0:00 yeah oh wait a minute okay yeah it's connecting okay uh and we are gonna record good afternoon everyone and welcome to the way to wow bounce back if you were with us last week you had a chance to hear me interviewing my lovely husband rabbi j siegel and his journey in sobriety and finding his place in judaism as a rabbi if you missed it you can still see the recording on the
0:36 youtube channel subscribe to the way to wow well today we have a very special guest and i feel honored to have mike skipnick with us all the way from calgary alberta and we're out in california i want to also take a quick moment and thank our producer rabbi kevin bemel for making this possible and taking care of all the technical stuff for us and today we're going to get to hear a powerful story a journey of a man who for years didn't have a voice suppressed things that were traumatic and his journey in finding not just a
1:12 way of survival but a way of thriving and a way of giving back making a difference now mike is now a keynote speaker he's a host of a podcast he's an eight-time international bestseller he's actually almost done with his ninth book and i'm so excited for you to hear his personal story there's so much to unpack here so much to learn i would say if you're a man in this world feeling like you need some guidance you don't want to miss this and women you need to hear this too because if you have a man in your life
1:47 how much more love and support can you give when you hear this man's story so i am going to start with welcoming you mike thank you for taking time to come onto this show i know that you travel and many people fly you out to speak and you're a coach to many people you you have a background in finance which is so cool because that's my world right now but why don't we start with you sharing a little bit about some of the early challenges you faced take us back as far as you want you know this is this is your story and your story matters so some of the challenges
2:23 you faced in and how you um realize you need to take a closer look at it in a different way yeah i really appreciate it i appreciate having the opportunity to share i've enjoyed our interactions thus far and what better than just go live and talk about it right um for me i don't know how maybe we'll go back further maybe we'll just start where you know i had a point of crisis i think that you know i think anyone who would want to raise their hands and and really agree that the pandemic was hard uh two years
2:58 um and in a lot of cases for people they managed to somehow navigate and some had the best uh years of their lives and for some you know like me i my business basically evaporated i was speaking and doing workshops that disappears pretty quickly and then you spend a whole pile of time trying to navigate the waters and you know i don't know about an old dog but this whole dog had a little bit of trouble in the digital tricks world and figuring out and reinventing and then in a landscaping industry that was constantly changing every couple of
3:34 months you know combine that frustration with boy this was really working i can't figure this out with the isolation and the life and zoom and everything that comes with it and then starts to create this lack of predictability of your business all led to kind of the moment last september so what have been 18 months in to the pandemic that um that was just one of those moments where i've had plenty in the past where a business thing just kind of didn't work out you're like this is we're going
4:09 different directions and it's not what we thought it was going to be and i can i've always been able to move on and clearly the pressure of all of the past year and a half at that point you know took me down uh you know and and i took it hard or whatever it was i spiraled quickly deeply into a dark depression and it was astonishing to me how deep and i felt hopeless i felt worthless i didn't have a clue what the future held and for one moment in my life i felt my
4:44 troubles were so insurmountable that suicide would be the number one way to escape and give my family here's the terrible way of thinking my family would be better off and for me that seemed real and a real possibility and clearly that was not a result and i i did not end up throwing myself into the raging river that i kept walking by every day thinking that that might be an idea and within 10 days i finally reached out for help 10 of the darkest days of my entire life quite frankly from a mental health standpoint i
5:20 i don't know how i got there and i don't know i didn't know how to get out i reached out to a professional i knew and she threw me the lifeline she said yes i'll i'm available we'll talk immediately and from that moment i kind of clawed back you know up the shores of the bank if you will and uh you know to a pathway to healing and so that was kind of the moment for me that just culminated i don't know years of frustration or not fitting but there's so much more to it and i know we're going to get into it but that was the moment for me that
5:55 shifted everything thank you for sharing that that's not an easy thing to say out loud especially in this setting what was it like for the people around you before you reached out for help in those 10 days your darkest days tell us more if you can if you recall or maybe you don't because you were really in a dark place alone feeling alone what was it like for your wife i know you're a dad were they aware of how much and how close you were to taking your life well we're a real close family
6:30 um and our son had just gone back from he's a downhill mountain bike racer he got back from world cup and was starting his last semester of school and so he was occupied with all kinds of emotion our daughter was trying to find her way in in her film industry business and and my wife um we actually we don't live in calgary alberta right now that's where i'm from oh i apologize it's quite a advertising we relocated to squamish british columbia four years ago that's quite all right it's between vancouver and whistler yes
7:05 and my wife yeah and my wife works at the lululemon she picked up a role there and she just loves the culture and it's a it's a terrible commute in bad weather um and absolutely glorious otherwise and and so she would leave every day seeing and they all saw me in this moment of you know darkness that they had never witnessed they have never seen me in this state and they she literally wondered each day as she drove home makes me a little emotional but she wondered if if i would be there um and they all wondered and you know they
7:41 won't they know i needed to get out and do a walk and be out of the house but they were all frightened or concerned that i may not come back and you know that that i didn't know that at the time i didn't know that that was their thinking um but as the healing started to begin you know those disclosures happened and you know even now it's just so hard to to imagine that that's what my wife you know and she's trying to be the support person um she didn't understand the gravity of my circumstances at the moment and what you
8:16 know our financial situation everything what it all meant um but she was just slugging it out trying to you know do well for our family and be there to support and you know she's coming home thinking i wouldn't wouldn't be alive when she got there so i can't even imagine for for as an entire family everyone's experiencing it and viewing it through their lenses and their experiences um is unique but you're the one in the middle of it all and i'm sure that also brought guilt with it like i'm feeling all these things but i'm also feeling guilty that i'm feeling all these things because
8:51 everyone's relying on me and they love you so much and that's where i think that thought will enter your mind they're better off without me because you feel bad that this is the man that they're that they have right now but you found hope you found and you you did some self-discovery share with us what you can about what you learned yeah i will and you know i did some great insurance planning a long time ago so the logic was really like they'd really be better off uh but not really i'm in that world so i completely understand
9:27 that yeah there is no um there was no way i could do it number one my i can't i could have forced my family into that dealing with that for their they didn't need a life reset i was going through one they didn't need it right they didn't need their lives in upheaval and uh and the other worry i had was what if i survived that would really suck you know you know the trauma i had the pain like ugh cause you had a plan i couldn't have lived with myself if i survived trying to kill myself go figure right all right so i get that you mentioned you had a thought about jumping in the river is that was that
10:03 yeah we were having big storms and rain and the river was just raging and it looked unsurvivable you know um i stepped out of that moment after i reached for that lifeline and just a beautiful woman who is part of my life who is a professional and a psychologist a a phd she really just extended that and it brought me on a journey and so the next journey was find a professional who did post-traumatic stress treatment and there's a reason for this and i found a fellow who's local who really
10:39 really is an expert and the reason i had that as my next step was because i had to deal with you know one of the things about the the pandemic was every few months you were like how did i get myself in the situation why did it change why am i repeating and everything was amplified but that was my life there were five year three year 10-year windows where i would rise in success and then suddenly somehow find myself limited and it felt like those patterns just kept playing out i couldn't put my finger on i have no idea what this all
11:14 meant but the pattern over and over again just like why is the person i just started working with why are they uh a crook or why do they do something wrong or why am i in a transition like what is going on here and i had to look at what causes the patterns and you know i i said well there's only one thing that's on my mind every single day and that is trauma that i experienced as a child and the trauma i experienced as a child is i was sexually abused by a pillar of the community at 11 years old and it was a couple of incidents and you
11:51 know we curtailed it right away but no one knew why i never interacted anymore in that way but um what i learn and the patterns that get set and so abuse happens we break our legs too and that's kind of this physical abuse so i'm not going to equate the actual abuse with anything other than it set a pattern and what it does to a child's brain when you're traumatized at a young age is it hardwires your neural pathways to avoid the problem ever again and and never and protect yourself and so at 11 i learned that the best
12:26 possible man in the comp in the community's perception was the person i could trust the least wow whoa and so that gets wired in right so every action i take for the rest of my life until that changes was to prevent myself from being close to men who are good or at least perceptively good so what i end up doing is bringing in flawed men that i could visually see their flaws in business because it was safe because i could see it like there's the problem i i can navigate this world
13:01 and the reality was of course a deep a flawed person who shows you their stripes is usually deeply flawed right and so i had i had always a surprise at the end of that road you know and so that created this cycle of business from and one thing that i'd have to say is i have a wonderful mother wonderful sister and i always had incredible women in my life and so on the relationship side that's where my love was that's where my safety was and that's where my security was so going back to my wife and our relationship was always a safe place so
13:37 my biggest challenge was in my working my professional side and the truth is is no one could tell there's not one person on the outside who would go ah there's something going on because i by all means i had a success i was rising every time um there were some coincidental weird things that go on in business over time i was in the investment markets so you kind of live and die by sometimes the market cycle so no one thought anything different they didn't think it was something i was doing and i didn't think it was something i was doing i just thought it was external
14:13 but now going through this journey i i figured it out and so the key was is how do i never repeat that moment again in life that brought me into the darkness and how do i fix the thing that causes the problem in the first place and so that's what i got to work on and i started to work with a therapist who does emdr before we get to that because i that's a really hot topic can i ask you a question about the workplace and something you mentioned um you you mentioned that any man that was perceived to be the best
14:51 by most people who was the good guy for most people to you that was the unsafe territory how did that affect any business that you were in and was that something that he as an individual was able to tell that you felt unsafe with him or that there was tension or conflict or you carried it all did it play outward so as a teenager from the moment of abuse to 19 years old i blocked it all out so i didn't even remember that that had
15:26 happened so what i saw with music teachers with coaches in sport with teachers in general is if they weren't women the good men i always had conflict when i should have been the mvp i wasn't when i should have been selected as the captain i wasn't and the reason is is there was something and it was my the energy that i had that protected myself from engaging and being engaged by good men who i perceived to be dangerous that had ulterior motives in business then i became more conscious
16:01 around 19. i actually tragically went to a counselor to ask for help and they said well we can't do anything about the man that abused you it's too long ago and uh by the way you know good luck with that so i just happened to you yeah me too me too um so i set off going i guess i gotta deal with this it's almost like it happened again when someone does that to you it's like it just happened fresh yeah and i didn't even feel the rejection i felt sad that i couldn't take the man off the street because there's so much guilt that i had lived with that you know this man went on to
16:37 abuse a lot more boys than me and so there there was a lot of guilt in that but the the real tragedy was that i thought i could solve it myself and i just went on doing it and and i was always driving forward and i had some really great successes in you know at a university and in my businesses and so it always felt like i had a handle on it and then it was the men that i chose to work with i was attracted to hard-driving men who were absolutely amazing exciting entrepreneurs thinking outside the box
17:13 but with flaws and often with flaws that everyone else in the marketplace knew and would say and i go no you don't know them they're good and and then i would see them you know the red flags start coming up and i'm like i can mitigate it i'm a smart guy i'm i'm nimble i got this and i didn't have it and so every few years the um their faults would ultimately lead to my demise because i was so close there was shrapnel flying everywhere right and and eventually what happened by 2010 when i finally made a huge shift in my business in a good way
17:49 um i just stopped working with men all together that i didn't pay as my coaches or mentors so i just i just stopped choosing to do business with bad men um or men in general i just thought okay well that's safe i'll just go alone alone is a nice way to become very isolated very isolated and we need others yeah speaking of needing others and that we can't do any of the real work alone tell me your journey to finding emdr and deciding that that's what you're going to try because there's so many different types
18:26 of therapies of healing patterns [Music] it's interesting when when you shared with me about that we're going to talk about what emdr is but it's no coincidence that i myself just got introduced to it to heal from some of my own past traumas and i had literally just committed to it and then i get the email and i read that you that that saved your life and i was blown away yeah and so share with us first let's
19:01 tell the audience what is amdr how did you decide yes i'll try that and then of course we want to hear how it saved you okay so i i experimented my gateway experiment uh was a number of years earlier um i was in a frustrated part of my life clearly all of the other stuff was the reason it was about injustice and so on the roads it just seemed the more i was driving the more people were doing things that they shouldn't to me and i all felt personal and so i was just going bonkers i just wanted to kill
19:36 people on the road like i just and i was losing my stuff and so i saw help from this person lady that i reached out to first and she did emdr with me she introduced it she goes i know i think i think i can get this you know i can help you and it's eye movement desensitization and reprocessing that's what emdr stands for and it's really a bilateral stimulation that occurs while going through a psychoanalysis or a therapy session and diana brought me through this uh one session um which you know i'll admit it was
20:12 weird i think it's weird i think the whole thing i'm watching you know it was just weird but it worked instantly the the cause of why i felt the injustice the the causal parts the part that create anxiety and anger and the emotion completely disappeared and so now i could use the skills and the tools and the strategies that you deal with you know thinking negative or bad thoughts you go okay this is where i'm gonna put it this is the technique dessert right so now i
20:48 didn't have the anger and the anger just clouds all your good judgment right and and so i got rid of that and i was able to process it say it worked like what are we talking about one session 10 sessions well for that instant it was it was instant it was one session wow and so fast forward to this experience and going through so i knew i needed some kind of trauma help and emdr was definitely there and one of my clients that i helped write a book had experienced incredible uh trauma in his life and he um was a
21:24 helicopter pilot so he crashed in a helicopter and lived and he was one of the handful of few people who lived while a few of his friends died back in 1992 it was just in a snowboarding um thing on the top of a mountain and and he it was a pilot himself you know and and he was starting to panic at a hundred feet above the ground just before he was landing his helicopter he would flip out and that's not really helpful in trying to land planes or helicopters and so he told me that he had saw he'd sought help from an emdr specialist and he was
22:00 just cured it just like it worked like crazy and he was an advocate and so that conversation combined with my experience led me to seek out someone locally who i just had a hunch might be the same guy i don't even think they are actually the same therapist and he struck a chord with me in his approach and our first conversation early in october was magical it was we did a little therapy right there and then and we did a little discussing and that was the moment that i said okay it's time to bring my secret from where it was in the recesses of
22:35 mine to everybody my wife was the only person who knew pretty much at that point and so it was time to tell my family tell everybody around me and then we had about eight weeks between our next sessions because i just financially had to figure it out he's not an inexpensive investment but an investment worth it and and really it was the fact that he was and i could have gone to my my friend right but i needed a man who was good who was helpful i needed that as much as i needed the treatment
23:10 and and i really recently i've given a talk about the tools and the craftsmen or the people who use them and the right combination a 25 year old woman out of college who applied to emdr would not have had the same impact as a you know a parent a man in his late 30s early 40s who did it at the same time so he as a craftsman was just as good combined with therapy yeah and i think it's no accident that it had to be a man because you're feeling from trauma that has to do with a man and now you're
23:45 building a beautiful experience and trust with a man who's good at his craft like it it is designed that way for you to have that healing process you know if it were the other way around then you had trauma with women one could argue yeah an emdr through a woman would be an incredible thing for you to experience that's why i'm so impressed with your openness and it's magical that that happened and it's like it comes full circle i feel yeah it it is like there wasn't a
24:20 single day from the moment i went into my depression in september until you know just outside of the last treatment i had um in december where i didn't cry like you know i i cried in at some point in a day every day for two and a half months um the the the last crying and now i cry a little differently but i'm really actually really like on an edge of crying all the time but in a good way now finally um it's amazing that we went through intense two-hour sessions for two weeks
24:56 straight and normally he would do it in a weekend it just didn't work through zoom and our scheduling wait two weeks straight meaning every day for two weeks every weekday for two weeks i was spent two hours going through that's 20 hours very intense intense incorrect that's correct incredible and by midway through i felt the again instantaneous i call it a miracle um a miraculous shift it was you know in movies i don't know all these avenger movies and stuff where the ground shakes
25:31 and then the the video gets fuzzy yeah and then it's still people nothing changes but everything changed that's precisely how it felt for me in that there was this moment where i went i i realized that my life was now different and not only that it was dif it was the way it should have been for 40 years and never was all the limitations that were created because of these patterns all the personal um emotional definitions i had of my life with shame and guilt worthlessness and hopelessness that i hid
26:06 secrets i mean there wasn't a day from the time i was 19 until you know today that i didn't think of being sexually abused it wasn't a day that went by i think it's if someone was had someone loved one die there's not a day that goes by you don't think of the loved one for me there wasn't a day i didn't get reminded and in the last decade there's so many media reminders of this going on especially with women you know and you know between priests and gymnastics coaches and you name it um the key for me is emdr took away the emotion
26:43 the the anxiety the absolute angst that came with all the emotions that were connected to that and i was able to think about it in a different way and i was able to see the possibilities in a different way and what really was amazing and i think i explained this to you before leia um is i was talking about part like we got we got kind of what do we get um uh really nerdy uh real genius style nerdy uh on uh quantum physics the other yes yes and and i think of it in that way though and and what i really try to explain it
27:19 is for my life for 40 years i was smashing particles together thinking that what mattered was the matter the physical stuff the uh at an at a subatomic level that's not what matters that's that's what keeps people away that keeps particles away from you so you just butt up right how you get people in your life how you open up opportunities is connecting in the space between which is the most of it anyways we're more space than anything not particles and emdr and the removal of all of that
27:55 br the neural pathway patterns and emotions opened up the space and so ever since you know early december i've been operating at a different level i've been operating in this place where space interacts where people immediately reach out to me out of the blue because they need to share something need to talk to me um the people i connect with on immediately after never having met them we go deep right away and all conversations now are meaningful you can always step back and talk about the weather but going deep i think is
28:31 and hey you know i'm 52 in a week and i don't have time to waste uh i i want to make some precious hay while the time is good and you know i don't have time to waste on anything that's not meaningful so going there all the time with incredible good men and that's been an absolute joy for me you know mike we're going to pivot in a minute or two to what you're doing with your newfound self because you're giving back in such an incredible way but i have to go back a minute when you said out of the blue i'll get a call i i
29:07 don't think it was so out of the blue i think everything is designed in such a miraculous way we could say the same about how you and i connected through kevin out of the blue i told him i had a cancellation a friend of mine couldn't make it to today's show you and i were going to meet yesterday anyway to have you come to a show down the road and then out of the blue i read your bio and i am blown away because you came into my life at the right time you know you're providing hope for men all day long you
29:42 probably have no idea that the person who's going to be interviewing you needed to hear your message for herself you know there's so much out there that we don't know what people struggle with and the painful things that they're trying to heal from and you know i'm a major component of you know therapy investing in yourself and seeking professional help when needed and you know i've been through a divorce and i've been through a lot of things but there's always new content that needs to be worked on and unpacked and looked at and to be the best self in this moment and when i hear your story i
30:17 think hope because a lot of us do feel like well that i'll always just have that problem or that's just who i am and then you know take it or leave it people that's my trigger that's my thing but what if it doesn't have to stay that way you know and part of the emdr i'm learning is you know trying to get like we're on a scale of zero to seven zero being you're not really triggered and seven being it's intense like if you're at a seven we try and get down to a zero so we're not emotionally charged by that same whatever it is you're working on right to know that you were able to
30:52 get to that zero level and i'm not sure if you did that type of therapy that i'm referring to but i can't imagine that that's a real thing because sometimes it's so ingrained and so heavy but you provide hope it's not just for men just so you know there are women who are going to be inspired to seek help if they're feeling that type of you know despair to the point of that darkness someone going through their 10 days right if if ever it leads to that but it's just remarkable that now you can turn around you're you're helping the
31:27 world at large seriously you know your life stream you are um doing podcasts you're writing books you're speaking you're being flown out to to share your wisdom i know that you created a couple things that we want to share with the world one of them is this you're launching the unlimited worth project can you tell us a little bit about that or a lot i do and i love something from something you said you know highlighting the out of the blue i know i know that being open to the universe having my energy attract the space in between
32:04 um everybody who's open will be will connect right when i say out of the blue is for 40 years that would never have happened right not in that way and and not that it isn't absolutely profoundly correct that it's not really accidental uh however uh the 40 years there was always a limit but what about you know and those and i live with that limit knowing that i was never at my full potential um never being able to work with people
32:39 who couldn't quite put their finger on why they didn't work with me or why we didn't reach that new level of success so oh you know fast forward to where i am on the other side of treatment and that is the fear the biggest fear was revealing my secret and you know that i would look at people square in the eye and i'm thinking to myself but you don't know my story and what i was worried about is my mom would not would learn that she couldn't protect me well of course she couldn't protect me she didn't know she didn't throw me in the hands of a lion she just loved me and hoped she was doing the
33:14 right thing for me um my wife didn't know better she just thought i was okay you know so no one no one did anything to me um i wasn't guilty or responsible for the actions of a person after the fact and so once i was able to relieve myself of all that burden all of that guilt all that shame and walk through the door and step over that you know the oath of silence i took to never tell my story i mean i would have been perfectly happy never to talk about it in my life like i really would have
33:50 but on the other side um that was the only thing that i should have done from the very minute i realized i i had had that um i should have dealt with it and i should have been persistent and someone else should have said you gotta go get some help you know and so i'm i'm fairly militant right now about a man who says yeah that was the thing but i think i've got it you don't have it you've never fixed it you won't fix it by yourself a professional is required and you know that's the mission i'm on right now because i know the other side of the door is brilliant and it's not brilliant you know at some time it's not
34:26 some kind of long healing journey there's stuff that still needs to be worked out but it's immediate you get your secret out you share break your silence step into the light open the door on the other side after treatment and you're instantly better your life is not going to improve overnight because there's stuff right but your life mentally and where you fit in this world will improve immediately it's it's just i was nev i always was pretty proud of myself for engaging people drawing out
35:03 personal information from them you know to get them to share and so i can learn about them right and i can help them because that's always been my role is to serve yet i was really good at pretending that i was sharing everything i didn't do it consciously but i know that i never gave everybody everything and and now i don't have to give everybody that secret of abuse but there's nothing nothing worth hiding like we all have our misgivings in life and those are always secrets worth keeping but that's the core secret is
35:38 i was damaged and i had a pattern set that dictated my life and i didn't have any control i didn't have free will i didn't have free will my brain was wired a certain way to behave a certain way to protect that child and unfortunately that protection is not congruent with regular normal people and so i finally realized what it's like to not have had trauma you know and and so for me you know i view it rather normalized like there's it's a sensational story it
36:14 was the worst place i've ever been there's incredible highs too that are now coming but the real story is it's as a matter of fact a man who looks successful one in six of those people is not doing well right one in six is sexual abuse let alone all kinds of other traumas right right so we've got a man who looks good they're looking like they're successful and they're dying inside every day it takes 24 years for a man to reveal their abuse okay so you're walking around with 30 to
36:49 40 year olds who are on the rise and some of those people are suffering and i don't want those people to suffer till they're 50. i don't want to you know there's it just kills you it just eats you alive and it and it will bring everybody with them with you right yeah and so i'm on a mission right now to to tell the world and i guess the simple goal is how do i affect a million men and their families you know that's you know i know something i know what the other side of the door looks like how do i do how do i tell everyone so i started interviewing men who are good men who
37:24 have healed and had therapy this is not i don't interview the men that are in i'm not a therapist so that's not my job but my role is to get what is really good about that experience out of men who've gone through it and i interview them and i'm i'm building the book and and so over the last few months i've been doing that and sort of you know a book is going to reach a ton of people that's a good way to get a word out um a podcast then i can reach are you interviewing them on the podcast is that where is that the platform yeah unlimited worth will be interviewing
38:00 men who have gone through both sides they have to be healed well because i want to bring hope it's and it's a matter of fact like it's today you're bad tomorrow you're 100 better exponentially better and the every single man will attest to when they went through a healing journey they were better almost instantaneously life got better and even if their life sucked it sucked way less you know if everything is falling apart you're not gonna like immediate if you just lost your house in your car and they don't show up the next day but your attitude towards it and your
38:35 ability to quickly regain everything completely is there well how does one know that they actually healed because mike you're going to ask them a series of questions to find out if they're really good to for for your for the purpose of what you're trying to accomplish so is there a certain way that you know they're on the other side do they have to have gone through emdr or yes do they oh okay so simple childhood trauma must have gone through therapy and emdr this is really powerful i think we need to repeat what you said because there
39:10 could be people coming to i was one of those people i spend thousands of dollars a year on you know seeing a therapist two hours at a time right years uh i could say yeah i was healed right so how does one know that okay this is how we know you're you have you can't do it on your own zero secrets you went through emdr your life is out there on the wall you know to tell me what that looks like i want you to jump off rocks and you had a broken leg oh we just had a great part i think if you didn't see a doctor and have a
39:45 right so that's that's what that's so i asked somebody to jump off a rock's face with me under the ground 10 feet below and i know you have broken leg if you went to see a doctor and you have a cast and you had proper treatment six or eight weeks ago you're probably fine but if you didn't do all that your leg would snap right the same as with your brain and so i don't i'm not again i'm not a therapist and i will tell any man who hasn't had treatment go get it but i want to give them the hope and the clarity
40:20 that it really is no big deal because successful men who are really really good are talking in my interviews and will be talking on my podcast and are part of the book and part of my platform that they can attest to how good it is on the other side and how easy that everything you feared everything that defines you on the other side no longer does it's i talk about this in my book there are patterns right we are stuck in our patterns and then we get emotional because of
40:55 these patterns right we the shame and the guilt and all that is like how do we keep reliving it well i'm gonna get more guilty more shame more hopelessness and it just compounds when you're on the other side of it how do you know you're well is you don't have patterns that dictate your life anymore in a negative way number one not so freeing and the emotions aren't linked to anything yeah they're unconditional trust is heart that one of the hardest um you trust yourself and it doesn't matter what other people
41:30 if you're not on a life or death where someone's threatening your life you trust yourself whatever anyone else does they're going to do and they it may affect your life but it isn't going to affect you and so knowing that it just changes it changes how i operate every day doesn't mean i'm not concerned about the bills and where i'm going and you know how do people like me that's not the case i just i know that i'll be fine i know i'll be fine and i know i'm loved uh i never you know you worry that if you s if you share
42:06 if you share that story like if you bring that crap into the open people are gonna like think twice that's wrong people love you more and more powerful it's true a lot of people feel that there's blemished or they're scarred for life or if i share this what are they going to think about me will they ever look at me the same and no they won't look at you the same they'll probably admire you more for being so brave i mean you're inspiring men to take action and you know we live in a society where it's weak for men to cry it's weak for men to talk about feelings and now i
42:43 think we're getting a lot kinder and you know i don't say we like me i always and i love men who cry what i mean by that is they're in touch with what's going on right they're they're aware of their experiences and how it affects them vulnerability is attractive and women need that and like that and that's how you thrive in a relationship but the world was set up that men are tough and women are the dainty weaker ones and and it's in the movies it's in it's in the ads it's it's getting a little better but you know hollywood doesn't help that
43:18 where the the you know we cry to our husbands well husbands can cry to their wives you know we're allowed to complain about a bad day and it doesn't just mean that the women are fetching the so you're can i share can i share something with you please yeah and and you know i'm about to we're just lining up i want to speak on hundred stages over the next year because i think there's a thousand men 100 stages yeah i mean how else am i going to read them which million men i got i got to be out there so um any platform that can give me that reach i'm going for and so if i want stages um back out speaking there is no
43:55 way i'm not going to get emotional but i want to share the emotion that i was crying every day for two and a half months in a depressed mode not feeling i'm just tortured and i was getting better but i was still today i cry or i get emotional as i tell my story not because of the pain of my story not because of the old feelings that were all connected to everything but i tell the story and i get emotional when i hear it resonates i hear two things one is
44:32 i'm so sorry it happened to you and i appreciate the empathy that is one of those i feel loved and i can receive it and how i receive it is by being emotional because i know it touches the other thing is i have a secret too and when i s i know it my radar is pretty good now i'll tell you there's not an audience or a room i won't go into that i know that something's not going on because i've seen it i lived it and i'm conscious and aware now and and so that emotion if i'm in a room with a thousand people
45:07 and i see one person who connects with me and i go boy that person is living in their torment that's gonna make me cry so i'm gonna have a hundred stage cries probably which is fine you know what you're doing for yourself that's such a gift this image came to me mike as an 11 year old boy who not only didn't allow himself to acknowledge what happened couldn't have someone give him that empathy of i'm sorry that happened to you that was not on anyone's radar because it was a secret
45:42 you are giving yourself the gift of what that 11 year old boy did not have and i was surrounded by a family who just absolutely like was just overflowing in that ability they all could have given it to me from the very moment like that that's i i have a family now that is that way and when i revealed my secret and broke my silence my mom and my dad rose my my sister rose to the occasion they they were exactly
46:18 the people they always were that i never received because i didn't give it to them and then our kids like our 18 soon to be 18 and 20 year old 21 year old adult kids who've been living in pandemic life in our house together for a long time they rose to the occasion and said they've got i've got we've got your back and we love you we've got your back and we love you my wife said i've got your back be well and they rallied around and said the only thing you should focus on is being well and i was worried about getting work and
46:54 being accepted professionally and what am i going to do next and reinventing myself once again and all my family said we got your back you get well we'll take care of this and for the first time in my life i completely let go of the reins and allowed myself to heal and and that's pretty overwhelming it's a big deal i i feel so honored to hear this story from you not just reading it which i will but um [Music]
47:29 every tear that you shed need needs to come out it's part of since you're 11 years old every amount of support and love you get you deserve and it was owed to you and now you're now you're getting it at soon 52 years old and it's it's a great birthday gift to give yourself the the allowing and embracing the support the empathy not the pity it's a different kind of feeling it's validation
48:04 to you matter that should not have happened it's not okay and we love you and we're sorry you went through that and we're sorry you couldn't talk about it sooner it's your time but you see one of the things i do believe and that's just my belief is that when we go through things that are extremely painful and traumatic there's a time in which there's this kind of pivot to it's not about me now and it's about i can help the next person who's going through the same thing that the lessons i've learned
48:40 along the way i actually owe to the universe to to share and give back and and help the next person you're you're doing that in such an incredible way you know when i think about some of the things i've had to overcome when i think that i can help one person because i can say i've been there let me show you how to get through it it kind of made it worth it not that i want it to happen again but that that lesson alone brought me here to be able to be that pillar for somebody else do you feel similar to that is that something you've ever experienced i i do i you know i certainly feel that
49:16 i am well armed for this battle you know i i feel you know i my professional uh life my personal uh family and just relationship support over the years i think a lot of things are aligned to allow me to be a voice for this i'm not a crusader in the in in the way that you know i'm not here to sensationalize you know the catholic churches you know i don't that's not that's not where i'm coming from in this and i hope that everyone begins to
49:52 understand that it's not about the sensationalization of the moment the abuse the all this other what it really means is a heartfelt desire to get inside the lives of people who deserve that empathy deserve that healing so that they can be better so that they can re like i call it unlimited worth for a reason because i lived worthless and i didn't i felt like i was limited and now i feel unlimited and i know i have worth and everybody who doesn't feel that
50:28 should feel it inherently it should just be people who haven't had trauma they just know that right i just know this stuff right it's just you know i'm the outlier not them and they know that they're worth it and they live that way and it's not even it's an afterthought it's not even a thought but now it's a conscious thought for me and this unconscious stuff is that everyone's coming into the space and and why doesn't everybody deserve to be there why don't they deserve to receive and give love to be happy without an asterisk you know
51:05 why don't they deserve calm in life and in relationships and you know those things are just elements that i you know it's not a crusade it's just get well see a professional let's be honest about where we were and don't go to the don't use the insurmountable pressure as the way you get help like i didn't need to do that i didn't need to go through a suicide moment to figure that out someone could have said you know i don't think you're well i see some patterns and if i resonate you should probably take heed and go get
51:41 help too if that's it i think it's brilliant you know it's a generational it'll pass on to families wives husbands sisters brothers mothers and their kids like my kids are better off because i'm here now doing this wow i i want to wrap up in a couple minutes and actually open it up for questions uh moses will have a chance if he has any questions you know i was thinking about why people are so hesitant about therapy there used to be stigmas or what's wrong with you if we could normalize that just like if you have a condition of health that's physical you go to the doctor and you
52:18 seek help it's the same thing there are reason that there are these professionals who go and get the proper training and titles to be able to do such work we need to treat it like it's just like going to the your regular practitioner um so that you could have healthy mind body and soul it's all connected thank you so much my friend and trigger like i don't care and i would care because it will create action if people are triggered they should be if they have trauma they should be triggered so much that they go see help
52:54 so there's a culture we live in right now is about trigger warnings and avoiding the bad feelings and avoiding things but somehow laying it all out on tick tock and instagram like come on if you are triggered that's good because you might actually seek help yeah pay attention to that there's help there is help and if it bothers you if it resonates with you good because it's time don't wait till you kill yourself because there's only you know there's one side of each like you don't succeed you're you live and you struggle or you
53:29 succeed and you leave a disaster behind anyway sorry no no but that's powerful very passionate about that affects you go get help all right moses thank you for joining us today do you have any questions for mike that you would want to perhaps uh say no he doesn't have to you don't have to i just we wanted to give it the chance since you've been with us um listening so closely um what we would like to do is make sure that kevin gets access to whatever titles you want us to post the names of your book your podcast on how to reach
54:04 you so this way people can listen review find you hire you you know use your expertise in their own personal journey and i'm sure you're going to touch those million lives and um good luck to you and and let's stay in touch i can't wait to hear more successes and your family is so lucky that they have you here healthy and healed that is huge to be able to say i'm healed that was what stood out to me the most yesterday when we spoke he said i am healed and i was like there's another
54:39 side he's on the other side so awesome thank you so much everyone join us next week for a surprise guest as well and share this episode with people that you know i already have in mind some individuals that i know um had similar childhood trauma and can find a lot of value in learning from your experience have a wonderful rest of your thursday see you soon