BILD What Matters

#6 - Lindsey Kaupp | The Hidden Cost of Always Proving Yourself

Victoria Cluney Season 1 Episode 6

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0:00 | 1:14:13

She spent years helping people heal while silently believing her own pain was normal.

In this conversation, Lindsay Kelp opens up about the hidden connection between pelvic health, nervous system regulation, motherhood, identity, and high performance. What starts as a conversation about pelvic floor therapy quickly becomes something much deeper. A raw look at how many ambitious people normalize suffering while constantly trying to prove themselves.

Lindsay shares what it was like living with pain for over a decade without realizing it was treatable, opening her clinic three months postpartum, and navigating the emotional weight of being both a caregiver and a high achiever. Together, we unpack why “common” does not mean “normal,” how nervous system patterns shape burnout and behavior, and why so many people lose themselves while chasing success.

This episode is honest, uncomfortable, grounding, and deeply human. If you’ve ever felt exhausted from carrying pressure nobody else could see, this conversation will stay with you.

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Welcome to Build What Matters. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. We've already spent what feels like a full day together, but it's been glorious. You've flown in from Alberta and uh you are checking off the bucket list. Absolutely. You flew in Sunday night and drove straight to the canal. Immediately. Immediately, which I joined you with my son and uh another one of our Build Pro members. You've had breakfast with community members. You've uh made friends with locals, fought with locals, made friends with locals. It's all didn't get arrested. We're good. Yes. And uh tonight you're speaking for WeBuild, which is very, very exciting and it's different, it's unique. And so we're gonna kind of dive into obviously who you are, the path that has gotten you here, but then also the topic of you know what you do for a living, because I think there's a lot of curiosity behind it, there's a lot of unknown, uh, maybe some challenges even in people really understanding. But from what I have learned speaking with you, it's so relevant in so many people's lives and needs to be talked about more. I'm gonna try to give you a proper introduction because it is more unique, but you're an occupational therapist and you're specializing in whole person pelvic health and performance. Correct. Did I get that right? That was awesome. I read well. You just need to introduce me everywhere. I know. It um, but you also are the founder of Emotion Therapy. Yes. Uh recently craft performance. This is recently formalized, yeah. Okay, formalized. Congratulations on that. Thank you. Let's start out by just like explaining in your words what even is a pelvic health therapist. That's a great what is that? Right? What is this that you do? Oh man. So I guess in the simplest way that we can talk about it is that pelvic health has been something that really has gained traction in the last five to ten years. So I've been working in this field since about 2017. Okay. And I think what brings us to pelvic health therapist is just the same as a knee or a shoulder or your jaw. When something isn't working optimally, there's symptoms and consequences of that. Right. So for most people in pelvic health, that would look like either urine or fecal incontinence. So leaking, prolapse, which is where our organs shift downwards. We don't have great pressure management in our core. Uh, pain is a huge one, especially in high performers, right? And men and women. And then we're really looking at kind of those daily functions. Going to the bathroom, sex is a huge one. And then we think about the fact that the pelvis is right in the middle of the body. So if you've done any type of like mindfulness or meditation or progressive muscle relaxation, they work usually from the top or the bottom and then move through the body. And when you get to the hips and the pelvis, it might talk about the hips and then it's gonna just jump. It's like there's this big black box over your pelvis, and then we keep going. But this is literally the structure that connects the top and the bottom of your body and also facilitates all the nervous pathways through the body. So as a pelvic health therapist, we're optimizing the pelvic floor, which is only one piece. So pelvic health consists of the pelvic floor, the core, okay, and your diaphragm. Okay. So kind of that main core, whole person pelvic health goes a little bit further. Originally, you know, we we treated this as a musculoskeletal issue. Okay. And it absolutely can be. Right. Usually a piece of it. But what we didn't often consider and where I feel, because you can have both occupational therapists in pelvic health and physiotherapists in pelvic health in Canada. And while our physiocolleagues are exceptional at what they do, it was never the intent or their their wheelhouse to look outside of the physical components of that. Okay. So occupational therapy takes that one step further into cognitive nervous system and really into function. Why do you think that we skip the the black box, the the middle section? Why do you think that that is an area that um is neglected? It's a taboo. We've been taught very with intention for kids to be very mindful and safe in that area. Absolutely. I think that's important. However, also, people don't talk about money, they don't talk about sex, right? Yep. I talk about all the fun things, right? So mental health used to be the big stigma. I'm so glad we're having that conversation. I work as well in mental health, so that's a huge piece of your pelvic health. But now we just dove a little deeper into something that's more personal. Absolutely. We shut the door and we go to the bathroom because that's not an area we talk about. Yeah. So you think a lot of people are living in silence because it's something that um can be very embarrassing for people by society and cultural norms. Absolutely. And they don't necessarily know different. Yeah. I didn't. Yep. Right. So, like, who knew that leaking, for example, very common, but it's common but not normal. Yeah. I was told that's normal, right? Uh, a big piece of my own personal story is pain with intercourse. Okay. I didn't know that for over a decade. So I would have pain with intercourse right from the very first time over a decade to the point of tearing. So, like, we actually have structural change. However, nobody told me that was not normal. Are you talking to your girlfriends about this, or are you just keeping it to yourself and thinking that that's how everybody feels? I think it just never occurred to me to bring it up. Right. So some people might talk to their girlfriends, and I remember um a former hockey teammate saying something, and I looked at her like, what do you mean you have sex twice in a day? That's a thing, right? That was a light bulb moment. It wasn't there, yeah. But it's a light bulb moment. So when you aren't raised discussing that, yeah, or you are talking to your girlfriends about it, do they have any more knowledge than you do? Okay. Or for men, it's probably even less talked about. You're not gonna tell somebody if you have sexual dysfunction or you're leaking. Definitely not. That's not the the locker room talk there. It is now. That's awesome. Yeah, so many questions. So many. If you leak, that's okay. It might not be normal function or optimal function, but we don't want to add shame to that, right? So, yeah, people sometimes have knee pain and they still do an exercise. So, do we want them to have the resources to optimize that? Yes. But if they're okay with it, we can be okay with it too. And then at the same time, but hey, did you know? Like, you actually don't have to do that. So I was an elite hockey player, I didn't know it wasn't normal to leak. I started leaking at 14. Okay. So I did a lot of Olympic lifting as cross-training. Yeah, and I was quite strong. And so I'm working out with my boyfriend's buddies on the football team. And we're lifting big. Yeah. And I leak and I like nobody really blinked an eye. It became a joke. Wow. Right? So interesting. And I can't, I have to be like fully transparent. I'm not used to talking about this stuff. And so the fact that it's on camera and it's going out there. Okay. And but also knowing the importance of it. And so I get it in that. And so it's, I think, really important that we have this conversation because you don't blink an eye. Like, you know, we've known each other now for six months, five, six months, and I've seen your content and talked to you enough that yeah, you will drop the, I mean, you said prolapse within the first like minute of this show. But that is your norm and it it is that normalization. Um how do how does somebody even get into the field that you work in? Well, you sure don't wake up dreaming to be a pelvic floor therapist, right? Yeah. I honestly I it's a line I use a lot with clients is nobody wakes up dreaming to be a pelvic health therapist. Yeah. Right? That's just not what you're excited to do. Right? Prove us wrong. Prove us wrong, right? How did I come to this? Yeah. So I was working as an occupational therapist, which traditionally occupy occupational therapy is very broad already. So I had worked in rural hospitals, I was working in a mental health role at a psychiatric facility, and I was pregnant. So great. I'm pregnant with my first child. And this leaking that I've always had with sport. So that's called stress incontinence when we leak with laughing, coughing, sneezing, running, jumping. Okay. Those kind of things. Now suddenly I was leaking like if I just kind of coughed a little bit or sneezed a little bit. Okay. And I had urgency. So like I had to go pee and I had to go pee like right now. So what did I do? I do what everybody does. I hopped on Google, right? And I'm like, well, what pops up? Pelvic floor therapy. Okay. Only done by physiotherapists. I could not find anything else. And so I was like, that's fine. So I went to a pelvic floor therapist. It was not an ideal experience. I felt pretty clinical. I felt like my questions weren't answered. It was very recipe-based. And that is not to say all pelvic floor therapists, physios and OTs are like that. That was just my experience. And I was like, they I feel like I could have done a better job. Okay. And then I went, why can't I? And so I started asking questions. And this is how between myself and another therapist in Ontario, we became, we don't know who's first, one and two in Canada, uh, in October of 2017. We both opened our businesses within the first week or the same week. Okay, as the first occupational therapist. So if somebody's Googling, physiotherapists are going to come up in Canada. Okay. Please go see them. Yeah. Occupational therapists, we are growing. Uh, and those two, PT and OT, have always been kind of like peanut butter and jelly. We work together. They can go together. So occupational therapists have different scopes in different provinces. Okay. It's very important for people to know. So what I do in Alberta, I have full scope. Okay. So I can work all on the physical side, all on the mental health side, the emotional, the nervous system. Pretty broad. Okay. In other places, such as Ontario and BC, it's quite restrictive. So you might work with both a physio and an OT to meet that full whole person public health. Where you can do that well-rounded approach or one-stop shop. One-stop shop. That's a great way to put it. Okay. Yeah. Can can you work with anybody outside of Alberta or is it like hands-on type stuff? Yeah. So great. So I'm going to back up a little bit. So people say, like, what do you expect in a pelvic health appointment? Yeah. Like, what does that even mean? What are you going to do? Well, you're going to fill out a very comprehensive intake for most people. We want to know things. And it sounds like questions that are absolutely not related. Okay. I want to know what your stress is. I want to know what your finances are. Yeah. What do you do for work? Are you standing all day? Are you sitting all day? Do you drive long distances? How tall are you? Right? These different things all change how you interact with the world. So we need to consider those. Then you're going to come in to a pelvic health appointment. You're going to be nervous. It's intimidating. You're going to walk in. And for most people, you're going to start with like a 20, 30 minute conversation. Okay. It should be no pressure. There should be lots of explaining what's happening, what's happening, what do we want to do. The way I was trained as a pelvic floor therapist, um, and I was trained by the physios because there was nobody else, um, is to do external assessment. So we work all through the body, and then internal vaginal and internal rectal assessment if it's a female, or internal rectal if it's a male. Okay. I don't do that. Shocking. I'm not not following the protocol. The droves of people that are gonna be coming now. And this is what stops people. Yeah. So what we need them to hear is you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Okay. And if somebody says this is the way it is, walk out. Okay. I see a ton of people virtually. So your question was do you see people across Canada? OTs and PTs are regulated in their province. So you need to work within the province you're regulated. However, COVID did us a solid. And so occupational therapy has agreements across most provinces for virtual practice. Okay. So I do see people across Canada virtually. Virtually. And my virtual clients often move at the same pace or faster than my in-person people. That's amazing. And to me, the thought process would be from like a behavior side of it, people would be more willing to make that call virtually because they know that they're in control. It's even though you know you have options and choice, sometimes when people walk into offices of positions of authority, yes, and even if they don't want to do something, they'll feel they just say yes, that people pleasing. Yeah. So having a little bit of that barrier with the computer, you can be assured that nothing's gonna happen to you physically if that's the thing that's holding them back. I want to dig into a little bit about you, but before we switch, what are some of the for somebody that's listening right now? Yes, and because high performers sit in pain and that's their they leak more, they have more prolapse and they have more pain. Okay. Yeah. What are some things that they can be aware of right now that maybe they're not even aware of? Like that's just their norm, like you with the uncomfortable intercourse until you heard that that's not normal. So could you give me like maybe the top three things that people are coming to you that they need more awareness on? So somebody watching that maybe out there is struggling with? Absolutely. There's some physical things that you could pay attention to, right? Um, but before that is do you like to be good at what you're doing? Okay. Did you have good grades? Are you an all-or-nothing individual? Okay. Were you an athlete or a high performer in any aspect? Music, school, whatever. Like is that your personality? Are you a doer and driven? Okay. Right there, starting to make some assessment. So those things are going to set most people up in a way. And then physically, do you clench your jaw? Do you get headaches? Yeah. Are your traps tight? If your traps are tight, it's a pretty safe bet here that we're gonna have some clenching or some high tone or hypertonicity in the pelvic floor. Is there low back pain? Okay. So low back pain is a massive issue for many people. And people don't relate low back pain and pelvic floor. Okay. They are inextricable, like they are tied together. Yeah. I I think I could see it just like visually because it's around, it's that same circumference. But um the like the jaw clenching, I wouldn't put that together. The other thing that I'd probably anything I anytime I hear gut, so IBS, Crohn's, colitis, anything that's, you know, constipation is a massive flag, anything there is going to have a relation to pelvic floor. And now I don't want this to be like snake oil, like, oh, this fixes everything. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But it's so central that it is often the missing piece or a missing piece. And if we can improve people's quality of life by, you know, five to 50% through one piece, fantastic. We we really want to do that, right? Anxiety is another. Yeah, interesting. So anxiety and depression are clinically significant. Like we have the evidence, they are tied to pelvic fluoride dysfunction. Should anybody that is like suffering from that speak to a pelvic health therapist, or are there certain things that, you know, if if you don't suffer from leaking, if you don't suffer from bulging, that type of stuff, is there what's the awareness piece that people need to have? That's a great question. Obviously, I'm biased. Yeah. I think it's really great to educate yourself because at some point in your life, there is going to be impact. Pretty much guaranteed. So one in three Canadian women will have pelvic pain at some point. Okay. Leaking is much higher. Prolapse, one of the studies is showing that between 40 and 50% of women at 20 years old who have never been pregnant have some degree of prolapse. But also, what people miss is what you do all day, every day, impacts everything else. So why wouldn't it impact that? I was gonna ask, like, what are some other lifestyle things that people should be doing and incorporating to help prevent things like prolapse, yeah, leaking if possible, that type of stuff. So, in terms of like urge incontinence, which is I have to go pee and I have to go pee right now. Okay, we teach that from a very young age, especially in cold climates. Go pee before you get your snow suit on, right? These are learned behaviors. Okay. So your bladder learns that that full isn't here, it's here. Interesting. So the way that that knows to go pee is it stretches and the stretch receptors speak to the brain, and the brain says, Hey, we've stretched this much, I need to go pee. But it's gonna send you a couple of false signals before it gets true. Now you don't want to leave it too long. Right. And with bowels, when you have to go, like if you have to go poop, go poop. There ain't false signals. Heard that. Yeah, please do that. But so just using, like you talked about, logic CBT to say, hey, do I actually need to go pee right now? Did I just go pee 10 minutes ago? Did I just slam two cups of coffee? Maybe I do need to go now, right? Because those are urgency irritants or bladder irritants. It okay. I'm I'm peeing. Be logical with your bladder. So somebody might be like, well, it's a long car trip, but it's better to make the stops versus be in the habit of training your bladder instead. You should be listening to your bladder and going when you need to go. Yeah, because it's called key in the door syndrome. It's like people turn into their driveway, they park, they're gonna go out and get to their door and they're trying to dig for their keys, and suddenly they really gotta go. Well, it's like your body recognizes the environment. Okay. And we gotta go now. Yeah. So you should be going P every two to four hours. Okay, typically. And you should be having bowel movements daily, ideally, or one to one to two, maybe three days past that. We're a little bit too far. Okay. Right. So the other things they can think about is like before you go to bed, how many times do you go pee before you go to bed? Well, I'm once. Yeah. Yeah. That's really rare. Is it? Yes. Okay. Well, and maybe I'm biased again. I talk to people with pelvic floor dyslexion, right? Yeah. But like people go pee and then they like do their thing and then they pee again. Or they wake up in the middle of the night and they're like, oh, I'm gonna get up and I go pee. Right. Well, did you wake up because you had to go pee? Or if you take a hot second and think about it, did I wake up and now I'm like, oh, maybe I have to pee, so I get up and do that. Right. Right? So we our body will do what we train it to do. Yeah. So being really intentional with that can be important. Yeah, okay. Stay-at-home moms are some of the biggest high performers that will struggle here. Right? What kind of struggles would they see? Well, children are chaos. I have two. Yes. It can be chaos. You're not always now in charge of your own day. Mm-hmm. Even though you are in the helm, you aren't at the helm in the same time. Um there's a lot of, there is a lot of show. Goods in parenting. Right. So oftentimes within a corporate structure, we can do things in a certain way and be praised for it. We can learn what that is. You know, how do I succeed in this company? What do they value? But at home, it's very different because now you have generational pieces coming in. So you have a lot of pressure, you have a lot of opinions, you have demands that you just never anticipated. And I know you had mentioned to me previously, like becoming a mom was kind of it was a big turning point, right? Yeah. I struggled massively. Yeah. I opened my clinic, emotion therapy, at three months postpartum with my second because that was my coping strategy. I could go to work and do something productive and helpful, and there was like an end product. Right. Versus like, and what do I do now? It's crying again. What do you do with this? Yeah. There's also in parenting and stay-at-home mom is you're not in control of other people's emotions. You can't walk away. Yeah. So when we're all having big feelings, or maybe you have a child with special needs, yeah, so many different things. Those demands, you don't you can't attenuate those, you can't change those. They're there, and now you got a deal. So, what does that look like? A lot of self-neglect, it sounds like, right? Like you're putting all the little people ahead of you because of their needs. And then, same with what you were saying about like sleep when the baby's sleeping, and take advantage of those opportunities, but they may not be opportunities that is the right time for you. Well, and like there's that there's the big push for self-care, which I love. But what people need to recognize is that everyone's nervous system is so different, yeah, that self-care for you and self-care for me might look very different. My self-care was going to do work, something that fulfilled me in that way. Whereas someone else's self-care might be taking a bath or having that nap or talking to a friend. And the other kind of piece with that is that underneath all of the self-care talk is still an expectation that children come first and that all needs are met. Like there is a very strong societal current around what needs to be the priority in that setting that anyone who bucks that is going to come up against, right? A lot of judgment. Let's like go a little deeper on that because I can hear your contrarian view, we could call it. But I think one that would be important for people to hear if the norm is to say that these put children first, do everything first. But yeah, why do you think that? Well, I can't even say that like I'm totally contrary to that. I I also adhere to that. What I struggle with is people creating recipe boxes or recipes for what self-care should look like. Right. Right? So rather than really getting to know yourself as an individual, and you're changing, your brain literally changes when you have children. That gray matter is shifting, changing, it's actually reshaping. We have so many things happening with hormones, right? And yet we're expecting people to now add another thing to their plate. You you should be doing self-care. All right, now I actually freaking can't. Yeah. So give me a hot minute. I am struggling, and absolutely we want to support people who struggle. Huge, right? It's a very um, it's a very volatile, very dangerous time for some people. But we want to make sure that we are caring for them in a way that actually creates the desired outcome. What even is self-care? To me, it's something that allows my body to sit in ease. So if that's sitting at the computer creating something, fabulous. If that's me in my bathtub, amazing. Now I'm very lucky. I have a husband who supports that. You know, I had supports in place. Not everyone has that. Yeah. So it could literally be 30 seconds with a hot cup of coffee, just feeling the warmth of the cup. So everything comes back to the nervous system. Always. Does it feel safe? Yeah. Or is it in threat and chaos? Yeah. It um, you know, I I navigated a lot of that last year because I never nervous system was not part of, you know, anything I ever talked about. Yeah. It's not part of anything that I hear in the military talked about. And when you are a high achiever, and then you're in an environment that not only fosters but demands, yes, and then continues to overload the people that can like we we break our people and the best people. I remember like so. My therapist actually told me to keep working, yeah, because it gave me passion. Yeah, and so we assessed that, gave me purpose and passion, and that wasn't the issue. And so, and there was trauma and there's a lot of stuff in the the background, but I learned nervous system and it it took me a while, but yeah, it has become instead of distracting myself, I'm allowing myself to sit in the discomfort. Good for you, and going through that, and then that calm and the focus. And when I was thinking about the parents thing that you were talking about, so my son plays hockey, yeah. And you know, I've been there by his side since day one. Yeah, but this year I stopped showing up as much in the hockey rank. I found that that actually was increasing my anxiety. I don't do small talk very well. The people are lovely, yeah, but I don't appreciate the way the like volatility in the stands. Um I don't want to just stand for an hour and wait and then watch a game for a half an hour and a half and then do another half hour waiting. It actually, for somebody who is so um driven, driven, yeah, kills me. Yeah, but I want to support my son. Yeah. And I went through this period of guilt of I know that I need this time, I need this humph, but I don't want to be a bad mom and I I want to support him. So the way, again, through a lot of like support with my therapist, yeah, not caring what people thought, yeah, I would actually sit in my truck and I would work, and then I go into the game and I get out and I go back to my truck. Or heaven forbid, I don't even go to the game. If I'm having a day where I know that I just need to go sit in the hot tub, yeah. Or be quiet and just have my own time, and that's a conversation that I have with my son to check in to see if that's something that like and even without him saying it, right? I can read his body language, I know if it means something, and I don't know, it has been a world of weight lifted. Interesting, and then because at first I did it, but I felt guilty. Yep, and now I'm probably like 25% guilty. I'm getting there. I can't say I'm perfect, I want to be the mom that's in the stands and like always there, but we create quality, and it's not about just the the quantity of just being all the time, yeah. And if your son knew that that was creating discomfort and issue for you, would he want you to do that? Oh, yeah, right? Like if we flip that around, we wouldn't want our kids to put themselves in situations that are not helpful to them. Yeah. So why would we put ourselves there? Exactly. Right? And sometimes we do because there's a there's a payoff to it. Of course, yeah. However, yeah, yeah. And then when you talk about, you know, the military peoples uh you've discussed with me previously, or kind of in our interactions, you know, some of your role in the military very briefly, it kills me that nervous system isn't the first thing that we're assessing for individuals who are going to be in these situations. Because, you know, whether it be military, first responders, different people like that, you want a very particular type of nervous system in those areas because they're going to be able to respond in the moment, function well, and then afterwards is when usually things turn to shit. Is nervous system something that is part of your makeup, or is it something that so I'm thinking about maybe I'm thinking from a different lens, but I'm thinking about like selection. So I yeah, that was my background was all about selection. And so we assessed, and I'm not part of the medical side, so I don't know what the medical do if that's part of it. I doubt it. I doubt as well, but yeah, it's all about cognitive ability and personality. That's what we're doing. Is that something that should be assessed up front? Or in my mind, I'm like, this should be something that is hammered in and fostered throughout the career because of all of the turmoil that somebody will have throughout their career. We actually design because I I also did assessment centers for special forces, the people that like you put them through the ringer. Yes. I don't know what is happening afterwards to help bring down the nervous system. Probably nothing. Yeah. Well, nothing was done. Um, that's where we see, you know, people turn to unhealthy coping strategies typically. Yeah. So I think the answer to your question is both. Yeah. I think we should be assessing for a baseline. And one of the things that would be a key indicator to me of somebody who would do well in those environments is do they have like psychological flexibility, yeah, but also nervous system adaptability. So when we think about nervous system, and I would love to write a paper on this, but oftentimes people think about kind of like a line, and then like it's the good old graph, like we're activated, we're down training, so we're regulated. I also think that's a poor use of the word regulated. To me, regulated means that you're at the correct or a peak nervous system state for the task at hand. So my activation level for being in an active military situation is very different than my peak performance state for writing an email. Right. Those two things are very different. So we have this up down, but what about if you took that line? And I don't know if people are going to be able to visualize this, but if it's a little string, what if we could build on that string into a nice thick rope that has adaptability, flexibility, resilience in that nervous system? So that when something does happen, because it will to anyone, it could be military, it could be anyone else. Do they have that ability to flex with it, to shake up and down, and then still come back to that peak performance state in whatever they're doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that. Great. I'm glad that I can, yeah. And I I because I did a um healing, like a two-day healing thing, and I talked about it on my very first podcast. Yes. Oh, talk about it, like take me out of my comfort zone, but I knew I needed to. I'm saying, yeah, yeah. What I learned on it, I thought was really, really interesting because I've always actually been a very even keel person. If I'm in my worst highest stress moment, I'm like this. Yeah. And I think I'm being clear-headed because I that's why, right? I'm gonna make decisions and I will deal with feeling feelings later. Yeah. It's a first responder state. Yes, but the feelings didn't really come. And so I always thought that I just like handled stress very well. So any interview I ever took that would ask me about my coping for stress, because in the military, I am incredible because I don't deal with it. And that's what I learned is that I actually didn't go through that process and to allow my feelings. I just bypassed it and went into the numb, where I thought was the alert clear stage. It was actually just numb. Yeah. And doing that for 20 plus years catches up on you. It's like a spring-loaded trap. Yeah. It just goes in and down and down and down. And so, you know, I'm a very science-based person. And as I get older, I get more and more woo as I go. I think all of us go through this, right? But is, you know, we talk about holding the emotion for women particularly, but I would put men in there too. Is we stuff it on down into that pelvic floor and pelvic bowl. And it's just like just keep adding weight to a spring-loaded trap. And it's where's the threshold that's gonna make it snap? And it's gonna come up, and there is no stopping it. Yeah, you can it can start to kind of jump up and you can shove it right back down, but eventually demand exceeds capacity. And when and how that happens is so variable, right? So, how do you actually start to ease off? How do you release that without opening Pandora's box and going a little bit over the top, right? So there's a lot to that, and that's where I think that whole person public health comes back to. Yeah. So yeah, there's the physical pieces, absolutely. I work a lot with rodeo athletes, and one of my big burly guys, right? Whatever and stuff told me he's like, the biggest thing that I took away from working with you was when we worked on the ability to tell myself and start to believe I am safe. Another piece that is missed or avoided, not avoided, maybe not given enough weight, is our environment. Yes. Right? So people talk to me, and I think I did a social media thing about this about a week ago, maybe. Is you know, I am a numbers person, so I like return on investment. I really like to put in this much and get out this much. What are all the inputs that are happening throughout your day constantly? Yeah. In your built environment, physical, in your social environment, right? If you don't love small talk, that's not a great thing. Exactly. Right? What about your cultural environment? Yeah, right? Right now there's a lot of upheaval in the world. Yeah, right. That is a cultural environment piece. And the last piece is kind of around that institutional environment. So for something like military, yeah, is it's the things that shape what we do. So policies, procedures, systems, the education system, our healthcare system, our policing systems, those are all institutional environments. But like when you think about that, the easiest ones to influence are social and built. So like you have beautiful plants here, right? Those add all real, of course. All real. You know what? I don't care. It doesn't matter. My brain doesn't register if that's real or fake, it registers that it's like a soothing piece, right? It's like beautiful muted colors. I feel comfortable. You gave me a nice pillow for my back, right? Yeah, so we can even just teach people like Pavlov's dog, you know, ring the bell, the dog salivates for a steak. What if you could just smell something or feel something, and you've already chosen what desired response you want. So if I want to feel joy, yes, which is something I give almost every client if we're doing safety through the senses, they choose one desired outcome, like calm or open or release, because we're often looking to open that public floor. I also give them joy because who couldn't do with more joy? I'll have some of that, right? If you can have one percent more joy in your life every day, would you take it? Yeah. So like if I want joy, and that comes from smelling my coffee in the morning, I can place that coffee at multiple points in my day. So I'm almost tripping over my trigger for joy all over the place. If I'm a high performer, pelvic health or otherwise, when I transition from something. So if I transition from treating a client to coming into chart notes, right? Or coming into doing coaching, I need to transition that somehow. How does my brain know that I'm actually switching tasks? Do you say to myself, brain, I'm switching tasks right now? I don't think so. Most people don't. But our transition times are quite long. It takes a while for the brain and the body to catch up when we're switching things. So why don't I use a sensory cue to initiate a transition? It reminds me of we did a workout this morning. Yes. The timer. Remember, I explained to you how I am a competitive person. The friendliest kind. Like if you beat me, I'm so happy for you. Great. It's just the love of the sport. Yeah. That's my jam. And my husband and I, when we work out together, and I tell him I'm not racing you because you go into a state, and I don't want to be in that state sometimes. Yeah. And I will be telling him, but I'm really telling myself. Yeah. But that timer goes off because we have the clock in our garage, and I hear the beep, beep, beep. And then I transition right into the competitive state. Yes. And now I'm racing him when I just said I wasn't. Yeah. So when we walked into the workout this morning, too, I started doing a completely different exercise than what we were doing. It was like, I don't even know what I was doing. Yeah. But this morning was pretty chaotic for me. Yeah. My brain was at full tilt. We have lots going on today. So we've done a lot today. I'm going to present tonight. Like there's lots. So you'll notice that I walked back to the door and I came back in. Oh. And at the same time I I tapped. You might not have noticed. But so it was recently, I was recently called out by someone that I coach for performance. Yeah. That I was not prepared to be in the gym. Okay. And they asked me facetiously, what is my cue for transitioning into the gym? Yeah. And I went, oh shoot. I don't have one. Okay. So my brain's still working on business problems and kids and the drive-in. Right. It's not working on my spurse gap. Right. You're an autopilot? Autopilot, other priorities, right? My my brain and my body haven't recognized that we've shifted. Yeah, okay. So we're not thinking about that now. We're here now. Yeah. Yeah. And then after some kind of self-digging, I realized because I went, oh, you know what? I was a competitive hockey player. Our warm-up list would be perfect for me, like from university. I'm going to put on the same songs because I still know the whole thing. I'm going to put those on and then I'm going to walk in the gym. The only issue with that was that the songs for warm up were set to activate my nervous system to go for a hockey game. Except the thing that I'm doing in the gym first is very small technical pieces first. Okay. It's not fast, hard sprints. Right. It's like, can you get this piece down? You're you're racing when you're not supposed to be racing. Yeah. And my brain literally is racing, and then I'm not getting components. Yeah. So I actually have to, again, reset that cue to match the task at hand. Is it an email or is it a competitive hockey game? Right. Is it something technical and slow or is it something with vigor? I'm hearing a lot of um intention, right? So people taking agency and ownership over the intention that they need to create when they go into these environments. Into any environment. Any environment. Because a lot of people, I hear this, I feel this myself. Like if you walk into your parents' house, and then all of a sudden you are transported back to. Childhood and you feel those feelings, right? And so resetting that intention or even just the awareness. Yeah. Because the physical environmental cues tell you that this is how you should act. Yes. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So we have so much agency in that. However, it can be very overwhelming. Yes. Because, like literally, you could add intention and cues to everything in your day. So that's counterproductive for sure. I don't want people thinking about their pelvic health all day. I don't want thinking people thinking about how do I increase my productivity by 2% today all the time. That takes away the joy. Yeah. Right? It doesn't allow me to be present and live. So what I love is picking a couple things in the day. So when I give somebody pelvic health exercise, and I told you breathing was the basic pelvic health exercise because the pelvic floor and the diaphragm are tied together by your inner abs. Okay. So when I breathe in, my pelvic floor should drop and open. My diaphragm should drop and open. And my transverse abdominis or innermost ab should also expand. Then when I breathe out, we have what we call the Kegel. It comes in and up. My diaphragm comes in and up to expel the air. And my abs contract naturally. So that is actually much more difficult than it stands. But with that, do you want to be thinking about that all day? No, not every time you breathe. So I usually say, like when you brush your teeth, do two breaths. When you I get in and out of a car a lot. When I get in and out of a car, I do two breaths when I sit. And I try and do one when I stand. When you're doing something else, like pick something that recurs in your day so that it's off the list, it's done, you're paying attention, but it doesn't take over your life. Yeah. It's called something, isn't it? Um, um it's like pairing. Pairing and stacking. It's habit stacking, habit stacking, stacking. It's habit stacking. Yeah, so deciding okay, the car is going to be the space that I'm going to. This is my cue. Yeah, do the queue. Please don't do your pelvic floor exercises in your car at a stoplight. That's a really bad choice. No, this is great. Yeah, I didn't know we would go down that road, but I think that it's um it's so so important to do that, to be to take agency over your environment, to have awareness of what and how you're feeling. Yeah, it impacts your physiology, right? Yes. Your feelings impact your actions, your actions impact your thoughts, thoughts, feelings, actions. They go in a cycle. Yeah. So you can use, I think you talked about CBT. Yeah. I use cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance commitment therapy, solution focus therapy all the time. That's where I feel super lucky. In my position as an OT in Alberta, I can be doing physical hands-on work. Yeah. And we can be having a therapy session at exactly the same time. I think that that is so important because it is so piecemealed that it can be draining for people. Overwhelming. Overwhelming, time consuming, and expensive. Expensive. Yeah. So to be able to do the one-stop shop, and even if it's not pelvic health at the end of the day, you can rule that out versus go somewhere else that will start to identify the problems as depression, anxiety, and we're just going to treat that. We're not going to think about the whole picture. Yeah. So I would say anyone, and like I work in mental health as well. So anyone who's struggling with mental health, we want to consider what physical pieces we can do to improve that. We now know exercise is more effective than any pharmaceutical drug that we have when they're paired together. Like I'm not saying there's not a space for that, but we can put things together. And you know, if it's 10% from exercise and it's 10% from our treatment from therapy, and if it's 10% from pharmaceuticals, why wouldn't we want all of that gain? Yeah, right. And same thing for pelvic health. Somebody is leaking, somebody feels pressure in their vagina, their rectum. If we have sexual dysfunction, so that can be pain with intercourse, that can be inability for women for anything to penetrate to go in. So that's called vaginismus and very important. There's a lot of shame with that particular diagnosis. If men, right? Either after prostatectomy, like the rate of prostate cancer, now that our screening is amazed, like is good, is skyrocket. Okay. Right. So like we want to see these people before and after. We want to see them before any surgery, hysterectomy, appendectomy, tummy tuck, anything in that core is going to impact C-section. I'm a two TM C-section mom. Okay. This impacts all of that. So we can optimize all of that for somebody and prevent issues down the road. Or, and I find these clients the hardest actually. When someone comes in, they're like, I actually don't have any issues. I just want to make sure everything's good. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do with a unicorn. Like, I guess. Yeah. But I, you know, we talk about, you know, how are your relationships? How are your finances? Yeah. How is your work? How's your parenting? If that's, you know, a role you have. Yeah. How is your physical health, your nutrition, your hydration, your sleep? Okay, let's look at this. What's our window in? Because sometimes it's pelvic health. Yeah. And sometimes it's not. Yeah. But just even the awareness, I guess, is what I'm learning the most about that. And I can, I mean, it's so obvious now, after an hour conversation, of like, yeah, everything is connected and related to the core. Yeah. And so why wouldn't you be having that assessed? And that's where, and I tell people, I was exactly the same, right? I was like, huh, that makes sense. Okay. Like, I'm going to look into this. Did I dream of being that pelvic floor therapist? No, not at all. Right? I was going to go to school for physio and I was going to be a physiotherapist, and that was it. I went to school. I got my degree in kinesiology. I played hockey. It was great. I was so driven I didn't stay for my fifth year of hockey. And now I wish I would have. Um, but I was on to my next goal. Right. So I went and now I got accepted to both OT and PT. Someone just told me it would look good on your PT application if you applied to OT. It's the only reason I did it. Okay. And then I was given 24 hours to decide. And I chose OT, which surprised everyone, including myself. Good, good move for me in the end. Yes. It would have been much easier. And I don't mean that easier in like that physio isn't a hard thing to do, but easier in terms of my life path to go to physio. Right. Ended up as an OT. You know, come up here and now I'm working. I said I would never work in mental health. Started working in mental health, had issues, did that kind of research. And that was where it was like, I could do this. And nobody told me no because I wasn't interacting with anyone in that time. I was, you know, late pregnancy, pretty small social circle. There was no one to tell me no. Fast forward a couple years when I decided to actually open a pelvic health practice. I got told no multiple times a day. You can't do this. We won't allow this. We won't train you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All the different things that people ask, why do I still do this? Yeah. And it's like, no, I don't want to. Is it fun to like palpate? So that's what we talk call touching inside of people. Well, to me, it's like the same as touching an elbow now. Right. But like, no, it's not. Like, I don't dream of doing that. If you do, that's probably not the right person. That's um. But the impact is so big. Yeah. The impact on someone's life is massive. And like I had one client who hadn't seen her daughter in Ontario for like three or four years, hadn't seen her granddaughter. She couldn't go like more than like 30 minutes without going pee. And her husband said he wouldn't drive with her. And she was terrified of flying. Well, we very quickly, like I want to say in like six weeks, were able to change that urge and capacity. And she was able to drive from Alberta, Ontario, and like she came into my office and just bawled. Right. Because she had to see her family. Yeah. For intimacy. Like if you, someone and who has chosen not to have intercourse until marriage. Okay. Now it's your wedding night, and you go to have intimacy with your husband or your partner or whatever, right? So let's say it's a man and a woman, and suddenly it's like he can't get in, and there's pain and there's shame and there's confusion. Yeah. How does that impact your whole life? Right? Because you don't talk about it. Well, and how would you know? Yeah. Right? Like these things. What about grief and loss, right? Miscarriage. You see lots of people with adoption, different things, like all of those feelings impact the function. And our function is what do we want to do in the day? People always say, like, how can you be so comfortable talking about this? A reps, right? I talk about this every day. Also, there's two other pieces to that. One is that I came out of mental health, and asking someone about sex or penis or vagina or whatever, it just doesn't, it isn't that hard after you've asked people day in and day out if they're gonna kill themselves or their loved ones. Yeah. The other piece was is like my dad was raised traditional Mennonite out of southern Manitoba. I didn't know that. Yeah. And my mom was from Alberta. But so when I could look Bill in the eye and be like, hey dad, I'm gonna leave this big, cushy government job with a great pension and benefits, and open a pelvic floor therapy clinic in a town of 7,000 people that I wasn't raised in, so I don't have the right last name. Right. And people are gonna pay me to do this, and I could talk to my dad about it. Yeah, that's when I knew I was ready. Okay. Because if you're not comfortable to talk to somebody, you shouldn't be yet. Yeah. Right? Like as a therapist. Yes. As on the flip side, as a client, please, please come talk to somebody. Yeah, no expectations of being ready. Right. There's no readiness there. But like now I can actually talk to you and not make you uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. I'm over here squirming. Just pelvic floors just gripping. I'm like, am I sitting? How am I sitting? But upper abs gripped, not breathing, tucking the butt. Yeah, yeah. Very, very interesting. So we've learned about who Lindsay Kaup is as a pelvic health therapist. What about Lindsay Kaup as the business owner? Because a big part. You mentioned impact. Impact is huge for me. Yes. One of my values, why I created this podcast, because I see so many business owners talking about all the great things that they've done, which is fantastic because that inspires. But I I wish there was more talk about the challenges, the struggle, the shit that we all go through. Like everybody is going through, and I want to normalize that struggle. Oh. Every day. Who is Lindsay Cowp as a business owner? And you know, what are some of the defining moments that stand out to you as you've grown your business? Yeah. I believe every great business is born out of serving a need. Usually a need that you've had yourself or seen the impact of, right? So when I created Emotion Therapy, my mission statement was literally we help men and women live their lives with confidence and joy through pelvic health. So my outcome is confidence and joy. It actually wasn't not leaking, right? That's what I wanted to see. I saw how leaking and that pain with sex impacted my life. Right. Being pregnant, becoming a new mom. That rocked my world. Like absolutely rocked it. I am very lucky that I have the support system I have, and I still struggled massively. How did it rock it? I'm used to being good at things. Right. I'm used to choosing what I do and having autonomy. Right. That is not the reality as a new mom. Right. Um, yeah, it was a lot. And like I definitely struggled with postpartum depression both with my first and my second. Um pregnancy, great. Birth, right? I also saw a lot of like the power of people other people's ability to impact you. So when I was having my second, I attempted a what we call a vaginal birth after C-section. Okay. I was fine. We labored for a couple days. My pelvic floor issues definitely impacted my ability to have a uh a vaginal birth. But one thing was a defining moment where the anaesthetist said to me, Who the hell told you you could have a vaginal birth? You have size five feet. So there is, or there was taught at one point that your size, your feet is correlated to the size of the pelvic inlet. So it does matter. No, it's bullshit. It's bullshit. Anyways, in that moment, it's like just flipped. And I didn't care if I had a baby, if I had a boy or a girl, I didn't give a shit. The only word I said after that was fuck. I actually, I think I swore at her, and it was worse, I think, because it was a woman. And I was like, seriously, lady, like I'm choosing to go for a C-section right now because we had some other issues going. I was fine with that. Right. Great. And then you throw that at me, and it was just like a big pile of shades. Yeah. It was great. Then we're going down to the surgical suite, right? My mom had given me a paper from 1985 that said, like, they lost her on the table with my older brother. Um, so they didn't know she was allergic to sesinyl choline, which is a drug that they will use. And I had given that to them and said, I can't have they call it socks. I can't have socks. So as we're rolling down, the same anaesthetist says to me or to the nurse behind me, go get the socks. And the nurse is like, I can't, she just told you she can't have that. And then her and the anaesthetist says to me, she goes, or to the nurse, she goes, if it's baby or mom that we're saving, obviously we know which one we are. And though I agree with her assessment that I would have asked them to work with the baby, that wasn't her choice to make. And it was just like it was a really defining moment, and that spiraled me hard. No doubt. For about six months. You put your trust in the medical system when you go to a hospital, you're there to be taken care of. It was the disrespect and the lack of consent that I really, after many months, was able to come back to, and that that's such a small thing. Now I can't imagine people who you know in many different situations with far different situations, right? So that was a big turning point for me as a business owner. I never want someone to feel that. As a therapist, I never want someone to feel that. And I'm gonna advocate for them to stand up for themselves, be educated and informed. The other big thing around business is that I was always told I could do whatever I wanted to. So, like I have lived with very high confidence and maybe like low skills, but I didn't know, right? I mean, they say the uh the optimist gets way more done than the realist. I don't know if it got more done, but I just think I can. Because you believe it, right? You'll try it where the realist won't try. No, and the optimist will try. Yeah. And so I was always told that, but recently, and through business, really has highlighted that is that that wasn't always what I was shown. So I was told one thing and experienced another in some ways. And then this is gonna sound so little because there are so many people with like big things, traumatic things in their life, life-changing things. But I almost think it fits me in how it comes out. You know, I I talk often about 1% or what can we do in 30 seconds, like these small things that build up. And I've actually trademarked it, I call it the confetti method. Okay. It's like sprinkle that everywhere, right? If you want something to change, sprinkle it everywhere. Yeah, just like the the coffee cup we talked about earlier. Put it in as many places so you can trip on that joy all the time. I have the coffee everywhere. You're fabulous. But at the same time, I'm five feet tall. I played hockey, I played elite hockey. So I was constantly praised for playing like I was six feet tall. But my reality is I'm not six feet tall, I'm five feet tall, right? So I would be praised for it, but I still didn't make the teams. You know, I played with some Olympians, different things like that. Real, like reality says this was my, and I wasn't the best skilled player. I wasn't whatever, I was the attitude effort player. Yeah. But how being five feet tall has impacted everything that I do in my life, just the same as you know, someone who maybe lives with diabetes or someone who grew up in a home with poor coping strategies. Those things that you see and experience day in and day out impact you. My trainer the other day told me, he's like, Lindsay, like your legs aren't that long. Stop trying to lunge this far. He's like, Why? Why did you like why do you do that? And I said, Because I was hanging out with girls who were six feet tall. And I said, at an elite camp, you're not gonna like, here's all the six feet tall girls are already done because they're doing lunges that are in the right, you know, stride length, and I'm still halfway across the field. Like, I don't want to be like that little meme of Michelle Tanner from Full House. I got little legs, right? Yes, so I've always learned to overcompensate or be bigger. Okay, I was just gonna ask what is the negative to that, right? Because you're always trying to prove yourself, always trying to prove yourself, and I have always chosen underdog positions, yeah. Occupational therapy, underdog position to to physio. Yeah, how do you see that that comes out for you? So talking about nervous system, talking about, you know, having that heightened awareness, it doesn't make us invincible to it, right? And so, how does it come out for you to constantly choose the difficult path and to constantly feel like you have to prove yourself? Is there ever an enough? No, right? Yeah, it's a hard no. Yeah, as soon as you hit the bar, you move the bar, right? Yeah, which is something I coach many people against. I used to have a program called Raise the Bar, right? I always just think I'm like, I have changed my tune in that. I used to never acknowledge things, never celebrate things. Yeah. And it actually has really impacted me in the fact that I was always proud to be like the low maintenance girlfriend or wife, or I was proud to be, you know, like I didn't care if we did something big for my birthday. I, you know, so that's in real life there, or in business. Like, I have never once celebrated like that. I've been in business for eight years or nine years or whatever it is. I'm not good at math. Um, because those are just things that happen, like who they're little. And then it realistically, when I coach others, I'm talking to them about celebrating little things. I kind of want to, and I already have insight into this, but I do want to talk about this is the reading thing that you do. Because I'm fascinated. Fascinated. I've never heard, I've never heard anybody explain this before, but you're an avid reader, to say the least. Avid, yeah. So, yeah, to kind of set that stage, I guess. So probably. Since I would say since COVID for sure, I read between 300 and 500. One year was like, I think my Kindle Unlimited was like 570 books. And these are books that are completed. They're not 20-page books. They're like full-size novels. Novels. They are anything from trash romance to developmental books to, you know, Dan Brown. Like it could be anything. And so you can literally look back and see where my mental health was by how many books I read. So the higher the books, the worse the mental health. When you're reading at that speed, it's reading, or for me, I'm reading for escapism. Yeah. There's struggle here, and this is my version of avoidance. Yeah. People think it's great. And then what do you say? Right? No, that's not a good thing. Everybody else is making a goal of 12 books in a year. Yeah. And you're like, I my goal last year was to stay under 200. I hit 207. You hit, oh my God. I just, I've never, I've never heard this before. And I still listen to audiobooks, still listen to a ton of podcasts. Like I always tell people I have a self-learned MBA in my business. And that was all through books and podcasts. All of it. If the struggle is there to manage it for you, then what hope does somebody have that doesn't have the education and the background that you have and the resources? And so what are you doing to overcome that? Well, a business coach I know often talks about information is one thing and implementation is another. Sounds like a wise woman. So she is pretty wise. Um, so I think for years I had the information. I chose not to implement. Of course. Now, choose is, you know, chicken egg. Is there things preventing me from implementing? Yes. Yeah. But also I chose. Yes. Right. And we want to be really care, like careful in owning that. Yeah. So for me, it is literally finding other things that create the same dopamine hit. Right. As that. So as I've come back into exercising regularly, and I have to say, like, the Build Pro family has been huge for that. You're amazing. Yeah. So amazing. Um, just the accountability. I grew up in a team. When did all of my struggles start? The minute I left my team. Yeah. I graduated my undergrad degree and I started to struggle. And my everything that had ever um managed my stress, my ADHD, all of the different things suddenly wasn't there, which was a safe social circle. Yeah. Daily exercise, probably twice a day. We were on the ice six days a week. We worked out five days. Yeah. Right. Life in an athlete. Yeah. I had purpose. There was goals. Right. And there was constantly, as almost like a video game, right? You achieve the next level. You achieve the next level. Well, once you get a real job, you just are there. And there's no team that's helping you to go exercise. Yeah. And your social circle is only other people at work in a new town. What do you what do you do with that? Right? You do whatever they do. Yeah. You are the the people you thank you. So, with all of that, like now that I I joined Bill Pro and I was very clear with you with this, I joined it for the community. The content is a bonus. Glad you said bonus. Yes. The content is absolutely there. Do I need it? Yes. Yeah. But the community was your driver. Yes. I I love it because I didn't know about networking. I didn't even call myself an entrepreneur. Embarrassingly, for like it was like really four years ago, four or five years ago, that I even started to lightly use that word. And I also joined communities. And the communities promoted drinking and promoted recklessness, promoted just not the lifestyle or the values that I was looking for. Right. And as all entrepreneurs, and as you said, we create things out of a need and a recognition. That's what Build Pro was stemmed from was like, what kind of community do I want to be a part of? Yeah. So we have our fitness chat and we incorporate it in our meetups. All the time. That the garage gym that you worked out in, that was our first meetup here in our backyard, and everybody came and did a workout together, and it was incredible. Yeah. We have a meetup section. So when you came here, I mean, you have like done the rounds, and people drop everything to come and see you. And the Build Pro members are coming to support you tonight. And so it's like that community is so valuable because it you it normalizes the behavior. You're such a valued member inside BuildPro. I knew it the minute that we met. I knew that was the place for you. You're gonna tell everybody I ghosted you. Yes. And you know what? I didn't I get a little butthurt with being ghosted, to be honest. I try not to. I try not to. Yep. And it actually did occur to me like that second time around that I wasn't gonna move forward. Because there's a few people right now that have reached out to me. I'm actually quite just um lazy when it comes to marketing right now. Like I just show up and nothing wrong with that. I'm attracting, which is amazing. I'm very happy with that. And we're gonna ramp up. So I'm excited for that next phase. But I just didn't have the time and I didn't prioritize it. Yep. So people that came to me, so I get a little butthurt when they come to me and I take the time to respond. Yep. And then it's like when it's time to make a decision, and then they just like disappear. And I do the check-in to say, you know, hey, and there's no closure. The the ego part of me wants to say, Well, go F yeah. I'm close, I'm closing the door then. I wouldn't blame you. That is my ego, yeah, and that is part of the development as a business owner of not to take it personal because you don't know what's going on inside. And you have come in and you have just been such an integral part of the group. You acclimated like you'd been there for years, you contribute, you bring value, you share, um, and you you lead by example. Well, thank you. So I can I can see certain leaders as well. And you know, everybody's made different, but you're certainly a leader, and thank you. It's why you're here today, it's why like you're going on stage, and um I'm just yeah, I'm super proud of the work that you've done. Thank you. How you show up. Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable because when we can actually pull that curtain back, and you are literally the expert when it comes to nervous system. I think it's such a uh an amazing thing because you understand probably better than anybody. As you shared about intercourse, but then also from a mental health, from like confidence, from how you cope, how it negatively impacts. And so, yes, you want to have somebody who understands you're like this to the core. Nice. Oh man. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Great conversation. It was really good. But we gotta go. We do have to go. We got more talking to do. So cheers. Thank you, Lindsay. To next time, we'll have you back and uh catch up, see where you're at. Thanks, Victoria.