The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Angela Alexander, Audiologist – Trauma to Triumph, Phoenix From The Basement Story

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Dr. Angela Alexander, Audiologist - Trauma to Triumph, Phoenix From The Basement Story Auditoryprocessinginstitute.com Podcast Show Notes

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you coming by the show be sure to watch the video version of this youtube.com fortune is chris voss hit that bell notification button you get all the show. Be sure to watch the video version of this. YouTube.com, 4Chats, Chris Voss.

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It's funny. Everyone keeps finding all the groups. There's like four or five of them on Facebook. So I always see these after the show. I always see these. Hey, we joined. Anyway, guys, we've been doing a lot of funny shows on Clubhouse. In fact, we're doing a nightly room over there.

It's either 7 or 8. Mountain, we'll be starting it every night. And then we usually run it to about 1 a.m. Mountain. Sorry, I don't know what the Eastern Pacific times are because I live in Mountain. I just don't care about the other time zones because that's the way I roll. Anyway, if you want to join us on the Clubhouse, join us over there. If you need an invite, let us know. We're giving them away all the time on our LinkedIn group. And yeah, I met some interesting people on Clubhouse. You've seen some of them come on

the show. We invited them because their stories are compelling, super interesting, and they're very super interesting people. And today we have another person we had on our big clubhouse room who enthralled us for several hours with their story, their journey. A journey of what we call on clubhouse sometimes the trauma to triumph or tragedy to triumph rooms, where we have people come in and share their room, their stories of how they went from trauma and turned into a triumph. They basically were the phoenix that rose from the ashes. Today we have Angela Alexander on the show to talk about who she is and what she does.

Welcome to the show, Angela. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you, Chris? I'm doing awesome. I'm just chilling here in the villain here. I don't know what that means. I'm not a rapper. What am I trying to do, Angela? I'm doing awesome. I'm just chilling here in the villain here. I don't know what that means. I'm not a rapper.

What am I trying to do, Angela? I don't know. You're cool, though. You're good. It's all good. This is why I have to stick with classic rock because I can't rap. So there's that. So, Angela, we met on Clubhouse, didn't we?

We did. We did. It was one of your podcast rooms actually yeah we were doing a podcast room and we were talking about a lot of people coming up and saying this is my story this is my journey and is there maybe a way to put this into a podcast or not and so people were talking about a lot of different things that were issues with them give us a dot com for you or people can look you up on the interwebs and what you do. And let's just give an overview of what you do and talk about, and then we'll get to the beginning of your journey. Okay. So I am Angela Alexander. I'm originally

from Kansas. In the last 10 years, I've lived in New Zealand. And four months ago, I moved to Australia. Moving during a pandemic, maybe not the smartest thing you could ever do. I'm an expert in auditory processing disorder, auditory processing. So I'm a doctor of audiology and I specialize in this difficulty that has more to do with the brain and less to do with the ears. Ah, okay. We'll find out more about it. So you are a doctor in this then, right? I am. I'm a doctor of audiology. So it's so funny. I became a doctor of audiology a year before I got married. So when people call me Mrs. Alexander, it feels really confronting actually. But I haven't really used my title often my husband calls me doctor anytime i

do something stupid but actually on clubhouse for the last two months i've been going by dr angela and it's it's been nice to actually hear the title sometimes i'm paying for it come on now girl you pay for you own it you run with it man it's like i ever bought that sir title from the queen of england i don't know i'll never get one but there was a while there evidently you could You run with it, man. And Survivor bought that Sir title from the Queen of England. I don't know why I never get one, but there was a lot there. Evidently, it was a bit of pale involved. But if I had one of those, man, I'd be walking around. I'd be like, you dressed me as Sir.

That's hilarious. Yeah, someone said to me, they're like, oh, graduating in four years is like leaving a party at 11. And I went to the University of Kansas Rock Chalk Jayhawk for 10 years. I'm leaving at 3 a.m. Mountain Time. Who cares about New York and California? By the way, I think your show would be on until 3 a.m. New York Time and midnight California Time. Throwing that out there in case somebody needs to know. Usually we have just all the, I think the way this show works, somebody made a comment, they're like,

this is when all the weird night people show up. No, the 12 to 3 mountain is like you get everybody. You get the Aussies, the New Zealand people, which are always wonderful to have. They always show up and go do the good day. Good day. Good day. Good day.

That would be more Australia. There you go. New Zealand would say, just hi-ya. Hi-ya. Hi-ya. Yeah, you certainly lived in the perfect place, New Zealand, for the pandemic. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me?

Jacinda Ardern rocked it. She's incredible. What a human. I was just sitting there going, can we, can we trade? Can we get her? I know. It's funny. Like people are putting up, Oh, we thought this was just going to be weeks long. And here we are a year later. And in New Zealand, it literally was seven weeks long. It was seven weeks of, I think we had 20 deaths in all of New Zealand. In Australia, where I live now, there's never been a single case. And I am up for my vaccination in four days. Wow.

Good on you. I got to get my second one here at the end of the month. And all my friends are getting it. It's like the new in thing. It's like having an OnlyFans account. Everyone's got one these days. So yeah, but what's nice about my rooms is doing them late at night, you get the whole world you see involved.

You get, like, a whole spectrum of the time zones around the world. So you got everything from the Aussies to the weirdos on the Pacific Coast and everything in between. So it makes for a fun room because you've got this spectrum of people and different cultures and different ideas and concepts. But we're all on the humanity train of Clubhouse, which is cool. Can I also say people are at really different levels of alertness? It is really weird to hear somebody who's, oh, I can't really even.

And I'm like, it's 4 p.m. Get your act together, Scott. Yeah, we did a show last night and we had people that were falling asleep. But they wanted to be there. that was important they're like yeah i'm not really tired but i just like being in this room it's funny and okay man sure hey yeah there you go so you are a doctorate of auditory stuff i think it's funny your husband is that passive aggressive is that the right term for what he does? My husband is cut from the same cloth as Elon Musk. He's incredibly intelligent.

He has had far less schooling than I am, but is far more intelligent. He's an innovator. He's just next level. He's one of those people we need to, I don't know. He looks at things in a different way. He's one of those people we need to, I don't know. He's just, he's, he looks at things in a different way. He's incredibly cheeky. And yeah,

I, if I do something dumb, that doctor is getting whipped, whipped out faster than you can say banana. That's funny. That's, that is one of the problems of having a doctor title. Everyone expects you to be all a smirk.

I say dumb stuff too.. I say dumb stuff too. I definitely say dumb stuff too. A lot. The further that you get from the ears, the less I know. When clients try to talk to me about genitalia, I'm like, yo, not my expertise, yo. Yeah, yeah. Or when they come up to you and they go, does this look infected? So that's my favorite joke with doctors.

Go up to them at a party and be like, hey, I need to show you something I think is infected. Can I do that? Does this look infected so that's my favorite joke with doctors go up to a party and be like hey i need to show you something i think it's infected can i do that does this smell infected that would be even better can you tell me does this smell like almonds i'm gonna have to show you in a private room though can we do that do i have to pay you for this yeah it sucks being a doctor it's it's almost as bad as being a computer genius and know how to work on computers then your family finds out your family's calling you computer genius and know how to work on computers. Then your family finds out. Your family's calling you. You're teaching elderly people how to use iPads and stuff. Yeah, they're always like, I can't figure out where's the Windows button?

You're like, oh man, we're so screwed right now. I work with hearing technology. What? A. A? So that is the standard joke with audiology. You say, I'm an audiologist and somebody's like, huh, what? So I used to have a business card that said, did you just say, huh, or what?

It could be three different things. And I had the things listed and what they should do about it. And the last one was like, it's probably just a poor sense of humor. And you and your family will have to suffer from it the rest of your life. Yeah, I was thinking that I had an audiologist once from a hooker in Thailand. But I got to clear it up. Just some penicillin and stuff. Once again, so far away from what I usually work with. Different holes, mate. Different holes. I'm not sure what that means, but yeah, I'll take your word for it. Different holes. There you go. There's the two up here. And you work with these people, you help them.

So what do you do before we get into your story? Because I need a little bit more depth in this. Do you help people listen better? Do you work with a lot of husbands to listen better to their wives? Or what's going on there? I am a specialist in selective listening and domestic deafness. Ah, yeah. So it's a dad joke. Okay. It's not legit. No. Okay. So basically let's say a person feels like they have a difficult time listening or hearing or understanding what they're hearing speech. How about, let me say that one more time. Let's say a person feels like they're having difficulties hearing and understanding what people are saying to them. The first thing they should do is they should go get a hearing test. Now that hearing test, when you hear the beep, whatever, and you

raise your hand or push a button, that is just telling us what your hearing sensitivity is. But auditory processing is much more complex. Using auditory skills to understand what someone else is saying is not diagnosed or identified on that hearing test result. So even if your hearing is really sensitive, it doesn't mean that your brain automatically knows what to do with that sound. So if you're really stupid, having good hearing is going to help you at all. Okay. So this is the interesting thing because auditory processing disorder, APD can look like a person is dumb. It can look like a person isn't paying attention.

It can look like a person doesn't care. It can look like a person doesn't care. It can look like they are rude, but actually it's that their brain is having a hard time taking in the auditory sense, the auditory sense, making sense of it, remembering it, and being able to bring it together to figure out concepts. And people will say, what's the point in having a label? We can actually test for it. So you would come into my clinic. I would do eight different tests and I could see how many skills you are struggling with. And then we can treat it.

Really? Make it better. Yeah. How do you guys usually treat it? Do you do auditory like training or something? What? You use the perfect words. words amazing how did you do that you're so clever i've seen these apps that do that yes it is legitimately called auditory training

it's like workouts for your ears ah lifting muscles have you ever one of the problems i have is i have tinnitus especially really bad tinn. I have it really bad in this ear. Like it's just a constant ringing and voices in my head that say kill, kill, kill. But the psychiatrist says it's something else and the judge. So there's that. Okay. All right. So first of all, if you have tinnitus only in one ear, get thee to an audiologist for a hearing test, because we shouldn't have anything happening that's asymmetrical on the head, right? Because your head has experienced all the same things in life, mostly the same amount of noise, same mom and dad, things like that. So if you're experiencing tinnitus only in one side, I would say that's a red flag. You need to go have a hearing test.

Now I do have it. It's really interesting. If my blood pressure gets high, if I'm really stressed out when I used to be hungover, it would do that. If I don't get enough sleep, it'll start the other ear. But it goes on and off in this ear. But it's definitely all the time. can actually weaken your inner hair cells of your cochlea and make them more prone to damage outer hair cells. The hair cells of your cochlea, it can make them more prone to damage with noise. So if you're around loud noise and you've had gin and tonics, especially because tonic water is also a bit of an ototoxin while you, drinking and loud noise at the same time they go together perfectly in all situations except for your ears this is every question i've ever fucking been to i know just don't drink and oh okay well wear earplugs sure okay but there's no there's no way to heal tinnitus tinnitus so the main thing that we can do with tinnitus is we can decrease how much it bothers you. All right there, but there is hope, like actually decreasing how much it bothers you

is a huge deal. It is a, because some people like you basically should categorize yourself. Are you curious? Are you concerned? Or are you distressed? I would sense that based on what you're saying, that you're curious more than sometimes. Sometimes it's madness, but yeah. Okay. Got it.

Got it. It's good to know. And you also said that it can be related to stress when you're having it in both ears. So, and stress and tinnitus are definitely interrelated as well, but yeah. So I think, yeah, basically identify curious, concerned, distressed. If you are distressed, get yourself to a, concerned or distressed, especially get yourself to an

audiologist. It's worth at least having that once over just to make sure that there isn't something else going on there because they're in a small percentage of cases there can be things that this is a warning sign for or a red flag for i was going to just get a lobotomy that's what we've been pricing out right now i'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy that thanks for reminding me of that joke that is the great i kind of forgot about it i love that yeah wasn't that a dr demento back one one maybe i don't know i'm a big fan of spoonerisms and wordplay archibald j spooner used to say the weird things like instead of long live the dear old queen he said long live the queer old dean the so this is pretty interesting we're learning a lot on on auditory things people should go get

their hearing checked. I don't know. I've been married six times and divorced six times. I think having that, claiming that you have that disorder, whether you have it or not, is a nice crutch to have, especially if you're married. I think most of my married friends have it. That's hilarious. I think it's really easy when you have a disorder that can affect day-to-day life to make it a cultural part of yourself.

Yeah. I just lean on it all day long. Exactly. Which, you know, for me, because I'm a therapist, like my whole goal is let's see where you're at and let's make change happen. Like it, it drives me crazy to identify something that we're not going to try to improve. But I do understand also that once you've got something you can point to and put your finger on and say, this is actually what the issue is, then it does create a little bit of a sense of relief. I've even been watching Married at First Sight in Australia right now. Their reality TV is amazing. It's like way less scripted compared to the U S stuff, but all the production

value. Love it. And there's like a guy on there. I'm like, dude, he is not understanding what people are saying at all. And his wife is calling him out for it. And I'm like, Whoa, was that a problem too? Where people like you're telling me ABC and I'm thinking one, two, three, completely. This explains a lot of Trump voters, actually. You know what? I actually put up a post on Facebook that I thought that Trump has a listening problem. Like I was like, I, I, I deeply care about people who have auditory processing issues and listening difficulties, but like nothing was going into him.

And, and I do have a hard time understanding that point of view. The Trumper point of view is just something that does not make sense to me at all. It's malignant narcissism. It is. It is. I mean, we're all just objects to malignant narcissists. It's the worst. Of course, people to put into office too.

It's interesting. But like I said, my first five marriages, I would just, when they would say, why don't you hear me? I'm just like, I, cause I just don't give a fuck and you're annoying me. But now I have a auditory disease that I can claim to have, whether I have it or not. And I can use that as a crush from here on out for my next three marriages. You're so welcome. You're so welcome. Yeah, no. So basically let's say if you were legitimately like, you know what, this is actually the root of some of the difficulties we've had. It can't be improved. So, yeah, you go get a hearing test.

You need one anyway, because that lateral tinnitus, sir. Check to see if that seems to work. Okay. Also, quick shout out to all of these people who are listening. The average person waits seven years from when they first experience hearing difficulties to doing something about it. And also they're showing that the rate of dementia, like the, your propensity to have dementia increases with that amount of time and the severity of the hearing loss. If you're not here for an uplifting story, you're here for my dramatic statistics, right? I love your delivery. No, the last four or five years, I've actually been trying to make go away. That's why we've been shopping lobotomy,

because I just want to forget the whole thing and all the pain, but it's slowly unraveling. So this is really cool. People can learn about this. We want people to go get their hearing tested. I don't know that a lot of my husband friends are going to do that. They like claiming the disease of, I think they call it husband deafness or something like that. Domestic deafness. Yeah. And part of the problem is women do tell you. They're like, I don't really want you to give me advice, but I just want you to listen to me talk about my issues but i want you to fix

them and i don't really want you to like spend all your time focused on me because then you're just being a creeper a creeper uh you know stalker and so then you then when you ignore them then they're all angry at you and you're like i thought you said you wanted me to not pay as much attention to you but now you do make up your fucking mind so there's all that dude i'm a problem fixer i have no idea if somebody is like hey let's fix a problem i am right there next to them yeah i don't know that's that's how i am because i run a business and a male and so we just have a lot oh you have a problem i am i am also i have no no penis but I also run a business, and I also like to solve problems. This just in?

No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. You're the first person, I think, on my show in 700 episodes to say, just clarify that you do not have a penis. I am clarifying at this current moment as far as gonads are concerned. There you go. All right right there's still time you can grow some maybe i don't know uh we actually did have a great uh author on the show who had a sex change and uh we had to refer to them with the proper pronouns they them

they're absolutely as you should it's really cool it's a good lesson in learning pronouns i never gotten a chance to use pronouns interacting with somebody. So that's great. Can I just say really quickly, you know how I was saying earlier that it feels awkward to me to be called Mrs. It's the same thing. It's my identity is I am Dr. Angela, but nobody calls me Dr. Angela. But just don't call me Mrs. That feels just weird.

Yeah. I might have to work that problem out with whoever those people are. Yeah. No, it's all good. Our identity is important. It's who we are. And if somebody does not recognize who we are, that sucks. You need like a name badge.

And then you always have to wear the stethoscope. If you don't do the lab coat and the stethoscope everywhere you go, like you just got to do it. I have a foster sister who's an optical physicist. And when I graduated, she gave me a stethoscope. And I was kind of like, wait, did she not get what she's... I got one too for my graduation. All of us who are doctors need a stethoscope.

Yeah, you got to be walking around with it, going out to dinner. You just got to... Because if you want people to call you a doctor, you got to give us those verbal cues that us idiots, you know, we're like, is she a doctor or not but then if you got the stethoscope and the name badge they're on yeah she's clearly a doctor you're walking around scrubs or something well it's funny i i do not ever need to be called doctor but i definitely don't want to be called missus let's you gotta work that out with the

right no it's okay i i'll work on it on myself too do it to yourself you got married so you got on this one i've already given him my whole last name so like isn't that enough you gave him your last name was the other way around like i've taken my i've taken his last name like oh okay not enough isn't that enough of a partnership i don't know man this sounds like counseling for the two of you yeah maybe maybe yeah I'm not that kind of guy. Sorry. I'm still working. I'm still working. My counts are on all the personalities and voices in my head, especially the kill, kill, kill one. That's the one that my parole agent says we can't do anymore or else I have to go back again if they find the bodies again.

So anyway, this is pretty interesting. I think this is really important for people to recognize. I wish when my tinnitus had first kicked in, I don't know, decades ago. It's hard to tell when it first kicked in because I get ringing in the ears after concerts. And I went to all the great concerts, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica. I went to them all. And I drank during them all. And probably some other things, too. I don't know.

There's enough. I've been through so much stuff. There's enough head wounds up here and brain damage from everything I've ever done. So that's probably some of it. But it's interesting to me how people, you know, we talk on Clubhouse, how people get into the fields that they're into, into the journeys that they have and how they fix sometimes a lot of different challenges that they have and their basic trauma to triumph stories. And you came into our clubhouse and you shared an extraordinary story where you just, the whole room was just in empathy with you and just our minds were blown.

But this is the story of how you became, wanted to become a doctor, get in this field, help other people, and make a difference out of the trauma that you went through. Should we cue up your story right now? Is that a good place for it? That's perfect. At the beginning, you were talking about a phoenix rising out of the ashes. And I like to joke that I'm a phoenix rising out of a basement. So I've got one of those weird stories out of the U S where of abuse and neglect, a little trigger warning there.

But yeah, my, my dad and my stepmom had some concerns because they said that I wasn't listening or paying attention. So I was 13. I was 13 when the major abuse started about 12 when minor stuff things started getting weird at 12 and then the abuse really started at 13 and most most teenagers don't listen this is common knowledge most teenagers don't listen they're going through

the development of their ego they're trying to find themselves. I remember my, when I stepped out of my 11 year old, he will say these kind of act out ego things. And you look at him and be like, what the fuck did you say? Cause I'm going to take your head off. You just backtalked your mom. And he'd have this look on his face. Oh shit. I didn't mean to say that. It just came out. And we'd be like, okay, he recognizes he's wrong. He's trying to find himself, you know, his ego and stuff. And can I just say that the step-parent situation, the step-parent relationship with a child is difficult because you don't know the context of that child. And that's tricky. So like with my parents, I got in trouble for things I never remembered hearing to begin with. Like you, there was one time, like I didn't bring a

backpack on vacation. So I had to stay locked in a hotel room instead of going out with the family to go do things. There is a little bit of crazy there, too, obviously. But their main gripe was that I wasn't listening. I wasn't following instructions. Like most kids in the 1980s, I was diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit disorder, and by my family doctor. And so to my stepmom, she was like, oh, she's got attention deficit issues. Let's keep her in a room all by herself, keep her free of distractions, and keep living our lives as a family. So her basic way to deal with it was to keep me locked in our basement. So down in the basement, I wasn't talked to.

I wasn't touched. I wasn't told I was loved. I was not allowed to watch TV. I wasn't allowed to plug things in. I didn't, I, there were no toilets. It was just buckets. So I actually had, you actually had a shit bucket as we call it. I actually had a shit bucket, we call i actually had a shit bucket

a legit shit bucket that lived in the same room as me which was awesome now give me some give me some better context if we can so did you when did your stepmom come into the picture and were you the only natural child between the two your your stepmom and your dad? Or were there other siblings that you had that were from your original mother and father? Yeah. Okay. I have an older brother with my mom and dad. And so my dad left my mom. He fell in love with this woman, left my mom. They were both teaching. They're both fourth grade teachers at an elementary school, as you do. And so my dad left my mom for her. And then that's how that started. So I was 11 when they met. Now, how does your, how does your most, in that day, most times the kids will go

to the mother. How does that, how does that not happen? These are stories people are asking. No, it's okay. All right. So we've, we've got, so my step-mom had two children who were younger than me and most people aren't used to a woman being an abuser. It's just not something that's really considered. And she has a really interesting way and a really interesting history of creating a narrative around a person. Like her ex-husband was treated in a way and my mother was treated in a way and they were able to rally an entire community around these different ideas of these people being controlling and manipulating and abusive like they would use the word abusive in the most ironic fashion. But anyway, so basically.

They're demonizing other people with what they're doing, but they're using it as a distraction maybe. Yeah, it's projection at like next level projection, right? So basically they had, my mom didn't even realize what was happening. Just all of a sudden, all of her lifelong or not lifelong, but her long-term family friends started turning and not really seeing things from her perspective and asking her why she was being so abusive to my father. And my mom was just kind of like, what? My mom was so shocked by it. And it's actually taken 20 years for her to unravel that whole story. So it would be fair to say that you got caught up and stuck in the basement because your dad was on board with this because he was into this new wife.

And she was one of the, it sounds like she was really one of these spinners of that demonization. And so the dad just basically got caught up in it and had issues with you as well. Is that a good thing? Yeah, it's really interesting. So my family's Mennonites. So Mennonites believe in non-resistance. So we got religion sneaking in here. I got religion as well. I did not see that coming. Right, exactly. So Mennonites, for the most part, are quite passive. So we believe in passive resistance. I say we like I'm still a Mennonite. I am not.

But they believe in that a person is going to get their just desserts wherever they arrive. And we shouldn't be doing anything like aggressive toward them. So my dad, my dad had like destructive passivity almost. He was so passive. Like my brother said that my dad didn't own ant killer he's like my you're my brother actually said once our dad is the type of person who was standing around while george floyd was being murdered it's that kind of destructive passivity he wasn't literally there but it's like he stood by he stood by and and some ways in which i wonder if my dad was actually being he

was in the same kind of domestic abuse kind of situation because he couldn't he couldn't actually speak up she was she was running the show i know these chicks man i think i was married to seven of them or something i know i have to do that because otherwise people will meet me and they'll be like i heard you had six marriages. And I had to think. You're like, not at once. The joke is I've never even married. Have you not actually? I've never been married, no.

I think Chris Rock said it best. You're either single and lonely or married and miserable. So I'd like to be happy. I just never got tired of being happy. A lot of my friends, they get tired of being happy. They settle down and get married. But I'm still happy. I just may want to run out of happiness.

I'll decide to get married. That's my joke. I mean, yeah. The Mennonites, if I have this correct, so I want to verify this. The Mennonites are members of certain Christian groups belonging to Christian communities of the Anabaptist denomination. Yeah, Anabaptist movement. Yep. Anal Baptist. No! to Christian communities of the Anabaptist denomination. Yeah, Anabaptist movement. Yeah. Anal Baptist.

No! Anal Baptist is the Catholics. I get that. I get that wrong. So Mennonites believe that the child should decide to be baptized, not baptized at birth. I could use that Mormonism. That would have been nice. Right?

Because I would have opted out right there. It's really interesting. Like my grandmother on my dad's side, she married, she was a different type of Mennonite than my grandfather. And when she married him, she got shunned. She got excommunicated from her church. Her family wouldn't talk to her until my grandfather passed away, essentially. And they were both just different types of Mennonites.

Like they had 95% in common. And then it's just these little bits. Now, are Amish part of the Mennonites? I'm reading through the wiki here. Yeah. So Jacob Amon and Menno Simons had lots of – there was a lot in common with those two. They split off – oh, my gosh. I don't know.

Maybe in the 1800s, something like that. There is a lot of similarities there. Wow. But the differences now – Amish don't know, maybe in the 1800s, something like that. There is a lot of similarities there. But the difference is now Amish don't have buttons. The Mennonites will use electric cars. Amish will use buggies, no electricity really. But then the Mennonites will chop off their radio antenna to show that they're not listening to the radio and things like that. Wow, that's quite the rebellion. like show that they're not listening to the radio and things like that. Wow. That's quite the rebellion.

But the parts that I'm bringing up are just things that I noticed as a kid as opposed to an adult having a really good idea of theology. Well, I think this is helping too because it really gives us a background on your parents and what they were thinking and what they were doing because this explains things a little bit more in the context of the rest of your story. But did you have to wear the garb? I'm seeing a garb on Wikipedia. Yeah.

Okay. So my grandmother was the more strict sense. She was, there was old Mennonite. She was Holden Mennonite. And my grandfather was General Conference or old Mennonite. And so we ended up being along the lines of my grandfather. So it's less strict. So I was not wearing the garb or anything, but we lived near those people. Like you can't, like my grandmother wouldn't show anyone her hair. Like her hair was only to be seen

by my grandfather. So it would have to be like tucked up into a bun. And she only had five, five hairs on her head head i did that with my fourth wife i said no one can see your hair anymore babe and so then i shaved her head bald but she liked it she was hot she was she was she was like she was into that who's that one chick never mind i can't even pull the joke from the 80s it's that it's that beautiful black singer no not that crazy bitch this was this was no she's a black woman beautiful black singer. Sinead O'Connor? No, not that crazy, bitch. This was, no, she's a black woman, beautiful black woman. I think she was married or dated David Bowie back in the day. But she had a music career.

She was just rocking. I think she was the first black woman I ever fell in love with. So you got the Mennonites, and it looks like there's about 2.1 million total population, according to the wiki here. And you live in their religious high there and so they just decide you're just a rebellious teenager yeah which is funny because like i'm i'm a really people-pleasing kind of person i have been forever plus you're from a passive religion too as well yeah yeah so like i was I, I genuinely wanted my family to love me. I genuinely wanted my family to accept me and to enjoy me and whatnot. And they didn't like,

she didn't in particular. So there are two kids living upstairs. I was in the basement. The door was locked. I would hear 12 footsteps down the stairs and then a click each time food was being brought down to me. My dad would come bring, it would either be a peanut butter sandwich or a cold processed cheese sandwich. Like it takes very little to make that taste more nice. Microwave it for 20 seconds, man. Anyway, American processed cheese sandwich or a cup of Cheerios for breakfast, cup of milk. Like I was literally treated like an animal, like a pet. Okay. Now you fill their bowl full of stuff. So I treat my dogs better than that. Right. I treat my dog better than that. They get chicken breast. Right. Exactly. So that was from 13 to 17. And then I got taken out of the house by social and rehabilitative services.

And I was put with a foster mom. So that was January of my senior year. And eight months later, I went to the University of Kansas and started school. I was told constantly during the basement years that I wasn't intelligent enough to do anything in life, that I was behavior disordered, that there are classes for people like me. Like I was just like my, my stepmom wanted to break me.

She wanted to break me. She wanted me to, she's like a prison guard. She wanted to break my will. And, uh, and then there's a lot going on in the basement because you have, you're in there for four years and you have to find something to almost just have something to do or keep you sane.

Did you have access to books, TV or radio? OK, so I didn't have she had a bookcase at the bottom of the stairs and I was not I was told that I was not to touch those or i would what did she say i would be sent to my mom's house to live faster than her head could spin or something like that that sounds like which is funny because i know right why didn't i just go touch the books but anyway so i would slowly go and steal a book and read it and some of my favorite books ended up coming out of that like water ship down by water that was a favorite book of mine. Yeah. Fiverr. Great movie too, I think if I recall. Yeah. I haven't seen the movie yet, but it's awesome. So I would steal the books, but I was scared. I was scared to take the books because anytime I got

found doing something that wasn't okay, things got more and more strict. So I wasn't allowed to plug things in. There was one day where I came home and I wasn't allowed to walk through the upstairs door, like the regular entrance to the house. I was only allowed to crawl in through a casement window. So when you went to school, you had to go in and out the window, right? In and out the window. And there would be people driving to the same school I was going to, and I would have to walk. This is the weird thing. Normally, when they lock somebody in the basement, they never get out because then they'll go to the authorities.

But you were literally getting out every day to go to school and then going right back into the hole. Yep. This is amazing. I know. It's pretty pretty weird where's your mother during this do you see her during these four years or no i didn't see her at all so what the fuck is going on with your mom have you ever talked to your mom about this oh my god my mom and i talk about this all the time and she feels awful about it because she thought that i was living a life of privilege. And during the divorce

situation, that whole narrative thing that they were able to do, well, I'm like 11 or 12 years old. Of course, I'm going to go along with whatever my parents are saying. My dad and my stepmom had me tell my mom through the court system that I wanted nothing to do with her. Pretty, pretty awful. And then immediately after they get... Which is weird. They didn't want me. Yet they didn't want my mom to have me either. Like, what?

That makes no sense. I've actually known a few crazy chicks like this. They're really evil people. Would you say that your stepmom was a narcissist? Do you have a personality profile? It's really funny. When I was in grad school, they're really evil people. Would you say that your mom was a, your stepmom was a narcissist or what? Do you, do you have a personality profile?

It's really funny. When I was in grad school, my, I went to counseling cause in at KU, you can go to counseling for $5 per session. So I went every week in that 10 years. Like why not? I'm going to my talking lady.

I love my talking lady. You're talking there. I could refer to them in more professional ways, of course. But anyway, it's funny. my talking lady. I love my talking lady. I could refer to them in more professional ways, of course. But anyway, it's funny, my talking lady. So there was one time she was like, Hey, I want you to come along to this group therapy session. I'm like, sweet. Went to the group therapy session and she introduced all of us. She goes, all of you in this room have a parent with a mental illness. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm in the wrong room. This is awkward. No, I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. So immediately after the session, I'm in the wrong room. This is awkward. No, I was like, I have no idea what

you're talking about. So immediately after the session, I like went up and I was like, this is super embarrassing, but I do not have a parent with a mental illness. And I think I'm in the wrong group. Was there another trauma group? And, and my therapist was like, okay, we need to book a session. And she sat down with me and she looked at me and she goes, you don't think that your parents had a mental illness? And I was like, wait, yeah, you could be right. And she was like, wow, this is the tragedy. It's crazy. But okay.

So basically my dad and my stepmom never took any kind of responsibility never apologized for anything like that i decided the the police left it up to me um the court system left it up to me at that time they said do you want to press charges and i said no because i was still daddy's little girl and i could not wait to reconnect with him and reestablish a relationship. Like I still loved my dad and I did not see him as much as the perpetrator, even though he was like helping this happen. So I decided, no, I'm not going to do it. Then in 2013, I went public about my story for the very first time on Facebook, put it all the way up, put it all up there. And they were like, Oh, Oh, can you please take that down? We need you to take that down. And I'm like, actually, no, it took me seven months. My family, my dad and my stepmom were like,

Oh, can you take that down? Even though they still hadn't talked to me or taken any kind of responsibility. And they're like, yeah, you need to take it down. So I came up with a series of 10 tasks that they could do to make things better. And I was like, yeah, you need to take it down. So I came up with a series of 10 tasks that they could do to make things better. And I was like, and you know what? You guys have 30 days to tell me which tasks you're going to be able to accomplish. And based on the number of tasks you accomplish, you can be more connected with me. And I was like, and in 30 days, if you don't respond, I'll post this on Facebook too. If they did all 10 tasks, I was going to take the

letter offline. And I finally had, I, the ball was finally back in my court. I finally got to say, you know what, actually, if you did all these 10, 10 things, we are good. We are fine. I will forget this ever even happened. You will have made your amends and you will have connected with me in a way that I find meaningful. It was like things like they need to write my mom a letter of apology. Like, why is it that they kept me when they needed to thank my foster mom for taking over and helping me? They needed to write me a letter of what happened from their perspective and how this kind of snowballed to what it did. I wanted them to read a couple of books and give me a one page summary reflection. I was like, you guys are both teachers. You appreciate what an assignment can do to help

you elevate your own and evolve as a human. And, and they like messaged me, they're like, oh, we need more time. And then they, they never, they never responded to it. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to have to let you go then. I'm not going to post this online because this is done. Not because you deserve it, but I do. And I'm over it. And so time went on and my dad passed away four months ago. I'm sorry.

You know what? It was harder to lose him from rejection than it ever was to lose him from cancer. I'm sorry. That's challenging. It is ironic. It was harder to lose him from rejection than it ever was to lose him from cancer. I'm sorry. That's challenging. It is ironic. It is ironic that he had to spend his last year of his life in isolation. That's what I had to do for four years. Maybe sometimes that's the biggest curse for some people.

I don't know. I suppose if you're so disconnected and you're so out there you don't have a concept of realizing what you did wrong i unfortunately have one of those brains that goes yeah you fucked up buddy yeah here it is right here wilderness of mirrors for you man everywhere you look it is really hard not to have some sort of oh what's that german shatten freud schadenfreud schadenfreud anyway schadenfreude it is very interesting to me now that my stepmom is as lonely as she's always created made other people be like nobody is in with the delusion with her anymore she just gets to be on her own with it and i mean

like the when i went public about my story the sheriff contacted me and he was like, whoa, everybody's asking me questions about you. I need to look into your case. And he was like, this was severely mishandled and they both should have gone to prison. And nowadays they, I don't think they give the child or in a lot of States, they don't give the abused wife or significant other an option. They just file the charges. My statute of limitations was really short and there's no way I was recovered enough to do something in that amount of time. Let me do a call back to a certain point where you're in that room. You find that listening in radio, I think, if I recall the story from Clubhouse. See, I actually listen in Clubhouse. So the radio becomes the auditory

key in for you that maybe drove you into the industry or business that you're in now. It is. There was one time where I was, I went to go back into the window and I would normally have to close the window, like with my arm in the middle to make sure that it didn't close too tight. But because it was snowing outside, somebody may have closed the window all the way. Anyway, I went to get into the window. My family wasn't home. Tried to open the window and my arm wouldn't fit through. And I don't know where my family is.

Like I have no communication device. It's snowing outside and my clothes are poorly fitting and not warm enough. So my dad's little blue Volkswagen pickup truck was sitting in the driveway and I went to open the door and it was unlocked and I was stoked. And I got in the car and his radio would turn on independent of having a key in the ignition. How cool is that? I turned it on and there was a Kansas Jayhawk

basketball game going on. And I was like, Oh, this is amazing. I can picture all of this. And honestly, I'm going to go ahead and say talk radio saved my life. So that had been maybe a year or so into it. This was 1997 and Kansas Jayhawk basketball team was so strong. Then the players there were just crazy good. Jacques Vaughn, Scott Pollard, Jared Haas, Paul Pierce, Rafe LaFrance. Okay. All right. I can name their starting five easily. So basically I went back down into the basement and I asked my dad if I could plug in my radio. And I think he forgot. I think he forgot about it and I plugged it in because I had a radio from, and I hid the ability that I actually had this. And I just listened to these basketball games. I lived for these basketball games. I would write

the stats as each game was happening. And I absolutely lived for Kansas Jayhawk basketball. And actually, I posted a story about that on Facebook last year in January on my 21st anniversary of getting released from my basement prison. Somebody tweeted it at Scott Pollard, and he took me to a KU Jayhawk basketball game on March 5th of 2020, right before the world changed. That's awesome. I saw the pictures on, I think you have some articles on medium.com. Yeah. We sat courtside and I just got to know him and he's just a phenomenal human being. I think that's a beautiful part of your story. I remember seeing the medium pictures and I was like, this is a great, this is a nice tragedy to triumph. But it's interesting. We, we skipped over. You didn't have a TV in that basement.

You didn't have really anything other than eventually hacked radio that you, you were using. Exactly. It's, it's funny. Cause yeah, it was, it was solitary confinement. Like when I watch stuff and I see people in solitary confinement, I know that feeling. I know that feeling of just being alone with your thoughts, staring at the wall, looking for faces in the wooden beams above my head, looking at the floor and trying to make sense out of the white condensation lines on the

cement floor of the basement. That's how bored I was. And so the radio, were you listening with headphones or were you listening to a transistor? Oh man, I had, I had bought a Walkman with those cheap Sony headphones, like the little bitty ones. And so I had those, I think they broke and I like cobbled them back together. And then hilariously enough, I was working at a pet hospital just a couple hours a day. I was changing dogs, newspaper bedding. And then I like looked down and on this newspaper were pictures of the guys of the basketball team that I've been listening to for ages. So all of a sudden I'm like, Oh, it's like,

I can see them. so i started cutting out these articles and i started pasting them in the note this notebook and then of course i ran out of paper and so then i started using like paper from other things and then i ran out of glue so i started using toothpaste and then i ran out of toothpaste like i and any time i would get in a funk i would just start reading through my notebook. And I actually still have the notebook here. It's one of my treasured possessions. It was my Wilson.

That's amazing. Your Wilson. I shouldn't even laugh. It's horrifying to think about. But it's interesting. And so it sounds like you've done the right thing with childhood trauma is you spent some really good quality time in psychology to work on this. Because you seem really balanced right now. You could go off camera after this and be like, kill, kill, kill. My voice is in my head.

But was that a thing that really helped you get balanced, get straight? If I look at things, like if I think back on my therapist that I saw, there were like three main therapists. Don Getman, shout out to you. I need to connect with her again, Alison Fowling. If I think back on the things that I used to talk to them about, like there was one time I remember going to Alison and saying, I'm scared to do something. And she's like, what's that? And I said, somebody asked me to go to lunch with them.

She was like, I want you to challenge yourself and do something that scares you once a day. Oh, okay, here we go. And now here I live internationally. I own my own business. I've owned multiple businesses. So that whole idea of pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. And I think that there's a couple of reasons that Clubhouse appeals to me. Number one, being able to be around other people while

you're still at home is great number two being able to oh that audition thing like it is such an intimate kind of situation just listening to someone's story and a huge extrovert like being able to meet other people is fantastic and also constant discomfort there you go i i really think the the the aspect of clubhouse that i really love that i think makes it a gem which is very different than tiktok or instagram or facebook there's no visual other than maybe someone's avatar uh you can you know you can go to the websites of course and find out more about them. But if I'm listening to you, I can't be looking at your face and judgments to the stupid things that we do about faces in our heads. We have that caveman process of fight or flight. Is this person dangerous to me?

Who is this person? We're judging and stuff. We're looking at people and going, why did they look that way? And we're making value assessments of them based on how they look. I talk about this a lot with TikTok and Instagram where it's tough for me to compete on there because I don't look good in a bikini. I can't hang my boots out and be like, hey boys, come see this. I got me. You could do it. You can do it. I got me a trap right here. What do they call it? A something trap? A honey trap. I think they call it a honey trap a honey trap i think they call it a honey trap i can't do any of that i can't compete on that level evidently with the gay bears i've been told with me some of my gay bear friends that i could compete in that field but they're good people

but we're just not swinging that the swing doesn't go for that far so i'm not even sure that makes any sense on that joke but whatever you're fine you're fine yeah i i do see where you're i love my bear friends they're great people i'm supportive of the lgbtq community but they have their lanes and i have mine and we love i am an ally i am an ally to death to death yeah yeah but yeah i just i just i just can't compete because i'm and then my content's very logical like i'm not selling anything that's that's appealing to a Pantsdown audience. Jeffrey Toobin is not watching my videos on Zoom, clearly. I have to, my only little ball that I have, my little talent ball,

is some sort of weird logic or jokes that I have. It's more probably jokes than logic. And my voice. People like my voice for some reason. I don't know why. It's probably those Kent menthols that I smoke 20 times a day. So I love it because you really have to, if you really are tuned in, you really have to listen to people. And when they have a compelling

story, you can't help but listen. And it's almost like a podcast that runs for four or five hours. In fact, we did one last night that was really funny and really compelling. And I remember getting the end of it. I'm like, God, I wish I recorded this whole thing and just asked everybody afterward if I could publish it, but you can't do that. You've so many people that come in and out of the room, but it was just so great. But no, your story was really amazing. And so this radio experience that you had in the room, this is what really drew you to become an auditory doctor? I think the frustration of someone not understanding my full potential because all they saw from me is that I wasn't following their instructions and not listening. I think

that was probably the main thing. I've always been interested in ears and I've always been interested in learning. I love the health field, but I can't stand blood or pain. So there's a lot of different reasons why I'm an audiologist, but I would say what is driving me forward is to overcome the constant unfairness that people have that have listening difficulties because they are not trying not to listen. It is just that difficult for them and we can make it better. One thing, one thing my eight ex-wives never figured out is that I was wearing earplugs the whole time.

So I wasn't, I was not only listening, I was completely shut off. And then my psychiatrist said, Chris, that could be the problem while you've had divorces. And I was like, yeah, but I'm going to keep wearing them. Which may explain why I haven't met my ninth wife.

But I'm working on it. I'm on Tinder. The nice thing is Tinder's visual, so I don't have to hear any bullshit. Anyway, I love this bit where I just keep moving the marker around. Because then people are just really fucking confused. I'm like, has has he what what what has he even been married what's going on something's going on there but and then half the time they go clearly he has been divorced eight times because the way he behaves so anything more we need to

know about your story anything we haven't missed or flushed out and you're going through this journey of tragedy to triumph no i'm connected with my mom again. I'm connected with every family member again. I'm not connected with my stepmom, but I'm not losing any sleep over that. Of all people in the world, she's probably the person I would watch her if she was reality TV, but I don't have any interest in being a part of her life. I would pay it just to be personally.

I would pay to have buses drive around the block and see if they can catch her doing a crosswalk. But that's just me. The, I don't know what that means, but you can connect the hit by anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

I get what you're saying. Yeah. There you go. I just had to, there's some people in the audience that do have that brain damage and auditory stuff. So we have to give a little assist to disabled. Yeah.

Yeah. Gotcha. You're, you're doing this to help improve the accessibility to your terrible jokes. Yes, yes, exactly.

It's actually a crutch for my terrible jokes and we're playing it off as a, as they're trying to be inclusive to people with brain damage, like not, not from real brain. You don't have to have a traumatic brain injury to have an auditory processing issue, but you can have it as well.

But anyway, but I will tell people they're dumb or stupid or traumatic. So there's that. Terrible. It was a pleasure speaking with you today. It was a pleasure having you. And thank you for sharing your journey with us because I think this is a good lesson. But one last question I have for you. Do you use it to terrorize your current children and warn them if you don't listen to me and go clean your room, my parents put me in a basement thinking that might be a good idea here. That's a real motivator right there. My daughter is three years old. Oh, well, don't do that. And I can never, I cannot ever imagine not treating her. She's the best

thing on earth. Yeah. See, I terrorize my nieces and nephews when they call me and tell me they're teenagers. So our parents are mean to us. They made us clean our room. They're horrible people. And I'll be like, they don't do that really, but I'm just kind of fudging, fixing some of this. But I actually tell them, I go, I go, yeah, that sounds really horrible. Yeah. You should come live with me. I'm great parent i have my dogs have uh kennel cages and so we can just put you in one of the crates and then we just let you out feeding time and then you're gonna have to go potty outside with the puppies this is why i didn't have kids because that whole diaper thing fuck that shit i he's in the backyard and the they learned to pee and poop

and they didn't do it in the house and a a couple of years you let them in, the dogs will show them how to do everything. You put a bowl out there for them, they got the water. But that's what CPS says. I can't have kids. Oh, no. I actually have to run. It was so wonderful to chat with you. Thank you very much.

Give us your.com where people can look you up on the interwebs real quick as we go on. Alright, so if you have any interest in learning more about auditory processing disorder, come check me out at APDSupport.com. There you go. Check our story out. A as in apple, P as in pole, D as in donut. Check out our story on medium stuff. It's really

interesting to watch and the pictures are really cool to see. Thank you, Chris. Thanks a lot for tuning in. Be sure to watch the show on YouTube.com. For Chris Voss, see us on all the other places we are on the interwebs. Thank you to Angela for coming and being brave and sharing her story with us and hopefully we'll improve a lot of lives from it.

Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you guys next time.