Shaping Your Emotional Performance And Healing: Coping, Questions, & Change

Today, I sit down with Tricia Parido, an emotional performance strategist and international master addiction specialist whose career spans over a decade of helping people develop emotional agility, recover from dependence, and rebuild a healthier internal world. 

In this conversation, I explore a wide range of topics with Ms. Parido, beginning with her early childhood experiences of perfectionism, isolation, and the emotional interpretations that shaped her inner world. We discuss how those early beliefs about being unseen or unheard evolve into patterns like people-pleasing, codependency, and perfectionism — and how recognizing those patterns is the foundation of emotional healing. 

As we continue our conversation, I dive deeper into how emotions affect relationships, communication, conflict, and self-discovery. Ms. Parido explains the difference between coping and healing, emphasizing the importance of learning how to sit with emotions rather than avoid them. Together, we break down how children and young adults internalize judgment, why questions matter more than accusations, and how parents can create a safe environment that encourages honesty, emotional regulation, and accountability without fear. We also touch on addiction, emotional purpose, the body-mind connection, and the power of developing internal awareness to change long-standing emotional conditioning. 

Later in the episode, Ms. Parido and I address the normalization of dependency — from alcohol and caffeine to ice cream, shopping, and social media. We explore how substances and habits become emotional crutches and how understanding the body’s signals is essential for long-term healing. Ms. Parido shares powerful insight into her own recovery journey, her transition into emotional performance coaching, and the methods she teaches clients today through her private practice, professional mentorship, and trauma-informed coaching programs. She also explains who should work with her, the structure of her emotional agility groups, and the importance of life-skills development after treatment. 

In closing, Ms. Parido leaves us with one powerful reminder: you get to choose how you experience life emotionally, but learning how to choose requires awareness, practice, and a willingness to shift the way you think, interpret, and respond.

https://www.triciaparido.com/

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Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today's episode is courtesy of Ms. Lori Osborne. She's not sponsoring this episode. I mean, she's free to send me money for it if she wants, but what I mean by that is she connected me with today's guest quite a while ago, and we are, because of my fault.

You know, of, of having thousands of emails. I need a va. I have thousands of emails coming in, filtering through all of them. We've all been there, but luckily today's guest was very understanding and we're connecting now and we're gonna have a great conversation about a whole slew of different topics.

We're gonna address a lot of interconnected topics, so to speak with a big focus on emotions. There are so many conversations that can be had around that topic alone, so we're going to get into that. Ms. Tricia so great to have you here. Glad to have you here and excited to get into it with you.

So could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Wow, thank you. First of all, first and foremost, right? Like Lori. Thank you. I'm an amazing friend, a great, great, great professional. To have on your side, but you know, just years of of her and she's just great. I'm gracious to her for making this connection.

And I'm really excited about our conversation today. But yes, I'm Tricia Parado and I have been in and around the online personal coaching, I guess personal lifestyle coaching space. For about 13 years. So before it was the designer thing to do right when the pandemic came and everybody went online.

I, you know, was already doing online coaching all across the US into Canada. So I am an international master addiction specialist along with, I don't know, 14 other titles or credentials, which are, are neither here nor there. I am an emotional performance strategist and, and what that means, right, for those that are listening is that I coach my clients in, in the direction of being able to experience living in a state of emotional agility.

Meaning we can sit in and move through anything and everything, right? The big, hard stuff as. Almost as easily as, as other things and, and really, you know, allow ourselves to experience living versus trying to cope through it. Right. We'll talk about coping, I'm sure, right? Yeah. Instead of trying to cope through it.

Or avoid or control, right. To sit in and move through it and have it still have you leading in the direction that you wanna see yourself going. Anyway. That's the short version. Right. And we can definitely get into coping as someone who works in addiction recovery, right? Obviously a lot of the side of addiction is coping.

The other major half that I have found is societal pressure, and that's a conversation on its own. But I wanna start kind of with your childhood and upbringing in terms of your relationship with emotions focusing on, on that area kind of. When do you feel like you got in touch with your emotions to the degree that you can then help other people, you know, live with their emotions and process them properly?

Hmm. There's not a single answer to that. So I, I came out of the womb, literally, I think a perfectionist. I don't know. You know, I was reading, writing, doing arithmetic, playing chess. Swimming, whatever, right. By the age of four and, and, you know, started playing classical piano at five and a half and I was a competitive swimmer by before I was seven.

And, and, and, you know, just always that way and always trying to think to catch up to my siblings who were considerably older than I was. The closest one to age was, was seven years older. Wow. And so just, you know, just trying to find that space in the familial unit. And, and, and so I remember a lot of times right, like marching down the hallway as this four or 5-year-old little girl multiple times a day think, you know, saying out loud, nobody loves me.

And, and I think it was my interpretation of, you know, the older people in, in my environment pushing me off, right? Like, and they weren't doing anything wrong, but that was. The way my brain translated it. And, and so from an early age, you know, I felt that nobody loves me. I'm gonna go isolate myself and, and quietly, secretly hope that somebody comes to get me and tell me that they do.

Right? And without knowing how to articulate that, that's what I needed in that moment, was to be seen and to be heard. And not, and to be included. Not to be pushed off. Again. I don't think that my siblings or. Any of the other people, older people in my life were necessarily doing anything wrong or trying to be harmful.

It was just my translation and, and I'm, you know, considerably older than you are. You know, I'm 55, you know, as we sit here today. So looking back at these things, you know, if you would've asked me this 20 years ago, I probably would've had a different answer about my siblings than I do now. Mm-hmm.

Right. So, so looking back and, and, you know, so that, that kind of stuff transpired throughout my life. I remember, you know, being told nobody wants to hear what you have to say. Again. By the time I was in sixth grade, I was, you know, through 10th grade work. So I was, you know, in, in advanced education at an early age and, and so I could hold my own in conversations.

And so, you know, nobody wants to hear what you have to say. It was, it was something that I translated, you know, in, in a harmful way. It wasn't meant that, right. It was like more of a don't correct. The, the, you know, your elders. And my, you know, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, both very staunch German women.

And, and so it was more of a, you know, like, know your lane and, and not again, to be meaning of any harm. So, you know, I started becoming aware of, of emotions that, of, of not feeling seen, heard, valued, or valid. And, and it was, it was hard for me, but then you go to school and, and I felt very heard and very seen.

And so I had the flip side there and, and, and so that was really cool. And, and I had a, an innate ability to be very supportive with. You know, with my peers. And so, and I really enjoyed that, but that led to people pleasing codependency. Yeah. And, and so there, you know, there was the perfectionism, there was the, you know, the isolation, there was the, you know, lowering self-esteem at the same time having, you know, elevated the steam in other areas.

And becoming very attached to that. And then therefore not wanting to, you know, always wanting to be gone, always wanting to be in those other en environments, the escapism. And, and so, you know, just this, this whole thing yeah, I mean, long life. So we could sit here in a lot of different seasons and we can talk about, you know, we could talk about, you know, when I found coping, right, coping was a big deal.

I learned. Say, my first recovery journey was anorexia. But also I learned to cope with alcohol at the age of 12 and when my father was killed. So there was, you know, adolescence was very tricky, to say the least. Yeah, right. You know, you talk about the look back, you know, you're saying at your age you're able to look back and view things differently, but I think.

Part of the amazing factor around conversations like these, whether it's podcasting or just in mentorship, coaching, whatever it may be, is that we give that look back to people where they presently are almost as a look forward and as a. We use our reflection as prevention, and I think that's really powerful.

I think it's so important for young people to be educated. You know, I say one of the issues is there are so many great books and resources and podcasts out there, but people don't know they exist or they're not seeking them out. And so I know what I talk about when it comes to parenting and mentorship is.

Putting an intellectual curiosity into your children or your, whoever you're mentoring, put, getting them to want to be self researchers. And I think in a day and age of AI and fake news and all these different things and information overload, there's so much information online, not all true. Being self, self-independent researcher is extremely important.

I mean that in the sense of, you know, fact-checking stuff, going outta your way to look into different books and resources and. So many people will make excuse, I don't have time for this, but you can make the time and it's not that difficult, even if you're just reading a few pages a day, or maybe you just have a daily science article that you look up, or a daily news article or whatever it may be.

I used to study six to eight hours of sermons through audio consumption while multitasking, and I know some people. We'll talk about the effectiveness going down when you're multitasking, but I think you can always, for me, I would listen to some of them multiple times, you know, and sometimes it depends on the task and I coordinate it accordingly, you know, things that require more attention.

That's some really, yeah. You've said some really critical things, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm, I'm good at because I, I think it's important, right? You're speaking to, to the, the people that are looking forward and, and, and so. You know, when, when you're talking about learning and researching, right?

We wanna learn about ourselves. We're all unique individual beings. Mm-hmm. So how I experience something isn't how somebody else is. And, and so, you know, I always encourage my, my younger clients, you know, like. When, when you hear those words coming in, right, like that's that external, the external noise, whatever you wanna call it, right?

Like that external stimuli when that's coming in. And if you don't like, you know how you're translating it or how it feels in your heart, in your soul, in your body and your mind, you have to call out what, how it's affecting you. The individual person is spend time investigating that like, huh? Why, and then having that ability to just even articulate like the, it's, it's so freeing to be able to say like, huh, did you mean for that to sound so hurtful?

Right. And, and you know, because you ask that question and the other person may have no idea or can you help me understand? But you, you know what you fully mean a hundred percent there because what I heard is that you don't wanna hear me. Right. Like that, that might be. Whatever, right? Like what I have, what I think and feel isn't important to you.

And that's what I feel. So when we learn to articulate that in the moment without, you know, the emotional overload, without the, you know, if we can learn how to regulate our nervous system and see it coming in and go, okay, huh, this feels uncomfortable, I'd like to pause here and, and, and do a little exchange so that.

Like, I don't internalize, get frustrated and now you know, the first person yelling and yeah. You know, back and forth. Right? This is how we learn. We learn about ourselves. So we know, like how I hear this is, is my, is my responsibility. How I experience it is my responsibility, what they think and feel is theirs.

And what we do with it together is, is the collaboration, but also, you know, like learning like this. This doesn't, this, this hurts my, my nervous system. I mean, I've spent enough time getting to know myself that I actually removed four autoimmune diseases from my body just by learning how to hear what my physical body was telling me, right?

And, and being able to identify what were those prompting elements in my life. And, and when I removed them and it started dissipating and I kept removing and dissipating and moving. I don't have rheumatoid arthritis anymore. Which is amazing, and I didn't do it and it wasn't medication assisted. It was me getting to know my body and making the adjustments it was telling me to make.

100%. I've had plenty of episodes dedicated to listening to our bodies because they do communicate with us and sometimes we don't listen. I think questions are so vital for relationships, for even. We look at politics right now. The huge division is just because of polarization. It's, you're wrong. I'm right.

Those are the conversations being had and what I think some people have done publicly and what you should do in your own life is. That question of, I'm curious, why do you feel that way, or why do you think that? I think, you know, it shows less selfishness. It shows that active listening, wanting to know, and it's the same thing with relationships.

Like you said, not everything that we hear. Was said the way that we heard it and it's, Hey, how did you mean that? You know, I think what's so important is also sometimes it's not what you say, but how you say it, and sometimes how we hear it too. And so I think it's important. I think a great example is, you know, being in a relationship and you say, okay.

I know they're not saying it that way, so why am I still feeling this way? Or why am I taking it that way? Because now there there's some kind of insecurity that I have that is actually being triggered and it has nothing to do with what they're saying. So I think questions, like you said, are so great for self-discovery and.

You know, bringing unity and conversation. I think questions lead the way to communication and conversation, and there's a lot of telling. In fact, I was actually on a call this morning for an hour and a half where we were talking about when children act a certain way or the behavior shift. That questions are vital for understanding that because what most people jump to is, Hey, you're wrong.

You're being punished. I'll give you an example. If a student starts having a shift in their grades toward a negative side, they're starting to fail their classes or something, a lot of people would just jump to blame like, you need to study more. You're slacking off, you're lazy, whatever it is, instead of, Hey, what's going on with your grades?

Is there some kind of external factor? Affecting you. But so many people want to blame the person rather than look at environmental factors. They make them the issue. And I think judgment before questions leads to children not wanting to tell their parents. It's like, well, why don't you tell me anything?

Because every time I go to you, you react harshly. You don't ask further questions, you just instantly condemn or you know, whatever it is. So I, I think it really is so important to have questions and I, I think it's hard. Also just as important to not let our emotions overrun, our ability to ask questions.

Because you know, when, when you're angry, the last things you, you want to do is understand someone else's side of the story and ask them questions. But I think it's so important, and I think that's also what will get you far in, in any religion that you're in. So many people just follow routinely, and it's actually asking questions and seeking out answers that can really help you develop your relationship with, with whatever faith you're in and whatever community you're in.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You, you said a lot of very profound and right on target things. Yeah. As, as parents, you know, we, we do, we need to, to learn. How to allow or, or allow our children to maintain autonomy, to grow into the being that they, that, that they would like to become. And, and I, you know, case in point, I had somebody say to me, you know, I want my daughter to maintain a, you know, a healthy fear, a you know, a level of healthy fear.

And I'm like, right, tell me more about that. Right. Because, because I, I'm not so certain that that's really what you mean, because if your daughter is out at a. A party or a gathering or, or something along those lines. You know, you want her to say, you know, I might try beer tonight. Or you want her to be able to say, huh, everybody here is doing drugs.

I'm uncomfortable. Come get me. And, and you know, anyway, that turns you want, you don't want them to feel like, oh, I'm gonna get in trouble. Because I'm here and what everybody else is doing. And, and so, you know, I think that, you know, we also as parents, and I've raised five and have six grandchildren, so, you know, we, what we really work on is, is teaching them how to regulate their own emotions.

So if, if they're really upset about something and they can't calm themselves enough to articulate it, it's, you know, how do we, how do we teach you to self-soothe? Like, go compose yourself, come back and articulate. And, and so, you know, we, we do a lot of that work and it, and it makes a huge amount of difference.

And, and so they are able to, in a social setting with their peers able to say like, Hmm, this makes me uncomfortable. This isn't a conversation I wanna have. I don't wanna go and do that. You know, like, you guys go and have fun. And they don't have that fear of. Missing out. They don't have that fear of judgment, et cetera, because it's just, you know, and, and they, you just gotta, you know, you just gotta navigate that, that space of when there's bullying and teasing, you know, how are they gonna, you know, you have to teach them how to handle that.

And it starts at home and, and teaching them how to have distress tolerance, emotion regulation to articulate and to feel safe. Seeing how they think, feel, and believe about things and, and being okay. You know, standing on their, their own, on their own regard. And you know, we have, again, we have five children and you know.

Spirituality is, is unique and individual to each and every one of them, just as it is, you know, for myself. And, and we all get to, to choose and, and, and not judge, right? It's, it's more of a, you know, society's need to, to operate in this, in a state of acceptance. I call it. Being in the stance of a learner versus the stance of a judger.

Mm-hmm. We're, we're far too ready. Knee jerk, impulsive, whatever. Right. Reactive instead of responsive. Less curious about. You know what other people think and the, and the, the thing is, is when the table's turned, you don't like to be judged. You don't like to be told what to think or feel, or you don't like to be told you're wrong.

So why is it, you know, why, why do you think it's okay to do it to somebody else? And, and so if you think about it. And I bring this one up quite frequently, you know, like when was the last time you judged somebody on the road when you're out driving and you know, if they turn left in front of you or if they're going a little slower and you're like, oh, they're on the phone, right?

This is, this is a good one for the younger crowd. A hundred percent. Get off your phone, you're distracted driving, you're going all slow, and you get all bent. Hey, when was the last time you were like on your phone? Mm-hmm. Not knowing where you're going, slowing down, holding up traffic, but yet you're judging other people for it and you've done the same, you've accidentally turned left in front of somebody before and, and, and.

Right, right. So, you know, we. We, we, it's like this is our world and, and, you know, other people being in it, in it or is a nuisance. And instead of, you know, accepting the fact that we're all here, living on the planet and we get to choose, right? Like this, my life motto is, this is my life too. It gets to look, feel, be however I want it to.

I get to choose, but because that's my motto, I give it to every, every other being on the planet. Like you get to choose for yourself. That's great. Right. And if I'm interested, I could say, Hey, tell me more about your perspective. If I'm not, I can say, wow, that's really interesting for you and move on.

Either change the topic or you know, say, Hmm, I'm not interested in that, but thank you anyway. Right. We could be polite. We could give grace. Mm-hmm. We could send blessings, right? Like if somebody seems to be struggling on the road, send them a blessing. You don't know what's going on in their life and it's none of your business.

It's a split second. Just keep going. 100%. You know, it reminds me of actually one of the women I was romantically involved with her dating profile said, mind you, this is my life. And I, I thought that was pretty neat, but. As far as the driving, what I do gotta say, just 'cause we're on, on, on topic. I have seen this very much recently, which is people having their phone, you know right where the steering wheel is and they're actively on TikTok while driving.

Y'all gotta stop that. That is so dangerous. Pardon me? Like, well, that's in the addiction. I don't think that's an addiction. It's, well, and I, I'm empathetic to the point that like, TikTok has a team of psychologists. That are working to actively keep you on the app. And some of them quit because of morality, which is really interesting.

It was on the news the other day, but you know, I think not even at a red light, you should be doing it, you know? And to me it's like. How far you drive. Most people drive on average, let's say 30 minutes to wherever they're going. You can't go without being on social media or whatever platform for 30 minutes.

You know? I think it's really it's really sad what, what we've come down to, but it's, yeah, it really is sad and I think it's like going back to. Talk, like being able to come to your parents or whoever it is, teacher, mentor, during those situations, it kind of reminds me of, I'm not sure if it's in place in every state, if it's a federal law or like a state by state thing, but I know growing up, at least where I grew up, they had it where if someone overdosed and you were doing drugs as well, if you called them, called it in you did not get in trouble.

It was like a good Samaritan kind of policy. And so I think, you know, having that. Implemented in your life as a parent, you know, if your kids do get into trouble being able to come to you with it to prevent further damage is important to come with that kind of mindset around it. For sure. And I think that, you know, it takes a lot for a, a kid to be able to communicate that with their parents and anything we can do to make it easier is so important.

Well, kids need to know that their mistakes are not moral failings. Right. If so, I failed at 12 years old because guess what? My dad was killed in a sudden accident. There we were at the funeral afterwards, and I'm like, everybody, I'm devastated. And everybody's standing around talking and smiling and you know, my little brain goes, what's the equation here?

Everybody had a beer in their hand and a cigarette picked up a six pack, grabbed a pack of cigarettes, took off, grabbed my cousin, took off out back, and guess what? It lightened the load a little bit, right? Mm-hmm. Like it lightened the emotional load a little bit. So it worked for a minute. So I learned, you know, in, in some of those big, big things, traumas, and unfortunately, I experienced significant traumas through all of adolescents, right?

Like my, my dad's passing was, was certainly not all of them. You know, and, and very important for, for the younger population, right? Like, so there's. You know, sexual assault, there's mm-hmm. You know, there's, there's lots of things, right? And, and so if you lean on that for your coping, right? If you go, okay, well I just don't wanna face this.

I'm gonna numb out with marijuana, I'm gonna numb out with alcohol, you are now letting an external situation, right? Like the bad act of another person. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, some tragedy. Whatever your, whatever the trauma is, you're letting that thing get in here and you're learning to cope with it with something outside, so you're giving an emotional purpose.

To alcohol, you're giving an emotional purpose to weed. Mm-hmm. You're giving an emotional purpose to whatever it is. Ice cream is one. Right? Like a lot of depression, I see a lot of young ladies gathering around, like in a group, like, ah, I just lost my boyfriend. Everybody's gathered around the ice cream and they're gonna go get their gallon things and they're gonna set the couch to do this.

Right. Hundred. Still a negative coping mechanism. Right. Like that, that ice cream can't help you emotionally. So, and I, I get it because I had an ice relationship with ice cream also. But but we gotta take the emotional purpose, so we wanna. You know, people just sit in and say like, this is a big hard thing for me.

I'm emotionally distraught. I wanna talk to somebody about that. And, and so parents listening, right? If you can't allow your child to come to you and say, I just had this big breakup, or guess what, right? I just. Sexual assault. Right? Inappropriate touching and weird advances. This made me feel uncomfortable.

All the things, right? Whatever it is, you've gotta feel comfortable going to an adult or somebody, right? Could be a peer, could be anything, right? Just go to somebody and say, I need to, I need to figure out how to, how to move through this. Not cope through it, right? We need coping skills. Coping skills don't equal alcohol, marijuana, ice cream.

Right? Like that's a, a bubble bath. A bubble bath is not a coping skill. Right. That's, it's, it's great. It's relaxing, it's soothing, but it's not a coping skill. So we don't wanna cope and like we're meant to experience it. Right. You can have all this moving. I could, I could get on a whole, I can have do a whole sermon on that one, right?

For sure. You can have process, you know, externally, but no internal process. You've gone nowhere. I mean, I, I would say coping is almost like jogging in place when you're trying to get to a destination, right? You, it looks like you're moving, but you're not actually moving at all. And I think the issue. For me, it's so ironic.

You know, I've done a lot of episodes on addiction from, from caffeine to pornographic content to alcohol to sugar is a huge one. Yep. Emotional eating. And what's so interesting to me is one of the goals of every person is to be independent, to have freedom, right? And how do they pursue that through sovereignty over, over their life.

And I think what's interesting with that is. People crave that socially, financially, in all these aspects, yet physically. They will allow themselves to get dependent on a substance to the point that in, in worst case scenarios with alcoholism, they can't go to the store without drinking first. They can't leave the house without drinking.

They can't even wake up and get outta bed without drinking. And so interesting to me, ironically, so that we are all seeking a dependence to, to do what we want to have the money. The freedom, the knowledge to do what we want. Yet some of us will get dependent on these substances and, and coffee is such a big one.

That episode blew my mind. I was just gonna say coffee. Coffee was a huge one. I did a whole episode just recently on caffeine addiction and it's become so normalized. Coffee is, was, was. I can't explain why it was created, but gen in a rural purpose was, Hey, I'm working a, a double shift and I need an energy boost.

But now it's become a glamorized, popularized, normalized drink. There are more, I won't say the name brand. There are more coffee shops of particular franchises in a town than there are sometimes churches, grocery stores. So you could have. A block with three coffee shops, every gas station, every, I mean there, there are very few roads in America you could go and be like, I want a coffee.

And they say, we don't have that here. You know? Right. And, and it's also, of course, energy drinks have a whole new take on it, you know, and being in the military, I saw firsthand the hey, who can drink more energy drinks and still have their kidneys work competitions. It's oh, I, I had three pots of coffee today.

Beat my record. It's, it's very interesting, the psychology behind what we brag about. Ooh, I only slept two hours. I, I never sleep. I don't even sleep, you know, it's a competition. But what I want to kind of focus and, and turn toward is we talked a little bit about your childhood, those experiences you had.

And nowadays, you know, you mentioned working as an emotional performance strategist as well as, you know, an emotional agility architect. What kind of led you into that? How did you end up in this field? Because you know, I don't wanna sound cliche, but I assume you didn't wake up one morning and you're like, I'm gonna be, you know, the emotional leader, guru person.

You know, like, no, no. And, and I'll tell you, right, like, so I, you know, I kind of touched a little bit on my trauma drinking years, right? Like adolescence a little bit into young adulthood, but. And, and, you know, and, and, and the journey with anorexia and, and the different things. Mm. And now then I became a parent and I got, you know, I was married, my husband and I have combined five children and life is good.

Right. I'm still a low level daily drinker. And, and it was the way I was raised, right. Just, just was right. Like, so the, it wasn't trauma drinking, it wasn't high levels of un intoxication. Sure. When we were on vacation or whatever. But here's, here's, and I'll just skip forward to it, right? So this is what happened.

And, and, and so I had, I had a hysterectomy and

when I was, just before I was 30 and, and so hormonally, my physical body changed. So around 35, about five years later, I developed generalized anxiety disorder. Okay. And, and so I was having anxiety and I didn't really understand it. So I was talking to my, my nurse practitioner about it. Now, mind you.

During a chunk of period of time bef Right. Leading, you know, right before that our oldest daughter had leukemia. You know, my husband was doing a lot of international business, was gone a lot and, you know, just kids and some of them were starting to move out and go off to college and, you know, things like that.

So it was just a lot of moving parts. I developed generalized anxiety disorder. My nurse practitioner who knew I was a daily drinker, right. I had my Coors Light every day and, and. She prescribed me Xanax, and I wasn't looking for, I wasn't looking to party it up. I wasn't looking for the big mind altering anything.

I was just looking for something to quiet the, the panic I was feeling in my physical box. Hmm. So uneducated, I knew like, you don't take 'em at the same time, you don't mix 'em, you know, whatever. Right? But so long story short, she prescribed me Xanax for, for daily use. Okay. Over the course of a five year period of time, so scientifically, the synergistic, synergistic effects of the alcohol on board daily and the Xanax onboard daily created a physiological addiction where I became that person that couldn't not drink.

I wasn't walking around like a drunk. I was maintenance drinking, right? Because I just couldn't not. And so there's, there was that right? Like, so it was just, I, I couldn't not, I couldn't not have my Xanax in the morning and I couldn't not, you know, have, have a, a small amount of alcohol and, you know, to, to keep it at a steady pace where I wasn't feeling like I was gonna crash.

And, and so at night I started to feel like, oh my gosh, right? Like, I can feel my liver working. I, you know, just really felt respiratory issues and, and things like that. So it was like. Sat down, had a conversation with my husband. 'cause he is like, why, why now? Right. I'm like, 'cause I can't, I feel like I can't not, I feel like when I tried to not, like, I feel like it's physically dangerous and, and so I went to detox, checked in sober.

Right. They, they found that very interesting. Like they didn't believe me. They actually thought their breathalyzer was broken. Guess not too many people in the world check into detox sober. Right. But I, you know, I needed, I needed that, I needed that level of watchful eye. I was, you know, in my early forties and, you know, had had history of, of hypertension and, you know, et cetera, right?

So I was making the smart decision be, be monitored medically. Did the, did the whole detox and then tried their, you know, did the 30 day, you know, standardized, standardized treatment. Because I'm like, I gotta learn how to open the refrigerator door, right? So I did the standardized treatment and then still was like, oh, guess what?

I still have to go home, right? Like back to that. So I got really passionate about it. I wasn't, you know, AA wasn't necessarily something that I was interested in. I had done that court mandated a couple of times in my twenties, early, early twenties. And, and so, you know, I knew what it was about. Knew it was a safe place to belly up.

You know, but it wasn't the way that wasn't gonna be what was gonna, you know, change my life. So I went to school and started studying the physiological effects of drugs and alcohol on the body and got extremely interested and it kind of was on from there. And I just studied everything about process, behavioral and chemical addiction theories, methods, modalities you name it, over about a five and a half year period of time.

And while I was doing that, I was. Going, wow, look, this theory, right, like the locus of control theory, how can I make that serve me in my life? So, long story short, I, you know, started creating a, a what was gonna, what was serving me in my life? Skillset, tools, tactics, right? And, oh man, life got real easy, right?

Emotionally, it got real easy. I'm a German, Irish, Scottish Sicilian tourist, born on the cusp of Gemini, right? Like. I see red, I can dig my heels in and I can get scrappy with the best of 'em. So I didn't like that. I just didn't like that feeling. So I wanted to be like a softer, kinder, gentler. I wanted to feel at peace and I wanted to be able to, you know, give a lot of grace and, and so I.

Changed my life. And so, you know, when I was interning, you know, getting those hours, those clinical hours you have to get when you're, you know, going into practice. And I, and so I started sharing it with the clients. That, that I was, that were in the treatment program that I was in and you know, we were doing it in group facilitation and I started doing some deeper work one-on-one.

And, you know, luckily I was at facilities that gave me the autonomy right to, to utilize this. And then I, you know, wrote a few programs for, for a couple places and, you know, did my time. And I worked at a, you know, again, I worked at a few facilities and then went off on my own right. And, and so started.

Because where I was really interested was the treatment transition to life. It was that space after so that you can learn, you know, recovery, life skills and, and learn how to that now what, what's next. And so that's where I got started. And it's really just evolved over time to where, you know, I have clients that, you know, there's no chemical substance.

In fact, most of my clients don't have chemical dependences anymore. And they may have, you know, emotional purposes that they've assigned to their wine or emotional purposes. They've assigned to the bucket of Ben and Jerry's or the Amazon shopping cart, or social media or the, you know, the people pleasing perfectionisms, you know, things like that.

And, and so, you know, we're all just there to learn, you know, just to continually advance that level of emotional intelligence, but how to translate that in, in each person's life. So anyway, that's, that's kind of the, the journey in a short, right? 'cause 13 years is a long time to put right. In an hour.

Right. No, for sure. I understand that. And can you kind of just give us a little breakdown of what you're doing nowadays, what your life looks like, and kind of who should work with you based on what you do? Absolutely. You know, so again, you know the, what I do today, I, I, I, it's. A little complex, right? So I do have, you know, we do have that focus that I have my insight and in insight and impact, totally.

Emotional performance focus group, boom. We do that every month, right? It's a new focus topic. We get together every week for an hour and a half on Mondays. Boom, we do that. 2026 has already been. Created and it's gonna be off. Awesome. The charts. But anyway, so there's that. And, and so in there, that's where we work on that emotional performance, the emotional agility in real time, in real life.

This next year we're folding in psycho nutrition, so I can teach people how to actually hear what their body is saying and to articulate the performance they're getting from their physical body. So that's gonna be really awesome. I have you know, elite. Private clients, you know, folks that would prefer to view a little bit more of that intimate one-on-one work, right?

Depending upon what's going on in their life. Again, people pleasing, codependency, perfectionism you know, and, and an attachment to alcohol. But a lot of them are coming, you know, they're coming out of, of a treatment type situation. And, and are really just looking to kind of get their, get their solid foundation.

Some are coming home from a mental health, you know, treatment program. And, and again, it's just a, it's that safe landing that, that soft landing where somebody can help them like make sense of, because when you come home, you, it, it feels very surreal. So there's, there's that. I also I also am a mentor for interns, so I do have interns from one of the local colleges that come to learn how to be a good practitioner.

I also work with professionals, high level professionals you know, for that. 'cause it's just different, right? Like when you need to have that, that level of emotional agility in practice, like in business. And it, and it helps because then you get to leave your business at home and it doesn't infiltrate your life.

And you're not negatively impacting your family. And other than that, you know what I meant? I'm an ed, I'm an educator at heart. And so I do teach for the Addictions Academy. I'm one of their elite master instructors. I teach six different courses for them. And wow, that can be, that can all be found on my, on my website.

And in fact in a couple weeks I'm teaching trauma coaching so that we can, you know, have trauma informed coaches out there that are actually, you know, sitting in people's lives and right. I think that's about it, right? Like, that's what I have going on right now. Right? 30,000 foot overview. Yeah.

That's just kind of the overview of the platforms. Getting a little bit of a facelift. So things are always kind of changing right now and everybody's like, ah, where'd to go? But you know, that's, that's the way of the world, right? 100%. And you know, we've touched upon a lot of different subjects in a variety of topics, but love as we close out here, what is the one big takeaway you want everyone to have in relation to emotions?

Mm. You get to choose. Mm. You get to choose. You don't like the way emotionally you're experiencing anything. Like you get to choose. You just need to learn how to choose. How to restructure, reframe, and, and, and shift in the direction that you would prefer. And, and it's, it's just not, it's not a, it's not a mindset thing.

And I, and I have to say this, right, like I love mindset work, don't get me wrong, but it is so much more than that. It is so much more than we touched, touched on the body, right? And the connection with it. Nine out of 10 signals go from your body to your mind, not the other way around. And, and so mindset's a good thing to have, but that mindset needs to be in learning what do I need to do to actually shift this?

And, and it's, it's a practice. So you've conditioned yourself over 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years of how you are experiencing living, right? Like you've worked hard to get where you are, and now this is like a conditioned way of being. I hear it all the time. That's just how I am. That's who I am. If they would only change, then I'd be fine.

Mm-hmm. Hear that all the time. So you've just, you've just said, this is my narrow lane. I can't be any different because that's just who I am and Right. I tell you. It's not, it's not who you are. Right. It's how you've conditioned yourself to be, and it's not satisfying you if you don't feel at peace. If you're not walking around the world with grace in your heart, it can change.

I really like that, you know, the idea that sometimes our justifications to ourselves are just limiting beliefs and we don't recognize it as that. So that's really important to see that. And again, questions and knowledge or one thing, the implementation and application of that is another. So don't just know and ask, but actually do.

And so. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate your time today and I hope this was insightful to everyone. We're gonna have your website and description below for people to check out. Again, you have so many different things going on, so I encourage everyone go take a look a little bit deeper and you know, see in more detail what you can find for you or for someone you know.

And so I can thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Blessings.