The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Feel, Heal, and Reveal: A Journey to Emotional Independence by PJ Victor

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Feel, Heal, and Reveal: A Journey to Emotional Independence by PJ Victor Pjvictorwriter.com Readysethealed.com Embark on a Transformative Journey to Emotional Freedom Imagine a life where you navigate through relationships with ease, understand and set healthy boundaries, and cultivate unwavering self-love and resilience. "Feel, Heal, and Reveal: A Journey to Emotional Independence" is your guidebook through the often tumultuous landscape of personal connections, offering you the tools to become emotionally self-sufficient. Begin your journey by laying a strong foundation, learning to acknowledge and embrace your sensitivity. Discover the significance of understanding your reactions to toxicity and mastering the art of saying no. With each chapter, you will build confidence in your ability to set boundaries that protect your emotional well-being. As you progress, learn to identify and shield yourself from toxic behaviors and manipulation. Trust in your instincts and intuition becomes your compass, guiding you through complex emotional territories. This book empowers you to recognize early warning signs and to rely on your inner wisdom to make decisions that honor your well-being. Healing starts with self-love and compassion. Uncover the strategies to overcome self-criticism and engage in practices that promote self-compassion. Develop resilience through effective coping mechanisms, including creative expression and mindfulness, to manage stress and foster emotional well-being. Building a support system is paramount. Learn to reach out for help, find trustworthy individuals, and understand the role of professional support in your healing journey. Discover strategies for disconnecting from toxic influences and prioritizing self-care, ensuring that you maintain your focus on personal agency. Finally, the book guides you through the decisive moments of leaving an unsustainable relationship, navigating the complexities of disconnection, and embarking on the path of rebuilding. Embrace a future beyond toxic relationships, focusing on healing, growth, and establishing a safe, supportive environment. "Feel, Heal, and Reveal: A Journey to Emotional Independence" is more than a book; it's a companion for anyone ready to transform their emotional landscape. It's time to step into a life of empowerment, resilience, and emotional independence. About the author Raised in Naples, Florida, PJ started acting, modeling, singing, writing, and speaking on stage at an early age, starting with commercials and plays in Elementary school. After experiencing her first yoga class over 20 years ago at a shelter for abused women and children, PJ vowed to give back by becoming a certified yoga teacher so she could volunteer to help others learn to have peace within using their own breath. PJ has been teaching groups and private yoga classes since 2017. PJ is also a certified mindfulness meditation teacher and a certified master hypnotherapist. Her focus on health and wellness and inspiring others with her public speaking and writing is driven by her own recovery from a closed brain injury in 1999 and the loss of an unborn child as a result of the October 1, 2017, shooting in Las Vegas. As a survivor of October 1, she has worked to help other survivors use meditation and hypnotherapy to heal. As a mother, she also loves to homeschool and teach her children and others to maintain presence and peace through self-regulation techniques that are essential components to getting mentally and physically unstuck. PJ continues to act, coach, speak, teach, train, and write as she supports animal rights and child advocacy, as well as educate and inform others about the dangers of human trafficking.

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. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. 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. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The early scenes of that makes it official. I'm so glad I don't have to sing that line after 14 years.

Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. At least not as harshly as your dad because, I don't know, he likes your older brother better. But get on his good side. Refer the show to him. Tell him to go to goodreads.com for Chess Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com for Chess Chris Voss. YouTube.com forChess Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, 4Chess Chris Voss.

YouTube.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. All those crazy places on the internet. As always, we always talk about how stories are the owner's manual to life. That's one of the big things we talk about on the show. And we have the most amazing people who come on the show. The CEOs, the billionaires, the authors, the Pulitzer Prize winners. People who come on the show to tell their stories, their journeys of life, their cathartic moments, the things that they learned. And the great thing is you can find, number one, you're not alone in some of the issues

you may have. And number two, they can help you resolve some of the issues you've had. And I've seen a few people, you've got issues. At least I'm the one with the issues. So there you go. That's why you should always listen to the show and refer to the show. We've got an amazing young lady on the show with us today. We're going to be talking about her new book that just came out March 5th, 2024.

It's called Feel, Heal, and Reveal, A Journey to Emotional Independence. PJ Victor joins us on the show with us today. And we'll be talking about her amazing, inspiring book. She was raised in Naples, Florida. She started acting modeling singing and writing and speaking on stage in early age starting with commercial and plays in elementary school after experiencing her first yoga class over 20 years ago at a shelter for abused women and children she vowed to give back by becoming a certified yoga teacher so she could volunteer

to help others learn to have peace within using their own breath. She's been teaching groups in private yoga classes since 2017, and she's also a certified mindfulness meditation teacher and certified master hypnotherapist. Welcome to the show. How are you, PJ? Doing fantastic. There you go. Welcome to the show show give us your dot coms tell us where people can find you on the interwebs basically i've got pj victor writer.com if you want to find out about my writing but i do have a link tree and it's jenna's journey which is j-e-n-a-H with an S, Journey. And that's just because the name is Jenna, but my pen name has become PJ. And I'm going to stick with it. There you go.

Run with it. Now, is this your first book? This is. I have been published back in college with some poetry in some anthologies, but this is my first actual published book i had the goal to do it at 35 but i did it two weeks before my 51st birthday instead oh you know it takes time to cook a good story you know you got to make sure there's quality you know it's a it's a it needs it needs to make sure it's ready i guess and it takes time so give us a 30,000 overview of your book feel heal and reveal

basically it is a guidebook for anyone who needs to find emotional independence and there is a difference between physical independence and emotional independence trauma is a huge buzzword this this time in life everyone's talking about childhood trauma, adult trauma, trauma everywhere in between. If you remove yourself from the person who is causing you harm, that's helpful. But unless you truly heal the emotions inside, you're not going to have the independence that's going to bring you the joy that you're searching for. And so that was the idea behind this book. I didn't want it to be a he said, she said of some of the stories I've lived through and the people that I've had to remove myself from, but I wanted

it to be a guidebook to encourage and to inspire others to go ahead and take that leap of faith in themselves and remove themselves, but also work on healing themselves. Yeah. If you don't heal yourself, you're just taking that trauma and dragging it from relationship to relationship, people to people. It affects you in so many ways. You know, we've talked about a lot about trauma on the show, especially childhood trauma and

how it can affect your whole life. I mean, you can, if you live long enough, you can usually look back across your life and you could be like, oh, I was dragging something through the sand this whole time. And you can see the impact sometimes that it has on your life. Although sometimes in the immediate, it's hard to see. I came across the other day a really interesting thing about how the fish can't see the water or can't tell that there's water. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting.

That kind of explains why when you're in trauma mode, you can't understand why you're reacting to stuff. I mean, for years, I used to wonder why I overreacted emotionally to certain things or I would get triggered and overreact. And you have to heal your trauma. So let's talk a little bit about your journey through life. People like to get to know the author as well. And then we'll circle back to the book. Tell us how you grew up. When did you know you became a writer and you wanted to write and start telling

stories? I will be honest. This is not in this particular book because like I said, I wanted to take the personal piece out of it. I really wanted people to see themselves in this book. But my trauma started very early when I was two years old, because from the ages of two to about five and a half, my biological mother was sexually trafficking me so that she could feed her addictions. And so she was giving me to drug dealers in exchange for drugs. And so you can imagine what these men did to me at a two, three, four, five-year-old. And we talk now about it openly, but it wasn't something we talked about in the 70s. So it took a long time for me to even understand that it wasn't something that was supposed to be happening to me. And by the time I was eight and could verbalize it to my father, you know, you're still in the late 70s, early 80s.

They gave custody to mothers when divorces happened. They never thought that it was worth looking at a dad, that maybe he could do this. So it took until I was almost 11 and almost 12 for my father to get custody of me. The damage had been done. And there was some therapy involved, but it just was not enough. And I kind of just floated through life escaping into books. I read tons and tons of books. And at that point, probably somewhere in that late elementary, early middle school age, I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to write books so that other people can escape. Now that's changed because now

I'm writing nonfiction because I want to help others. And that's because of what's happened to me in the last few years. I have developed a mantra that I am a healer and that I am healed. And so I want to write books that inspire and help others heal themselves. There you go. And we talked about in your bio about how you discovered yoga and breathing and different things. Talk to us about how you went on your healing journey for your trauma. So as you can imagine, being traumatized sexually as a child, I wasn't really interested in boys growing up. And the boys I allowed myself to be around generally took advantage of me. So there were some rapes in high school. And by the time I did end up getting married, I was married to an abusive man who left me for dead in a shelter for abused women and children with the help of a friend. And like I said, I was there over 20 years ago now, and this wonderful, beautiful woman came in and did a breath work

and yoga session with us. And I literally, I did, I made the decision within moments of that class beginning, I'm going to get out of this situation and I'm going to come back here and I'm going to do for the other women what this woman has just done for us. And it took a long time. Life happened. Life is not linear. I didn't go from that terrible tragedy to all of a sudden fixing myself. There were other relationships along the way that got in the way of me becoming a yoga teacher. But it finally happened a couple years after I had unfortunately experienced some trauma in Las Vegas at the October 1 shooting in 2017. And I was able to not only become a yoga teacher, but specialized in trauma recovery yoga. And that was absolutely, starting in 2019, a pinnacle into my journey of actually finding

healing. There you go. So what is it about yoga that you find really helps people so much and helps them manage or deal with trauma? So it's really about connecting to your breath. One of the problems that I have encountered, and I've heard it talked about a lot, is that when you're traumatized, you become into this hyper vigilant state of fight or flight, and you don't even remember to breathe. You're constantly holding your breath. You're constantly waiting for the next shoe to drop. You're constantly waiting for the next hand to raise to smack you around. So I find that yoga and meditation allow me to be me and to remember the pieces of me that I was allowing to die inside. And I had lost my smile. I'd lost my joy.

But through yoga and meditation and teaching it to others, watching them cry, because it does happen, you're releasing emotions, but then watching them come out on the other side of that class with a smile on their face, it just, it changes you. There you go. You know, we've had different scientists and scholars and people on the show that have talked about how damage and emotional damage and trauma can be, can be, what's the right word for this?

Can be contained in the body, can, can be held in inside of the body. And, and maybe it's a muscle reaction. Like I used to find with my ADHD or my trauma, you know, I would trigger a seizing of my stomach and my stomach muscles. And then it would kind of go into my chest and my heart. And, you know, people experience that with anxiety and panic attacks and things like that. And so it translates into the body pretty well.

And some people feel that it, you know, stores in the muscles or organs and stuff. And so maybe that's part of a memory base that the body uses to store its memories and it's triggered by the site. It's beyond my pay grade clearly. And so it sounds breathing and yoga helps you figure all that out and maybe wash out some of that stuff. That is exactly what I found. And I will tell you that it's not enough though. I mean, there's a, I find that to really find healing, you need a connection between the mind, the body, and the spirit. So for me personally, I can tell you that the trauma had been stored in my body for so long that I developed after the shooting, after surviving the shooting, I had been pregnant

with twins and lost one as a result of that shooting. It was beyond postpartum depression that I was feeling. And they wanted to prescribe all these wonderful medications that were supposed to make me better, but it was really only treating the symptoms. And so I read a book called The Body Keeps Score, and it made complete sense. It clicked for me to understand, oh, wait, the things that happen to two, three, and four-year-old Jenna, just because you ignore them, just because you don't think about them, doesn't mean that that is still somewhere inside of you. And it really took until August of 2022 when a medical professional looked at me and said, you've developed an autoimmune disorder. You have terrible blood markers. Your lung capacity is failing you. Yes, you have a four-year-old and you have these other two children as well, but you

might need, not might, she told me emphatically, get your will in order. You're not going to survive this. And that was a huge wake-up call that I needed to do something beyond meditation and beyond yoga to figure out how to bring myself back to life. And it's been a battle, but that battle that I fought and won because I've now been in remission for almost 15 months is why I had to write this book. There you go. Share the journey, share the struggles, share the cathartic moments, and help other people that might be going through the same thing. The Body Keeps the Score, I've heard about this book before,

and I think that's some of the references that people have made. It talks about how the body, I guess, holds that trauma in the physical nature of the body. And cleansing it and cleaning it is really important. Now, in the book, you talk about the journey to emotional independence. Does it ever end? How long does this go on? Can I just do it to the end of the block? Or is this something I got to take a drive with?

I wish. The short answer is absolutely no it never ends the journey of embracing your sensitivity and finding your emotional independence is not linear i have discovered over the years that there are a lot of highs and there are also a lot of loads and you discover things, you face the challenges. And the key word that was constantly being used with me is, wow, you're such a survivor. And I really got tired of hearing that because I didn't want to just survive. I wanted to thrive. So I had to learn to cherish the sensitivity, to honor myself, let my emotions guide me to learning how to respond rather than react so that I really could feel this absolute emotional independence. And I'll tell you, there was a relationship that I was in that I did finally get brave enough to walk away. But like many, I went right back in, not under the same terms because I had started to create some boundaries, but they weren't clear enough.

And honestly, that's when my health took its biggest dive. I was in a toxic relationship, therefore the toxicity was taking over my body. And so, I just really feel like, okay, I missed the mark. I didn't write the book I wanted at 35, but here I was knowing with more wisdom that each step forward, no matter how small, is a victory. And maybe if I could communicate that to others, then they would start taking small steps to their own personal victories there you go now in the book you talk about being sensitive is a superpower tell us about that so a lot of times in relationships and i know it works both ways men to women women to men your sensitivity is seen as a weakness and the other person might try to use that against you. But I really try to

drive home in the book, and I do repeat it in a couple different chapters, that you have to remember that being sensitive is not kryptonite. Being sensitive in this sometimes absolutely insensible world is a superpower because it's so pivotal to cultivate environments and relationships that honor your sensitivity rather than demean it. And so setting boundaries has become another buzzword in our culture now, but you have to do it to protect your emotional wellbeing. And I've even noticed as I've continued this journey and become much more emotionally independent than I was before. It wasn't just that significant other that needed to be removed from my life. I had to, as I learned from a mentor, fire my friends. There were some friends that I literally had to be like, look, I get it.

You want to talk negatively about this person. You think it's cool. I don't want to go there. I'm walking away from that situation and that person and yes there's a child involved and there's other children involved and there's all these things but i want to move forward in positivity and if you want to gossip all day long you're gonna have to do it about me now too because i'm not gonna be in front of your face you know i i found that as i've grown older that you just don't have time for

certain people and you need to bust those people and say, you know, go your own way there. I've learned that a small group of people and surrounding yourself with high quality people is super important. People with integrity, people with good traits of human kindness and honesty and trust. You know, the world's, the life is too short to spend your time living with people that, you know, their lives are a mess and they love it that way. And it's just the way it rolls. And I like the paradigm shifts that you're doing. You know, you talked about moving from being a survivor to a thriver, you know, looking

at people and going, you know, looking at people and going, you know, who are the people around me? There's a saying that we become most like the people, the five people that are around us. And some people argue whether it's true or not, but I think it's true because they have the greatest effect on you subconsciously and consciously on who you are. And they can influence you positively or negatively depending upon their outlooks of life and their ambitions and what they want to take and do. Do you agree with me on that? Absolutely.

My grandfather has been in heaven now since I think 1998, but he used to tell myself, my father and different people that there are three types of people in this world. Those who are going to help you, those are going to hurt you and those that will do neither one. And you need to decide which one you want to be and then act accordingly. And for me, I, no matter what has happened to me in my life, I've always wanted to display a servant's heart and help others. Even, you know, I'm the one everyone always said, she'll give you the shirt off her back. But I learned, like I said, that I had to fire some friends because sometimes the people

you were giving your shirt to weren't going to give you one back when you needed it. Yeah, that's true. I've had that happen a lot in life where you're like, you know, I really have to call in a favor, but you call in that favor and, you know, you get the answering machine or something. And you're just like, wow, okay, I see how this works. And yeah, it's really important to identify those people. And just the quality of people you have around you

can make all the difference. You talk about setting intentions. What are intentions as you define them and why is it important to set them? So when you're moving forward physically out of a relationship or emotionally from something that you are trying to release and learn to respond instead of react you have to remember the importance of setting intentions and what i mean by that is these are not just mere wishes that you throw into the wind like when you pick up a dandelion and just see where it leads you i i know that within meditation yoga it's a woo-woo kind of world. I'm woo. I'm not woo-hoo. So I'm the girl at a concert, woo, you know. But rather, you have to have these really powerful affirmations to determine your

direction and your desires. Intentions are basically the way I look at it, like a compass that is guiding your steps, ensuring that even when the path gets a little foggy and it's raining outside, you don't say to yourself, oh crap, the sun is not coming out for me today. I'm just going to hide in my room. Instead, you develop a sense of where you're headed and you get out of bed and you open the door and you go out anyway. There you go. You talk about how to recognize toxic behaviors. Why do we need to recognize toxic behaviors, I suppose, in ourselves and other people? So we've talked about firing friends, right? So a partner or a friend, they are someone who is supposed to uplift and support you and be a cheerleader, not perpetually find fault and manipulate your emotions.

And that was a really difficult lesson. And like I said, it's not linear. I had to learn it over and over and over again and sometimes with that same person multiple times. So recognizing the signs is not about fault finding. It's not about pointing the finger because we've all heard, you know, you point a finger at me and you got three pointing back at you. And it's not about labeling others. I don't want, and I didn't want to throw this whole book into narcissism and, you know, behaviors of that type, but it's true. In order to protect your well-being, you've got to recognize when these behaviors are happening in front of you.

And it's really important to understand when an interaction is leaving you drained rather than bringing you joy, having you feel fulfilled. And you've got to spot those red flags because that's the signal that it's time to set boundaries you don't want to wait until you've been left for dead in a closet that is a lesson that i had to learn and that that person that person left me physically we separated but i just found another person who had the same behaviors. And so you do have to keep learning it over and over again. And a key thing that I had to learn was that there is a difference between manipulation and gaslighting. And I tried to express this in the book that manipulation, it starts with these small requests or minor criticisms.

Just for a way that the manipulator can kind of test the waters. And they're just laying the groundwork for this dynamic where they're going to hold all the power and you gradually just give it all away. But with, on the other hand, you've got gaslighting where you feel like you're losing grip of reality. And it is a form of psychological manipulation. Whereas a victim, the victim starts to question their memories and their perception and even their sanity. And I'm like, wait, did I remember? Wait, did that happen?

Because the person's telling you, oh, I never said that. Or, oh, I was joking. And so you start to question your sensitivity and wonder, oh, I am being too sensitive because they said I'm being too sensitive. But remember, I told you sensitivity is a superpower. So over time, your confidence erodes. And it's crucial to understand that those behaviors are not reflections of your worth. Because when you question your self-worth, those tactics just simply exert even more and more control over you. There you go.

And you mentioned, oh, sorry. You mentioned like physical things, like when we talked about the body keeping score, that was, like I said, that was the pinnacle for me being told, hey, you're literally going to die. And so the headaches, the stomach aches, the fatigue, they're all symptoms that the body is using to sound an alarm to someone who is literally letting go of their boundaries. There you go.

And yeah, people have killed themselves. They destroy themselves. They destroyed, I think, parts of themselves by the stress and the pain that they carry, the trauma they carry. You know, you see people that go into autoimmune diseases and people that go into, oh, what's that one thing I've seen a lot of depressed people get? It's a thing where they lack energy. And usually there's a lot of depression going on in their life. They're something that they have unresolved.

But a lot of these unresolved behaviors, I think you might agree, until we resolve them, we keep repeating the same pattern with ourselves, with relationships. We'll pick the same partners. You know, I find a lot of people that have unhealed trauma they well let's flesh this out i i was listening to ryan taraban i think it is that's on youtube he has a big youtube channel he's a licensed psychologist and he was talking about something that i heard a long time ago like i heard this like 20 or 30 years ago that one of the problems people that have trauma do or unresolved issues from childhood is they try and find ways to replicate that scenario. And so they pick relationships and people and scenarios that help them try and relive that scenario. And their thinking in the subconscious mind is that they can relive it and they can beat the game.

And they can somehow repair that by beating the game. The problem is usually those scenarios, they have an end result that's because of the scenario that it's in. You know, if you go swim in the sewer, it's not going to get better. You're not going to have a good experience no matter how many times you go swim in the sewer. It's always going to be bad. And so people have to realize that they've got to resolve that trauma, but you just can't go into those relationships over and over again expecting a different result,

and you're going to end up in the same result, especially when you're dealing with two broken people that, you know, you have broken glass and they have razor blades, and you're like, play together, see if you can figure it all out. And so it's kind of interesting to me, and I think that's why a lot of people do that. They keep picking the bad partners. They keep getting in these bad relationships. Sometimes there's a comfort level, too too or they've grown up with drama the stress the trauma of seeing that relationship um communicated or signaled to them or represented to them as well

this is what a relationship is and that's all you know as a child then you you keep choosing and picking those partners and replicating those relationships until you resolve your trauma i agree with you 110 i didn't have daddy issues my father was a very loving man and once he had full custody of me he did everything he could to try to create happy memories for me, like they were going to override my earlier childhood. But what I did is I dated men, boy children that had drug and alcohol problems because I couldn't fix mommy, but maybe I could fix them. And it took a long time for me to understand that's what I was doing. And an important thing I had to do was forgive myself for doing that.

That was absolutely crucial to finding emotional independence, which was simply just forgiving myself because otherwise that behavior was going to keep getting repeated. Yeah, and I like how you identify that. A lot of times what you see in a young woman who makes bad choices in partners, it's usually a lack of a father in the home or a good, healthy, masculine father figure. So usually that's what you see when I see a single have that father with the blueprint of a healthy male, they don't know what a healthy male masculine looks like. And yours is very different because of where you were raised by your mother at first. And so you're trying to save your mother. And so you pick men that you're trying to save with the same sort of issues.

That's really interesting. I don't see that a lot. And now here I am as a single mom raising three boys and trying to raise them to be, and I tell them all the time, men of good character. Because truly, as long as I forgive myself, then I can help them navigate the complexities of their own relationships and hopefully lord willing teach them to remember that the choice to respond rather than react is an incredible powerful act of self-love and as long as you love yourself guess what others can love you too definitely and in the great thing about being a man operating your masculine is you use logic and reason so

you shouldn't be responding with emotion and that's what boys and men need to be taught the one of the things you talk about the book is communicating with a narcissist there's a lot of narcissistic chatter on on social media I think some of it's a bit much because I mean I think designated or diagnosed narcissism is maybe five to ten% of the population. But there seems to be a lot of people that they've dated at least all of them. So somehow they cornered the market. So talk to us about narcissism and then once you identify one that truly is, communicate with them, I guess.

So I was so fortunate, and I say that with a lot of sarcasm. I was going through therapy with a partner and the counselor was shocked because my partner scored a 100. And the counselor was like, in my 30 years of counseling, no one has ever scored over an 80. So it just goes to show that I kept making the same mistake over and over again. But what I have learned from that and others, and it's not just partners, relationship partners, even friends, right? When you're communicating with someone who is either displaying narcissistic personality disorder traits or some forms of narcissism, it's like navigating a minefield because you never know what might trigger an explosion.

And so the golden rule that I have found is to stay factual and unemotional as possible. Emotions are the ammunition that narcissists use against you. So if you can keep your communication brief and based only on facts, then you completely reduce their arsenal. And when they don't have an arsenal, it's just like having a bully that you just ignore, right? Then they have nothing to come back at you with. And I admit, I've seen a lot now lately with social media of people trying to say, hey, here's how you go through a divorce with a narcissist. Here's how you do these things. And they have great tips. They really do. But I'm someone who wants to be a cause and not effect. So I have come to realize that the best way to communicate with a narcissist is to limit the communication and then give yourself a shield and your shield is self-care. So in this battle against narcissistic abuse, your well-being is your fortress. The activities that you choose to do, like nourishing your body, your mind, and your spirit, that's what's going to empower you to stand firm when there's this onslaught of negativity coming at you. So it might be because I've got boys running and always kind

of trying to find me. If I'm lost and you can't find me, ask one of the boys, they'll find me immediately. So I might be hiding in the bathroom journaling. I might find time for myself to meditate, or I might just take a walk with my shoes off and just feel the grass under my feet and enjoy nature. But those are the practices that replenish your inner strength, remind you of your value and your worth, and reinforce your resilience so that when that narcissistic person tries to communicate with you. Knowledge is power. We learned that as kids, right? So if you educate yourself about narcissistic personality disorder, you can demystify their behaviors. It's no longer confusing to you what you're experiencing.

And then you get to detach emotionally. So while you're becoming emotionally independent, you're also learning to detach emotionally from their attempts to continue to manipulate and control you. And so you really, I mean, I'm not a huge sports fan. I love me some hockey because I'm going to be a Vegas Golden Knights fan until I'm six feet under. But if you think of it as learning the opposing team's playbook, you can predict their moves, you become an amazing chess player, and you can strategize accordingly. There you go.

It's, you know, and healing your trauma too ahead of time helps you be less of a victim. Because I think narcissists hunt for people. I think people that are broken hunt for damaged people, sometimes because they're damaged too. They hunt for people like themselves. And that's in being, resolving your trauma, trying to fix your trauma. And of course it sounds like, well, just fix your trauma, Chris,

in a perfect world. But I meet people being single all my life that they've never resolved their trauma. And they go from relationship to relationship. And every relationship is the same. And you're like, are you going to heal this trauma? You know, I was talking to somebody the other day that I was interested in and found out they had PTSD. And I'm like, so are you going to therapy for that?

And she's like, no. And I'm just like, yeah, okay, bye. And you can identify and, and I have, Hey, it's not my job to save people. They got to save themselves. You can save people. You, you can give them advice. You can write great books for him. You can, you know, maybe suggest some yoga for him, but they got to do the work, you know? And I love that phrase, do the work. And so until they have their come to Jesus moment where they go, Hey, I'm going to fix my trauma and I'm going to do that. But it makes, once you fix it, I think you become less of meat for predators like narcissists and other people who are going to abuse you. What do you think about that? I agree. And like I was saying earlier, you have to forgive yourself.

That's a key piece of healing. Because if you have this low self-worth and you have this feeling like, I'm a terrible human being, that's why they're being mean to me. You're going to keep finding people who are going to be mean to you. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So when you forgive yourself, when you slip up, when you react in a way that you regret, then that's when the change occurs. You know, healing, we all say, oh, I just, you have to heal your trauma.

You have to heal your trauma. Well, change is a process. It's not something you can pop a pill and bam, you're healed. Even when you break a bone and you have a cast on and then they take that cast off, there's normally some atrophy to the muscle and you have to then keep working on that leg or that arm that was broken to get it back to where it used to be. And so change has these setbacks, but also these victories. So when you celebrate the victories, then you're committed to your growth. And then you've got this willingness to learn from everything that you encounter. And then maybe you go on a date with somebody like Chris, and you

don't say, Oh, yeah, I've got PTSD. You say, I experienced PTSD and now I've changed. I've become a better person. I evolved. My last name is Victor. And I like to always say, I'm not a victim. I'm a Victor. I love that. Because yeah, I want to cultivate this skill, right? Of responding, not just protecting myself because when I was a little girl, I didn't know how to protect myself. And then I ended up in constant toxicity. And like you were talking about the fish and the water, you start swimming in toxic waters and you don't know those waters are toxic. You're constantly breathing it in. That's all you know. But once you start to embrace change, once you really decide, and it's a choice,

we all have this free will, right? Once you choose that you're going to become healthier, once you embrace a more mindful and intentional approach to your own life, all of your relationships get healthier because you got healthier. Your self-esteem strengthens. And then you have this profound sense of peace. So when someone tries to communicate with you in an unhealthy manner doesn't matter anymore because you're navigating through the complexities of relationships and you're remembering oh I made a choice I created a boundary

I'm going to respond I'm not going to react and then you're really showing yourself self-love and all this affirmation about your worth and your capacity to rise over all of that negativity. And I love how inspiring you put that. That's so motivating. Thrive, you know, don't survive, thrive. And you're right. It makes all the difference in the world. Knowing your value is so important and and having these issues resolved because when you meet people you know especially if you're seeking relationships or friendships and stuff you meet people and right away you know they have ways if they're toxic they have ways of testing you or pinging you if you will you know putting you through you know seeing what you respond to you know like usually what i'll see is i'll i'll see in the form of little little pokes or disrespects you know sometimes as a man a lot of women do what's called shit testing where they should test you to you know see if you're on your masculine but there's a difference between that and just like outright disrespect or or you'll see like control things that will

be, you know, testing your value and seeing where it is. And I think that by knowing your value, by having your trauma healed, you recognize that very, very long with people. I mean, you know, I'll, I'll see it right away. I'll be like, what the fuck did you say to me? I mean, I'll think that in my head, but you know, and I'm not being emotional reactive, I'm just like, wait, I, I kind of felt that and heard that. And yeah, I think I see what you're, I think I see a little bit of what you're up to.

I think I see the tip of the iceberg there. I think I see what's going on, what you're about. And this is just the beginning. So we're just not going to go down this road. I totally agree with you because here's the thing when you learn to respond instead of react then you disarm those toxic individuals and then you reclaim your peace and you have your own power and then you are not just a survivor but you're actually a thriver despite their toxicity because it's theirs, not yours. You made a choice to not get in that nasty fishbowl. And so that path from reaction to response, it's challenging. Not going to lie,

haven't enjoyed every moment of it, but the journey I found is so worth it. As a little girl, I walked through with rose colored glasses until I realized what was happening to me. Then I jumped into books and read them so that I could escape into these worlds where everything was beautiful and the families lived happily ever after. Well, now I feel like I won the battle. I mean, there's still things going on with my ex, right? But I feel like the battle for myself and my own sanity and my own peace was totally worth where I am today. And now I just want to encourage others to choose to navigate their life with grace grace and with strength and resilience because that is like in our response that's where the growth and the freedom really comes from so that i mean you're a handsome man

if a woman came into your life and y'all went on a coffee date or whatever it may be if she is showing you that there has been growth and that she is free from the past, then you've got a real shot at living together. Not necessarily in the same house, but I mean, walking together, walking on the journey together. And I think that's what we all want. We crave companionship. That's kind of the way we were created, but as you started talking about way back in the beginning of our talk today, people keep walking out of one toxic relationship into another. And we just have to create this world of people who have healed themselves and made the choice

so that we can start going into healthy relationships. And all these people that are healed can find each other, and the toxic people can go swim can find each other and the toxic people can go swim in that fishbowl themselves there you go you know one of my keys those coffee dates is you make sure their therapist comes with them you buy them a coffee too and you can get a validation or you know if they can at least bring a note from their doctor that helps this person has been in therapy for five years and is healed now yeah everyone right now listen the show's going like chris needs it the most the but you know what's interesting too

that made me think about that is when you know your value when you heal your trauma and you know you you've taken you've taken survivor to thriving it shows like it comes out just in our conversation you know your your positivity is radiant and how you think and how you've developed yourself and healed your trauma and what's interesting is i find that when toxic people come along or maybe they're not healed or maybe they're not developed enough they will tap themselves out if you're interested in dating them and i've heard this so many times over over i don't know how long have i been alive and dating you're not the sort of guy who's going to put up with my

shit this isn't going to work out and i've like line like so many times and they'll tap themselves out like you're you're a really nice guy you're you're the guy who's not going to put up with my shit and i'm like why would you want to give someone you love your shit? That doesn't make any sense. But you can, you can tell that they're not, they're not at that place in their life. And they realize that you're probably not going to put up with their shit and

they need to go swim in the toxic thing. And so it's interesting how it, it, it kind of, some of those people kind of wash themselves out is what I'm saying. They do. Yeah, I agree because I ended up dating someone and getting to the point where you meet the parents, right? Mother loved me.

Mom thought I was amazing. Loved all my kids, you know. But he was just like, I got to tell you, I don't want to date you because I can't control you. I need somebody younger that I can control. I was like, let me help you. Walk out the door. There you go. There you go.

My issue is the moms usually love me more than the daughters. And the moms are like, she doesn't deserve you. So there you go. If I wasn't married. One last thing I want to cover is you talk in your book, people with trauma, they have a lot of negative self-talk because they abuse themselves because they've been abused and they blame themselves. And you've kind of alluded to it throughout the thing. They have that negative self-talk. They punish themselves. How do you overcome that?

So it was an interesting thing for me. Probably one of my longest standing friends passed away during COVID and he was actually murdered for $300 in his pocket. And it was just a simple people going crazy, right? And at that moment in my life, when I found out and that call came to me, I took every tool I had learned in trauma recovery yoga. And I sat on the stairs of the house I was looking to purchase. And I could hear other people in the background. It was the home inspection, actually, of the house that I was looking to purchase. And I just kind of walked through these really simple steps in about 90 seconds.

And it just completely cleared my focus. And then, of course, I went home and I wrote it down. And I started to practice it. I recorded it and started to practice it for myself. Do you have 90 seconds? Are you asking me? Yes. Oh, we got plenty of time.

Yeah. Okay. Here's what I want you to do. No, this is for you. Okay. And anyone listening, Chris,

all right. I want you to know, and I, you're a very intelligent man, so I know you know this. Flattery will get you everywhere. The center of your forehead is your logic center. It's your planning center. And many of us have heard the saying that an elephant never forgets.

Negative thoughts are like tiny little elephants slowly wandering around in our minds, taking up space in our logic center, our planning center, and continuing to use that space for their home, even when we no longer want them there. I want you to take a moment to imagine all your negative thoughts, the things that you have told yourself, the things that others have told you. Imagine them, visualize them as paper origami elephants. And I want you to set those paper elephants on fire with your strong breath. I want you to breathe in deeply through your nose and send your breath like a blazing fire to your forehead. And as you exhale, just sweep away the ashes of all those paper elephants, which are no longer strong enough to take hold in your mind with a cool, moist breeze.

Again, breathe in through the nose. Set the remaining paper elephants on fire. And exhale as you blow the ashes away, clearing them away. So there is only room for love and happiness to fill your forehead. I love it. Wait, I have paper monkeys now. No, I'm just kidding. That's okay.

They can be tigers, monkeys. It doesn't matter. For me, it was a paper origami elephant because one of my sons loves doing origami. And that's what it is. I sat on the stairs. I took my shoes off because I knew that feeling grounded was important. And I rubbed my feet into the carpet of the stairs. And I closed my eyes. And I just imagined paper elephants catching fire.

And then as I did my exhale, those elephants, the ashes were just blowing away. And I've been now doing that since 2020. So about four years, I've been practicing that to really bring back, bring myself back to center. It's like a self-regulation process and you know you can do it quickly 30 seconds just imagine those elephants breathe in breathe out three breaths and go on with your day this is way better than what i used to do with the people used to annoy me and be in that area where i'd set them on fire so the judge says they can't do that anymore so this works well the no i like the analogy of where

you took and you're like you're imagining those thoughts and then you you kind of simplify or disassociate by making them paper and so they don't become so powerful in our minds and then you you use the imagery to wipe them away and of course breath is a great way to do i mean i feel a little bit more relaxed now too and that's's really, I mean, this area here, like when I get my facial massages and stuff, oh my God, they start rubbing this area right here and your whole brain just goes, oh, wow. It's like where all you carry all your stress. And so probably because I'm always worrying and squinting and looking at people like I want to set them on fire. So there you go.

Give us your final thoughts as we go out. Tell people where they can order up the book. Do you have any services that you're offering like coaching or anything like that on your website too as well? So if you go readysethealed.com, that is where I offer services for quitting smoking, releasing weight, and finding healing with the help of someone to walk you through and coach you through that process, basically as a mindset coach. PJVictorWriter.com, that's where I'm going to start showing all my books. I have another book actually coming out in the next week, my second book coming out. I'm kind of excited about that since it's dedicated to my oldest son. And I have, prior to coming on with you, I was watching some of your podcasts

and you've got a sense of humor and it made me laugh. And so I thought you might enjoy knowing, and I'm sure you probably know this, but if it's not in the book, it's a secret. We'll call it an Easter egg that I'm going to give to you. We learn, obviously, about when to walk away. That's in one of the chapters is learning when to walk away. And I think we've talked enough today about setting boundaries and sticking with them. But I have to tell you, my ex told me that he couldn't live without me, but I know for a fact that he's still alive. So it's just more lies. That's unfortunate.

No, I'm just kidding. And what I have learned in the process of remaking some of these mistakes I've made, taking an ex back is like eating a McDonald's. It seems like a great idea at the time, but afterwards you are hugging the toilet and very sick to your stomach. Sounds like Friday. And I'll take it a step further. Taking an ex back is like trying to put poop back into your butt. All you're going to do is get shit on your hands.

There you go yeah you yeah i i i think i've done that once i think everyone has to kind of do it once to experience how fun it is not and yeah you eventually go back and you know it seems like kind of cool because you miss each other and but then after a day or two you're like oh it's you i forgot it's you again oh man all right oh people are like i'll change you're like no you won't i don't think people really change much over the thing but this has been really inspiring thank you very much for coming on the show it's great to see how you've taken the challenges of your life the cathartic moments and you've turned them into positivity and you've turned from a survivor to a thriver and given us all the inspiration to do that. So thank you very much.

We really appreciate it, PJ. Thank you. And thank you for giving me the space to share that with you and with your listeners. I appreciate you. There you go. And give us the dot coms as we round out. We like to do the bookends. So give us one more time.

So the book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and it is Feel, Heal, we round out. We like to do the bookend. So give us one more time. So the book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And it is Feel, Heal, Reveal. It's kind of exciting. Red is my power color. So this was, you know, honestly, one of the best covers that I could ever imagine coming out with because I do love living on the water. And that was one of the things I did was release the relationship and come back home. So feel, heal and reveal. It is my first book. I'm super proud. It was like giving birth to another baby. And I'm excited because this is the first of many. Second book

comes out next week. And the third and fourth are slated for towards the end of the summer. And just my goal is at least four, if not six books this year. I'm just not going to stop trying to inspire and help people heal. Yeah. Well, you're doing an awesome job of it so far. So please continue. Order of the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold. Feel, heal, and reveal. A journey to emotional independence independence and we've talked about

some things that hopefully change people's lives get the book so you can delve in that journey some more and reach out to pj on our website maybe do some work with her because i i don't have the elephants running around now i just have a bunch of bag of monkeys but i've always been crazy that way thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris voss leakeded.com fortress chris voss chris voss one on the tiktokity. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, leakedit.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfastfacebook.com. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys

next time.