind of nice, it was relaxing. Or we're focusing on the ducks there on the lake. It was kind of it was nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

And in these moments where we can just be quiet and still, it's there's a lot of joy in there, right? We can just enjoy each other's company in the quiet space. If you were gonna think about where you came from in that metaphor that you described earlier being so dark in today's neighborhood, what would be a good metaphor for you in your life right now, today?

SPEAKER_01 41:00

My life right now, today. Well, certainly not the ghetto anymore. That's not my metaphor. Um much nicer neighborhood where I don't feel afraid to be in. Um it's kind of like our neighborhood we live in. You know, I feel very safe and secure here and and that sort of thing. So um not dark outside, sunny, um you know, and much more loving.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Yeah, I can relate to that because I I think our home maybe didn't always feel that way. And today healing for me is coming home to a safe home and a safe marriage and a happy household where we know we can lean in and trust each other and be there for each other in ways that we weren't always there for each other. Yeah. Um what advice do you have for people out there that may be in situations like we were in in our marriage when it was hard and we weren't sure we were gonna stay together? And kids are tough, you know. They have mom, you know, not some people's kids are easy. Our kids were not.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

We're still we're still having some issues. We're still in it. Yeah, we still have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Um what would you say to our listeners out there that maybe might yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

It's never too late.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

It's never too late to start getting help. And and it's it's funny because I was one of those people that really kind of was derogatory towards therapy and that kind of stuff, like that it was all BS, you know, that kind of thing. And you know, it's not. It really isn't if you really lean into it and actually do the work. Um, it can be very helpful and very therapeutic. It could help you get out of a bad situation you're in. Maybe you're in a situation that you shouldn't be in. You know, it could give you the the tools you need in order to extricate yourself from that situation. At the same time, maybe you're in a situation that you want to be in, but you're making it difficult because you're not, you know, because the way you're reacting to things, the way you're doing things, um, it can help you change those, those behaviors. So I'm I'm all for it now. You know, and and especially the right kind of therapy.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Yeah. And I think like you threw yourself into this wholeheartedly. I mean, we've all in the family talked about that. That once you recognize this was a thing, you put your heart into it. You threw yourself into this journey. And healing is when you are when you identify this thing and you're willing to really do the work to get through it. And um, that is something that I just admire about you is that you've been willing to go through this and put the kind of work in it that you put into it.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Well, you and the kids are worth it.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah. And, you know, I think likewise, I think my commitment to my own journey of healing, I think I will have to continue on that because they don't just go away. Yeah. Right. Um, it's why I wanted to bring you on the show because I think you are a beautiful. Example of somebody that has been committed to exploring your own internal landscape. And it's not easy. It's not an easy thing. No, it's not easy.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

It's it's really hard. And it's really um and it's eye-opening. And sometimes it's eye-opening in a good way, and sometimes eye-opening you learn something about yourself that you may not like way. You know, but it's good. Either way, it's good because you can't change something if you're not aware of it. And if you're not aware of how it's happening or why it's happening, you can't do anything to make it different.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

Yeah. What's next for you?

SPEAKER_01 44:33

God, what's next for me? Um, I'm I'm staying on the same path. I mean, I love my therapist. She's been great for me. She's been very helpful. So just continuing the work. Keep doing the work.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

What do you look forward to the most in your life as you think about the future?

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Oh man, uh, seeing my kids grow and become what they what they can become.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

You know, so and hopefully grandkids. So Colton and Dev, get right on that.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Yeah. So I'm I, you know, I want to be like it like to be an empty nester for a little while before we have grandkids. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Well, we just took in the 85-year-old mom, so that's not happened anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yeah, well, that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

But we love her. We're happy she's here. Yeah. Um, well, I just love you so much, and I'm so grateful for you and my life and the and the commitment to your journey and therapy and your commitment to our marriage, because I think marriage is hard. And being married for, you know, decades, a lot of people give up. I mean, I think the divorce rate is something like 60% now or even higher. I think pandemic really drove that up for people. Um, what advice would you have for people in long-term marriage that may be thinking, I want to, this is too much work?

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Well, I mean, it's it is a lot of work. And so, you know, the question is, do you do you value the relationship enough to put in the work? You know, if you don't, um, then that says a lot about your relationship, right? But if you really value the person that you want to be with, then you put in the work. Um, and it's worth it.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah, I agree. And would you have imagined five or six years ago, even that we'd be where we are now?

unknown 46:21

No.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Yeah. No. Yeah. It's easy to want to avoid the pain, right? Yeah. And putting in the work, it's a huge reward on the other side. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, quitting's easy, right? If qu if if if success was easy, everyone would be successful, right? And whatever they're doing, you know, relationships, work, whatever. Quitting is really easy. Um, it's always easier to walk away and to not put in the work, right? But if you put in the work, you can see a situation totally change.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

So yeah. What are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_01 46:59

What am I most proud of? God, well, there's lots of things I'm proud of. What am I most proud of? Oh, that's a hard question.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

It can be more than one thing.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm proud that, you know, of our children. Um, you know, I'm proud of our marriage, that we're together. You know, if you would have asked either one of us six years ago if we're gonna be together now, probably both would have said no. Um, I'm proud of um the fact that despite my upbringing and despite you know my circumstances, I was able to to go to school and and become a lawyer like I wanted to be. Um I'm proud of all those things, you know. So, I mean, there's so many things I'm proud of.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Yeah. I'm very proud of us that we're where we are today. And I'm incredibly proud of our kids and the journey that they've been through with us and who they are as individuals, and that we raised good people that have amazing hearts. And in spite of our, you know, our we had some stuff, in spite of all of that, we have a loving home that we've created for our kids and with a tremendous amount of trust. And I'm very, very proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Is there anything else that you feel like you want to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Um, you know, the the the one of the best things about doing therapy for me, and also like reading your book and and then like, you know, experiencing people on your podcasts is that, you know, you walk down the street and you see somebody in a fancy suit or something going off to their fancy job, and you think, oh, that person probably had it easy, and you don't know what that person's life was really like, right? I mean, that person could have had a worse childhood than mine, or the same kind of childhood as mine, right? And so, and so you know, as you're driving down the street and you see people and they're not doing what you would expect them to do, or you get angry because you're driving behind someone who's going slow. You don't know what that person's going through. I think this journey has made me a lot more aware that people are different and they each have their own story and they each have their own challenges. Um, and people who you think may have grown up in a really you know solid situation with wealthy parents and that kind of, they still could have had horrible traumatic experiences growing up. And so I think the big revelation for me was realizing that, you know, everybody has a story, that everybody has a road that they had to travel. And, you know, some of them are worse than mine and some of them are better than mine, but e everybody had their own challenges and their own road, so to speak. So I think that's what I'd ask people to just be a little bit more gracious to other people, a little bit more kind to other people, uh, because you don't know what their experience has been.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

It's so true. We we make a lot of assumptions about people, and sometimes we measure insides by their outsides. And I agree that we could be using a lot more compassion for each other. And, you know, those assumptions are a total waste of time, right? Yeah. Maybe we could follow our own advice in that area the next time we get behind the wheel.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Yeah. I'll try it.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

But I will say that people in Seattle do not know how to drive. No, they don't know how marge lanes are the roundabouts. That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's a real problem. Well, I just want you to know how much I appreciate this time that we've had today. Um, I know that our listeners are going to get a lot out of this time that we share, this special sacred space that we had today on my podcast. It means the world to me that you were willing to come on here and be as vulnerable as you were today to share the depth of your childhood stuff and our lives together. Is there any insight or message of hope that you'd like to share with our listeners that you haven't already shared?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Um, you know, just no matter what you've been through, there are people who've been through similar situations. You're not alone. Um, and you should always reach out for help.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Yeah. You know, that is such an important message because we frequently think that we're unique with our own damaging past, and we're not. I mean, I think that is an incredible message to leave everybody with that we're not fighting these battles alone. And I certainly love that you're in my neighborhood and that you share it with me. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

I love you too.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

And I love you. We can have a little kiss at the end. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Diego.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

Welcome, Senior.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Thank you for joining us today. As you head back in your day, we invite you to notice what's happening in your own neighborhood, at work, at home, or inside yourself. Change often starts close to home. And sometimes the smallest shift in awareness can create the biggest ripple. If something in today's conversation stayed with you, we'd love for you to carry it forward and share it with someone else who might need it too. And if you're finding value in these conversations, it would mean a lot to us if you subscribed and left a review. We're just getting started, and your support really helps us grow the community. Until next time, take care of yourself and each other.