The Resilient Mind - Resilience Expert: How to Be Mentally Strong When Life Falls Apart - Dr. Cristi Bundukamara

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Watch the full video interview on the new Resilient Mind YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCasFhxZ7awHow do you find the strength to go on after unimaginable loss?In this deeply moving and powerful episode, we are joined by Dr. Cristi Bundukamara, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, author, and mother who has navigated the profound grief of losing three of her children and her husband.Dr. Cristi Bundukamara shares her incredible story of resilience, not as a tale of enduring pain, but as a journey of actively building mental strength. She introduces her revolutionary "Mentally Strong Method" a three-step process.If you've ever felt overwhelmed by life's challenges, struggled with loss, or felt like positive thinking wasn't enough, this conversation will provide you with a practical framework for healing.Connect With Dr. Cristi B:Youtube:- @CristiBundukamara Website: https://mentallystrong.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristibundukamara/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cristibundukamara/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cristi.bundukamara.3/----------Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_Journal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you'll be listening to How to Be mentally strong when life falls apart with Dr. Christy B. This episode is also available in video. Watch it on YouTube by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Every single person listening is going to go through grief at some point in their life. If they haven't already, it will come. I have two biological children and I adopted five children from the foster care system.

Within a year of adopting children, we had our first tragedy. And that's when one of my children, Johnny, died in a drowning accident. I would say that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the things I didn't do or stay. I'm so glad I got the chance to tell you how much I love you. Nothing was really helping my son, and so we were just living in this constant trauma. When after losing your third child, you know, you're not being honest with yourself. we could actually learn to be mentally strong.

One of the most powerful things I heard you say was thoughts are not facts. There's two narratives here that happens with the thoughts are not facts. And so related to that, let's talk about the method, the mentally strong method. The mentally strong method is three words. Think, organized, what I wasn't expecting was my daughter in 2021 died in her sleep. Hi, Dr. B. I am super excited to have you here and to hear about your story, your perspective on being mentally strong. Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. Thank you so much. I'm excited to share and just excited to share how resiliency in the midst of tragedy can actually happen.

And I believe that's a great place to start because when I read about your story, the loss of your husband, your children, Can you kind of give us a little bit of background about your story and how you got to where you are today? Yeah. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner by trade. I have two biological children and I adopted five children from the foster care system. Mostly because like I thought, you know, just trying to help. I thought if I just love on other children, that there will be kind of these blessings and things like that. And within a year of adopting children, we had our first tragedy. And that's when one of my children, Johnny, died in a drowning accident. City boy, we took him out to the country into Kentucky for a family reunion. And he tried to swim across the river and just went under and drowned.

And that is the first huge tragedy that ever has happened in my life. I've had things, you know, not necessarily an easy life. But when you think you're doing everything right and things are going your way, you have the education, you have the positive thinking, you have the good partner and you're making choices to help your community and you get hit with a tragedy like this. And Johnny had two biological sisters. And I had told them that they would be safe, that they, when I adopted them, that they are now safe. And so not only did we have this loss and this tragedy, but now his two biological sisters are having trouble trusting their new adopted mom, right? So that was happening. And then within a year, my son Reggie started having seizures.

Now, Reggie's my biological child, and I only say that because we found out that the disorder that he has, DRPLA, my other biological child and my husband have the. same type disorder, right? But in the midst of this, my girls are dealing with, you know, the trauma of losing their brother, plus their previous trauma. We adopted them when they were seven, eight, and ten. So they came with some trauma prior to adoption. And then Reggie is having catastrophic epilepsy. Like this kid was seizing nonstop. Every three days, he'd have like 12 grand mal seizures. He'd stop breathing. Now, I'm a nurse practitioner. And so I'm a medical provider in my own home, right? Like I had to actually take care of my son from a medical perspective.

And I went on this journey of trying to find what would help my son. And that opened me up to many things, many of the self-development work that probably a lot of your listeners listen to, you know, positive psychology, manifestation, like, how do you actually live this good, resilient life? And I'm a medical practitioner and my son's seizures were not responding to medical intervention. And so I went down this alternative medicine route, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners also are into lifestyle choices and how do you have a resilient body and how do you live naturally or biohack. So I went, I began this journey and it was for the purpose of saving my son or trying to treat my son. and all of the things that I did were actually helping me, but they weren't helping my son, right?

Meditation helps me. Neurofeedback helps me. Homeopathy helped me, right? But nothing was really helping my son. And so we were just living in this constant trauma. They finally diagnosed him with this rare neurodegenerative condition, which is genetic. They tested my husband and my other biological child, and they both had it. So another, like, below to the face, like you, you know, you think you're doing all the right things. And I understand positive psychology intimately. But when you're getting hit with the realities, with horrible realities over and over again, we have to acknowledge the difficulty of that. We have to acknowledge that it's not just positive psychology. It's not just grit that we could actually learn to be mentally strong. And in the 10

years of medical trauma with my son and raising my children who had their own trauma journeys, I began like developing what I now call the mentally strong method because we don't actually teach mental strength. We don't teach resiliency. That's why I'm so happy to be on this podcast because it's obviously your passion to teach resiliency. And there are techniques. There are things that we can learn to do to help us, even if we're not in tragedy, Because every single person listening is going to go through grief at some point in their life. If they haven't already, it will come. You know, we will lose our parents.

You know, we may lose someone close to us. I mean, I hope no one goes through the grief that I've gone through, but we'll all go through grief. And we all experience some form of trauma. Maybe, you know, maybe it's mild trauma so you don't want to like say it's trauma. So I call it injury. When it's not trauma, we still have moral and ego. ego injuries that happened to us throughout our life. Somebody in our childhood called us stupid, right? That still, that impacted me as I was going on my, my journey to save my son. Like, if I was smarter, if I was better, I would have been able to save my son, right? You see how that negative dialogue impacts your strength, you know? And so I began working through those things, pulling in all the self-development work and my knowledge and in medicine and psychology. and in alternative medicine and just began to like go on this personal journey. It wasn't about

teaching people at that point. So in 2016, my son Reggie passed away. And like losing a child is the worst trauma that that someone can experience, right? We talk about the love that, you know, that is your first love when you have a child. You think your spouse is your first love. Actually, your first child is your first love. Like that's when you actually understand the depth of love. And so losing a child is a whole other level of grief and trauma and spiritual conflict. And I went through that grief journey and I began teaching about grief, mostly about grief. Like we need to feel the pain of grief. This five stages of grief that people teach is not true. And that's a whole other podcast. But like actually going on this and teaching people how to

grieve. What I wasn't expecting was my daughter in 2021 died in her sleep. And now my daughter was not sick. Now, my son had 10 years of medical trauma. We were fighting for his life every day. My daughter, although she was diagnosed with the same neurological condition, she had had a couple seizures in her life, but when she would go to the doctor and start a medication, the medication would work. Right. So it was just this completely night and day experience. Same with my husband. He had the same disorder, but he didn't actually even start having symptoms until he was 45. And so I always thought, oh, my daughter's going to be like my husband, right? She's going to live into her 40s.

Like there's, you know, there was no indication that she was going to die. And so when I talk about my son's life, my son's life was traumatic. But his death was not a spiritual conflict because I would never pray for him to come back. Because by the time he'd passed away, he was in a lot of pain. and wasn't able to do anything. But with my daughter is like crushed me spiritually, you know, just the whole positive psychology was out the window and it was more than grief. It was trauma, right?

Like doing CPR on your own child is trauma. And so I had to take the time to process all of that. And, you know, I was telling you about how I created the mentally strong method when I was raising my kids and in the overwhelm of that. When Reggie died, it was my treatment. Like, it was the foundation for me to know how to grieve and to grow. When Maya died, it was my safety net. Like, when after losing your third child, you know, you're not being honest with yourself if you are not, you know, admitting to feeling almost suicidal, right? Like, it is just feels unbearable. And so the mentally strong method became my safety net. And I began to really, you know,

understand how to separate the grief and the trauma and the spiritual conflict, right? Like we, in our culture, and I, you know, and I include Canada in that, you know, culture, right, of, you know, we're successful. We have things. We don't talk about, you know, religion and spirituality because we have this fear of someone trying to convince us of what they believe, right? And so we've taken it out of the mental health journey. And we are, physical, mental and spiritual beings. And so I had to realize that that is part of the conversation. I had to wrestle with what I call God. And like, how could you take three of my children? And I was praying and manifesting and thinking positive and doing all of the things. And I have been able to,

to, you know, go on that journey and come back understanding like a bigger picture. And I, you it's not about sharing the details of that. It's about allowing people to feel, give permission to go on that spiritual journey, to figure things out, you know. And that's part of resilience. So resilience is not just grit. It's not like I'm going to push through. I'm going to, you know, whatever happens to me, I'm going to stay positive. And that's good. That helps with any negative thoughts that might come your way. But it doesn't actually help you process grief or trauma or your spiritual journey, you know, it may influence your behaviors and choices. But in the mentally strong method, we bring all these things together so that you can make choices of like,

how do I deal with that grief? How do I deal with that trauma? And still think positive. Because in the self-de-like, we have these two. In the self-development world, it's like, oh, just think positive. It's going to be okay. In the mental health space, you go to a counselor. and it's almost like, oh, it's not your fault, you're depressed. Or, you know, it's a biochemical problem. And both are true. We call it dialectical thinking. But like taking our power back that we are responsible for our journey.

Our journey of resilience is not just about thinking positive, but that is a big part of it, but is not the only part. And I know, I know of the things when I was researching you, Well, as you talk about how traditional grief models, especially that five stages of grief, can sometimes actually do more harm than good. What do those models miss in your experience? Yeah. That it's stages, that it, that there's an end that you should be able to do this successfully, right? And even in the DSM, which is where we diagnose things, if you are still in.

grief a year later, they call it prolonged grief disorder, at least five years, if you're talking about losing a child, but the reality is it's a lifetime. Grief changes you. So all types of grief. So even what we might call normal grief, right? Like we all lose our grandparents and then, you know, when we get older, you know, maybe our parents, even normal grief, life is different now. It has changed that the influence of that person is not actively there. The energy of that person is not actively there. So if we think of it as a physical body, we could think of normal grief like you've got to cut, right? And, you know, that cut heals, but there's still a scar. You're always going to remember your grandma. You're always going to remember. And maybe you choke up and get a little emotional

at Christmas when, you know, when you don't have her Christmas cookies or whatever, right? Like, there's still a scar there forever. But losing a child, losing someone close to you, losing your spouse, even, you know, I've talked to people who've lost a sibling, like, or even a best friend. Like, it's also about attachment. There is a theory called attachment theory that talks about, like, how much time and influence that person had in your life. It's not the role that they played. It's not about, was it your mother or your aunt, right? And somehow mother is more than aunt. well, if your aunt raised you and you talked to your aunt every day, it's going to hurt more. The pain, the wound is deeper.

And oftentimes people say time heals all wounds. Also not true, right? If you think about that from a medical perspective, there are wounds that if you don't medically treat them, they will get worse and you could lose a limb, right? Like, not all wounds are going to heal by themselves. And so being able to identify how deep is that wound, right? How deep is your trauma? So, you know, trauma, for example, you know, we talked about mild injury all the way to, you know, huge, maybe sexual or physical trauma that you had in your childhood, right? Some of those wounds, big, quote unquote, big trauma wounds may not just heal themselves.

Maybe you just put a band-aid or a dressing over it, but you still have that wound and it's still impacting you significantly in a negative way. But if you can heal that wound, you will always have a scar, right? And bigger wounds create bigger scars. But you, and even like losing a child is like losing a limb. Like I lost a hand. Now, can you learn to adapt and live a life that is happy? yes, but you will always be missing the fact that you lost your hand, right? And so understanding that grief is forever, it is not a stage, but what happens is that typically from a negative perspective, people have enmeshed their grief with their trauma, and so they're holding on to trauma.

And we know this from a medical perspective, from an alternative medicine perspective, if you hold on to your trauma, it will come out in physical form. So this is where we talk about like people with autoimmune diseases or or things that are happening to them. And you know, you go to like a manifestation retreat and people are getting up from their wheelchair, right? Like these are, these are things that are happening because the psychology of them holding on to something was manifesting as a physical symptom. And so we have to learn how to let go of the trauma and acknowledge the pain of the grief. And we don't like pain, right, in our culture. We want to, you know, take a pain pill.

We don't want to be in pain. But you do have to feel the pain of your grief, but separate from the trauma. Trauma has to be removed from the body or it will come out in physical ways. The trauma is what's making you have those negative thoughts. But grief is our badge of honor. I am proud of the pain I carry for my children. And now my husband, my husband did pass away after a year on hospice just a year and a half ago. And so I understand pain and grief pretty deeply, intimately.

And what would you say just to clarify that distinction between grief and trauma and how understanding it might help or has helped your healing process? So grief is any loss, and it can be loss of a dream. It could be loss of a business. I mean, I work with people who have lost multi-million dollar opportunities, right? Like, and there's grief in there. Now, if they lost that because of someone betraying them or stabbing them in the back, that's the trauma, right? But we often keep those things together. But if we can separate them, the loss of that. The loss of that. opportunity, that business, you know, is part of your story, right? Your grief remains part of your story. But if you hold on to the trauma, then it's like, oh, this horrible thing happened to me. Somebody betrayed me. And now this, you know, like you have this negative dialogue. So it's not a positive part of your story. But the grief of losing that and, you know, sometimes I like to keep it light with, you know, business. But we all, we all have grief. Divor.

force, you know, sometimes hurts, it hurts differently than death of a spouse, right? Like this person who you thought you were going to be with forever and you were pouring your love and your life into them, maybe betrayed you, cheated on you, wanted to leave, whatever the story is. So the trauma of that betrayal is something that has to be released. But the story of having experienced love and pain is your grief and it's okay to feel that pain, to honor that pain. But when you think of it in conjunction with the trauma of it, the injury of it, it creates pretty significant negative neuropathways. And as you are talking, one of the thoughts that I had is like culturally, like the idea of trauma might not be common in certain cultures. I know typically in my culture,

We are just starting to know and to hear about trauma. But it's not something that we experienced or talked about quite a bit growing up. And I know for me personally there was a time when I was like, oh, I've never been through a traumatic experience. Right. Like, oh, that's for what other people like experience. But in learning more about it and even in hearing what you say, that it's almost like there is the capital T trauma and then the small T trauma.

Right. For people that might not even be aware or might be resistant to acknowledging that maybe they might have that trauma, what are kind of some steps they can take to reflect on where the past experiences could have been traumatic or maybe just those were injuries, as you call? Right. And I think people can resonate more with the word injury, right? I think, you know, sometimes it's hard for us to use the word trauma because we don't want to also disrespect. respect people who have a story of horrible trauma, right? Like, you know, and I get that. And that is, there is some truth to that because we also sometimes baby, right, like we're kind of going into this stage of everybody's got trauma and no poor me. Like, you don't want that victim stance either. So if we use the word injury and we define it by anything that changed your perception of the world to a negative is an injury, right?

We all have life experiences. And, you know, let's say you have a father who is absent and, you know, just calls you names, right? Is that really trauma? Okay, maybe not. But did it change the way you think of yourself? Yes. Did it change the way you thought of a father, right?

Did it, you know, change the way you thought of men if you were a woman? And like it changed your perception of the world and how you show up in the world. And so acknowledging it as an injury that shouldn't have happened. But even in the best of homes, we make mistakes. I have to apologize to my kids all the time. I shouldn't have said that. You know, like, so it's because as I was going through some of this journey, it was like, I don't want to blame my mom like that.

You know, my mom did her best. Like she was a single mom and, you know, working in the cornfields. Like she was trying her best. So who am I to say, you know, my, you know, thinking I'm dumb came from things that she said to me, right? Like, she was on her journey, struggling, probably thinking those things about herself, right? And so it's not about pointing blame. It is about acknowledging how something impacted you so that you can choose to let it go or choose to reframe it, rewire it, you know. And it's not just about the whole pouring

in positive thinking, because this is what happened in this young generation. In my generation, I'm 52. When I was young, it was like, oh, you've got to figure it out yourself. Nobody told you you you were smart. Nobody like positively reinforced you all the time. Like, it just didn't happen. That wasn't part of raising your kids, right? Now, but all of us felt the low self-esteem was the thing that, you know, when we were growing up and stuff. And so we raised our kids telling them they could do anything and get a trophy just for showing up, right? Like, and, and, and so it's not just about pouring in positive, right? Because then that gives it a skewed sense of self-worth, right? But it's it's about ourselves. Even when I teach my raising mentally strong kids class, I start with a parents. This is not

about what, what's going on with the kid. Like, what's going on with you? you and how are you compensating for your past traumas? Because you are. And this is what, you know, people do. Like if they weren't given that positive reinforcement when they were a kid, that's what they're giving their kid. But then, you know, the fact that my generation had to figure everything out ourselves and you growing up in another country probably the same, you had to, you know, figure things out on your own. We learned critical thinking skills very young. And now we have a lot of young people who don't know critical thinking skills because everything. has kind of been poured into them, right? So sometimes your injuries actually made you be able to

critically think at a very young age. So it's a gift. But reframing that and knowing that and not having that victim stance. So it's a balance between what the, you know, psychology community says is, you know, that it's not your fault that you feel this way to everything is positive psychology. it's really an intimate, unique balance between the two, and only you can know what that journey is for you. Like I go on my own journey, but you have to go on your journey because it's different. One of the most powerful things I heard you say was thoughts are not facts.

And so on one end, that's easy to understand. But on actually applying it, how can we actually separate thoughts from truth, especially when we're in that state of pain. Yeah. So there's two narratives here that happens with the thoughts or not facts. And I can tell you from a negative perspective, the men in my young adult life would tell me that I'm too sensitive, I'm difficult, your emotions don't matter, the facts matter.

And now I've been able to turn my emotions and my passion into my work, right? And so there's also a negative narrative there that I don't want to, I want to make sure the listeners understand that that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the way, the thoughts that you have are, are from, the negative thoughts that you have are from injury. And if you can acknowledge and find that injury, you can reprogram your brain. I separated into two components, negative thoughts and core connections. Your negative thoughts, if they're just negative thoughts, you can get rid of them pretty quickly. If there are core connections, they keep coming up.

I'm not good enough. Keeps coming up for me, right? And I've been, you know, working on reprogramming that for a while. You know, I'm not smart. I have figured out I'm really smart in a lot of ways. There's certain ways that I'm not. I hire somebody to do that, right? Like, you know, when you get to that place in your life where you can do that, the, and so the

thoughts are not facts is important, but it's also important that you, you don't fall into this magical, delusional thinking of like, if, if you would have told me back in my 20s, you just need to say you are smart 100 times a day and you're going to change that thought. That didn't actually, that wouldn't have actually worked because I literally can, not read a paragraph and answer questions about the paragraph. Like I have a very specific inability to do that. And if somebody just kept saying to me, you know, just say that you're smart and everything in life makes you read a paragraph and answer questions about the paragraph. Like everything in academics does that, right? Like, so knowing, like really being able to

evaluate yourself, why do I think I'm not smart? Because I'm having trouble with academics, right? had trouble with academics in my young life. Well, why is that? Like, go deeper. Why? Why? Why? Because nobody's just dumb, right? Like, there's, and then so now that I know very specifically, I can make a choice about that, right? But we often want, uh, or accidentally like say things that are simple. And even my, um, my YouTube coach is like, you know, tries to get me to be like this sensation. Well, you have to say. that if they do these three things, everything's going to be fine. And I'm like, I can't say that because it's not true. But that's what we want to hear. We want to hear that if we just do this one

thing, if we just change that thought, everything will be better. I truly believed that my son was going to be healed. Like 100% believed it. And I lived like that. And he ended up passing away. Right. So sometimes your thoughts, even on the positive, could not, you know, be managed. infesting in your life. You could, you know, divorce is a big thing in our culture, being hurt and betrayed in relationship. And I help a lot of people in this situation. And they're like, yeah, but I, I really wanted this. I, this is what I committed to. I was doing, you know, and the reality is, you know, the other person wanted the divorce and there was nothing that they could do about it, right? And so sometimes we have to balance that reality with our thoughts. And so it's important to find

thoughts that we can really believe. So for me, it started with, wow, I'm pretty emotionally intelligent when I learned that there was a difference between IQ and EQ. And so then I leaned into that and began to understand myself better and that kind of stuff. And so thoughts are not facts, but we do live in a world of realities, right? Like you, you can think you're going to, you know, get this $5 million business deal, but what happens when you don't get it? How, how do you remain resilient and positive even when negative things are happening? It's about self-awareness and understanding where true mental strength comes through because just grit can get you so far. Like I have always been a never give up girl, right?

Like you just don't give up. But there has been multiple times in my life where the weight was too heavy. And I had to stop and pick it apart. I had to stop and take the time to grieve. I had to stop and figure out how to release the trauma, right? And so if you are doing, this is to the listeners, if you're doing all the right things, you're trying to incorporate all that you're learning, you're listening to these podcasts, and you're still struggling, you might need to take a step back and look at yourself.

Where are your injuries? Where, what goes deeper? And this is where I was talking about, I separate the core connections and just the negative thoughts, right? Negative thoughts you can like try to get rid of, right? But if there's a core connection, something, some people call it like the inner child. I don't like that because I'm like, you know, we need to grow up. We're adults, right?

But that same concept that goes deep, you know, you might need to, you know, stop and take the time and try to figure out, you know, how and why those things are still impacting you. And so related to that, let's talk about the method that you came up with because you built something truly profound, the mentally strong method. Could you walk us through the three pillars and how someone might be able to, apply the concept when they are mentally spiraling. Yeah. Oh, I love that word spiraling. I don't love it. I actually, I've experienced it.

And I think if we're all honest and vulnerable with ourselves, we've experienced that spiraling. And what we think we know how to think, but oftentimes we're ruminating or we're overthinking. And so the mentally strong method is three words, Think, organize, choose. Now, when we do the method itself, we go deep. So when we say think, we do something called a thought map. And that thought map is like 20 years of journaling in 20 minutes. Like you're getting out all of the stuff. So let's say you're anxious. And we say, okay, what's making you anxious right now? And you write down all the things. What's made you anxious in the past? Oh, we write down all things. What made you anxious as a child? When's the first time you remember? being anxious. You're like, oh, that doesn't have anything to do. Yes, it does. We're going to, let's move forward. We're going to see, we're going to find patterns here. And then the last question

is how does this impact your spiritual relationship? And oftentimes people keep their spiritual relationship out of their mental health. And it is connected. We are physical, mental, and spiritual beings. And this is not to proselytize a specific belief system. This is very important. And most people are like, well, I don't believe in God. We're not most people. But if they don't believe guy that that's how they respond or if they um you know do have some sort of belief system they're like well what does that have to do with anything just listen to the question and write down the answers because what we're going to see is patterns right so i say i'm i'm anxious about something and i write down you know some business deals that are going on blah blah blah so what made you anxious in the past

well when i was trying to save reggie's life i was constantly anxious right what made you anxious as a child oh, not doing well in school and academics, right? So you see the pattern when I'm not performing to what my expectation is, you know, and then how does this impact my relationship with God? Well, you know, God says don't be anxious about anything, right? Like, so you can see that all of these things are happening. And even though I didn't really understand the spiritual connection, I have this verse that was ingrained in me somehow that I actually, that's a the first thing that came to my mind, right? And so I think anxiety is bad, right? And so in those four questions and one piece of paper, we got out a lot. We saw patterns in performance. We saw,

you know, this belief that came from an external teaching source, right? That's not actually true. Anxiety is not bad. Anxiety is good. That's a whole other conversation. So learning how to think. So that's what we do in the thought map. And then we have to learn how to organize. So when I realized that even in professional like cognitive behavioral approaches, nobody talks about organizing. They talk about thinking. They talk about, you know, your thoughts impact your mood and your behavior and teaching people to do that. But no one was really organizing. And so this is where it's different than every other CBT model of now let's organize what's on that paper, right? So my core connection of, of, you know, probably not being good enough because of the performance thing. Obviously, my grief, like, I lost that battle. Like, my goal was to save my son and he

passed, right? So it's a failure. And now I'm trying to grow a business and something's going wrong. And so I'm a failure, right? I'm not really, but I'm just saying, like, this is the psychology that's going on in the subconscious. And so you put those things in the right category. The negative thought of I'm a failure is just a negative thought. Like, I know it's not true, but does it creep in sometimes? Yeah, it does. Right. And I know why, because I've done this thought map. And so when I'm, instead of just gritting through, I'm a success, I'm a success, I'm a success. It, like, when you can know where that I'm a failure came from, it's easier. Like, you're not constantly battling, right? You know, they say that you have to say a positive. positive thought, three positive thoughts for every one negative thought that you have to try to reprogram the brain. And if you're just constantly doing that and you don't actually know how to where that negative thought came from and how to get rid of it, you're just constantly in that three to one battle. But if you can have insight into where it came from. And then we have other

categories where it's like anxiety is actually a strength. Anxiety is our body's way. when you are anxious, you are on point, right? Like you prepare, you focus, you know how to. But when it creeps up into moderate, you lose a little bit of function, but you can still function, right? When it gets into severe, you start losing function. So really what we're trying to tell people is not, don't be anxious because you'll be laying around doing nothing, right? We're telling people, like, get control of your anxiety to a mild, productive, place because anxiety is actually a strength. So these are the components of organizing that.

And then making choices. But in the self-development world is really good about teaching. Like, it's all a choice. It's all a choice, right? Like you can choose to be happy. That is a true statement. But to someone struggling with depression, real depression or grief, they have, you know, trauma, like to just say you can choose, although it's a true statement, it's got, there's a process to it. And so in the mentally strong method, this, it's like a flywheel. Like you think, you organize, you choose and then you think organized choose and you just keep going because our mental health is a journey for our lifetime. We should be continuing to be more mentally strong, you know, as we get older, have more life experiences and things like that.

But if, if you're just told by somebody who says, oh, if you just choose to be happy, you're, you know, you can choose to be happy. And what's happening is there's people silently feeling like a failure because they're listening to that. And there's probably people listening right now. They listen to that. They know, you know, in this person, they believe this person that if I could just choose to be happy, I would be happy. But they're not. They're struggling. They're trying, but they're internally, silently feeling like a failure because they're not happy that they, you know, that they're sad a lot of the time or they're reactive or they're crumably. or they're irritable.

And so like acknowledging that it's a process of thinking, organize, and choosing. And so if you listen to a motivational speaker and they say, you can choose to be happy, I don't want you to throw that out the window. I want you to say, okay, I know I can choose to be happy. This is the thinking part. Think about what's stopping me from being happy. Like what are the negative thoughts that need to be reprogrammed? What is, you know, is there grief and trouble?

trauma that I haven't, you know, acknowledged and worked through. And then you just, you keep thinking of this think, organized choose as a flywheel. And you just keep going through your life in that. So it can be as simple as something happens and it hurts my feelings, right? And I'm like, let me think about that. Or, okay, I know where that came from. And I'm going to choose to let it go. Right. Or maybe the choices, I'm going to choose to let that person know that it hurt my feelings. Right. But you always have that option. of choice, but if you know where it's coming from, if you've thought through it and organized it, the choice is more powerful and it moves you forward. And I'm thinking just as I'm listening to you and correct me if I'm wrong, it's also like a

powerful element of accepting those emotions as opposed to trying to fight against them. Yep. Because from my own experience and from studying a lot of working with people, it seems like there's that resistance that I don't want to feel bad. I don't want to feel this negative emotion. And either they try to drown it out with substances or different activities, or they try to just skip to the positive thinking without going through that process. So would you also say that that acceptance piece is like an, almost like an ingredient to that procedure?

It's an ingredient with control. And this is, and I think, people who are on this self-development journey will like this word of control. Like, you can do this with control. I've talked to so many professional people who are like, I can't open that box, you know, that trauma. Like, I know I got trauma, but I can't open that box because I don't want to, you know, kind of lose it or those kinds of things, right? And so there are types of therapy that can do that. The mentally strong method does not do that. I don't need to know. the details of your trauma. I would only want to know, like, how it changed you. Remember I talked about

injury, trauma? Like, it changed your perception. What changed? Do you no longer trust people? Well, that's still impacting you. Do you want, and you have a choice of whether you want to open that box, right? And there are times in your life that you can't. And, you know, I, for example, I'll talk to a mother, right? And, you know, she has some childhood trauma and these things and they'll come up And she's like, I can't open that box right now. Like I have to, you know, be in a place. We can slowly change the impact that that trauma had without opening that box ever. So this idea that you have to deal with the past trauma is not always true.

But acknowledging how it's impacting you today, that's what you have to change. You have to change today. And if you are feeling depressed, anxious, angry, and you are. trying to push through that, like, and just deny, like, I don't have it. Yeah, you're going to hit a wall. There's going to be a point where you're going to have to acknowledge it, right? And what happens when you just push through, and there are people strong enough to never have, never deal with those things, they will come out in physical manifestations of autoimmune. It's like your body just is like you, you've got to work through that. So if you have a feeling and a

emotion that you don't like. You can, while still in control, evaluate what is that emotion? And so that goes back to the thought map in the mentally strong method. Like, what is an emotion that you deal with? I'll say what not being good enough. Okay. And does it come out as anxiety, fear, sadness? How does it come out? I think like perfectionism. Does that? So I'm very, like I prepare quite a bit. Very particular things have to be perfect. So I guess the underlying emotion, there will be anxiety. Okay.

Yeah. And so we would do just like I said, like, you know, what's making you feel anxious now? What's made you feel anxious in the past? And your child, I won't do this to you on your own podcast. Go ahead. I've learned to be more open. So we can do it right now. Yeah.

So tell me what makes you feel anxious now. Probably like fear of like failure. since I have a few businesses. So some of my previous ones were not good enough. So whenever I'm working on the business, things are not going well. I'm anxious. Things are going well. I'm still anxious that they might change.

Yeah. And what about in the past? In the past, like I have been a specific story that I think was the first time I felt anxious, based on what you're saying earlier. Back in Zimbabwe, like I was put into grade one, a year earlier. So when I got there, I did not know how to write my name. And everyone knew the alphabet and I knew nothing.

So basically, yeah, when they were like, oh, write your name and I said I didn't know, the kids there were very colorful in their expressions in terms of like, oh, why don't you know how to write your name? Decided to sleep that whole class. And then I was like, to my parents, I'm not going back to school. And then we kind of corrected that. But I know that was kind of one of the main turning points for feeling like I'm not good enough and feeling anxious that things might not work out.

Yeah. And what about your spiritual relationship? How does that? It affects it when it comes to trusting, which is similar to giving up control. So trusting that the universe is going to take care of the things that need to be taken care of. I can focus on the intentional component. So, yes, I think I could do a better job of trusting the universe than I'm doing right now. Okay.

And these, so if we would have drawn this all out, it'd be in bubbles all on a piece of paper. And, you know, you've already noticed that there's a performance piece. Like, there's this external rather than internal drive. Do you notice that? So when it came to the spiritual question, it was like, this universe has some sort of power or control. You didn't talk about your soul. You didn't talk about, you know, internally at all. So every example were external examples of your worthiness coming out as anxiety, right? So it's just a pattern, right? So we, just by asking those four questions,

we got to see a pattern in your thinking. And this is just for insight, right? It's not, so now, the next time you get anxious, I also want you to not think of anxiety as a bad thing. I want you to think of it as a continuum, right? And, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, a 1 to 3 is actually going to have you be prepared, right? You were prepared for this interview. You, like, when you have mild anxiety, you're actually successful. And I just want you to start, like, thinking about the internal control of not just the physical symptom of anxiety. So yes, the physical of bringing that anxiety down to that hyperproductive place, right, because that's what happens, is that we're hyperproductive when we're mildly anxious, but also bring in, bring it internal. Like the control of the anxiety

is yours, but also the control of the outcome, right? Like, this is a spiritual dance. between the universe and your soul and your purpose and, you know, bringing the power and the thought internal rather than everything external. So just think about that moving forward. I know now I can email you if I need a question. I need to organize. Now I need to choose. Yeah.

Think, organize, choose. And like I said, the mentally strong method, it takes, you know, several hours to go through the whole whole program. but it is a foundation for everything that we do moving forward. And yeah, and it was my safety net, God forbid, something horrible happens, you know, as well. You know how to organize your brain and make even baby choices of taking a rest, you know, allowing yourself to grieve, allowing yourself to feel the pain, acknowledging when you feel anxious, acknowledging when you feel depressed, right? So it's not just about the drive, which is hard for me too because I'm a very driven person, anybody in business is, right? But it's that whole component of taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually.

I love it. And my head is like thinking so much about so many things right now. One of the other things that you have done with your work is you have the mentally strong method, but you also wrote a book. Yes. So I wrote a book. It's called Pain and Purpose and it is my story. And your listeners can get a free copy on my website, Mentally Strong.com. At the top, it says get your free book. And it really tells the story of how I was able to do what I did of losing my three children and a little bit about the mentally strong method. You know, clicking on that link and getting the book allows you to also kind of be invited into seeing my documentaries. So after my daughter, Maya died, I went on a 45-day grief journey and I filmed the whole thing and created this documentary. It is called Strength and Vulnerability of like it's a very vulnerable. I mean, you see me in very ugly, emotionally ugly places. But I think it's important to start talking about how painful many, many people have gone through such horrible pain and they don't even know how to get rid of the pain.

So they're just doing that grit push through thing. And there is a healthier way. There is the mentally strong way. And so, yeah, we have lots of things, books, courses, intensives, where you can come to Colorado Springs and spend three days with me and really get a physical, mental and spiritual boost and really know how to move forward. For someone who's listening, who feels disconnected, they are grieving, they are feeling, numb but they want to take the first step.

What would you recommend they can do as a first step? Choosing to never give up, right? Like choosing to make that phone call to do that thing that you know you need to do. Many people are hurting. And I'm sure all of your listeners are like, you know, listening to podcasts, trying to do the right things. and there. But if you feel like you can't do those things, you are struggling internally, make a choice for yourself. And of course, I'm going to say come to one of my programs or whatever, but the first part is making a choice for yourself. Do you know how many parents will not take a class for themselves,

but will take my raising mentally strong kids class? And that's, but I get them. Like, come on in. You can think you're doing this for your kids, but we're going to work on ourselves too, right? many of us are in a place where we're constantly choosing to help our loved ones and what we really need to do is to stop and make a choice for ourselves. And do you think the capacity to help others is influenced by the capacity or the bandwidth that we have in terms of helping ourselves? Yeah, absolutely. You cannot take someone to a place you've never been. And this, you know, my staff doesn't like me sometimes because, Because to work here, you have to, like, be working on yourself. You have to be doing the method. You have to be, you know, working through your trauma and your grief. And what employer does that, right? Like people. And so, but they can't help someone else get to a place if they've never been to that place. Right. If you are, you know, angry with God's universe, whatever you, and you can't help someone have a spiritual connection. Right? Because you don't have one. You know, you can't help. And it's not, it doesn't have to be specific experience. Like some people say, well, you're not an alcoholic. You can't help an alcoholic. That's not true.

I've been through grief and trauma. I've been through lots of human experiences and I have worked through them. And so I can, I can help anyone get to the place that I am, right? But I can't get someone to a place that I've never been. And so if we're in a helping profession, if you're a coach, if you're a counselor, you have to keep moving forward because you can't bring someone to a place that you are not, right? A place of loving yourself. When we all tell you, oh, you got to love yourself. You know how many people don't even like themselves? Like you, and to love yourself, you have to know yourself. And so I always say there's like these three steps. You have to know yourself and many people don't even know themselves, right? And then what you know you have to like.

And then you have to, and that's how you learn to love yourself. Like you can't just make a choice to love yourself. Who are you? Do you even know who you are? I love that. And I love the three-step process because I think usually like on the first one. Like know thyself and then that's separate from liking yourself, which makes it, yeah, it's not, this makes it more cohesive. So how is your worldview now with everything you've learned and your experiences? How do you see the world? How do you see humanity? How do you see yourself? Yeah. I definitely see it from a different spiritual lens. I once believed in absolute truth. I believed in a specific faith system. And now I know that everybody is on a journey. And we are definitely spiritual beings. There's definitely something. outside of this world, right? But we also have to live within the confounds of our reality. So I try to keep it more practical. And I'm, one of my core values is connection. Like I connect with people

and then, you know, I have, you know, people who I connect very deeply with. And those, those relationships are eternal. Like relationships are eternal. Like your business, you know, may fail, you won't take your money with you, right? Like, we have to live in the realities of our world. But the relationships, the soul connections are forever. And so, yeah, so I don't really believe in absolute truth anymore. Like, it's all an experience. And for people that want to learn more about you, like follow your work, where can they find you? So on Mentallystrong.com, go on there, get your free book, but also look around, look at all the programs, follow me on social medias, all those are on the website, and I have a lot of free content out on YouTube.

And yeah, I am passionate about helping people just get stronger. And if there's one key takeaway, the listener can live here with, what would you like that key takeaway to be? You forgot your three words already? What are the three words? Come on. Is it the think, organize, and choose? Yep.

Think, organize, and choose. That's just remember that over and over again. Beautiful. I felt a little bit of pressure. I'm like the temperature is increased. Good, good, good, good. Thank you so much, Dr. B, for your perspective, for sharing your heartfelt story of resilience

and for being a beacon of light. And for showing us that no matter how difficult life is, days lighter the end of the tunnel. And we can be stronger, we can thrive instead of just surviving. So thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you for tuning in.

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