EFR 860: How To Overcome Guilt and Shame and Rewire Your Mind for Hope, Resilience and Joy in the Face of Trauma with Samantha Harte

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Samantha (Guest) There really isn't any reason why I should be sitting here alive, with 15 years sober, with two beautiful children and a healthy, happy marriage, if not for making tiny changes again and again through a 24-hour period for the last 15 years and it leading to gigantic, amazing results, like how do you explain that? I was a severe cocaine addict who overdosed and almost died, who lost her sponsor to a relapse and suicide, whose husband had a five-year extramarital affair who I'm still married to, by the way, happily and yet I'm filled with joy, I'm filled with purpose, I love who I am, I love my life today, I think, at the root of any traumatic incident, if there is any bit of blame and shame that we are putting on ourselves, forget about the outside world. We're trapped because we cannot see anything clearly and we can never hear the whisper of our intuition. But we must must do something about it if we're going to move forward. Hi guys, I'm Dr Samantha Hart, physical therapist, bestselling author and life coach, with 15 years sober. Welcome to Ever Forward Radio.

01:24 - Chase (Host) Hey and welcome to Ever Forward Radio. I'm your host, chase Tuning, certified health coach, wellness entrepreneur, army veteran, and I am stoked to bring you my guest today, dr Samantha Hart. Samantha is a physical therapist, performing artist, podcast host and sober mom of two. She has in fact been featured in People Magazine, time Magazine, best Life and the New York Post for her expertise on the intersection of mind, body, health and wellness. Here, off of the cusp of her new book Breaking the Circuit how to Rewire your Mind for Hope, resilience and Joy in the Face of Trauma, she's been diving into her raw and honest depiction of her life, which has had definitely a fair share of trauma, loss and heartbreak. But now, after more than a decade in recovery, she decided to reimagine the 12 steps so they become modern, trauma-informed and more universally applicable to both addicts and non-addicts alike. Through her physical therapy practice, samantha came to realize that, whether we're addicted or not, we all in fact suffer from some degree of what she calls soul sickness. We navigate love and loss throughout our lives with little or no guidance, often fumbling our way through with self-sabotaging behaviors. But despite her initial resistance to the well-known 12 steps of AA, alcoholics Anonymous, sam eventually reimagined them so that they worked in her own life, and this is exactly what she's going to be sharing with you here today. And throughout this process, she discovered that the spiritual concepts in each step have universal application and can help people you, me, anybody learn new ways of navigating adversity, not just addiction. If you have not yet done so, subscribing to the podcast, following on your podcast platform of choice, would be the best, thank you, I could ever ask for If today's episode or any other episode provides value to your life. It helps you live a life ever forward. If I could ask just a couple seconds of your time and hit that follow button, that subscribe button. It supports the show in big, big ways. It makes sure that you're never going to miss another amazing episode and helps me reaching new amazing guests like Samantha to help you and me because I learn from every guest to help us keep living a life ever forward. Thank you, today's episode is brought to you by Element.

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05:42 - Samantha (Guest) I love the name of your podcast, thank you, and here's what I'm going to say about it. I believe my life's work is and I don't mean professionally per se, I mean personally more than anything is, in the face of hurt and heartbreak and grief and betrayal, to continue to put the armor around my heart that is trying to protect me down such that I can be open to love, connection and belonging again and again and again. So if I am moving ever forward, no matter what happens to me in my life, I am continually trying to have what Brene Brown says is a strong back and a soft front.

06:39 - Chase (Host) Never a right or wrong answer, but I appreciate your interpretation, thank you so much or a wrong answer, but I appreciate your interpretation. Thank you so much. And with that I would like to kind of just let the audience know something I'm sure you're well aware of in your work. So we're gonna be talking a lot about trauma today, and you might think that doesn't apply to me, or oh, so many other people have it worse or better than me, but the World Health Organization states quote and this is from 2023, around 70% of people globally will experience a potentially traumatic event during their lifetime. So if you can't relate to the word trauma, what that looks like, what that feels like of course I'm not wishing this on anybody, but I would probably challenge you to go. Just wait a little bit. Keep living life and there will be an experience that you can probably relate to eventually.

07:33 And you have three key words that you use to talk about trauma hope, resilience, joy. In fact, they're in the title of your new book, breaking the circuit how to rewire your mind for hope. The title of your new book Breaking the Circuit how to Rewire your Mind for Hope, resilience and Joy in the Face of Trauma. Could you please define those words. What do you think they should look like and feel like?

07:56 - Samantha (Guest) Hope, resilience and joy. Hope is the opposite of despair, and I have found myself before and after getting sober. I'm 15 years sober today.

08:08 - Chase (Host) Today.

08:09 - Samantha (Guest) No, not literally.

08:09 - Chase (Host) Okay, okay, I was like man, this is a treat. I mean, this would be a real treat, but still, 15 years is amazing, congratulations.

08:15 - Samantha (Guest) Actually, in February it'll be 16, so I'm closer to 16, which is pretty wild. I have found myself face down in a pit of despair tons of times in my life. Call it trauma, Call it something difficult Life on life's terms, call it small T trauma, big T trauma, whatever you want to call it. And I wouldn't be here talking to you if I didn't find some kind of flicker of hope, some kind of light at the end of what seemed like a very dark tunnel. And I think that is a skill. I was not taught that in my house to have enough faith in the desperate times and lean on people who did seem to have hope until I could accumulate enough wins in the direction of hope to believe it myself. So I think it's a skill we need to cultivate, especially when we've lived through trauma.

09:25 When we've lived through trauma, resilience to me is the idea of your ability to get back up when you've been knocked down, which has overlap with hope. I also grew up with a perfectionist disposition, and so failure was intolerable to me. I did not know how to fail beautifully. I didn't know how to fail period. And I think in the face of failure, the opposite of that is resilience.

10:04 So can you fail and then try again Because you know that your worthiness is not wrapped around the outcome of the thing that just happened, right? So resiliency, emotional resiliency, is sort of knowing that you as an entity, regardless of what you've done or not done or said or didn't say, that you are enough and you are worth fighting for period, regardless of the external circumstances. Joy is probably my most favorite word of the three and I'm sure we'll get to it. You know, on the heels of my greatest loss in my life, which is what prompted me to write the book, I knew now there's a saying in recovery, early in recovery, that you need to match the level of calamity in your life with equal amounts of serenity. And that makes a lot of sense right.

11:09 When you fast forward into my sobriety and I was in a marital crisis and betrayal was at the epicenter of my pain, I remember thinking about the calamity serenity bit and going, well, what words replace that? Now I need to match the level of betrayal I feel with equal and opposite amounts of forgiveness, or I'm in trouble spiritually speaking. So then let's go all the way forward to the loss that made me write the book the greatest grief of my life. Here we are again. If I do not match the amount of grief I feel with equal and opposite amounts of joy, I'm in trouble. Joy is the intentional chasing of laughter, pleasure, play and rest, and I don't mean in between everything everybody's asking of you, I mean every single day. I mean looking for it and when you belly laugh, not cutting it off because it's inappropriate. I mean the memes you see on Instagram, the falling down on the floor with your closest friend over something so meaningless because it might just be the thing that saves your life that day. That's joy.

12:39 - Chase (Host) I've never thought about grief that way. I got this visual of it's like a counterweight and there's there's a weight counterweight to it and we often struggle so much with grief because it feels like it's just pulling us down. Pulling us down has so much weight and gravity to it and oftentimes the work to heal from or learn from that grief.

13:03 Maybe we're not there yet, for whatever the reason, you know the work is just not getting done. But we can add to it. You know, we can go the joy route and the appreciation and the gratitude and kind of just slowly build that counterweight up and then, suddenly the grief has less weight to it.

13:17 It doesn't mean it's not still there, that doesn't mean we don't need to work on it, but we've kind of found a way to to bring it back up out of the darkness a little bit. I like that a lot. Your trauma is not your fault, but it is your responsibility is a quote that I love. What do you think is more difficult for people to grasp? Is it the blame aspect of trauma or the ownership necessary to move on from it?

13:43 - Samantha (Guest) Ooh, that's a good question.

13:45 Until I was five years sober, in recovery, physically abstinent, spiritually bankrupt, miserable, and I worked the steps in a new way where we did them around.

14:01 The marital crisis that I was in my life didn't get better, and the thing that changed it completely was the ninth step, because the woman I worked with said have you ever made an amends to yourself and I'm bringing this there is any bit of blame and shame that we are putting on ourselves, forget about the outside world. We're trapped Because we cannot see anything clearly and we can never hear the whisper of our intuition. And we can never hear the whisper of our intuition, which would be the vehicle that would say this is totally not fair, that this happened to you, and you're not a bad person if somehow you played a part in this, but we must must do something about it if we're going to move forward. You'll never hear that if you're stuck under the weight of shame. So I feel like addressing shame and separating ourself from the behavior or the incident is such a critical first step in order to then take the second and take responsibility for how we're going to move forward and amend the thinking or the acting or the behaving.

15:34 - Chase (Host) You talk about in your book how making micro changes can lead to macro results. Do you really think small, incremental changes can lead to such large scale healing? Because we're talking about probably some of the most difficult periods or situations or experiences of people's life, or an experience in life that, for whatever reason, has turned into, has maybe become more grandiose in our mind and that can really seep out into all areas of our life. So how can, making small incremental changes actually turn the ship of someone's entire life.

16:13 - Samantha (Guest) Well, James Clear wrote a book about it called. Atomic Habits. He did do that. He did do that. And it sold over a million copies, so there's definitely something to it. You know he talks about getting 1% better every day and it being like compound interest, right?

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18:05 - Samantha (Guest) So let's just take all the science that is in fact, real and true about making small changes and getting big results and just move it over for a second. I am living proof of that being true. So if someone doesn't want to hear the research or it just feels too far away, this is the power of storytelling and why I was so vulnerable in my book Sharing my Hardest Things, because there really isn't any reason why I should be sitting here alive, with 15 years sober, with two beautiful children and a healthy, happy marriage, with a big house in the suburbs, if not for making tiny changes again and again through a 24 hour period for the last 15 years and it leading to gigantic, amazing results, like how do you explain that I was a severe cocaine addict who overdosed and almost died, who lost her sponsor to a relapse and suicide, whose husband had a five-year extramarital affair who I'm still married to, by the way, happily, you know I mean. The list goes on and on. And yet I'm filled with joy, I'm filled with purpose, I love who I am, I love my life today.

19:33 How do you explain that that didn't happen overnight? That's impossible. Even the story of my marriage took two years, three years of just the purgatory period of the marriage falling apart and us separating, until I finally found out. And then I was like I'm leaving you and never doing this with you again. And then I was like, wait a minute, but is there a light at the end of that really dark tunnel? Is there hope? Oh shit, I think there is. Maybe we need to find our way back to each other. Just that one story of my life took years and years, one day at a time, one tiny decision in the direction of my intuition at a time. So I'm living proof.

20:18 - Chase (Host) I want to jump right into what you just said. Let's do it, I'm kind of having my mind blown right now Is there a light at the end of the tunnel. Is there hope? Oh shit, I think there is Hmm. I think there is.

20:33 I'm just getting flashbacks to moments when I have decided to finally face adversity, face a traumatic event, and you have a breakthrough. Where you go, oh, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse or I thought that this is never going to get any better, something, someone pops up as that light at the end of the tunnel and with that immediately, I think, is hope, this idea of hope, but also like the oh shit moment. What is?

21:09 it going to take for me to get from here to cross through that tunnel, to get to this light that I never thought was coming. What is this? Oh shit, moment of hope, cause you think hope and it's just like, oh cool, I got it. But no, like no, it's, it's more work, it's even maybe more scary. Mm-hmm.

21:22 - Samantha (Guest) Yeah, In the story of my marriage there was a two year period where I was sure he was cheating on me. All signs pointed to it. And now for backstory. He was with me on the front end of my addiction. We were just two young, hopelessly in love, completely unhealed people who came together. It was the perfect storm of untreated addict meets untreated enabler. So we stay through the absolute shit show of my addiction, which looked like me cheating and lying and you know again and again, and him wanting to leave and accumulating resentment and not leaving. And we get engaged. I get sober, I throw a wrench in his plans to leave me. We get married, all without doing the work required to heal. Then he starts pulling away, pulling away, pulling away. And while my intuition was starting to speak up in recovery, I hadn't yet worked the steps in that really profound way. I hadn't made that immense to myself, so I basically thought I deserved the treatment I was getting.

22:29 So, even though my intuition was like this isn't adding up, like I think he, I think he's cheating on you, it was overridden by the shame voice. The inner critic was like this is what you get, the punishment fits the crime. So just sit here with your tail between your legs and be a good girl and don't complain. And that looked like me going absolutely insane in recovery, such that I slept on friends' couches for months and months and months and months. And then finally, after begging my husband to please forgive me, and controlling and managing and manipulating what he thought of me and the past and whether he'd go to therapy or work his own 12-step program and it utterly failing, I signed a lease and moved into my own space. That's when I did the 12 steps in that new way. And then, on the other end of that, it seemed like we were doing better. We were in therapy with a new practitioner. I was a different version of myself. So I moved back in and I'm like, oh my God, it's not me, it's you. He seemed just as sick as he was before, unable to look me in the eye, acting strange, didn't seem like he was quite telling the truth, but I was clear and I was sturdy inside for the first time and my intuition said you can stay or you can go. You're going to find out everything you need to know either way. So don't worry about it, cause I basically got to a point where I said I don't want to do this with you anymore. And that was so courageous of me to have reached that point, because up until then he was the only thing left that made me feel like I was worth anything at all. Wow. And as he pulled away, I essentially, like Samantha, had no soul. So I just I crumbled and I built myself back up from the inside out. I stitched myself back together, moved in and said no, not only do I not want this, I don't deserve this. And he begged me to stay. So my intuition said I got you, girl, whatever you want to do, I got you. You can stay, you can go. I stayed.

24:32 Two weeks later I found out the whole thing five-year extramarital affair on and off with the same person. I mean, it's like a lifetime movie. It's hard. The details are in the book. It's unbelievable the extent to which he wove himself so deeply into this lie to cover up. He wove himself so deeply into this lie to cover up his own resentment, his own fear of everything imploding. It was like living a double life. The girl was blackmailing him. If you, if you end it with me, I'm just going to tell Sam everything. I have her number, I know where you guys live in LA, I'll just show up. And it was just this insane charade. So he was, of course, not able to look me in the eye and function normally. When I found out, I moved out and I was like I'm done. I totally unequivocally I am done.

25:19 - Chase (Host) Like most people, I think.

25:21 - Samantha (Guest) Exactly. And, by the way, to put this in perspective, my using took place in New York. My sober life was in LA, so everyone in LA at the time was like you're fucking done Right, because we forget and I'm not saying this justifies the behavior, it doesn't. He was completely wrong, right, but we tend to forget, when we're on the other side of a mess, what we used to be like, and I think it's part of what's going on culturally now. We cannot, we judge, and it's so hard to stay curious and compassionate and be like, oh my God. I remember a time when I literally couldn't do any better than that. So everybody was saying you're going to leave, right, my mom, my sister, everyone in my sober community. And I'm like, yeah, fucking leaving, fucking asshole. And I signed the papers and I have sex with everyone I can Cause.

26:17 I felt like an animal coming out of captivity. Honestly, it was like this glorious reckoning with my young self, except now I was a sober woman, exploring who I was, with confidence in my sexuality and really learning to let go of the dreams and hopes and expectations I had for the future with this man and just embrace things like you know. You want to be a mother you really thought it was going to be with him. Trust that your perfect baby is coming. You just don't know when or with who, like. That's how spiritually fit I was at that time, and about eight months in to my fucking spree. By the way, I could write an entire series that would put sex in the city to shame about this time of my life. I mean, it was just one disastrous date after another, but it's so hilarious looking back on it.

27:09 - Chase (Host) Reminds me of. Did you ever watch the show Californication? Oh yeah, fucking and punching.

27:14 - Samantha (Guest) Exactly, that was my life. So when there was a little, yeah, I need a tissue.

27:22 - Chase (Host) Can we get a tissue please, chantel.

27:23 - Samantha (Guest) Sorry to ruin the good time, but I really am like sniffly.

27:26 - Chase (Host) Oh no, you're fine.

27:27 - Samantha (Guest) You're fine.

27:28 - Chase (Host) Okay, If that's you sniffly, I don't even know what I sound like.

27:30 - Samantha (Guest) No you're not sniffly, you don't even sound.

27:34 - Chase (Host) Thank you.

27:34 - Samantha (Guest) Thanks, Sorry messing up the good flow.

27:39 - Chase (Host) I'm okay, I'm good. Thanks, I got two more hours for the day before it runs out.

27:44 - Samantha (Guest) Yes, we're good.

27:45 - Chase (Host) Yeah, so fucking and punching.

27:49 - Samantha (Guest) Fucking and punching. So I don't remember the exact moment. It was definitely enough of a lull in the sexcapade part of my story where I had to sit with myself, when my intuition spoke up and she said are you sure you're done?

28:12 - Chase (Host) Done with what?

28:14 - Samantha (Guest) Him and I remember, you know, as if she were sitting here and the rest of me were here, this part of me was like are you fucking kidding me right now?

28:27 - Chase (Host) Where the hell did this thought come from? Like, how could I even think that?

28:30 - Samantha (Guest) No on from Like. How. How could I even think that no, like? Because there was just that sense of how much work, as you said, it might actually require. If I even entertain that, however, I had learned in this process of self-discovery and loving on myself that I needed to listen to the sound of her voice. So what that looked like was me meditating on the idea not sharing it with anybody, by the way, because when you really need to tap into your knowing, the last thing you do is survey the outside world about what you should be doing.

29:07 Right.

29:08 And that's a clear indication that you don't really know what's right for you yet, and I wanted to know what was right for me. So, silently, I would meditate on that question and every single time, every single time, the vision was the same and it was me staring through a really dark tunnel, endlessly dark, and at the very end there was a little match. Dark, and at the very end there was a little match, and I couldn't understand it any other way than there is a flicker of hope. And the reason I was able to see that was because, instead of just looking at those few years and what had happened and the way I had been treated which was awful and nothing that I deserve, no matter what happened on the front end of my addiction and I was clear on that I wasn't taking him back because I felt I couldn't do any better or I deserved it. It was not that at all. It was that once upon a time we met and we really just loved each other and we had no tools and we were reckless and we hurt each other, and at the beginning of the story I really hurt him again and again, which doesn't mean I deserved what happened, but what it means is then I got sober, then I got tools and then I became a woman with dignity and grace who could tell the truth. What if that was possible for him too? Wow.

30:43 And that was the thing I couldn't turn away from, because I, in my bones, did not believe that he was a cheater, somebody who had a sex and love addiction, who was going to keep going out and hurting me. I didn't believe it. There was no evidence of that. And he was in therapy and he was going to Al-Anon meetings, all the things I had wanted him to do.

31:07 He was doing the work now and I thought I actually think and it might be 10 years from now, which, by the way, was almost true we're past the 10 year mark. It might be 10 years from now, from this aha moment of am I done before? I feel this way, but I actually think that somewhere down the line we could have a really happy life together and that we might even one day be able to look back at this time and laugh about it. I could see it and I think that is so incredible that I had enough sober awareness and enough love for myself to be brave enough to lean into the forgiveness process. And, by the way, had it not been for making that amends to myself in those six months of healing before I moved in and before I found out, I'm not sure I would have had any template at all to forgive him at the level that I needed to.

32:13 - Chase (Host) Hey guys, quick break from a conversation with Samantha. If you want to check out her book, I will have it linked for you in the show notes. But if maybe listening is more your jam I'm assuming so because you're listening to this podcast right now and if you haven't checked out audible yet, let me put you on. It is my favorite way to listen to audio books. In fact, I love reading the hard copy while also listening, or throwing my AirPods on on a walk and just zoning out and continuing on from where I left off in my book. See, with the Audible app, you can turn any moment into a story, a lesson or an adventure, whether it's best-selling fiction, self-improvement, business insights or even exclusive podcasts. Audible makes it effortless to learn more, relax and stay entertained all hands-free. And the best part is that Audible app is super easy to use. I just open it up, find the title that I'm looking for, go to my library or search a new release. Boom, it's downloaded in seconds. You can even adjust narration speed, bookmark key moments and switch seamlessly between reading and listening with select titles. So now, learning faster and enjoying books on the go has never been easier. So if you want to check out Samantha's book for free, because every time you sign up you get a free 30-day trial, which equates to a free credit which you could use to get her book Breaking the Circuit how to Rewire your Mind for Hope, resilience and Joy in the Face of Trauma. And if you don't absolutely love it, then cancel in 30 days and you got nothing to lose. So head to audibletrialcom, slash ever forward to start listening, start learning and start loving books in a whole new way.

33:43 Yeah, I think with forgiveness it also kind of goes the way of love. You know, I don't think we can fully, truly forgive somebody else until we can fully, truly forgive somebody else, until we can fully, truly forgive ourselves. We can't fully love somebody else until we know what fully loving ourself looks like. Or else I don't think you will end up at that same kind of selfless question that you did Like what if this same healing is possible for him? What if the same realization is possible for him? I don't think you can get to that question without having accepted and fallen truly, madly, deeply, radically in love with yourself and wanted that same love for the people that you think that you love and want even more love for in your life.

34:26 Yeah. What you just described, I think arguably could be objectively described as a traumatic life experience. Um but I wonder, if we're using the word trauma to uh sparingly, do you think there's a difference in how we are using or leaning on trauma versus just you know, you had a bad day, like yeah, life got a little hard, kind of thing. It's not a traumatic event. Where's the line of just adversity?

35:04 - Samantha (Guest) and trauma. That's a really great question, and somebody recently asked me a similar question. They said I'm hearing your story and you have for real trauma, right, but I'm thinking about my own life and I'm like can't relate.

35:26 Yeah, you know it doesn't really hold a candle. It wasn't that bad. I went through some hard things, like what would you say to someone like me? How would your book help somebody like me? And so there's, there's a couple of ways to answer your question. But this is the first part. For the listener who is like, oh, here's that trauma word again, I totally hear it, I get it, and there is a distinction between life on life's terms and that every one of us is going to go through something hard.

36:00 And you know, from a sort of diagnostic perspective and I'm not a clinical psychologist, you know small T trauma and big T trauma and in the Gen Z landscape, trauma is, I think, used all the time and on the one hand, it's wonderful that it's on people's radars and it's in conversation and being normalized. Is it being hyper normalized to the point where everything's trauma?

36:28 - Chase (Host) Everything can be a traumatic event.

36:30 - Samantha (Guest) So all of that is sort of a big question mark about how you personally, in your life, define trauma. I think it's very, very important, though, not to turn away from it because of what it triggers inside of you, and instead the insight I would give people is to say take a second to scan the landscape of your life. Take a second to scan the landscape of your life Anyone who's listening and what I mean by that is think about your work, your relationship with your job, whether you love it or hate it or dread it, or have friends at work that you look forward to seeing, or not so much. The quality of your romantic relationship, if there is one, or if you don't have one, how you're feeling about that. Do you feel obsessive, desperate? Do you feel hopeful?

37:16 If you're a parent, your relationship with your children, how present you are, all the aspects that matter you know life, love, parenting, work. Scan your life. If there are places, even just one, where you're less than satisfied, where you're coming up against a constant pain point, oh, I just really want it to look and feel different in this one area or these two areas, but it doesn't. For me, that's enough to indicate that there's some work to do, whether or not that gets diagnosed from some deeply rooted trauma as the source of the pain point or not. Does that really matter in order for you to make a start? No, because when you get to the end of your life, what's actually going to matter is the quality of your relationships, how deeply you loved, and so if things are getting in the way of you being happy and joyous and free and loving with your whole heart, that's worth taking a look at. And that's the bottom line. Call it whatever you want to call it.

38:33 - Chase (Host) I love that answer. I that completely flipped that question on its head for me.

38:40 - Samantha (Guest) And.

38:40 - Chase (Host) I wholeheartedly agree. I think okay, something horrible happened in my life or I don't know. I stubbed my toe on the corner of my bed, like we do getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Versus I was in a car crash where I nearly died. That didn't happen. I'm just saying. Objectively, one could say that the car crash was much more traumatic than stubbing your toe.

39:17 But these events in our lives, if we want to I think through my lens here learn how to move forward from them and want to learn from every interaction we have in our life, good, bad or ugly, and really kind of getting to that even keel aspect. You know, uh, and learning that everything that happens is for me. And if I believe that, then I have to kind of almost then shrink the size of the weight it holds in my life, or else I'm just going to stay stuck in it.

39:46 So if I want to move forward in life, I have to learn how to examine every aspect of my life and every interaction and every event um to be able to get that lesson and to be able to move forward. And with that you can't stay stuck in a big T or little T experience. Great answer, great answer.

40:04 With trauma, with significant life events, we oftentimes see people go towards like what you were describing in your story substance abuse, addiction, drugs, alcohol, sex gambling. Why do you think some people's trauma leads to addiction and substance abuse and others never touch the stuff?

40:29 - Samantha (Guest) I mean it's a complicated question and I think what we know from the research is that you could have a genetic predisposition toward it and never touch it. I have a genetic predisposition. I mean my lineage for addiction and mental illness, by the way, goes very deep my environment and my natural disposition. Besides my genetic disposition for addiction, my disposition towards having to be perfect at all costs, and that being exacerbated by a really unstable home environment where pleasing, performing and perfecting allowed me to feel safe and secure, was like pouring gasoline on a fire in terms of finding solace in drugs and alcohol. So I think our environment, especially in our formative years, has a lot to do with whether or not we're going to turn toward that versus something healthy in hard times.

41:38 - Chase (Host) Yeah, as someone who comes from a family of, um, a lot of addiction, um it, uh it kind of surprised me sometimes, uh, the fact that, uh, you know, I escaped that. I definitely look back at points in my life and go, yeah, I definitely abused alcohol, definitely abused it for quite a while, and then, you know, kind of on on the notes of what we're talking about today, once I finally faced my trauma, or chose to face every hard thing in my life, that just began to dissipate more and more. So it was just like, oh, there we go, if you work on the stuff, then you don't need any other stuff to hide the stuff that you're supposed to be working on. Yeah, funny how that goes.

42:21 Funny, how that goes so your background as a DPT correct Doctor of physical therapy. Yeah, how have you seen trauma manifest in the body specifically. What does that look like? What does that feel like, maybe in people that you've worked on, your clients, or even in your own body?

42:37 - Samantha (Guest) Do you mean emotional trauma showing up in the body?

42:44 - Chase (Host) Sure, I was going to kind of leave it open to interpretation. But if I were to say trauma manifesting in the body, how would you interpret that? How maybe have you seen that?

42:51 - Samantha (Guest) The way I want to answer that, although there's a lot in the research coming out about emotional trauma and gut health issues and autoimmune diseases which, when I look back now at some of the people who came through my clinic, it makes me really scratch my head about the more confounding issues that were going on that nobody could seem to solve.

43:22 On that nobody could seem to solve.

43:23 And in direct correlation to that, what I was seeing in my clinic was a bunch of high net worth folks who could afford to pay cash in a sea of practitioners that took insurance, but instead they came to me.

43:34 Why did they come to me?

43:35 They came to me because, like what I just suggested about checking the landscape of your life, for emotional pain points, they had physical pain points that were disrupting their everyday lives so much and so often that they were like I will do whatever I can do to make this knee pain or this back pain go away.

43:58 So they had real physical trauma right, real wear and tear that was affecting their sleep, their ability to work out the way they wanted to travel, where they wanted to go. Finally, they're baby boomers. They have all the money they get to travel and now they can't right, Because they're super inflamed and they come to me and I'm thinking this is amazing, I'll be able to give them the exact program that they need to make this stuff go away or to get them ahead of their inflammation, instead of chasing it. And again and again, I would see this presentation of emotional cycles of dysfunction, this presentation of emotional cycles of dysfunction, emotional cycles of addiction, emotional cycles of subconscious patterns that were so deeply ingrained just like their movement patterns, that it wasn't within the scope of my practice to treat as a DPT Right.

44:50 So I had a who. I cannot tell you how long I worked with him for 10 years. He would say I'm working on this, I'm going to do that Never. He never did anything. He stayed completely stuck, just running in place and all these places in his life he was deeply unhappy in his marriage. He wasn't really in the job he loved, he couldn't get out from under it and his body was riddled with pain.

45:27 Yes, some of it was orthopedic and some of it was just natural wear and tear from being athletic, but a lot of it, I think gut health, all these strange things that were going on, were untreated trauma. So even if I didn't always understand how the emotional trauma or the emotional dysfunction was playing out in their physical body, they still showed up, stuck in cycles that were having them come into the clinic and say I know you told me to do all these things, but the chronic people pleaser. I just had all these people over and I knew I should have kicked them out so I could get a good night's sleep and wake up early and do the program, but I just I didn't know how to say no right. And all of a sudden that issue is a sticking point in me helping cure their knee pain that they're paying me all this money to fix. It's so much of the reason I wrote my book.

46:24 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I think how how one might approach doing the work on their body could be a very strong indicator of how you might be or not be approaching the work on your emotional self.

46:39 - Samantha (Guest) Absolutely.

46:41 - Chase (Host) Yeah, there's a quote you have in your book I love about uh secrets and that's, our secrets keep us sick, but when we talk about our shame, we shrink its power. We realize we are not bad people, but good people who made bad choices. Walk us through the importance of healing through the liberation of our secrets.

47:08 - Samantha (Guest) Hmm, that is maybe the greatest touch point in my book. My sister died of a drug overdose two and a half years ago and I think shame killed her. I think her inability to share what she was most ashamed of, not just when she was young and the things that happened to her and the people who perpetrated her, but again and again, through relapsing and trying to get sober, all the bad choices. Her shame was so great that she couldn't share it, so great that she couldn't share it, and it was scarier to her to speak the truth out loud than it was to slowly kill herself. And that is the most frightening thing of all. She knew at the very, very end she was in a web of lies. I was clearly on to her, but I knew better than to be accusatory because I knew how sick she was.

48:24 And I remember going to sleep after seeing pictures of her face bludgeoned and bruised, as if somebody beat her, to a pulp Friends reaching out and saying did you see your sister's face? We her to a pulp Friends reaching out and saying did you see your sister's face? We have to do something. Help, please, help me. We had a talk. I let her tell me the string of lies about how she slipped and tripped and fell and then slipped again in the tub and split her lip and cracked her tooth. And I'm listening and listening and my stomach's turning upside down and the fixer inside of me is screaming and wanting to shout and beg and plead that she get the help she needs. And I just listen and I go to sleep that night I have a really scary dream.

49:11 I wake up in the morning and I think I'm going to call her and this is what I said. You know, jess, I was thinking about what you told me about your face, and it feels like there's more to the story than what you shared, and I just want you to know that you're safe to share it with me. That is the kind of recovery and space I held for my sister at that point, after trying everything in all the right ways and all the wrong ways, and she kept up her lie. Sam, I know what this looks like.

49:47 I know this looks like a relapse. If there was anyone I could tell it to, it would be you, because you wouldn't judge me. I promise that's not what this is. That is how tightly wound she was to her secret and it fucking killed her. If we do not shine a light in the darkest corners, we are in danger in the darkest corners. We are in danger, in my sister's case, of a physical death, but in all of our cases of a slow spiritual death, and that is the scariest thing to me Reminds me of this quote.

50:35 - Chase (Host) Actually, my wife has tattooed on her uh back shoulder and it says the enemy of my mind has his stronghold. Excuse me, the enemy of my life has his stronghold in darkest corners of my mind.

50:49 - Speaker 3 (Host) Yep, I'm sorry to hear about your sister, by the way. Thank you.

50:53 - Chase (Host) Yep, I'm sorry to hear about your sister, by the way.

50:55 - Samantha (Guest) Thank you.

50:59 - Chase (Host) There's another quote from Christine Langley Obaugh and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly and honestly. I don't know, Christine, who you are, but in researching your work and just similar works, I came across her work and she says patterns don't disappear. Excuse me, I'm going to go back and say that again. I can't read my notes here.

51:26 There's a quote from your book that I found that links up perfectly with another one from Christine Langley Oba and your work says patterns don't disappear, they take new shape. And then she talks about how we repeat what we don't repair and I thought there's this perfect little continuation of patterns, and just are we? Are we repeating the same patterns over and over? Are we even aware of our patterns? Um, how can we look at undesirable patterns in our life as clues to what is not resolved?

51:58 - Samantha (Guest) as it relates to healing from trauma, oh, I have so much to say about this. Okay, so my most recent healing journey from old patterns is codependency, and I love talking about this because it's applicable to so many people. So forget about the lens of substance abuse, for a second right. I've been in these codependent friendships on and off for years not all of them, some of them and while I've had lots of friendships that have erupted and dissolved, none have woken me up out of a subconscious pattern quite like this most recent one did, which was about two years ago. And you know I've made a lot of sense of why we were as enmeshed as we were. She lost her mother when she was young. I had just lost my sister. It was sort of the perfect storm of how deeply can we stick our claws into each other to get the love that we seek Right. But it wasn't until the friendship imploded and I got zapped out of this patterning that I thought why does this keep happening? Of this patterning that I thought why does this keep happening? Why do I keep getting myself into a situation where the through line is if I love you hard enough, maybe you won't leave me?

53:28 And to the bit about repair, I've also strung together two things. I've also strung together two things. The first thing I heard when I was newly momming and I had a hell of a time with my toddler, who could not stop hitting me and it was just me. He was hitting, by the way, nobody else. I was going out of my mind and I put him to bed one night angrily. You know I didn't hurt him, of course, but I was just. I wasn't loving and I was just so, so tired and angry. And I put him to bed one night angrily. You know I didn't hurt him, of course, but I was just. I wasn't loving and I was just so, so tired and angry.

53:59 And I started crying and I called my friend and she said it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair. She said do you know how many times you're going to lose your cool with your kids Behave in a way that you're not proud of? So let's not worry about making that perfect, let's just repair the rupture. So I did. I went back and I was crying over the crib. My tears were falling on his little two and a half year old face. I said mommy got so upset and I'm really sorry. I love you so much and you know, and I thought about that for a long, long time, and then I remember hearing, on a completely separate occasion, years later, that which cannot be repaired must be mourned. Here's why this matters repair the ruptures of an emotionally absent, mentally ill mother and a drug addicted sister with these friendships.

55:05 - Chase (Host) That's so unfair to you and her.

55:07 - Samantha (Guest) I was trying to repair things that I couldn't. I cannot change that. My mom has been mentally ill my whole life and currently still is. I cannot change that. My sister's addiction took her away from me even while she was alive for two decades and then killed her. I can't get that back in any friendship, in any human. I can't repair it. Human, I can't repair it.

55:40 So instead of trying to and then putting all my eggs in that one friendship basket and, of course, that person letting me down because no human power can fill that God-sized hole, I need to grieve. I need to grieve. That is the work I've been doing. That is the work I've been doing. So now I'm dampening the feedback loops for those codependent behaviors that are so embedded into my nervous system, because I'm hyper aware of what they look like, of why I do them, of how they end, and I want something steady and sturdy. I want real, stable friendships.

56:18 And the truth is, in the beginning of recovery they say practice contrary action. Do the thing you don't want to do until it becomes the thing you want to do. I have to hang out with friends that my initial younger child is like hmm, kind of boring, instead of the firecracker friend who I'm like Ooh yes, you are going to meet all of my needs. I have to really kind of go in a completely different direction and I'm just so grateful that that happened when it did, because that is how deep that wound went. Of all the things I've been overcoming in my life, that is probably the earliest thing I ever learned was to self-abandon and to love hard on everyone else, to feel safe and worthy in my home, and I've literally been playing that out. I mean, I'm 15 years sober, been in a ton of therapy and I've literally been playing that out. I mean, I'm 15 years sober been in a ton of therapy and that spiritual bottom around codependency just happened two years ago.

57:22 - Chase (Host) Wow, wow, yeah, that's, I think, the coolest part of healing, the coolest part of traumatic healing is just when you think you're out of the woods or just when you think you've had this massive breakthrough, and it's a valid breakthrough. Breakthroughs are breakthroughs. You're like, oh man, how could it ever get any better? How can I ever have any other kind of realization? Just wait, just wait. You're 15 years into your sober journey and then this massive breakthrough happens just a couple of years ago. It's incredible because you're I mean, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you're just perpetually in a better place, a better place, a better place, I think.

58:07 - Samantha (Guest) The other part of that, too, is that life will continue to serve us something that we cannot predict or know, no matter how hard we try right, good and bad and until it happens we don't really have anything but what I call sober reference points, you know, of how we got through the other thing.

58:29 that looked kind of like this but in every new situation, there is an often a being taken to my knees moment where I go. Oh my God, yes, I've kind of gotten through something like this, but also never before. And now what? And yes, I'm going to rely on some of the tools that saved my life in the past, that did bring me hope, resilience and joy, but I'm probably going to have to discover some new ones yeah. Yeah. For this new thing that I'm facing, you know, which is why we never graduate from the spiritual curriculum of our lives.

59:10 - Chase (Host) That's another like oh shit, woman. Oh shit, there's hope. Oh shit, there's work. Oh shit, I realized something. It's a joke, it's funny, Um, but it's like it's not, but it is. You know, um, where would I like to go next? This is a just been so good sitting with you here. Thank you so much again for opening up and expanding so much more out of your book. You're welcome. You talk about in your book and in a lot of your work the role of God in the healing process. Do we have to believe in God in order to fully release and learn from and heal from our trauma?

59:50 - Samantha (Guest) Well, let's start by saying to the listener who is having a visceral recoil I'm with you and I was you. And when I say the word God, it has absolutely no religious intonation whatsoever, so I am not aligning myself with any religious form of God. When I came into the 12 step rooms and the steps were dripping in God and I wasn't at all spiritually at the bottom and ready to be there, I was like absolutely not, because I grew up in a house where, if you believe in God, you're an absolute idiot and the only person you can count on is yourself. So my entire existence was predicated on my self-will and what I could create and manage and control period. There was no room for faith or surrender or being comfortable in the not knowing. There was no such thing, zero skill sets for being able to do that.

01:01:05 And so I spent those five years in my initial recovery running my life into the ground without God, because I didn't need or want it, and I alluded to this earlier when I did that ninth step and I made the amends to myself and the shame started to lift because I had shared, right, my, my hardest things with somebody and they said that doesn't mean you deserve this marriage.

01:01:39 And I went into a practice of compassionate self-talk and I redirected my inner critic again and again and I finally heard my intuition. I didn't know yet that that was the whisper of God for me. I just knew that that voice was the most loving, compassionate, calm and curious voice I had heard for decades and I wanted to lean in to what she was saying. So there was a moment of is this God? Can this be the God of my understanding? But also, it's the best thing I've got. So for now I have no evidence that trusting or believing it is going to make my life better, but I feel like it's gotta be better than listening to the voice who always tells me I'm not enough.

01:02:37 - Chase (Host) Because it also can't hurt right.

01:02:40 - Samantha (Guest) Exactly so. There was a leap of faith, but again, I was desperate enough to take the leap. In that case, it wasn't a leap to suddenly believe in God and worship some sort of God that I can't see or touch or know. It was a leap of faith to start trusting this higher version of myself. And then, as I took steps in the direction, she was nudging me and had wins, you know, and one of those wins was in that space where I finally signed a lease in my marital crisis and I did all that hard work.

01:03:21 I also got fired from the job that I had and was like oh shit, because I was financially pretty destitute, making $33 an hour.

01:03:31 My husband wasn't financially supporting me and I was working on the third floor of a building, by the way, not very far from where we're sitting right now, living on the first floor. I would take the elevator up to work, take it down and sleep and be miserable in this apartment. As I was healing and depressed in my marriage and in order to make more money, I started asking my patients where are you going when you're done? Who are you working with when insurance is like oh, you're 60% better, and they're like I don't know a trainer and I'm like can I train you? I'm a doctor and I know you and I know your health history. So sure enough, I'm sort of poaching people out of desperation from the clinic and she's like you can't do this, you're fired. When I moved back into the house with my husband before I found out he had the affair, there was a little part of me that said you should keep this apartment because it was a live work building so I asked the management can I keep this apartment?

01:04:28 This was before rent went through the roof. By the way, in Santa Monica it was super affordable. It's beautiful loft apartment with 16 foot ceilings for $1,400 a month, okay. Exactly.

01:04:39 Can I keep this and convert it into a little fitness studio? They're like, yeah. So I moved back into my house. I found out my husband has an affair. I now have a place of business and I move into a totally different space that becomes the apartment that I have. My sexual escapades in my intuition told me keep that space, don't let it go. That was the beginning of Strong Heart Fitness. Months into that, I had two clients, a married couple, who were listening to my idea of a one-stop shop for health and wellness and this vision for a proactive, preventative healthcare future, and they invested and I expanded.

01:05:27 Okay, so I literally had wins in the direction of listening to that voice, so then it was easier to go. You know what? So then it was easier to go. You know what I am going to call that God, but in that limbo state, all I knew was that it was the healthiest, most beautiful sound inside of me that I had heard in decades, and I was willing to bet on her. That is the God of my understanding and has been for the last 10 years of my life.

01:06:02 - Chase (Host) It's my intuition, beautiful, beautiful. I'm always curious when I sit across the table from someone that has decided to pour out their life story in the form of content, but especially a book. What uncovering happened with writing this book? What lesson was learned when writing this book that you were not prepared for or were most surprised by?

01:06:39 - Samantha (Guest) A couple of things. I don't remember saying this to my husband when I found out about the loss of my sister, we were in the Austin airport waiting to get on a plane back to LA and I lost my mind, obviously. And I lost my mind obviously and I remember tipping the wide brim of my hat down to hide my face and the whole plane ride was like a blackout. He said to me later, months and months later, that I said on that airplane I'm writing a fucking book. So I knew that day that some cord had been cut where the version of me in my clinic watching that soul sickness that I couldn't quite put my finger on she was now getting into action and pivoting and doing something that was going to change the entire course of her life and maybe other people's too.

01:07:40 What started as a memoir quickly became, through a team of people asking me really important questions, a self-help memoir, and one of the coolest discoveries in writing was why are you doing this? Why are you writing this? You have a story to tell and there is power in storytelling. But is there something else here that could be prescriptive for people? And you know, maybe this book is my latest attempt at saving other people? Maybe, but when I really ask myself, is this your latest codependency flex that one day you're going to look back and go, oh girl, you know you couldn't save your sister, so then you tried to save the whole world. You're so sweet, you know, maybe, but I don't know if this book would have saved my sister's life. I was a living, breathing embodiment of this book of using the steps in a practical way towards life's hardest things, and that didn't save her. So, at the end of the day, what I know is that this template, this version of the steps, is what saved mine, and I can speak to that for the rest of my life. And there is not a version of me that I can imagine, from this point forward, that isn't going out into the world and trying to spread this kind of message of hope.

01:09:28 I believe we are in a connection crisis, first with ourselves and then, as we've said before, you can only love contingent on how deeply you love yourself. We can only connect contingent on how deeply we are connected to ourselves. This is a life raft back to being in deep communion with your spirit, with why you are here. What else am I supposed to be doing here. Besides that, I really can't think of anything. I did not know that writing this book was going to clip me in to this itch that I've been wanting to scratch since I was little of. I'm supposed to do something big and important and once upon a time that looked like Britney Spears. Move over. I'm going to be. You know, I wanted the record deal I wanted. I'm a performing artist. I love the art.

01:10:23 - Chase (Host) I've seen the clips. She's got moves, everybody. I've seen the clips you know, I mean that was backup dancers and everything yeah that was it for me.

01:10:31 - Samantha (Guest) And now it's like this crazy full circle moment, because when I wrote the book, I put aside my life as I knew it. I put aside. I subleased my space in Santa Monica and I said no, I'm not treating patients right now. I'm healing, I'm grieving, I'm creating, and what happened is I invited in all kinds of things that clearly I was still supposed to be doing here. I went on tour in Japan as somebody's choreographer at 40 years old, with two babies at home, all right all right Right, an opportunity of a lifetime.

01:11:06 I started backup singing with him, then I started making my own music and now I'm working with an extremely accomplished music producer and musician who's been in the industry for 30 years, making an album that corresponds to the chapters of my book. Now, the most amazing thing about it is I'm not attached to the outcome and it's not about being a star. What that looks like now is I show up to talk on a stage, on a panel, on a podcast, right, and if I'm lucky enough, if it's my own event, I have one coming up on Saturday. I sing a song at the end.

01:11:45 - Chase (Host) Oh, that's so cool, amazing.

01:11:47 - Samantha (Guest) And I now have this full circle moment of gosh. You really thought the thing you were supposed to do in the world was be on a stage flipping your hair, but actually you're in the business of saving lives and you're using every single part of who you are, including the artist, to reach people in a meaningful way. There is no way I could have known how connected to why I am here that I am now when I first started writing this book. It's changed everything.

01:12:24 - Chase (Host) For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode's show notes or head to everforwardradio.com