How to Get Closure Without an Apology?

Bullying leaves clues in places most of us never think to look: your posture, your pain patterns, your fear of being seen, and the reflex to manage other people’s moods just to stay safe. We go back to the root of it, what happens inside a chaotic home where addiction, intimidation, and “jokes” that feel cruel teach kids the wrong definition of love. When that’s the training ground, sibling bullying is not random. It’s a nervous system strategy that assigns roles, the target who learns to disappear and the protector who uses aggression to avoid getting hurt.

From there, we widen the lens to bullying culture in schools, cliques, and online spaces, including how scarcity and social hierarchy turn outsiders into enforcers. We also talk about why healthy conflict is not the same as bullying, and how repetition, power imbalance, and lack of repair push the body into freeze, people pleasing, hypervigilance, and shame loops. If you’ve ever felt stuck waiting for an apology, we challenge that pattern directly: closure is something you create, not something you receive.

We end with tools you can actually use, nervous system regulation, forgiveness meditation, mindset work that helps you witness thoughts instead of obeying them, and frameworks like the Enneagram to understand your internal “user manual.” If you’re untangling childhood trauma, sibling dynamics, or online bullying stress, this conversation is built to help you reclaim your voice. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest insight you’re taking with you.

Dr. Matt F

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Transcript

A Childhood Shaped By Chaos

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Imagine this. You're a little kid. You live in a house that doesn't quite feel like a home. It feels like a war zone. There's an alcoholic stepfather running the show, unpredictable, intimidating, sometimes cruel. And sometimes he thinks it's funny. Actually, all of the time he thinks it's funny. Your biological dad isn't around because the same manipulation in the home made him feel like he didn't belong there. So now you've got two kids learning what love looks like from absolute chaos. And here's what happens in environments like this. One child usually becomes the receiver, and one child becomes the doer. Because children don't learn love from what they're told, they learn love from what they experience. So if aggression is modeled as connection, then bullying becomes love. One child learns, I take the hit, I stay small, I survive by not being seen. And you'll see this kid head down, shoulders forward, trying to disappear, hoping nobody sees them. Not realizing that posture is signaling to the world I'm not safe in myself. And again, this is not their fault. This is adaptation. But the nervous system and even at a primal level, human behavior starts to organize around predator and prey dynamics. So now the very strategy meant to protect them makes them more visible to harm. I'm gonna say that again. The strategy meant to protect them makes them more visible to harm. And I know this because that was me. I was bullied constantly when I was a little kid. At home and outside of it. I remember walking with my head down thinking, if I don't look up, maybe no one will see me. But that's not what happened. And I remember one night I was in the shower, I couldn't have been somewhere between seven and ten. It was pretty young. Um, and it was during the Night Stalker era in the Bay Area, and it was a horrible serial killer was on the loose, and there was a lot of fear in the air. Uh, I think this was kind of the end of the serial killer era, but it was like it was no, it wasn't. But um uh anyways, I digress. There was a lot of fear around, you know, serial killers and kidnappings and things like that. And my stepdad thought it would be funny uh to turn off all the lights in the house. And before he did this, he says to me that um there was a serial killer out on the loose who was looking for little blonde girls to murder. And, you know, because I grew up in this environment with a cruel man, I thought this is normal what people, you know, say to each other. So I didn't question and I believed him. I was a child and he was authority, right? So that's what you do. And so I'm in the sh the shower, and he turns off all the lights in the house, and he and my sister went outside of the bathroom window and started dragging branches across the window. I don't even know if a scream came out, but I remember my body registering shock and terror in that moment, thinking that this was like the moment I was gonna get slaughtered or tortured by some deranged man on the loose. I ran out of the shower, and that's about all I remember. Except I remember their laughing and feeling rage and humiliation and a sense of helplessness that that I did not even know how to process at the time. And their laughter made made it worse because I immediately heard like don't be so serious, you shouldn't take things so seriously. It was just a joke. Now, maybe in a normal household that might have been a joke, a prank, but I had this all the time, right? Like it wasn't like one off event where people were like, Oh, that'll be kind of funny. Because you know, people do stupid stuff like that. I've done stupid stuff like that. But it was a, you know, a daily bullying in my life. Like my sister was very, very physically abusive. And um, the big joke in the family was she tried to kill me twice before my first birthday. Like, why that was a joke instead of being handled uh is beyond me. Um, but I guess that just describes more of the family dynamics that we grew up in, where that was tolerated and I think almost encouraged. I know I don't, you know, I'm not sitting here victim shaming or blaming or anything like that. Or uh what I am saying is that it's family dynamics that were learned generation and passed down through generations. And that's why this conversation is important because I think when you look around the world right now, we're seeing this global phenomenon of bullying that has gone on for far too long. And on one end, we have people trying to protect victims in a way that makes them disempowered, and on the other end, we have this bullying culture that actually creates more predators. And the polarity between the two is outrageous right now. And I think that as a society, as a culture, we must take a look at our own signature in that, in that dynamic and take our power back if you're on the receiving end. And I'm just gonna talk to you guys because I don't bull most bullies won't recognize that they're bullies. Most bullies don't have the emotional capacity to look inside and say, hey, I shouldn't do this, or this is wrong. Because it's really born from the same place. It's born from this place of avoiding shame or pain. And their answer is let me hurt something outside of me. And the person who has the learned response of, let me go within and you know, protect myself, but also shield myself through this layer of victim consciousness. And I promise you, if you hear those words and you think I'm insulting you, I am so not. I did not even realize how much that was impacting my life. And I'm only saying that word so that you understand that you have a way out. Because I don't like being considered a victim. I don't call myself a survivor. You know, I had sexual trauma and other sorts of traumas, and I you'll never hear me say I'm a survivor. Um, I don't like that label. I don't identify with it. And if you do, by all means use it. I'm not, you know, like I said, this is my experience and that's it. And I just want people to feel empowered and to know that they can create a new reality for themselves. And because what I didn't realize was that this pattern followed me through adulthood. And a lot of it was postural, by the way, which I didn't quite understand until yesterday my back was hurting. And I was thinking, why are you why does your back hurt so bad? And of course I do the layered, the layered thing, right? I'm like, is it money? Is it posture? Is it um, is it energetic? Is it a past life? Like I'm the one who like goes and sees like the entire programming of pain, and I'm like, okay, where is it? And for me, it was uh postural. And you know, I've been working through my fear of visibility, which tells me I think that I've become even more invisible, which means I went back into old postural patterns of rolling my shoulders forward, putting my head forward, and looking down to not be seen. And that creates low back pain. Um, forehead posture is one of the most common physiological reasons for low back pain, which I'll talk about in a different episode. But it it was the physiology of the old me who was working through the fear of visibility of being seen and really wanting to hide and protect myself from a world that has caused me a lot of pain. And I don't mean that in a way of um blaming anybody because a lot of the situations I created myself. And so, you know, I understand that I also understand why I created them. So there's compassion on both sides. But so when we look at sibling bullying, which is really what I want to talk about today, I was really angry at my sister for a long time. And then I had to hold space for the fact that she learned these strategies in the same environment, the same definitions of love that I did. And I don't know if firstborn or secondborn has anything to do with it, but she is firstborn and so she learned something very different than I did. It it if I become one of the bullies, I won't be the one who gets hurt. And so she followed his lead, and probably to avoid getting hurt herself, right? Because you you either join on the team that's gonna bully, and you see this in girl clicks all of the time. You either join with the ones who look more powerful, or you become the powerless. And, you know, I get it, like logically, as a child, you would make that decision based on, you know, survival and safety. And that's what we did. Um, we adapt. And I think that we have to understand that that's what's happening when when you're little, is we're adapting to an environment that feels unsafe. And when you have a raging addiction in the home, chances are you have a lot of feelings of unsafety and trying to navigate uncertain environments every day, depending on the level of addiction, how your body registers it. Anyways, that's more complex. And I would say that most bullies are not born, they're trained. And you can see this. I saw this in when my daughter was little, and there was this girl clique that dominated the elementary school. And I remember there were three girls at the center, and we went to the family picnic one day, and I never pushed my daughter to be in the main clique because I didn't want her to become a bully, obviously, because of my own experience. And so um, we were there at the family picnic, and we had our little friend that we hung out with, and um, I was watching the girl click, and the the the moms orchestrated very, very much so, they orchestrated the circle. And the girls on the inside of the clique sat together with their moms, and then you could see the other moms, and I watch everything, right? I'm very observant. I watched the other ones, and their daughters were gonna sit somewhere else, and then they said, Oh no, let's go sit closer to them. And there's no judgment. I think maybe we're all all trying to resolve our childhood trauma, right? Like, I think that you can see this playing out in the world on the internet right now, especially people trying to resolve their childhood trauma anyway that they know how. And there are a bunch of, you know, crazy people who just need a little bit of therapy or coaching, and they're they're creating a lot of destruction. But you know, I'm gonna, I just watched a documentary last night. I'll talk about that in a minute. But like, okay, so there's these little girls, and their moms were the ones who said, no, you we need to go sit over here next to that group because they wanted them to be in that group. And I thought that that was interesting because I was like, well, why would you want them to be in a group that they could get kicked out of? And I did a lot of research on girl bullying, click dynamics, because I wanted to make sure that I knew how to protect my daughter from the complexities of girl cliques. And, you know, we've all seen mean girls, or hopefully you have. If you haven't, watch it. It's very interesting because it's not far from the truth. And I think that, you know, that pattern can run up into adult life. And I think that, you know, even grown-ass women experience bullying in this girl click environment. I did in my mom group that I was in uh when I was, and I even participated in it because I didn't want to be the one kicked out again. Um, bit me in the butt later because I was so against who I am. I couldn't, you know, match the meanness, and so I was kicked out, thank God, because I don't know who I would have become. I'm sure I wouldn't have. But anyways, I got distracted. Um, so let's look at it like this that that bullies are trained, and some of them, who knows? Maybe there's some mental health issues that they're born with, like narcissistic personality disorder you can't do anything about. Let's all just that's true, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about learned behavior. And I think that normal conflict is normal, right? Like I think conflict is normal. Like that's how we grow and learn, and that's how we learn to adapt, and that's where we learn resiliency. So, you know, sibling rivalry, sibling conflict, that that's totally normal, and that should happen, right? But when we look at like the bigger scale, I'm thinking back to this group, it leaked out everywhere. The these two girl groups, right? So the the other girl group, they didn't feel stable within the center, the popular girls, and because they were on the outside. And how they treated people was almost worse than the girls on in the middle, the ones that had the core uh popular group. And they were almost like the hunchmen, right? The ones who went out and made sure that other people didn't come in so that they didn't lose their spot. And I remember when I we tried this uh dance class with my daughter, and it was this local dance studio, and it was easier than the one that we were going to, which was further away, and you know, she Kiro really wanted to try it. And we went and the popular girls were there, and I realized maybe she does want to hang out with them, and and that's okay too. Like, I have you know, you be you, boo. And um, so we go, and the girl on the the lowest girl in the pecking order was mad dogging her the whole time, like seriously, and I'm like watching this because I'm very observant as a person who grows up in an alcoholic home. You become like a super spy, you literally see everything around you because your hypervigilance gives you a keen sense of awareness. Uh, there are some, you know, there's some perks, and so I watch everything, right? I'm very observant, and I'm watching this girl mad dog in my child. Now we're talking like eight-year-olds, we're not talking teenage, we're eight-year-olds. And I'm watching her, and I'm like, why is she doing that? And I became very curious, and I realized that she was the low man on the totem pole, right? Or whatever it's called. That she was the furthest out from the core. And she was afraid if somebody else came in, the scarcity of opportunity in the group, someone would have to leave. It was a scarcity thing. And it was because there wasn't enough, right? There wasn't enough space. Someone has to be on the outside or someone has to be beneath because it's a hierarchy so that other people can feel better, so that other people are the popular ones, so that other people are the ones who are um above everyone else who are being worshipped, right? Other people aspire to be like. Now, this is very helpful in some areas of life. Like, you do want to have a mentor. I have a massage mentor who I wanted to aspire to be like, and it helped me in my career tremendously. He didn't abuse power though, and that's the difference is when you aspire to be like someone who is abusing power. Now, as soon as they have your admiration or they have your desire to be within their circle, now we have an actual problem because you're gonna start handing your power away to them. And so last night I was watching this documentary on um Manosphere, I can't remember, I think that's what it was called, and it's on Netflix, and they just released it. And um, it was disgusting to see what these men were teaching young men. Now, I love a good male role model. Like Tony Robbins, I've been to his conference many times. I think he is an outstanding male role model. And I think right now the world needs strong male role models for young men because unfortunately, many of them did not grow up with them in the home. And I think that they're starving for that. And unfortunately, they're going to people who abuse power as a way of learning what a man looks like because they didn't have one. And I think that's sad. And I know, you know, I've talked to a lot of single moms where they were like, I just need a strong male role model for my son because I don't know how to teach him how to be a man, and their their dad buggered off and I don't know what to do. And I remember being in that same position when I was little, and I was very lucky because I had some really strong male role models, especially in sports, show up with my son and um taught me how to be a boy mom, right? Like I didn't know how to be a boy mom. I never didn't know anything about little boys. So I, you know, would take him to the monster trucks and all the things just because I didn't know, and I wanted to make sure that he had all of the experiences that I thought he might enjoy as a young man. And, you know, I'm gonna get back to bullying though, but I just wanted to say that it was really that that documentary that showed me the extreme bullying, and it was disgusting, and it was laughed, and it has the most views on TikTok, and uh it was so against the very nature of human kindness that I I felt like, oh, this is why you haven't wanted to do social media marketing because energetically you see a lot of what happens in there, and you didn't want to be in that world. And I also think on the flip side that we can be a light in a place that is very dark. And, you know, I know that that's part of my mission on the planet is to be light in dark places, and it's you know, hard sometimes to go into a place that is so cruel and to say, hey, you the kindness created you kind. That's a phrase that I always say whenever I'm faced with cruelty. Um, and you know, what's the the light, the path of light right now? And you know, that's not always easy to do, but it is at the core of my essence, who I am. So when we look at like some bullying, because I think we get bullying wrong a lot. I think that um that word is thrown around too too much, and I and I think that sometimes there's normal kid kid stuff, right? Like we'd wrestle, we'd fight. Like there was normal kid stuff. I remember, you know, as kids, there was normal fighting with the neighborhood kids, and then we'd resolve it like five minutes later and run off, and we were all best friends again. We didn't have anyone mediating, we didn't have to get the school involved, like we figured it out because we wanted to play together and we learned how to resolve conflict within our social group in order to keep it happy. Now, the world is different. We have the internet, and kids have no shutoff for bullying because I could go home and you know, if there was friends that were bullying, they weren't there. Unfortunately, there was the other stuff, so I never really were out of it, but you know, that's a different story. So, um, healthy conflict with kids. It looks like kids argue and then they reconnect and they do some rough housing that both people enjoy. My son and his friend, oh my god, when they were little, they would sit there and pound the crap out of each other. He still does it in the forest, and they all love each other, they have rules of engagement. I'm like, wait, just start your bike club, but that's just how they hang out, like they like it, and so I don't worry about it. And um, it's mutual, it's consensual. They like they enjoy boxing, it's a way of uh, you know, whatever I don't understand the man brain. I'm not gonna go out and punch anyone. They enjoy it, and I don't and I don't care. Um, because we know he's safe and he's got rules of engagement, and you know, it's it's consensual. So, and they they all enjoy it for whatever reason. I don't need to understand the human brain, I don't need to understand the male brain that much to understand that I can just hold space for the fact that they enjoy it. If you're a boy mom, you know this, right? Like, you know, like so. And so, like when my son found his best friend, literally, I think within seconds, they were like rough housing, and I was laughing. I was like, oh my gosh. And the other mom looked at me like, is this okay? And I was like, Is this okay? And then we were both like, oh, thank God they needed this kind of a friendship. And they became super great friends because both of us understood how boys work. And um, so here we anyway. Anyways, uh, so rough housing, teasing that goes both ways. Teasing is kind of like flirting sometimes, right? Like, I think that you know, you there is a healthy amount of teasing and it and it's playful. It's when it goes too far that is the problem, when you're not registering, okay, it's time to stop. Um, and you know, emotional repair happens naturally. That they the nervous system gets activated and then it resolves. This can actually be a good thing. When I was at public speaker training, they literally had us tell our worst nightmare, our worst, our our biggest fear, and mine was of being in a room and speaking about the things I've studied and learned and researched, and having people with a higher level of degree or education than I have dismissing everything I said because I didn't go to Harvard. And so they basically, you're you're giving your speech and they act it out in front of you to teach you how to regulate your nervous system while you're being attacked, um, speaking. And it was a really powerful exercise. It was very activating for me, and it was extra hard because the people I loved. We just spent these like weeks together um learning and and we were had like we were so close, and then to watch them all attack me, I was like, it brought something deep and visceral up for me, but it was also very healing because I learned that I would survive and I learned how to navigate it and then forgive them all because I knew they were just actors playing a role in my life to help me be stronger. So let's see what happens when you're little and you have a lot of repetitive bullying, and this could be from a parent, this could be from online, this could be from um your siblings, it could be, you know, there's so many places bullying comes from. Um, it's bullying is repeated behavior, it's a power imbalance. One person feels unsafe, there is no repair, there is no resolution, and there's no escape. Now, when this happens, the body literally registers that it's not safe, the world is not safe, their body's not safe, I'm not safe, I have no power. This is where everything changes because the body doesn't care what you call it, it tracks safety, power imbalance, repetition, and resolution. And healthy conflict, there's activation, expression, repair, and calm. And bullying, there's activation, fear, no repair, repeat. So the system adapts into freeze, which is shutting down. So you've seen we saw this polar bear video when I was studying with uh Peter Levine's Semitic Experiencing, um, where the polar bear was neutralized with the tranquilizer, and it literally went into all states of this nervous system where it was first it f fought and then it ran. And then once the um tranquilizer, there was like this, oh my god, I'm gonna like freeze, and to watch it freeze wide awake, it was actually quite activating for me because I was like, that's basically what I go through on a daily basis. Um, when I was really at the height of processing through some complex PTST. Um, when we're looking at the bullying, we're adapting, we're freezing, we're shutting down. So, you know, your body literally will freeze to protect itself. And then you might start placating your people pleasing, which means I'll do anything to get you to stop bullying me and just freaking like me because I need to belong here. This is my family, I need to belong, which means I'll give up all of my self-respect or rights or worth just to get you to stop hurting me. These decisions are made by a child who didn't have other strategies. I want to repeat that they were made by a child who did not have other strategies. So it's important because what happens is this person grows up with hypervigilance, scanning constantly for danger or for everything, patterns and shame loops. It must be me. So then we also take responsibility for everything because we think everything is our fault. And you know, a lot of verbal abuse embeds this in your mind. So when we're looking at the sibling dynamic in dysfunctional homes, kids organize into roles. One becomes the target, that's who I was, and one becomes the protector through aggressive behavior. And I remember never knowing when I was gonna get a smack down from her. I mean, I remember one day running from her because she stole my wallet and she literally chucked it at the back of my head, and I flew forward and I was crying and it hurt. Like I remember the sting of it, and it hurt so bad. And I walked inside and my stepdad just laughed and he was like, Well, what'd you do to deserve it? And the answer was nothing. She stole my wallet. I asked for it back, and it was painful on all levels, right? Which meant I also nobody would ever come to help me. So I also learned control that I was the only one who could help myself because there was nobody around who would help me. That's a dangerous lesson to learn at six. I'm just saying, because then you become over-controlling, you're criticized for it, and then you go to like learn how to use your intuition, and you have such high control factors. The universe is like, we gotta work through this control issue that you have. And I'm like, Yeah, but did you see where I learned it? What am I supposed to do? We'll talk about that later. Um, so sometimes literally the most dangerous bully, and this is this is also true, is not the one who's the overt bully, it's the passive aggressive one. They tend to hide behind victimhood, they manipulate your perception of reality and they avoid accountability at all cost. So they don't look like the obvious villain because they're not the ones with the bruise, but they might be the one who's picking, picking, picking, picking, picking, picking until the other one explodes on them. Now that's dangerous because they already know the other person's triggers and they're trying to keep themselves in the victim role. You'll see these people creating victim consciousness everywhere they go. That is still bullying. It is bullying. To trigger someone, either on purpose or unconsciously, to hurt you is also bullying. I need you to understand that they create just as much harm because now the other person is in this cycle of abuse with them that maybe they didn't even sign up for, but they haven't yet learned how to regulate their own nervous system. This isn't about blaming or any of this. I just need you to have awareness of it. So if you were the receiver, your body learned safety comes from managing other people. And you'll see the a whole bunch of these people in Al Anon. And, you know, they tolerate mistreatment, they wait for apologies, they seek closure from the person who hurt them. And this was the conversation I was having with a client yesterday, um, because we were talking about sibling dynamics, and her sister was dead set on getting closure from her, apologizing, and she did, but for things they did that when they were a kid, but like there's no closure here. It's it's not gonna close. You have to close it yourself. If you expect the same system that hurts you to take accountability and responsibility for healing you, you are still handing your power away. If you wait for the same system that hurts you to create healing for you, you are still handing your power away. It is very important that you understand that because they're not going to. The only one who can close the loop is you. I remember this one um coach said, You didn't create it, but you're the one responsible for healing it. And that was really powerful because I think there was a big part of my life where I wanted validation for the things that happened to me in my life, and I wanted someone to take responsibility and to acknowledge it. And that caused me more powerlessness and anger than just about anything I've ever experienced in my life. And letting that go was the most self-empowering thing I have ever done. And that required me to do a lot of forgiveness meditation, do a lot of inner work, and taking full responsibility for where I'm at in life. That was the only way I could move forward. And I've had some crap happen, but that was the only way I could move forward. And I have a system of tools that I use to do that. I have like a oponopono, which is the Hawaiian prayer of forgiveness. That to me was probably the most powerful one that in the beginning of my journey helped me the most. And I would have it on in the background all of the time just to ease the old pain. And then there's this other meditation, and I have one on my YouTube, I can put a link below. It's the morning miracles meditation, and it does take you into forgiveness with someone that's either consciously or unconsciously draining your battery. And I just did it this morning, and you know, it was an old tenant of mine. And as soon as I got done with the meditation, I realized that he was just the last bully that I allowed in my life to lie to me. And, you know, in the meditation, it also pulls up all of the other people who might be energetically corded in through that same um energy system. And I immediately felt better when I got up. And um, it was funny because I went and dumped my coffee pot water all over the floor. And not me in the past, but me over the last kind of five years, once I got into that I just want to hide mentality. Um, I literally dumped the whole coffee pot water all over the floor. And it was the first time I I like really laughed about doing something so stupid instead of saying, like, why does this always happen to me? You know, it was like, oh my gosh, you should wear your glasses when you're making coffee tough. And I just laughed and I was like, all right, this is I guess I'm gonna mop the floor while we're doing it. I guess the universe was like, hey, maybe you should do a little cleaning today. So like, which is my natural way of being. I've never been the type of person who was like, why is this happening to me? I have always been, how is this happening for me or through me? And it would, it was a weird place the last five years of my life to live in a place of not having that access to that, and a horrible feeling because that's my natural state. And looking at the world through a victim consciousness was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to come out of because I was unprepared for it. And it's not my natural state. So it felt so good, actually, funny enough, to spill all the coffee water all over the floor and laugh about it and be like, I guess this is the universe, like this is how I'm gonna clean today. This is good. Um, and then oh, how can I turn this into a funny story for my podcast? So here's my here's my guide for you. If you're struggling to get over a bully in your life, or if you know, even you, if you were a bully, because you who who cares? Let's all do a bunch of forgiveness, okay? Because many of us grew up in a time in life when we had one parent at home, or we had parents recovering from some pretty big stuff that they didn't have the tools and strategies, so they made a lot of bad decisions in a world that was changing very quickly. You know, the the 70s we had commercials that were interfering with our decisions. And, you know, we can talk about that at a later time, but we had new things that people didn't know what to do with or how they were going to impact the future. And I was watching this comedian last night, and he said he was at the he was a millennial, so he was born at the time where the internet was just coming online and you had to wait like a really long time for pictures to load. And I was laughing because I was like, Oh, I remember that. Like it was like patience, and now you can have anything in the click, like one second, and you can have access to any kind of information that you want, including lies, including lies, a lot of lies. And how do we know what's true or what's not true? And it was like this really great thing, but he's the one who talked about the um documentary that I went and watched. And it was just interesting to see these influencers with so much power and influence over people. And it scared me a little. And it reminded me that we all have a voice in what happens in the future of the world. Now, we're either gonna use our voice to be the light in the dark, or we're gonna hide and wait for it to be over. And it was funny because after I got out of the session with my client, my phone changed, and it was this Tony Robbins saying that we did at uh UPW, which was I will lead, not follow. And I've really been struggling to uh heal my brain and to find my voice and to do the branding stuff that I'm supposed to be doing, and it has been really hard for me because I just have this real, really strong need to feel invisible right now. Um, and you know, it it is something that I've been working through, and that's why the low back pain last night made me look at the physiology of it, but then also where have you been holding your head down so that you don't have to see anything that's happening around you so that you can still feel safe because you're still afraid of bullies. And this client of mine, as we were talking, she said that her sister was waiting for closure from her. And I said, that's funny because closure doesn't come from the person who created the wound, closure comes from you. And the more you learn that your closure is yours to create, the less people can take your power away in any situation. And some of the most painful experiences in my life have been the most powerful teachers and moments of transformation. The problem is we don't teach people how to do that. We don't teach people how to take responsibility for the outcome of what happened so that they can make it some something meaningful. And I remember after the worst part of it, I just kept thinking, I'm gonna turn all of this into my purpose, and that's gonna fuel me to get through this. And and it did. It made me get up every day and do the inner work and keep doing the work. And, you know, sometimes the tools need to change based on where you're at on your journey. And I think that's where, you know, having a guide, having someone help you who can see from the outside uh is very helpful because you do need to understand which tools to use at the right time. So forgiveness, that's number one. And it's for you, not them. There's a really cool like daily forgiveness meditation that you can do by Dr. Matt James. Uh, it's on YouTube. I'll post some links in the show notes. And then also, you know, I have my morning miracles meditation that includes forgiveness. But first we fill ourselves up with love and then we forgive others. And don't force yourself to forgive someone yet. And you know, if you don't want to, that's fine. But if it's impacting your life and draining your energy, you need to move on. And the only one who's going to create that closure for you is you. So, and that's just the truth of it. Um, so we can also use the superconscious recode. That's my favorite, because it'll just go close a lot of those energetic loops up without you needing to go unpack the original event. Uh, and oh, we also learned this really powerful tool where we walk someone through going back and looking for the original event. And it's called a massive change history. And it is a somatic experience. So we put in a new anchor that you you know you go sit with the version of you who created the pattern because we're only looking for patterns that are stopping you from moving forward. I'm not the type of coach that goes in and looks for patterns that aren't impacting you. Um, we only look for the block. So if you want to make more money and you have a fear of visibility, and visibility is the part that's gonna get you to move forward, we look for the core wound this time or a past lifetime, and we just clear it and install a more empowering belief. And that's uh the massive change history. Um, and sometimes, you know, it's it's an identity level issue where you're not actually aligned with that. Like you don't really care about wealth. Maybe you just care about passion and your mission on planet Earth, but you'd also like to have money, then we have to go and say, okay, well, let's prioritize the mission and let money follow. Um, which can also be true. And, you know, there's just all kinds of different tools and strategies that help: hypnosis, NLP, superconscious recode, SRT therapy, uh, energy healing, physical somatic body work, uh, all of these things help to create a better experience of life than you're having right now. And they're all great tools at the right time. So I say most of the time it's a matter of learning how to regulate your nervous system. You can do that through breath, tapping, uh, movement, uh, get anything to get you out of freeze mode. And the other one, then, you know, then we're looking at the mind. How do you witness your thoughts as separate from you and then decide how you want to move forward? And that's a lot of mindset work where you're witnessing, you can use the model. Brooke Castillo has a whole podcast on it, the super or um, the life coach whole podcast changed my life. And um understanding your frame of reality, and that's where the Enneagram comes in because it gives you a user manual to your mind. And I think that this is probably the most imperative tool that everyone needs to learn. Because as soon as I had my son take the test recently, he's a five. And I'm like, oh my God, that explains everything. I totally understand you now. Now I know how to work with you better so that we have a beautiful relationship. Because that's my priority with my kids is to have a beautiful relationship. And that looks like me not forcing my perspective on them, but by witnessing the world through their perspective and guiding them on their journey. So I have very different definitions of parenthood than most people do. So what um, so Enneagram, understanding your world, emotional regulation. Your emotions are not always real. They are impacted by your diet, they're impacted by your environment, they're impacted by your hormones, they're impacted by your energy. Are you picking other people's stuff up like a giant sponge with no way of releasing it? Um, your emotions will fluctuate constantly, depending on many different factors. So, emotions, yes, we need to witness them, process them, but we do not have to see them as always real. I know when I used to have my period and I had PMS, what I thought was real would shift as soon as it was over. And then I'd have to backtrack and go, what the heck just happened to my mind? That doesn't feel like it was me at all. And that's why I say our emotions lie because I have a lot of evidence that my blood sugar levels, if they're off, I will see the world differently. Um, if I'm feeling very activated by someone, my mood will shift. They shift. Uh I think the emotion chemical lasts 90 seconds. The thoughts that feed the emotion will either make it shift or it will make it stay. So, and then the other thing is is spiritual healing. Do we have soul contracts with these people? That our soul was like, hey, that sounds like a good lesson I would like to learn. How do I make sure that I learn how to process bullying so that I can help others later in life? Who knows why our souls create these weird contracts for us? Um, you know, it but we can clear them. And that's where, you know, spiritual healing work, superconscious recode, um, anything that's working with, you know, past lives without needing to go in and see what they are. We can just clear the energy from them, other timelines, things like that. Those loops can just be closed without needing to go in and explore it. Unless you like to have a girl in our tribe who just loves to go look at past lives, and I'm like, I'm fine with this. We can go there. Um, but just don't get stuck there. Still decide on what you want and then choose different. So, one of the exercises that I really love. Is imagine that you're in a white room and that you have no past, and there's a door in front of you that just says possibility. We have the ability to make new choices from our future all of the time. And then there was this other statement I found in one of my old journals last night, and I don't remember where I got this from or who taught it, but it just felt like it resonated with this episode. And it just says, you know, you can put your hand on your heart and say, I acknowledge that through the power of my commitment of conscious and unconscious, I have created my life the way it is now. I now choose to use this power to create my life the way I consciously choose it to be. Breathe that in. Say it slow. Hand on your heart. That's how you take your power back. Have a great day, my friends.