Erin [00:00:00]: Welcome back, more love listeners. Thanks for being with us again. You are in for a treat. Today we are going to talk about authenticity and people pleasing. Are they on two ends of the spectrum? I don’t know, but I think one of our guests might have some insight that would be awesome for you to hear. Chris Barthelmy of True North Motivation is with us today. I found Chris on Instagram, messaged him because who wouldn’t? Isn’t that what everyone does? And basically said, I need to have you on this podcast. So you are in for a treat as Chris talks about personal accountability, honest reflection, and the hard truth behind looking at ourselves and asking, are we living an authentic life? And if not, what do we need to do about it? We’re really excited to have you, Chris, and really excited that you’ve chosen to be with us today. So thank you for being here, number one.
Chris [00:01:15]: Well, I appreciate the, the invite. I love doing these things. You know, my entire premise of what I’m doing in this world is to help others and I can’t help others unless I get in front of them. Your viewers are not the people that already follow me. So it gets me into fresh faces that will hear my take on some of the self awareness stuff and it may resonate with some of them and it may help them get past whatever it is that they’re facing. And that’s the, the true end goal. It’s not money, it’s not power, it’s not influence. It’s literally just helping people get past the struggles because we all struggle from, like some very heavy things, you know, even if it doesn’t look like it on the outside, you know.
Erin [00:01:52]: Absolutely. And so you’re right. Getting in front of an audience that maybe has not officially met you before, my first question for you would be, how would you describe yourself to that audience, to an audience that has never met you? What would you say?
Chris [00:02:06]: That’s, I mean, that’s a loaded question right there. I’d say that I’m someone that deeply cares about other people and my end game and end goal is always to be a cheerleader to those that I, that I have either in clients, friends, family, like whatever they’re trying to do in life, I want to be there on the sidelines. Even if it is just saying, good job, I’m proud of you. You know, I want to be support to so many people, to try to help them get past because mental blocks, they’re terrible. Like, whether you’re coming out of a traumatic relationship, whether you’ve tried something before and failed. I know just how bad those mental blocks can keep you from the greatness that we all have inside, you know, and so I just want to be a cheerleader. I want to be a support system for whoever it is out there that needs help, you know?
Erin [00:02:58]: Yeah, I love that. I love that.
Rebecca [00:03:00]: So what’s your background? Why. Why are you passionate about that?
Chris [00:03:04]: Ooh. Well, you know, from a very early age, I found myself in leadership roles. No matter where I went, whether it was, you know, I worked. I worked at Sears in the shoe department. I ended up like a shift leader there. I worked in the restaurant industry. I ended up a shift leader there. I ended up, you know, I worked at a gymnasium in the fitness area, and I ended up the. The supervisor for the entire gym section in my college. And every time I did, I. I found the best part about leadership was coaching and mentoring other human beings. Like helping them to understand problems and to watch those light bulbs go on in their. Their head. Like, oh, man, I get it now. I figured it out, right? And. And watching those people grow in their abilities just, it. It was awesome to me. Well, I continue to just bounce around. I never knew I knew what I wanted to do with my life, but I just wasn’t sure how to get there. I wanted to be a motivational speaker. I have always wanted to be that since very young. Right. Because when you play sports at young age, you get people that come and do motivational speaking. I was like, I want to do that, right? No idea how to get there. So I just kept doing all these roles, trying to figure out where I fit in. Joined the military, did eight years there, and I started to really hone in on what I was good at. When I was a Ranger instructor, I was really, really good at getting people to get past. We call it the suck factor. That part of Ranger school where it sucks so bad that you’re like, I can’t even do it. I can’t go any further. And helping them get past that. And I said, here’s where it is. It’s not leadership. It’s not discipline. It’s not my own self worth. That’s not important to me. What’s important is getting that person to take another step, even when they don’t think they can. And I started realizing that coaching was that niche for me. I got out of the military. I did it in the public utilities industry. I was a supervisor there that helped guys go from day one labor up into, you know, operators on machinery up to foremen. I helped them Grow. And I said, at some point during a abusive relationship, I said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna finally, you know, start a motivational company and a coaching company. And I have never looked back ever since. Now, you know, three years, three and a half years later, now I am full time coach. I have typically anywhere between 20 to 30 clients at any given time that are active with me. And I just, I absolutely love what I do, helping people get past those mental barriers, those limiting beliefs that we all have inside of us. You know, I love it.
Erin [00:05:43]: I love that you say mental barriers. Because when I watch your videos, one of the things that strikes me is your videos aren’t for people who want to stay in a place of wallow and sorrow for a long period of time. Your videos are sort of focused on, okay, it happened, let’s acknowledge it now, how do we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going? So when you think about the types of clients that you serve, the people that you serve, what’s their profile? Who are the people that typically come to you and what are they looking for specifically from you because of what you offer?
Chris [00:06:24]: The typical client suffers from being stuck in a rut, or loop, whatever you want to call it. They have overthinking patterns in their head and they, they struggle to figure out a way out of it. You know, there’s, there’s so many content creators online that offer little tidbits of information to get you past stuff, and those are great, but they don’t give that person a starting point. So a lot of times they’ve followed all these people that have great things to say, but they get stuck in a loop. Like, they try one thing. It’s almost like when people diet. They try one diet for a week, then they try another diet for a week, and they try another diet and they never, they get stuck in that loop. Same thing here is, is just like you’d hire a coach for, you know, fitness or a fitness trainer. I am like a trainer for your mind. I start to organize your thoughts, I start to help you process. I look both backwards and forwards at the same time. So I understand your trauma and how I can fix your negative loop that you’re in. And I also give you tools to make sure that we never end up in that place again. And that’s, I think, why I’m so effective and why so many people come to me is because I offer a little bit of both. We look at therapy. Therapy almost always looks backwards. Let’s heal your childhood trauma. And that’s great, but that does not give me anything. To stop the problems of the bad decisions I’m making in my life right now helps me understand my bad decisions, but it doesn’t teach me how to make better decisions. And so I offer an approach that has a little bit of backward and a little bit of forward and then staying present in the now to figure out how to get out of that negative loop, if that makes sense.
Erin [00:07:57]: Yeah, I love it. I wonder if we can talk about. You talked, you mentioned trauma. You mentioned that having your own personal trauma has also informed who you are as a person and who you are as a coach. Can you take us down that road a little bit and tell us about the trauma that you have experienced and how that’s crafted you into who you are today?
Chris [00:08:18]: Absolutely. Unlike a lot of people that I actually coach, I don’t have any real childhood trauma. I mean, I have a little bit in that I had coaches in sports that would tell me I’d be a skinny twig. I’d amount to nothing because I was very, very skinny and very, very small in high school. And so I had some body dysmorphia issues that I still deal with today because of those mean things that those coaches told me at a 13 to 14 year old boy age that like really, really sunk in. And it’s affected me as far as how hard I work at things to be better essentially that affected me a little bit, but nothing really major. In childhood, I wasn’t physically abused, I wasn’t emotionally abused. I grew up in a two parent household that was very, very loving. My abuse didn’t start until I started making really bad choices in life. Okay. So like while I was in college, I. I’m not going to get into all the details, but I did some shameful, shameful things to a woman that I was, you know, actually engaged to at the time. And after the shame just kind of got to me, I attempted suicide. I took an entire like probably 500 pills worth of Benadryl trying to kill myself. Wow. Thank God she was able to, you know, beat the door down and get to me and take her to the hospital, all that stuff. So I had the trauma of like carrying a lot of shame and guilt over some really bad choices that I had made in life. We got better. We ended up getting married. I ended up joining the military shortly after. Went for eight years in the military. Well, I went to Ranger school first back in 2007, got done with Ranger school, went back to my unit overseas about. I’d say about a month and a half after coming back from. From Ranger school, I was put in charge of a team, which is four guys. And while out on a patrol, one of my men stepped on an IAD that blew us to smithereens. I was thrown 15ft, head first, into a wall. I suffered a traumatic brain injury from that specifically. But in the aftermath, that. I mean, that explosion took his life. Cut him clean in half. And having to see those things and watch a man’s last dying breath and know that there’s nothing you can do about it. But the worst part of that incident was that it was a mistake that I had made in thinking I was telling my guys, because we saw what looked like a hot spot on the ground. And so we had been trained that a hot spot on the ground under thermal vision typically means there’s buried explosives. Stay away from it. We’ll come back in daylight and actually take a look. Well, I thought I had told all three of my guys, hey, stay away from that spot. Apparently, Rodriguez, one of my guys, never got that word. So he stepped on the pressure plate that blew us all up. Had he known, had I not made that mistake, he’d still be here today. So I’ve wrestled with that for a very, very long time. That happened in 2007. I mean, we’re. We’re at, like, 20 some years, you know, since then, almost 20 years. And I still, to this day, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that, that mistake, and wish that I could take back that mistake. Fast forward from there. I got out of the military. I’d gotten divorced while I was in the military, Got married to another woman as I was getting out of the military, had a son. That relationship just was doomed from the beginning because I was attaching out of the wrong things. I was attaching out of lust. I was attaching out of just, like, a fear of not finding someone. So it’s like, okay, well, this woman will do kind of thing. That didn’t really work out. We had a son, and before he was even two years old, we were already in the process of divorce. So really found myself lost after that. Like, how do I keep making mistakes and keep doing this? I’m a very intelligent human being. Why do I keep ending up in this loop? Fast forward 2019. I started a relationship with a woman that eventually became a physical abuser to me. I should have laughed at the first time she hit me. And we always talk about that with abusers, like when you’ve been abused, whether it’s physical, emotional, whatever, that we should leave that for the first time. And I found myself staying for another two and a half years after that first time she hit me. She was extremely emotionally abusive and I didn’t know enough about psychology to know what she actually was. And I didn’t understand that until eventually I asked my therapist who had I been going to a therapist for a little while at that time because of PTSD and my TBI issues. I asked him if he would be willing to, you know, take on the couple instead of just one person, you know, take on the couple as, as, you know, counseling. She agreed to it. So we go. And within three sessions she had cheated on me and done some other stuff and showed zero empathy in our sessions and even told the, the therapist basically that I was to blame for all of it. And so coming out of that, her and I eventually got separated. There was abuse on the very last day. She got thrown in jail. And then eventually she took out charges on me and had me thrown in jail for something I didn’t even do. She was saying that I was the abuser. All charges were dropped. We were, you know, domestic violence can be very, very scary, you know what I mean? And especially on the man side of it. I struggled for a long time to even speak up about it because a lot of men think that we’re going to be laughed at for it. Like, though that didn’t really happen, you know, and, and clearly, though, when the police showed up and there was a slap mark on my. You could see her handprint on the side of my face and not a mark on her. I’m 6 foot tall and 200 pounds. She was 5 foot 8 and about 110, 120. Those police, they knew what they were looking at because they were like, we don’t see a scratch on her. You’ve got scratches and slap marks on you. You clearly were the one abused here. And so I didn’t want to talk about it though, because it was like my manhood felt like it had been stripped that day, you know, like I had been physically abused. But coming out of it and talking to my therapist further, he’s like, he’s like, I’ve seen a lot of people in my, in my day. He’s a doctor of psychology. He’s not just like a fly by night therapist who has a counseling degree, right? He’s like, I’ve studied a lot of these behavioral, you know, issues. I really believe that she is a, is a clinical, diagnosed narcissist. He goes, I can’t really give you that diagnosis because there’d be a lot more testing I’d have to do. But he’s like, she exhibits every classic sign. I had, I had heard that term and, and it become a, it became a buzzword shortly thereafter on Instagram. Anyways, everybody’s a narcissist now, right? We’ve talked about, it seems like if, if a man, if a man doesn’t like a woman, you know, all of a sudden she’s like, oh, he’s a narcissist. He has zero empathy. And it’s like a lot of the clients I get think they have been with a narcissist. And a lot of times in talking to them, we find out they’re probably not. They just have their own childhood trauma or whatever. But after understanding that I was with a emotionally, physically and financially, at times abusive woman, it really set me back quite a bit. So those traumas though, I look back and I’m like, why did God put me through all of this, right? Why, why did I, why did I have to suffer all these different, like, types of abuse and things? And I started realizing that it was my choice. I chose to go through all these by choosing to go past red flags, by not understanding my own needs, my own wants, not understanding who I was as a person and what I truly wanted, and letting my fears really drive my decision making process. So I said, I want to, like, I, I then I had an epiphany. One morning I was walking out of Lowe’s and I saw a truck that said True Something roofing, True Star roofing or something like that, right? And I had this like, almost like a lucid awake dream as I’m walking through the parking lot. And I, and I heard like, True North Motivation Find. You know, helping you find a way was what came to me. And I was like, there it is. There’s the motivation company that I want to start right there. I was like, I don’t want anyone else to go through the same pain that I have been through. I don’t want them to suffer. Like, the mental thoughts that we have after coming out of an abusive relationship are absolutely terrible. I suffered from suicidal tendencies for a good six months after coming out of that relationship. And so I didn’t want anybody else to suffer from that. So I started the company specifically to start shedding light on these types of issues. So that way we can teach people how to regulate their emotions, how to process Their emotions, how to trust again after you’ve been in those types of situations, how to attach properly. And so it just kind of snowballed from there. And that trauma, I believe God put me through it, so that way I could relate to a lot of my clients. On a personal level, therapy doesn’t work a lot of times because the therapist is looking at a book saying, okay, they’re dealing with this. This is what you say to them. I have lived it. I have been through it. So it usually makes it a little bit easier for me to really connect and really show them that there is a way through this because I’ve made it through. And it really. I mean, that trauma has shaped me into the coach that I am today. So I’m really. I’m thankful at the same time, like, disgusted that I had to go through it. Does that make sense?
Erin [00:17:43]: Sure.
Rebecca [00:17:44]: Well, how many times do people in drug and alcohol counseling become the counselors, the actual counselor, because they went, you have to walk a mile in my shoes. You know, Absolutely. You know, and I. We talk a lot because we have an empathy podcast. How often do we talk about the difference between empathy and people pleasing?
Erin [00:18:02]: Yep.
Rebecca [00:18:02]: And those red flags and things like that. Like, it’s such a fine line. Such a fine line.
Erin [00:18:08]: Yeah. And then recognizing. So what. What I think is really unique. First of all, thank you for sharing all of that. I think it’s important and it’s meaningful, and I really value your willingness and openness to talk about those things. And what I think is interesting for me about your story is that moment where you. Sounds like a moment. Right. Probably a bunch of mini moments that led up to a moment where you finally said, I have some onus in why I’m where I am right now. And that’s a part that I think is really unique about your story, because having an empathy podcast, talking about empathy, talking about. We talk a lot about past childhood. We talk about past traumas. We talk about a lot of those things. There is a fine line for me between owning your own personal sense of self and the decisions that you’ve made. Like you said to overlook red flags, to decide that you’ve stayed in a relationship too long. Between that and recognizing that some really terrible shit happens to some people sometimes in their lives. And so what I’m always really captivated by in your videos, specifically the videos. I love your music choices, by the way. They’re my favorite. The ones where you’re, like, sitting somewhere and you have your. Your hood up on your sweatshirt and you’re just talking openly. Those are my favorite ones to the camera, and I love them because many of them somehow find this beautiful balance between owning the fact that really terrible things happen to people, but finding a way to own the one little piece that you can own about it without overburdening yourself with what has happened to you. There’s something about those things that’s a really, really fine line for me. And I’m wondering if you can go a little deeper into talking about why that onus is important to you. Why that. That for me, that. That’s your. Your gold star is finding that balance between what happened to you and owning. How do you do that? How do you decide what it is that you’re going to own?
Chris [00:20:34]: It’s a very difficult question, but it’s. In all honesty, I always say, I always look for. I can’t fix other people. I cannot fix the fact that I was hit. But I can, because if I don’t fix what. What caused the hitting to happen, what caused me to be in that situation, you know, like, I need to figure out why did I stay with her long enough to even be hit in the first place. And so I have to own, even if it’s only one person, you know, I have a reel that, and I think it puts it probably the most eloquent I ever could. I am not a victim of abuse. I’m a victim of my own choices. And we have to realize that every choice I’ve made in life has put me right where I’m at, whether I like it or not. Everything I have done has led me to where I am. And that does not absolve that human being of hitting me and the abuse that they. That they, you know, put on me. But I have to own my portion of it because one, it’s going to help me validate that it actually happened. Too many people come out of an abusive relationship and the abuser will never admit they ever abused you. And so we suffer in that negative loop because we’re unwilling to admit that it happened because we’re waiting for them to apologize for it. So that owning it a lot of times helps us to validate that that trauma actually happened. I played a role in it, even if it’s only, like I said, 1%. I played a role in the continuation of that abuse so I can own that part, figure out how to fix that part. So at least I know that I have done everything I can in the future to not make that same mistake. And I think owning it really comes down to understanding where I made a bad choice so I don’t end up there again. Because we are not a victim of life, we are a victim of our choices. I chose to be with that woman, even though there were certain things about her that kind of scared me from the very beginning. But I also reasoned it and bargained away and said, well, the sex is really good, so I’m gonna stay. Right. And that’s where we have to have that. That hard look inward to say I stayed when I shouldn’t have, and that’s why I ended up abused. Is that. Does that kind of hit home with you?
Erin [00:22:41]: Absolutely, yeah.
Rebecca [00:22:42]: There’s always choices.
Erin [00:22:44]: Recently, over the past few months, I’ve been coming to terms a lot with my own people pleasing. And I know you have a reel on this. I watched it the other day and the people pleasing for me was my way of taking ownership for where I am at my place in life. And I didn’t recognize that it was people pleasing. I think everyone around me might have been like, oh, yeah, you’re kind of a people pleaser. That would not have resonated with me until I read this book called the Joy of Saying no by Natalie Liu. And when she started to describe people pleasing and she started to describe efforters specifically, these are people that have a tendency to overdo, always go too far, always have to do the next best thing, always raising their hand. They’re going to be the PTA president, even though they have absolutely no time to be the PTA president. But for me, understanding why that people pleasing existed and being able to associate with the fact that as I was growing up, I also grew up in a two parent household and also grew up with a very loving family. But I grew up in what they call the age of oppression. And the way that I was shown love was by receiving positive affirmation for what I did. So great job getting that thing. I really appreciate that you, you know, stepped up and did this particular thing right. So it was what I was doing that was allowing other people to show me love. So until I was able to identify where my efforting was coming from, where my people pleasing was coming from, that I was then at that point able to own. Wow, look at the ways that my people pleasing has taken myself away. I’ve been in this relationship for too long. I. I’ve raised my hand way too many times. I have sacrificed my own mental and physical health for the wellbeing of other people. You say in one of your videos, Chris, I’ve fed people I put mouth into. I’ve put food into the mouths of people that have bad, bad talk to me. Right. Has said, have said terrible things about me. That was me. There was no limit to what I would not do for other people because constantly at the risk of myself. And so it wasn’t until I was able to own that, but the ownership of that was done similarly to what you’re talking about in a way where I wasn’t hating on myself for that. I was instead just acknowledging. You seem to have this tendency. This seems to be who you are as a person. You can see the impact that this has had on you. Now what the hell are you gonna do about it? You gonna keep being a people pleaser or do you wanna change something? And also, I think similar to you, once I finally made the decision, I’m all done with that. It’s a very quick turnaround for me, you know, more than anyone, once I’ve identified it, recognized it, I’m all done. And we sometimes talk about me going on these sprees where I’m like, I’m done with this. I shut this off. I closed this down. I shut this. I told this person, once you recog.
Rebecca [00:26:01]: Recognize it, you’re able to see your patterns.
Erin [00:26:03]: Yes.
Rebecca [00:26:04]: Yeah, yeah.
Erin [00:26:05]: But. But recognizing that and owning that sometimes takes me a little bit. But once I got it, I’m all set. Right? And I would say since November, which is when this first came to my realization, my whole life has been drastically different as a result of that. And I think that’s what I like that the stuck to it. Iveness. Right. It’s a stubborn passion for deciding that something no longer fits you. So you’re all done with it. And I don’t know if you can relate with this, Chris, but I struggle as someone who is that way, when people will continue to put themselves in situations over and over and over again after they’ve identified what the problem is.
Rebecca [00:26:49]: But I think that’s the difference. You are lucky in that sense. You’re lucky in that sense that you’re the type of person, we call it neurodivergent. She’s so neurodivergent in that sense that she is literally able to psychoanalyze her life and look at the patterns. Like she’s freaky like that. She can literally zero in almost like this map on her desk and look at these patterns in her life and psychoanalyze and say, wow. And connect these green dots and then make that pattern change. And you can visibly see it in her life change. So then she looks at other people and she can identify it in other people and then say, I don’t understand why they can’t see it either.
Erin [00:27:32]: Right.
Rebecca [00:27:33]: And so it’s very clear. And I can have that conversation with you, but I can see the non neurodivergent people and I can understand why.
Erin [00:27:41]: They can’t see it while they’re still hanging on.
Rebecca [00:27:43]: Yes. Because in their mind it’s not that simple. It’s way more complicated and way more. Not pattern driven and way more convoluted where you. It’s cut and dry.
Erin [00:27:55]: Right. I’m like, it’s actually not, it’s not complicated at all. If you just look at the dots, it led us here and now we’re done. Right? Right. But I do, I have struggled significantly once those dots have been identified with people continuing to do. And that’s where I start to fall off. Which I would imagine. This is why I’m not a coach, Chris, because I imagine that’s the time where you’re supposed to stick in it a little bit more. But you are a therapist.
Rebecca [00:28:20]: But you are a therapist.
Erin [00:28:21]: Fair.
Rebecca [00:28:22]: And you are. And you do stick in it and you do help people and you do care very much. Yes. And so you are a coach. Yes, you are. And you are loving and you are caring.
Erin [00:28:30]: That is fair.
Rebecca [00:28:31]: But you also do see, you’re like, people get the program.
Chris [00:28:35]: Yeah.
Erin [00:28:35]: I’m like, this was the answer, folks. We put it on a platter for you. Like, this was the answer. Now we just do something different. Right. Can you relate with that, Chris? Does that resonate with you?
Chris [00:28:47]: Okay, I’ve got tons of stuff to talk about on that one. You guys just gave me like tons of data for like great things to kind of counter some of those points. First thing I’m going to say is, this happens all the time. People get into that position. Why don’t they want to change when they know better? Okay. Why does the alcoholic continue to drink when they know alcohol is bad for them? Why does the cigarette smoker continue to smoke when they know it’s bad for them? Well, I would say that they still are blaming somebody else. Right. Well, I wouldn’t have to drink if my work wasn’t so bad. Well, change your work, change where you work.
Rebecca [00:29:26]: Oh, but I can’t because I like the people that work there because my pension’s so good.
Erin [00:29:32]: But I have to make money. If I don’t make money, then I.
Rebecca [00:29:34]: Yeah, I’ve been there so long and I won’t make more money at this other place.
Erin [00:29:38]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rebecca [00:29:40]: You know what I do? Cut that person out of my.
Chris [00:29:43]: You know, that’s what drives them to continue the bad decisions. Which means they’re not taking a true, honest look interiorly and saying, I am the problem. Because I’m refusing. I’m making my work the problem. No, it’s me choosing my work.
Erin [00:29:57]: Yeah.
Chris [00:29:58]: And so that part of it is. We are acknowledging it, but that’s the ownership part. You have to have.
Erin [00:30:04]: Yes.
Chris [00:30:05]: You have to own that decision. Good, bad, or indifferent, you own what you have done.
Rebecca [00:30:10]: I’m the first name should I write down on paper?
Erin [00:30:12]: I screwed up.
Rebecca [00:30:13]: You know, I know this.
Erin [00:30:15]: This was me at the party. How many Doing the party favor.
Rebecca [00:30:18]: How many people? I’m right. I’m writing down everybody in my life on this piece of paper that I think should call you Chris.
Erin [00:30:25]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:30:25]: I’m gonna.
Erin [00:30:26]: I’m just gonna work 30 more clients for you.
Rebecca [00:30:28]: I just go right there.
Erin [00:30:30]: We got 30 more clients coming your way right now. And in fact, she’s gonna write their names down. Then she’s crossing their names out right after that, because she’s done with them. Just completely done with them.
Rebecca [00:30:39]: Okay, keep going.
Erin [00:30:40]: No, it’s so true.
Rebecca [00:30:41]: I know. I’m aware.
Chris [00:30:43]: The next part of that, though, is that the other part, like you were talking about, Aaron, where you’re. You’re like, why can’t they see it? Right? You’re coming at it. You’ve already seen. It’s been illuminated. You have already made the correlation that it’s my choices, right? So we go back to the old adage where there’s a person standing at one side of a number, there’s a person staying at the other side. I see it as a six. You see it as a nine. You’re screaming at me, why don’t you see it? It’s a nine. And I’m like, it’s a six. It’s clearly a six. They can’t see it because we have to do a perspective shift. I have to show them how they are making themselves the problem. So that’s where I have to have some of the most guttural conversations with clients. At some point, I analyze, typically for the first four to six sessions, all their patterns, all their behaviors. I start saying, okay, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? And then at some point, I have to put a stop to it and say, you realize you are the cause of all of your problems, Right? And they don’t want to hear it first A lot of times I’ll have clients that will actually stop booking with me for a period of time. Then it sinks in. And then they call me back and like, okay, so you gave me that perspective, and I want to hear it, but now I’m ready to face it. Right? And that’s the part of what I do that I absolutely hate, is having to show them. I. I line up that mirror and I say, you are the cause. Well. Well, he. He did this. No, he did not. You allowed him to do it because you didn’t set boundaries. You allowed him to do it because you didn’t say no. And that’s where all of a sudden, once they start seeing it, it can’t be unseen. And that’s where they finally see it as a nine and not a six anymore. And they go, I will never do that again. Because they see how they get fed up with their own BS because they’re like, I am tired of acting like that because I can see my behavior is what’s continuing to attract these type of human beings into my life repeatedly. You know what I mean? And that’s. That’s where I can see you. Like, oh, my gosh, why can’t they see it? Because they. They are stuck on the other side of that perspective, you know?
Erin [00:32:46]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:32:46]: Now this brings full circle back to how I am very terrified for the up and coming generation on how the entitlement and how we’re raising these children and these people to think that they can do no wrong. And, you know, I’m.
Erin [00:33:02]: With the lack of self accountability is.
Rebecca [00:33:04]: What you’re worried about. I am terrified.
Erin [00:33:06]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:33:06]: I am absolutely terrified.
Erin [00:33:08]: Which makes sense because as a mother, you are very much, you know, old school Taylor. Your daughter will come home and she’ll say something about her grades, and you’ll be like, what did you do to earn that? You need to do something different.
Rebecca [00:33:21]: What, were your ears ringing this weekend?
Erin [00:33:23]: Oh.
Rebecca [00:33:24]: Oh, where you’re.
Erin [00:33:26]: But you’re really. But that’s. You are very consequence driven and you are very clear on.
Rebecca [00:33:34]: My parenting style is very much. Let’s look at the big picture and let’s look at how you contributed first. Yeah, let’s not point the figure. We’re not pointing the figure at what other people did. Let’s look first at what you contributed to the problem, and once we look at that, then we’ll talk about what other people did.
Erin [00:33:55]: Right.
Rebecca [00:33:56]: Because I’m 100% confident you contributed. Also. You are not a victim.
Erin [00:34:03]: Even if. Even if contributing means you didn’t remove yourself from a situation, you didn’t set up an appropriate boundary. You didn’t say, I’m not doing this anymore. Correct. Yeah.
Rebecca [00:34:11]: The likelihood that you were 100% a victim is so slim. I know that for a fact. Yeah, that’s just my parenting style. Be right or wrong. I just. I don’t believe there’s 100% victimhood in any circumstance. I just don’t.
Erin [00:34:27]: Now, what’s interesting for me, though, Chris, is that you said, I really hate the part where I have to hold up the mirror and tell him that. Now, that might be one area we do differ, because I love that. I love it so much, and here’s why. I feel like the greatest gift you can give to another human being is the ability to see themselves for their own true, authentic self, that they might not have been able to get there without you holding up that mirror. I think it is the most beautiful gift you can give someone. I agree with you. People are not always ready to receive that gift. I’ve actually had plenty of supervisors who are not ready to receive the gift that I provide them about how they’re really bad as a supervisor. But this. This gets me to a really interesting point. You can see a lot of similarities between Chris and I, right?
Rebecca [00:35:25]: Oh, yeah.
Erin [00:35:25]: Our mindset, our motivations.
Rebecca [00:35:27]: Oh, yeah.
Erin [00:35:27]: Our thought processes. Right?
Rebecca [00:35:29]: Hundred percent.
Erin [00:35:30]: But what’s been so fascinating to me and what keeps drawing me into these videos, Chris, is he’s saying things that I also say in my own kind, caring, empathic way. He’s much more straightforward to the point. Get out of your own way. You’re not a victim. I might say something like, why don’t we look at the ways in which your actions have led you to where you are now? If I’m being honest, my true approach would be much more like Chris. I would just cut out the middle ground and just go right for the jugular. Just to be really clear about what is happening here. And I don’t know if that’s feminine versus masculine. We talk a lot about how between the two of us, I’m much more of the masculine energy, you’re much more of the feminine energy. But I feel like people can hear it from Chris easier than they can hear it from me. And I don’t know why that is.
Rebecca [00:36:28]: It’s just the audience. Oh, he’s not talking to higher. He’s not talking to higher ed. Professional counselors.
Erin [00:36:34]: I’m coming over to your channel, Chris. I’ll be on next week.
Rebecca [00:36:38]: He’s not talking to Higher ed professional counselors who are on bit teams.
Erin [00:36:44]: Okay.
Rebecca [00:36:44]: You think it’s genuinely the audience 100% interesting.
Chris [00:36:50]: I think it’s a combination of factors. I think that because here’s the interesting part, I don’t talk like that when I’m talking to clients. I talk much more like you do. I will be like, oh, well, how did you contribute? Do you think that was the best idea? How could you have done things different? I can totally understand where you’re coming from and why you did that, but could you have done it differently? I take a much more empathetic approach when it comes to having the clients in one on one sessions. But those, those videos are meant as a attention grabber. Like, hey, check out how I process information because it’s logical, it’s thought based, it’s not emotion based, and it’s bringing together emotions and logic all into one package. And you said you like my music choice. Each song is chosen for a very, very specific reason, sometimes to go exactly with that, you know, whether it be the song title or just the way the melody is giving a certain mood. And I think it’s a combination of all of those elements. I have a masculine and feminine way about me and I’ve always known that I am balanced in the center. I have a lot of empathy and love and can articulate things and see the spaghetti brains that women have. But at the same time, I can organize and be logical and have the boxes and compartmentalize like a man. So I kind of sit right in that middle point. And I think that it sounds like you do too at times where you’re sitting at that middle ground. Because when it comes to clients, you have to know, do they need a more straightforward approach? Do they need the, the a little bit more laid back approach? That’s why I shift how I talk to clients based on them. I use a motivational interviewing style of talking to them in a lot of cases until I figure out whether they need straight up, you need to do this or if I find that I need to get them to do it by their own motivators. But every client is uniquely different and that I have to kind of sit back, learn about them, and then use which approach works for them. If that makes sense.
Erin [00:38:52]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:38:53]: And reality is 100% of the world is not going to like you 100% of the time. It’s just, it’s just how it is.
Erin [00:39:01]: Working through that one.
Rebecca [00:39:02]: It’s okay, sorry, line up 10 people. And 30% of those people are not going to like you just. That’s just life. It’s just how it is.
Chris [00:39:12]: And.
Rebecca [00:39:12]: And it doesn’t matter.
Erin [00:39:14]: How do you get through that, Chris? You just don’t care.
Chris [00:39:18]: I look at their opinions a lot of times, and I’m like, you are. You have no basis for making comments on my life. Right. So, surprisingly, I would say of. Of my followers, it’s about 60% women, 40% men.
Erin [00:39:33]: Wow.
Chris [00:39:33]: The men that follow me, apply, applaud me for. For standing up for men for once and actually articulating things that they feel but don’t know how to articulate. But I get, I would say, at least five to ten comments on my reels a day. You’re such a simp. No girl’s ever gonna want you. No, actually, it’s the opposite. But like. And. And that’s where I’m like, I see the projection coming out of them because right. Once you’ve gotten to a place where you heal and you understand it’s projection, you’re like, you’re. You’re just a piece of crap. No girl’s ever going to want you. What he’s saying is no girl wants him. And he’s mad at me because of where I am. He’s trying to shame me through his projection. And so a lot of times I let it dust right off me because I can see it coming a mile away. It’s because I’ve done the inner work to understand myself and to be completely honest and say, I love myself. I love that I have feminine energy. I love that I’m sensitive. I love that I’m able to articulate my emotions. Who cares if you don’t? I love who I am. But that’s, again, that honest look to say I own who I am. All parts of me, good, bad, ugly, and indifferent. You know.
Erin [00:40:41]: That piece for me? How did you get there? How did you get to this point where you went from shame and guilt, suicide attempts, trauma, ptsd, all of these things? How did you get to a point where you then look to yourself and say, this is who I am, and I. And I love this person?
Chris [00:41:09]: I’ve always actually been there. The trauma has. Has helped me understand that part of me that I’ve always kind of. I would. I wouldn’t say I’ve been in fight with that. That part of me, because I’ve always known I’m sensitive. I always known that I can be in touch with emotions, understand and have empathy that other men cannot. Understood it. And I’ve actually never been afraid of it. That’s why I’ve been more goal driven than anything. Because if I’m goal driven, I’m like, I’m going to do this at that point. I don’t care about the opinions of others. I’m not looking for validation. And that was the big key for me, is realizing I don’t need the validation from others to tell me I’m doing the right thing. Right.
Erin [00:41:55]: What was the last thing you said?
Chris [00:41:57]: I said, I don’t need that validation. I’m just looking to accomplish my goal, no matter what somebody else says, if it’s my goal, not their goal. So why should they shame me for doing something that I want to do?
Erin [00:42:11]: I’m ringing the bell. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Rebecca [00:42:13]: There you go.
Chris [00:42:14]: Well, and when you were talking about being a people pleaser and understanding your. Your stuff, I was, I was there for a long time and it had nothing to do with childhood, but my first relationship that I ever got in as a, as a young adult. It’s like Pavlov’s theory. It was conditioned like a rat. Like, Pavlov dinged the bell, he gave the treat. He ding the bell, he gave the treat. We have been conditioned a lot of times in relationships that if you do a good thing, you’ll get validation. Well, it becomes a drug in our brain to where we have to have that validation. So we are literally. And it sounds really bad, but this is where that perspective shift is. People pleasing is a way of controlling others to get the dopamine that you need.
Erin [00:42:52]: Yeah.
Chris [00:42:52]: Once you see that, you’re like, well, damn, I feel crappy now that I have a drug addiction to myself and I’m controlling others to get it.
Erin [00:42:59]: Yeah. They talk about that in the book, how it’s a form of manipulation 100 to get that dopamine fix.
Rebecca [00:43:06]: Yeah.
Erin [00:43:06]: Because it’s the way that you’ve felt loved and cared about and validated.
Rebecca [00:43:11]: Yeah.
Erin [00:43:11]: And here’s what’s fascinating, Chris. I would tell you, anyone who knows me really well would say she doesn’t care about the validation of other people. She’s just gonna do. She’s just gonna do what she does. Right. But through the last, again, since November, there is something about that validation of people who I genuinely would pass on a street and not care at all about that is so important to me. And unpacking that and figuring out what that is. I’ll give you an example. I had a video on Instagram that went viral. I had no idea what to do with this. The thing went viral and I was really Obsessed with going in and commenting on all of the comments, whether it was a thank you, whether it was, I really appreciate you taking the time. If someone wrote something nasty, I would say, thank you so much for sharing your opinions. Even though I’m thinking to myself, I wanna know the comments that got me the most. This is so fascinating. The comments that got me the most were people commenting on my nose ring. I know this sounds. I know this sounds crazy, but you would have all of these women who would be like, absolutely, I wish I knew that. I wish I did that. That’s so amazing. Right? You’d have these many men that were like, I really appreciate you sharing this perspective. You know, and there would be just normal banter in between, but it would be the people who would be like, I can’t hear anything you’re saying till you take that nose ring out of your nose. Or, you would be hot except your nose ring takes it all away. And I thought to myself, why out of all of the comments, that to me is that validation? I don’t know. But that to me is this. There’s something that sense of self worth, that self love that I know who I am regardless of how anyone thinks about me that was missing in some of those comments. Now you’ve made a good point, Rebecca. Many times I didn’t take the nose ring out. And I would have previously, I would have been like, oh, it might be something I’m a little self conscious about anyway. Or I don’t know, am I of the age where I’m allowed to have a nose ring? You know, what a good thing.
Rebecca [00:45:20]: What if it was replaced with. If you just weren’t blonde? Replace it with something else.
Erin [00:45:28]: Right, right. But isn’t that fascinating? And so I connect that with what you’re talking about, Chris, which is this. I need to continue to do more work on the inner self of who I am and really figuring out who is she, regardless of what other people think she is or should be. And I genuinely believe that at some point of my life, I felt what you felt. I felt this sense of like self that’s always been there through a whole lot of life happening. I think that I’ve allowed that to be beaten out of me in some way, shape or form or because of people pleasing. I’ve tried to figure out, well, you like this part, so I’ll hold onto that. Or you validated this, so I’ll hold on to this.
Rebecca [00:46:14]: Society says you should look this way if you’re a doctor.
Erin [00:46:19]: Yes. Right.
Rebecca [00:46:21]: You should wear a Blazer at work because you’re a doctor.
Erin [00:46:24]: That’s right.
Rebecca [00:46:24]: You shouldn’t have a nose ring because you’re a doctor. You shouldn’t have a nose ring because you will be more polished.
Erin [00:46:32]: Yep. Fuck that. Yeah. You shouldn’t be so direct with people. You should really look at yourself a little bit. Or people would say that to me. You should really look at yourself a little bit more. Maybe you were the problem in that situation. And historically, I’ve been like, no, it actually wasn’t me. I actually was real clear on where I was at. But I’ve allowed these things to chip away and get beaten out of me over the last however many years. It wasn’t until the last three months specifically, that I really started to regain that confidence. But I really want to highlight what you’re saying there, Chris, about. Until we are clear about who we are, the good, the bad, the ugly of who we are and own that and accept that, and then start to really show compassion and love for that, we are always susceptible to the opinions, the thoughts, the comments of everyone around us because it’s just shrapnel that just continues to hit us, you know, over and over and over again.
Chris [00:47:28]: Yeah. And it has an effect that at first may not be there. And it takes time for those negative comments to come out. And that you. You asked. You’re like, is that validation? You’re actually looking for the opposite. You don’t like negative criticism more than you want validation. You’re afraid that somebody doesn’t like you. Right. That’s what. That’s what I gather out of it. And I was there, too. I would rather. I would rather not get any comments and get one negative comment about me, you know? Yeah. So it’s like, I don’t need the validation. But don’t say anything bad about me. You don’t. If you have nothing nice to say, just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it.
Erin [00:48:03]: So true. Yeah.
Chris [00:48:04]: And. But that comes from a place of not accepting that there are things about me that other people are not going to like. That, I think, was the key part that I found somewhere after that abusive relationship was like, I stopped caring about the negative comments anymore. And that’s when I truly started owning who I am, who I was. You’ve ever seen the movie eight Mile, the very, very last rap battle? I use this as a good illustration. Exactly this. He goes in that last rap battle and he literally says, I am a bum. I am white trash. I do live at home with my mom. What Are you gonna, you know, tell these people something they don’t already know about the. That to me, that means that the. The key to confidence is saying I am going to be vulnerable. And I don’t care what you have to say about me because it can’t be used against me if I’m already saying, I know this. So if I go into any situation, I say, I know I suck. This right here, like, it’s already owning it before it’s a problem. So now you can’t have anything negative say you can’t make fun of me. And that came from, like, when I was a child, you can’t see it, headphones on. But I had really big ears, right? Called Dumbo. You know, all sorts of mean names, Mickey Mouse, Dumbo, everything, right? There came a point where I had to say to myself, like, I would meet people and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, my ears are big. Got it. And they. They. I would never hear a comment ever again. Because it was almost as if I’m telling them, this is not a soft spot for me. You do not get that right over me to make fun of me for that. And that part of my journey of life has. Is really now transferred into now. And that I don’t care what you say about me, it’s now I can eliminate those negative comments. And I think you’re on that edge. It feels like finally realizing that you just don’t care about the negative anymore. You just look for the positive or don’t look for anything and don’t even worry about the negative.
Erin [00:49:51]: Absolutely. So true, right? So true. Well, you didn’t disappoint, Chris. I’m telling you, I’m so happy that I reached out to you. I’m so happy that you responded. My family’s not happy because I screamed very loud, like I said in my kitchen when you did respond on. But if someone wanted to get a hold of you, whether that be for coaching or if someone wanted to find you on Instagram to see all the great reels that I see regularly, how would someone get a hold of you?
Chris [00:50:21]: So on Instagram, it’s True north motivation. It’s one, obviously one long, you know, tagline True north motivation. And then my. My website is tncoachingcollective.com I have other coaches that work for me. I have one that is on the website. I have other coaches, but I have one on the website that deals specifically with addiction therapy and getting through all sorts of forms of addiction. But, yeah, you can get a hold of me there. I have a whole clothing line on there. My book is on there as well, which is 41 days of freedom, which is a mental health journey based and rooted in the Bible. So, yeah, those are the two ways you can get hold me.
Erin [00:50:59]: Love it. Well, you have a follower for life with me. I will continue to watch. I will continue to heart. I will continue to enjoy all of the things that you have to say. I’m so very appreciative of you taking the time to be with us today on More Love to show us more Love to show our listeners more love. Please get a hold of Chris for additional information to connect with him just to make your life a little bit better. Thanks again for being with us, Chris.
Rebecca [00:51:22]: Thank you, Chris.
Chris [00:51:24]: Thank you, ladies, for having me on.
Chris [00:01:15]: Well, I appreciate the, the invite. I love doing these things. You know, my entire premise of what I’m doing in this world is to help others and I can’t help others unless I get in front of them. Your viewers are not the people that already follow me. So it gets me into fresh faces that will hear my take on some of the self awareness stuff and it may resonate with some of them and it may help them get past whatever it is that they’re facing. And that’s the, the true end goal. It’s not money, it’s not power, it’s not influence. It’s literally just helping people get past the struggles because we all struggle from, like some very heavy things, you know, even if it doesn’t look like it on the outside, you know.
Erin [00:01:52]: Absolutely. And so you’re right. Getting in front of an audience that maybe has not officially met you before, my first question for you would be, how would you describe yourself to that audience, to an audience that has never met you? What would you say?
Chris [00:02:06]: That’s, I mean, that’s a loaded question right there. I’d say that I’m someone that deeply cares about other people and my end game and end goal is always to be a cheerleader to those that I, that I have either in clients, friends, family, like whatever they’re trying to do in life, I want to be there on the sidelines. Even if it is just saying, good job, I’m proud of you. You know, I want to be support to so many people, to try to help them get past because mental blocks, they’re terrible. Like, whether you’re coming out of a traumatic relationship, whether you’ve tried something before and failed. I know just how bad those mental blocks can keep you from the greatness that we all have inside, you know, and so I just want to be a cheerleader. I want to be a support system for whoever it is out there that needs help, you know?
Erin [00:02:58]: Yeah, I love that. I love that.
Rebecca [00:03:00]: So what’s your background? Why. Why are you passionate about that?
Chris [00:03:04]: Ooh. Well, you know, from a very early age, I found myself in leadership roles. No matter where I went, whether it was, you know, I worked. I worked at Sears in the shoe department. I ended up like a shift leader there. I worked in the restaurant industry. I ended up a shift leader there. I ended up, you know, I worked at a gymnasium in the fitness area, and I ended up the. The supervisor for the entire gym section in my college. And every time I did, I. I found the best part about leadership was coaching and mentoring other human beings. Like helping them to understand problems and to watch those light bulbs go on in their. Their head. Like, oh, man, I get it now. I figured it out, right? And. And watching those people grow in their abilities just, it. It was awesome to me. Well, I continue to just bounce around. I never knew I knew what I wanted to do with my life, but I just wasn’t sure how to get there. I wanted to be a motivational speaker. I have always wanted to be that since very young. Right. Because when you play sports at young age, you get people that come and do motivational speaking. I was like, I want to do that, right? No idea how to get there. So I just kept doing all these roles, trying to figure out where I fit in. Joined the military, did eight years there, and I started to really hone in on what I was good at. When I was a Ranger instructor, I was really, really good at getting people to get past. We call it the suck factor. That part of Ranger school where it sucks so bad that you’re like, I can’t even do it. I can’t go any further. And helping them get past that. And I said, here’s where it is. It’s not leadership. It’s not discipline. It’s not my own self worth. That’s not important to me. What’s important is getting that person to take another step, even when they don’t think they can. And I started realizing that coaching was that niche for me. I got out of the military. I did it in the public utilities industry. I was a supervisor there that helped guys go from day one labor up into, you know, operators on machinery up to foremen. I helped them Grow. And I said, at some point during a abusive relationship, I said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna finally, you know, start a motivational company and a coaching company. And I have never looked back ever since. Now, you know, three years, three and a half years later, now I am full time coach. I have typically anywhere between 20 to 30 clients at any given time that are active with me. And I just, I absolutely love what I do, helping people get past those mental barriers, those limiting beliefs that we all have inside of us. You know, I love it.
Erin [00:05:43]: I love that you say mental barriers. Because when I watch your videos, one of the things that strikes me is your videos aren’t for people who want to stay in a place of wallow and sorrow for a long period of time. Your videos are sort of focused on, okay, it happened, let’s acknowledge it now, how do we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going? So when you think about the types of clients that you serve, the people that you serve, what’s their profile? Who are the people that typically come to you and what are they looking for specifically from you because of what you offer?
Chris [00:06:24]: The typical client suffers from being stuck in a rut, or loop, whatever you want to call it. They have overthinking patterns in their head and they, they struggle to figure out a way out of it. You know, there’s, there’s so many content creators online that offer little tidbits of information to get you past stuff, and those are great, but they don’t give that person a starting point. So a lot of times they’ve followed all these people that have great things to say, but they get stuck in a loop. Like, they try one thing. It’s almost like when people diet. They try one diet for a week, then they try another diet for a week, and they try another diet and they never, they get stuck in that loop. Same thing here is, is just like you’d hire a coach for, you know, fitness or a fitness trainer. I am like a trainer for your mind. I start to organize your thoughts, I start to help you process. I look both backwards and forwards at the same time. So I understand your trauma and how I can fix your negative loop that you’re in. And I also give you tools to make sure that we never end up in that place again. And that’s, I think, why I’m so effective and why so many people come to me is because I offer a little bit of both. We look at therapy. Therapy almost always looks backwards. Let’s heal your childhood trauma. And that’s great, but that does not give me anything. To stop the problems of the bad decisions I’m making in my life right now helps me understand my bad decisions, but it doesn’t teach me how to make better decisions. And so I offer an approach that has a little bit of backward and a little bit of forward and then staying present in the now to figure out how to get out of that negative loop, if that makes sense.
Erin [00:07:57]: Yeah, I love it. I wonder if we can talk about. You talked, you mentioned trauma. You mentioned that having your own personal trauma has also informed who you are as a person and who you are as a coach. Can you take us down that road a little bit and tell us about the trauma that you have experienced and how that’s crafted you into who you are today?
Chris [00:08:18]: Absolutely. Unlike a lot of people that I actually coach, I don’t have any real childhood trauma. I mean, I have a little bit in that I had coaches in sports that would tell me I’d be a skinny twig. I’d amount to nothing because I was very, very skinny and very, very small in high school. And so I had some body dysmorphia issues that I still deal with today because of those mean things that those coaches told me at a 13 to 14 year old boy age that like really, really sunk in. And it’s affected me as far as how hard I work at things to be better essentially that affected me a little bit, but nothing really major. In childhood, I wasn’t physically abused, I wasn’t emotionally abused. I grew up in a two parent household that was very, very loving. My abuse didn’t start until I started making really bad choices in life. Okay. So like while I was in college, I. I’m not going to get into all the details, but I did some shameful, shameful things to a woman that I was, you know, actually engaged to at the time. And after the shame just kind of got to me, I attempted suicide. I took an entire like probably 500 pills worth of Benadryl trying to kill myself. Wow. Thank God she was able to, you know, beat the door down and get to me and take her to the hospital, all that stuff. So I had the trauma of like carrying a lot of shame and guilt over some really bad choices that I had made in life. We got better. We ended up getting married. I ended up joining the military shortly after. Went for eight years in the military. Well, I went to Ranger school first back in 2007, got done with Ranger school, went back to my unit overseas about. I’d say about a month and a half after coming back from. From Ranger school, I was put in charge of a team, which is four guys. And while out on a patrol, one of my men stepped on an IAD that blew us to smithereens. I was thrown 15ft, head first, into a wall. I suffered a traumatic brain injury from that specifically. But in the aftermath, that. I mean, that explosion took his life. Cut him clean in half. And having to see those things and watch a man’s last dying breath and know that there’s nothing you can do about it. But the worst part of that incident was that it was a mistake that I had made in thinking I was telling my guys, because we saw what looked like a hot spot on the ground. And so we had been trained that a hot spot on the ground under thermal vision typically means there’s buried explosives. Stay away from it. We’ll come back in daylight and actually take a look. Well, I thought I had told all three of my guys, hey, stay away from that spot. Apparently, Rodriguez, one of my guys, never got that word. So he stepped on the pressure plate that blew us all up. Had he known, had I not made that mistake, he’d still be here today. So I’ve wrestled with that for a very, very long time. That happened in 2007. I mean, we’re. We’re at, like, 20 some years, you know, since then, almost 20 years. And I still, to this day, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that, that mistake, and wish that I could take back that mistake. Fast forward from there. I got out of the military. I’d gotten divorced while I was in the military, Got married to another woman as I was getting out of the military, had a son. That relationship just was doomed from the beginning because I was attaching out of the wrong things. I was attaching out of lust. I was attaching out of just, like, a fear of not finding someone. So it’s like, okay, well, this woman will do kind of thing. That didn’t really work out. We had a son, and before he was even two years old, we were already in the process of divorce. So really found myself lost after that. Like, how do I keep making mistakes and keep doing this? I’m a very intelligent human being. Why do I keep ending up in this loop? Fast forward 2019. I started a relationship with a woman that eventually became a physical abuser to me. I should have laughed at the first time she hit me. And we always talk about that with abusers, like when you’ve been abused, whether it’s physical, emotional, whatever, that we should leave that for the first time. And I found myself staying for another two and a half years after that first time she hit me. She was extremely emotionally abusive and I didn’t know enough about psychology to know what she actually was. And I didn’t understand that until eventually I asked my therapist who had I been going to a therapist for a little while at that time because of PTSD and my TBI issues. I asked him if he would be willing to, you know, take on the couple instead of just one person, you know, take on the couple as, as, you know, counseling. She agreed to it. So we go. And within three sessions she had cheated on me and done some other stuff and showed zero empathy in our sessions and even told the, the therapist basically that I was to blame for all of it. And so coming out of that, her and I eventually got separated. There was abuse on the very last day. She got thrown in jail. And then eventually she took out charges on me and had me thrown in jail for something I didn’t even do. She was saying that I was the abuser. All charges were dropped. We were, you know, domestic violence can be very, very scary, you know what I mean? And especially on the man side of it. I struggled for a long time to even speak up about it because a lot of men think that we’re going to be laughed at for it. Like, though that didn’t really happen, you know, and, and clearly, though, when the police showed up and there was a slap mark on my. You could see her handprint on the side of my face and not a mark on her. I’m 6 foot tall and 200 pounds. She was 5 foot 8 and about 110, 120. Those police, they knew what they were looking at because they were like, we don’t see a scratch on her. You’ve got scratches and slap marks on you. You clearly were the one abused here. And so I didn’t want to talk about it though, because it was like my manhood felt like it had been stripped that day, you know, like I had been physically abused. But coming out of it and talking to my therapist further, he’s like, he’s like, I’ve seen a lot of people in my, in my day. He’s a doctor of psychology. He’s not just like a fly by night therapist who has a counseling degree, right? He’s like, I’ve studied a lot of these behavioral, you know, issues. I really believe that she is a, is a clinical, diagnosed narcissist. He goes, I can’t really give you that diagnosis because there’d be a lot more testing I’d have to do. But he’s like, she exhibits every classic sign. I had, I had heard that term and, and it become a, it became a buzzword shortly thereafter on Instagram. Anyways, everybody’s a narcissist now, right? We’ve talked about, it seems like if, if a man, if a man doesn’t like a woman, you know, all of a sudden she’s like, oh, he’s a narcissist. He has zero empathy. And it’s like a lot of the clients I get think they have been with a narcissist. And a lot of times in talking to them, we find out they’re probably not. They just have their own childhood trauma or whatever. But after understanding that I was with a emotionally, physically and financially, at times abusive woman, it really set me back quite a bit. So those traumas though, I look back and I’m like, why did God put me through all of this, right? Why, why did I, why did I have to suffer all these different, like, types of abuse and things? And I started realizing that it was my choice. I chose to go through all these by choosing to go past red flags, by not understanding my own needs, my own wants, not understanding who I was as a person and what I truly wanted, and letting my fears really drive my decision making process. So I said, I want to, like, I, I then I had an epiphany. One morning I was walking out of Lowe’s and I saw a truck that said True Something roofing, True Star roofing or something like that, right? And I had this like, almost like a lucid awake dream as I’m walking through the parking lot. And I, and I heard like, True North Motivation Find. You know, helping you find a way was what came to me. And I was like, there it is. There’s the motivation company that I want to start right there. I was like, I don’t want anyone else to go through the same pain that I have been through. I don’t want them to suffer. Like, the mental thoughts that we have after coming out of an abusive relationship are absolutely terrible. I suffered from suicidal tendencies for a good six months after coming out of that relationship. And so I didn’t want anybody else to suffer from that. So I started the company specifically to start shedding light on these types of issues. So that way we can teach people how to regulate their emotions, how to process Their emotions, how to trust again after you’ve been in those types of situations, how to attach properly. And so it just kind of snowballed from there. And that trauma, I believe God put me through it, so that way I could relate to a lot of my clients. On a personal level, therapy doesn’t work a lot of times because the therapist is looking at a book saying, okay, they’re dealing with this. This is what you say to them. I have lived it. I have been through it. So it usually makes it a little bit easier for me to really connect and really show them that there is a way through this because I’ve made it through. And it really. I mean, that trauma has shaped me into the coach that I am today. So I’m really. I’m thankful at the same time, like, disgusted that I had to go through it. Does that make sense?
Erin [00:17:43]: Sure.
Rebecca [00:17:44]: Well, how many times do people in drug and alcohol counseling become the counselors, the actual counselor, because they went, you have to walk a mile in my shoes. You know, Absolutely. You know, and I. We talk a lot because we have an empathy podcast. How often do we talk about the difference between empathy and people pleasing?
Erin [00:18:02]: Yep.
Rebecca [00:18:02]: And those red flags and things like that. Like, it’s such a fine line. Such a fine line.
Erin [00:18:08]: Yeah. And then recognizing. So what. What I think is really unique. First of all, thank you for sharing all of that. I think it’s important and it’s meaningful, and I really value your willingness and openness to talk about those things. And what I think is interesting for me about your story is that moment where you. Sounds like a moment. Right. Probably a bunch of mini moments that led up to a moment where you finally said, I have some onus in why I’m where I am right now. And that’s a part that I think is really unique about your story, because having an empathy podcast, talking about empathy, talking about. We talk a lot about past childhood. We talk about past traumas. We talk about a lot of those things. There is a fine line for me between owning your own personal sense of self and the decisions that you’ve made. Like you said to overlook red flags, to decide that you’ve stayed in a relationship too long. Between that and recognizing that some really terrible shit happens to some people sometimes in their lives. And so what I’m always really captivated by in your videos, specifically the videos. I love your music choices, by the way. They’re my favorite. The ones where you’re, like, sitting somewhere and you have your. Your hood up on your sweatshirt and you’re just talking openly. Those are my favorite ones to the camera, and I love them because many of them somehow find this beautiful balance between owning the fact that really terrible things happen to people, but finding a way to own the one little piece that you can own about it without overburdening yourself with what has happened to you. There’s something about those things that’s a really, really fine line for me. And I’m wondering if you can go a little deeper into talking about why that onus is important to you. Why that. That for me, that. That’s your. Your gold star is finding that balance between what happened to you and owning. How do you do that? How do you decide what it is that you’re going to own?
Chris [00:20:34]: It’s a very difficult question, but it’s. In all honesty, I always say, I always look for. I can’t fix other people. I cannot fix the fact that I was hit. But I can, because if I don’t fix what. What caused the hitting to happen, what caused me to be in that situation, you know, like, I need to figure out why did I stay with her long enough to even be hit in the first place. And so I have to own, even if it’s only one person, you know, I have a reel that, and I think it puts it probably the most eloquent I ever could. I am not a victim of abuse. I’m a victim of my own choices. And we have to realize that every choice I’ve made in life has put me right where I’m at, whether I like it or not. Everything I have done has led me to where I am. And that does not absolve that human being of hitting me and the abuse that they. That they, you know, put on me. But I have to own my portion of it because one, it’s going to help me validate that it actually happened. Too many people come out of an abusive relationship and the abuser will never admit they ever abused you. And so we suffer in that negative loop because we’re unwilling to admit that it happened because we’re waiting for them to apologize for it. So that owning it a lot of times helps us to validate that that trauma actually happened. I played a role in it, even if it’s only, like I said, 1%. I played a role in the continuation of that abuse so I can own that part, figure out how to fix that part. So at least I know that I have done everything I can in the future to not make that same mistake. And I think owning it really comes down to understanding where I made a bad choice so I don’t end up there again. Because we are not a victim of life, we are a victim of our choices. I chose to be with that woman, even though there were certain things about her that kind of scared me from the very beginning. But I also reasoned it and bargained away and said, well, the sex is really good, so I’m gonna stay. Right. And that’s where we have to have that. That hard look inward to say I stayed when I shouldn’t have, and that’s why I ended up abused. Is that. Does that kind of hit home with you?
Erin [00:22:41]: Absolutely, yeah.
Rebecca [00:22:42]: There’s always choices.
Erin [00:22:44]: Recently, over the past few months, I’ve been coming to terms a lot with my own people pleasing. And I know you have a reel on this. I watched it the other day and the people pleasing for me was my way of taking ownership for where I am at my place in life. And I didn’t recognize that it was people pleasing. I think everyone around me might have been like, oh, yeah, you’re kind of a people pleaser. That would not have resonated with me until I read this book called the Joy of Saying no by Natalie Liu. And when she started to describe people pleasing and she started to describe efforters specifically, these are people that have a tendency to overdo, always go too far, always have to do the next best thing, always raising their hand. They’re going to be the PTA president, even though they have absolutely no time to be the PTA president. But for me, understanding why that people pleasing existed and being able to associate with the fact that as I was growing up, I also grew up in a two parent household and also grew up with a very loving family. But I grew up in what they call the age of oppression. And the way that I was shown love was by receiving positive affirmation for what I did. So great job getting that thing. I really appreciate that you, you know, stepped up and did this particular thing right. So it was what I was doing that was allowing other people to show me love. So until I was able to identify where my efforting was coming from, where my people pleasing was coming from, that I was then at that point able to own. Wow, look at the ways that my people pleasing has taken myself away. I’ve been in this relationship for too long. I. I’ve raised my hand way too many times. I have sacrificed my own mental and physical health for the wellbeing of other people. You say in one of your videos, Chris, I’ve fed people I put mouth into. I’ve put food into the mouths of people that have bad, bad talk to me. Right. Has said, have said terrible things about me. That was me. There was no limit to what I would not do for other people because constantly at the risk of myself. And so it wasn’t until I was able to own that, but the ownership of that was done similarly to what you’re talking about in a way where I wasn’t hating on myself for that. I was instead just acknowledging. You seem to have this tendency. This seems to be who you are as a person. You can see the impact that this has had on you. Now what the hell are you gonna do about it? You gonna keep being a people pleaser or do you wanna change something? And also, I think similar to you, once I finally made the decision, I’m all done with that. It’s a very quick turnaround for me, you know, more than anyone, once I’ve identified it, recognized it, I’m all done. And we sometimes talk about me going on these sprees where I’m like, I’m done with this. I shut this off. I closed this down. I shut this. I told this person, once you recog.
Rebecca [00:26:01]: Recognize it, you’re able to see your patterns.
Erin [00:26:03]: Yes.
Rebecca [00:26:04]: Yeah, yeah.
Erin [00:26:05]: But. But recognizing that and owning that sometimes takes me a little bit. But once I got it, I’m all set. Right? And I would say since November, which is when this first came to my realization, my whole life has been drastically different as a result of that. And I think that’s what I like that the stuck to it. Iveness. Right. It’s a stubborn passion for deciding that something no longer fits you. So you’re all done with it. And I don’t know if you can relate with this, Chris, but I struggle as someone who is that way, when people will continue to put themselves in situations over and over and over again after they’ve identified what the problem is.
Rebecca [00:26:49]: But I think that’s the difference. You are lucky in that sense. You’re lucky in that sense that you’re the type of person, we call it neurodivergent. She’s so neurodivergent in that sense that she is literally able to psychoanalyze her life and look at the patterns. Like she’s freaky like that. She can literally zero in almost like this map on her desk and look at these patterns in her life and psychoanalyze and say, wow. And connect these green dots and then make that pattern change. And you can visibly see it in her life change. So then she looks at other people and she can identify it in other people and then say, I don’t understand why they can’t see it either.
Erin [00:27:32]: Right.
Rebecca [00:27:33]: And so it’s very clear. And I can have that conversation with you, but I can see the non neurodivergent people and I can understand why.
Erin [00:27:41]: They can’t see it while they’re still hanging on.
Rebecca [00:27:43]: Yes. Because in their mind it’s not that simple. It’s way more complicated and way more. Not pattern driven and way more convoluted where you. It’s cut and dry.
Erin [00:27:55]: Right. I’m like, it’s actually not, it’s not complicated at all. If you just look at the dots, it led us here and now we’re done. Right? Right. But I do, I have struggled significantly once those dots have been identified with people continuing to do. And that’s where I start to fall off. Which I would imagine. This is why I’m not a coach, Chris, because I imagine that’s the time where you’re supposed to stick in it a little bit more. But you are a therapist.
Rebecca [00:28:20]: But you are a therapist.
Erin [00:28:21]: Fair.
Rebecca [00:28:22]: And you are. And you do stick in it and you do help people and you do care very much. Yes. And so you are a coach. Yes, you are. And you are loving and you are caring.
Erin [00:28:30]: That is fair.
Rebecca [00:28:31]: But you also do see, you’re like, people get the program.
Chris [00:28:35]: Yeah.
Erin [00:28:35]: I’m like, this was the answer, folks. We put it on a platter for you. Like, this was the answer. Now we just do something different. Right. Can you relate with that, Chris? Does that resonate with you?
Chris [00:28:47]: Okay, I’ve got tons of stuff to talk about on that one. You guys just gave me like tons of data for like great things to kind of counter some of those points. First thing I’m going to say is, this happens all the time. People get into that position. Why don’t they want to change when they know better? Okay. Why does the alcoholic continue to drink when they know alcohol is bad for them? Why does the cigarette smoker continue to smoke when they know it’s bad for them? Well, I would say that they still are blaming somebody else. Right. Well, I wouldn’t have to drink if my work wasn’t so bad. Well, change your work, change where you work.
Rebecca [00:29:26]: Oh, but I can’t because I like the people that work there because my pension’s so good.
Erin [00:29:32]: But I have to make money. If I don’t make money, then I.
Rebecca [00:29:34]: Yeah, I’ve been there so long and I won’t make more money at this other place.
Erin [00:29:38]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rebecca [00:29:40]: You know what I do? Cut that person out of my.
Chris [00:29:43]: You know, that’s what drives them to continue the bad decisions. Which means they’re not taking a true, honest look interiorly and saying, I am the problem. Because I’m refusing. I’m making my work the problem. No, it’s me choosing my work.
Erin [00:29:57]: Yeah.
Chris [00:29:58]: And so that part of it is. We are acknowledging it, but that’s the ownership part. You have to have.
Erin [00:30:04]: Yes.
Chris [00:30:05]: You have to own that decision. Good, bad, or indifferent, you own what you have done.
Rebecca [00:30:10]: I’m the first name should I write down on paper?
Erin [00:30:12]: I screwed up.
Rebecca [00:30:13]: You know, I know this.
Erin [00:30:15]: This was me at the party. How many Doing the party favor.
Rebecca [00:30:18]: How many people? I’m right. I’m writing down everybody in my life on this piece of paper that I think should call you Chris.
Erin [00:30:25]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:30:25]: I’m gonna.
Erin [00:30:26]: I’m just gonna work 30 more clients for you.
Rebecca [00:30:28]: I just go right there.
Erin [00:30:30]: We got 30 more clients coming your way right now. And in fact, she’s gonna write their names down. Then she’s crossing their names out right after that, because she’s done with them. Just completely done with them.
Rebecca [00:30:39]: Okay, keep going.
Erin [00:30:40]: No, it’s so true.
Rebecca [00:30:41]: I know. I’m aware.
Chris [00:30:43]: The next part of that, though, is that the other part, like you were talking about, Aaron, where you’re. You’re like, why can’t they see it? Right? You’re coming at it. You’ve already seen. It’s been illuminated. You have already made the correlation that it’s my choices, right? So we go back to the old adage where there’s a person standing at one side of a number, there’s a person staying at the other side. I see it as a six. You see it as a nine. You’re screaming at me, why don’t you see it? It’s a nine. And I’m like, it’s a six. It’s clearly a six. They can’t see it because we have to do a perspective shift. I have to show them how they are making themselves the problem. So that’s where I have to have some of the most guttural conversations with clients. At some point, I analyze, typically for the first four to six sessions, all their patterns, all their behaviors. I start saying, okay, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? And then at some point, I have to put a stop to it and say, you realize you are the cause of all of your problems, Right? And they don’t want to hear it first A lot of times I’ll have clients that will actually stop booking with me for a period of time. Then it sinks in. And then they call me back and like, okay, so you gave me that perspective, and I want to hear it, but now I’m ready to face it. Right? And that’s the part of what I do that I absolutely hate, is having to show them. I. I line up that mirror and I say, you are the cause. Well. Well, he. He did this. No, he did not. You allowed him to do it because you didn’t set boundaries. You allowed him to do it because you didn’t say no. And that’s where all of a sudden, once they start seeing it, it can’t be unseen. And that’s where they finally see it as a nine and not a six anymore. And they go, I will never do that again. Because they see how they get fed up with their own BS because they’re like, I am tired of acting like that because I can see my behavior is what’s continuing to attract these type of human beings into my life repeatedly. You know what I mean? And that’s. That’s where I can see you. Like, oh, my gosh, why can’t they see it? Because they. They are stuck on the other side of that perspective, you know?
Erin [00:32:46]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:32:46]: Now this brings full circle back to how I am very terrified for the up and coming generation on how the entitlement and how we’re raising these children and these people to think that they can do no wrong. And, you know, I’m.
Erin [00:33:02]: With the lack of self accountability is.
Rebecca [00:33:04]: What you’re worried about. I am terrified.
Erin [00:33:06]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:33:06]: I am absolutely terrified.
Erin [00:33:08]: Which makes sense because as a mother, you are very much, you know, old school Taylor. Your daughter will come home and she’ll say something about her grades, and you’ll be like, what did you do to earn that? You need to do something different.
Rebecca [00:33:21]: What, were your ears ringing this weekend?
Erin [00:33:23]: Oh.
Rebecca [00:33:24]: Oh, where you’re.
Erin [00:33:26]: But you’re really. But that’s. You are very consequence driven and you are very clear on.
Rebecca [00:33:34]: My parenting style is very much. Let’s look at the big picture and let’s look at how you contributed first. Yeah, let’s not point the figure. We’re not pointing the figure at what other people did. Let’s look first at what you contributed to the problem, and once we look at that, then we’ll talk about what other people did.
Erin [00:33:55]: Right.
Rebecca [00:33:56]: Because I’m 100% confident you contributed. Also. You are not a victim.
Erin [00:34:03]: Even if. Even if contributing means you didn’t remove yourself from a situation, you didn’t set up an appropriate boundary. You didn’t say, I’m not doing this anymore. Correct. Yeah.
Rebecca [00:34:11]: The likelihood that you were 100% a victim is so slim. I know that for a fact. Yeah, that’s just my parenting style. Be right or wrong. I just. I don’t believe there’s 100% victimhood in any circumstance. I just don’t.
Erin [00:34:27]: Now, what’s interesting for me, though, Chris, is that you said, I really hate the part where I have to hold up the mirror and tell him that. Now, that might be one area we do differ, because I love that. I love it so much, and here’s why. I feel like the greatest gift you can give to another human being is the ability to see themselves for their own true, authentic self, that they might not have been able to get there without you holding up that mirror. I think it is the most beautiful gift you can give someone. I agree with you. People are not always ready to receive that gift. I’ve actually had plenty of supervisors who are not ready to receive the gift that I provide them about how they’re really bad as a supervisor. But this. This gets me to a really interesting point. You can see a lot of similarities between Chris and I, right?
Rebecca [00:35:25]: Oh, yeah.
Erin [00:35:25]: Our mindset, our motivations.
Rebecca [00:35:27]: Oh, yeah.
Erin [00:35:27]: Our thought processes. Right?
Rebecca [00:35:29]: Hundred percent.
Erin [00:35:30]: But what’s been so fascinating to me and what keeps drawing me into these videos, Chris, is he’s saying things that I also say in my own kind, caring, empathic way. He’s much more straightforward to the point. Get out of your own way. You’re not a victim. I might say something like, why don’t we look at the ways in which your actions have led you to where you are now? If I’m being honest, my true approach would be much more like Chris. I would just cut out the middle ground and just go right for the jugular. Just to be really clear about what is happening here. And I don’t know if that’s feminine versus masculine. We talk a lot about how between the two of us, I’m much more of the masculine energy, you’re much more of the feminine energy. But I feel like people can hear it from Chris easier than they can hear it from me. And I don’t know why that is.
Rebecca [00:36:28]: It’s just the audience. Oh, he’s not talking to higher. He’s not talking to higher ed. Professional counselors.
Erin [00:36:34]: I’m coming over to your channel, Chris. I’ll be on next week.
Rebecca [00:36:38]: He’s not talking to Higher ed professional counselors who are on bit teams.
Erin [00:36:44]: Okay.
Rebecca [00:36:44]: You think it’s genuinely the audience 100% interesting.
Chris [00:36:50]: I think it’s a combination of factors. I think that because here’s the interesting part, I don’t talk like that when I’m talking to clients. I talk much more like you do. I will be like, oh, well, how did you contribute? Do you think that was the best idea? How could you have done things different? I can totally understand where you’re coming from and why you did that, but could you have done it differently? I take a much more empathetic approach when it comes to having the clients in one on one sessions. But those, those videos are meant as a attention grabber. Like, hey, check out how I process information because it’s logical, it’s thought based, it’s not emotion based, and it’s bringing together emotions and logic all into one package. And you said you like my music choice. Each song is chosen for a very, very specific reason, sometimes to go exactly with that, you know, whether it be the song title or just the way the melody is giving a certain mood. And I think it’s a combination of all of those elements. I have a masculine and feminine way about me and I’ve always known that I am balanced in the center. I have a lot of empathy and love and can articulate things and see the spaghetti brains that women have. But at the same time, I can organize and be logical and have the boxes and compartmentalize like a man. So I kind of sit right in that middle point. And I think that it sounds like you do too at times where you’re sitting at that middle ground. Because when it comes to clients, you have to know, do they need a more straightforward approach? Do they need the, the a little bit more laid back approach? That’s why I shift how I talk to clients based on them. I use a motivational interviewing style of talking to them in a lot of cases until I figure out whether they need straight up, you need to do this or if I find that I need to get them to do it by their own motivators. But every client is uniquely different and that I have to kind of sit back, learn about them, and then use which approach works for them. If that makes sense.
Erin [00:38:52]: Yeah.
Rebecca [00:38:53]: And reality is 100% of the world is not going to like you 100% of the time. It’s just, it’s just how it is.
Erin [00:39:01]: Working through that one.
Rebecca [00:39:02]: It’s okay, sorry, line up 10 people. And 30% of those people are not going to like you just. That’s just life. It’s just how it is.
Chris [00:39:12]: And.
Rebecca [00:39:12]: And it doesn’t matter.
Erin [00:39:14]: How do you get through that, Chris? You just don’t care.
Chris [00:39:18]: I look at their opinions a lot of times, and I’m like, you are. You have no basis for making comments on my life. Right. So, surprisingly, I would say of. Of my followers, it’s about 60% women, 40% men.
Erin [00:39:33]: Wow.
Chris [00:39:33]: The men that follow me, apply, applaud me for. For standing up for men for once and actually articulating things that they feel but don’t know how to articulate. But I get, I would say, at least five to ten comments on my reels a day. You’re such a simp. No girl’s ever gonna want you. No, actually, it’s the opposite. But like. And. And that’s where I’m like, I see the projection coming out of them because right. Once you’ve gotten to a place where you heal and you understand it’s projection, you’re like, you’re. You’re just a piece of crap. No girl’s ever going to want you. What he’s saying is no girl wants him. And he’s mad at me because of where I am. He’s trying to shame me through his projection. And so a lot of times I let it dust right off me because I can see it coming a mile away. It’s because I’ve done the inner work to understand myself and to be completely honest and say, I love myself. I love that I have feminine energy. I love that I’m sensitive. I love that I’m able to articulate my emotions. Who cares if you don’t? I love who I am. But that’s, again, that honest look to say I own who I am. All parts of me, good, bad, ugly, and indifferent. You know.
Erin [00:40:41]: That piece for me? How did you get there? How did you get to this point where you went from shame and guilt, suicide attempts, trauma, ptsd, all of these things? How did you get to a point where you then look to yourself and say, this is who I am, and I. And I love this person?
Chris [00:41:09]: I’ve always actually been there. The trauma has. Has helped me understand that part of me that I’ve always kind of. I would. I wouldn’t say I’ve been in fight with that. That part of me, because I’ve always known I’m sensitive. I always known that I can be in touch with emotions, understand and have empathy that other men cannot. Understood it. And I’ve actually never been afraid of it. That’s why I’ve been more goal driven than anything. Because if I’m goal driven, I’m like, I’m going to do this at that point. I don’t care about the opinions of others. I’m not looking for validation. And that was the big key for me, is realizing I don’t need the validation from others to tell me I’m doing the right thing. Right.
Erin [00:41:55]: What was the last thing you said?
Chris [00:41:57]: I said, I don’t need that validation. I’m just looking to accomplish my goal, no matter what somebody else says, if it’s my goal, not their goal. So why should they shame me for doing something that I want to do?
Erin [00:42:11]: I’m ringing the bell. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Rebecca [00:42:13]: There you go.
Chris [00:42:14]: Well, and when you were talking about being a people pleaser and understanding your. Your stuff, I was, I was there for a long time and it had nothing to do with childhood, but my first relationship that I ever got in as a, as a young adult. It’s like Pavlov’s theory. It was conditioned like a rat. Like, Pavlov dinged the bell, he gave the treat. He ding the bell, he gave the treat. We have been conditioned a lot of times in relationships that if you do a good thing, you’ll get validation. Well, it becomes a drug in our brain to where we have to have that validation. So we are literally. And it sounds really bad, but this is where that perspective shift is. People pleasing is a way of controlling others to get the dopamine that you need.
Erin [00:42:52]: Yeah.
Chris [00:42:52]: Once you see that, you’re like, well, damn, I feel crappy now that I have a drug addiction to myself and I’m controlling others to get it.
Erin [00:42:59]: Yeah. They talk about that in the book, how it’s a form of manipulation 100 to get that dopamine fix.
Rebecca [00:43:06]: Yeah.
Erin [00:43:06]: Because it’s the way that you’ve felt loved and cared about and validated.
Rebecca [00:43:11]: Yeah.
Erin [00:43:11]: And here’s what’s fascinating, Chris. I would tell you, anyone who knows me really well would say she doesn’t care about the validation of other people. She’s just gonna do. She’s just gonna do what she does. Right. But through the last, again, since November, there is something about that validation of people who I genuinely would pass on a street and not care at all about that is so important to me. And unpacking that and figuring out what that is. I’ll give you an example. I had a video on Instagram that went viral. I had no idea what to do with this. The thing went viral and I was really Obsessed with going in and commenting on all of the comments, whether it was a thank you, whether it was, I really appreciate you taking the time. If someone wrote something nasty, I would say, thank you so much for sharing your opinions. Even though I’m thinking to myself, I wanna know the comments that got me the most. This is so fascinating. The comments that got me the most were people commenting on my nose ring. I know this sounds. I know this sounds crazy, but you would have all of these women who would be like, absolutely, I wish I knew that. I wish I did that. That’s so amazing. Right? You’d have these many men that were like, I really appreciate you sharing this perspective. You know, and there would be just normal banter in between, but it would be the people who would be like, I can’t hear anything you’re saying till you take that nose ring out of your nose. Or, you would be hot except your nose ring takes it all away. And I thought to myself, why out of all of the comments, that to me is that validation? I don’t know. But that to me is this. There’s something that sense of self worth, that self love that I know who I am regardless of how anyone thinks about me that was missing in some of those comments. Now you’ve made a good point, Rebecca. Many times I didn’t take the nose ring out. And I would have previously, I would have been like, oh, it might be something I’m a little self conscious about anyway. Or I don’t know, am I of the age where I’m allowed to have a nose ring? You know, what a good thing.
Rebecca [00:45:20]: What if it was replaced with. If you just weren’t blonde? Replace it with something else.
Erin [00:45:28]: Right, right. But isn’t that fascinating? And so I connect that with what you’re talking about, Chris, which is this. I need to continue to do more work on the inner self of who I am and really figuring out who is she, regardless of what other people think she is or should be. And I genuinely believe that at some point of my life, I felt what you felt. I felt this sense of like self that’s always been there through a whole lot of life happening. I think that I’ve allowed that to be beaten out of me in some way, shape or form or because of people pleasing. I’ve tried to figure out, well, you like this part, so I’ll hold onto that. Or you validated this, so I’ll hold on to this.
Rebecca [00:46:14]: Society says you should look this way if you’re a doctor.
Erin [00:46:19]: Yes. Right.
Rebecca [00:46:21]: You should wear a Blazer at work because you’re a doctor.
Erin [00:46:24]: That’s right.
Rebecca [00:46:24]: You shouldn’t have a nose ring because you’re a doctor. You shouldn’t have a nose ring because you will be more polished.
Erin [00:46:32]: Yep. Fuck that. Yeah. You shouldn’t be so direct with people. You should really look at yourself a little bit. Or people would say that to me. You should really look at yourself a little bit more. Maybe you were the problem in that situation. And historically, I’ve been like, no, it actually wasn’t me. I actually was real clear on where I was at. But I’ve allowed these things to chip away and get beaten out of me over the last however many years. It wasn’t until the last three months specifically, that I really started to regain that confidence. But I really want to highlight what you’re saying there, Chris, about. Until we are clear about who we are, the good, the bad, the ugly of who we are and own that and accept that, and then start to really show compassion and love for that, we are always susceptible to the opinions, the thoughts, the comments of everyone around us because it’s just shrapnel that just continues to hit us, you know, over and over and over again.
Chris [00:47:28]: Yeah. And it has an effect that at first may not be there. And it takes time for those negative comments to come out. And that you. You asked. You’re like, is that validation? You’re actually looking for the opposite. You don’t like negative criticism more than you want validation. You’re afraid that somebody doesn’t like you. Right. That’s what. That’s what I gather out of it. And I was there, too. I would rather. I would rather not get any comments and get one negative comment about me, you know? Yeah. So it’s like, I don’t need the validation. But don’t say anything bad about me. You don’t. If you have nothing nice to say, just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it.
Erin [00:48:03]: So true. Yeah.
Chris [00:48:04]: And. But that comes from a place of not accepting that there are things about me that other people are not going to like. That, I think, was the key part that I found somewhere after that abusive relationship was like, I stopped caring about the negative comments anymore. And that’s when I truly started owning who I am, who I was. You’ve ever seen the movie eight Mile, the very, very last rap battle? I use this as a good illustration. Exactly this. He goes in that last rap battle and he literally says, I am a bum. I am white trash. I do live at home with my mom. What Are you gonna, you know, tell these people something they don’t already know about the. That to me, that means that the. The key to confidence is saying I am going to be vulnerable. And I don’t care what you have to say about me because it can’t be used against me if I’m already saying, I know this. So if I go into any situation, I say, I know I suck. This right here, like, it’s already owning it before it’s a problem. So now you can’t have anything negative say you can’t make fun of me. And that came from, like, when I was a child, you can’t see it, headphones on. But I had really big ears, right? Called Dumbo. You know, all sorts of mean names, Mickey Mouse, Dumbo, everything, right? There came a point where I had to say to myself, like, I would meet people and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, my ears are big. Got it. And they. They. I would never hear a comment ever again. Because it was almost as if I’m telling them, this is not a soft spot for me. You do not get that right over me to make fun of me for that. And that part of my journey of life has. Is really now transferred into now. And that I don’t care what you say about me, it’s now I can eliminate those negative comments. And I think you’re on that edge. It feels like finally realizing that you just don’t care about the negative anymore. You just look for the positive or don’t look for anything and don’t even worry about the negative.
Erin [00:49:51]: Absolutely. So true, right? So true. Well, you didn’t disappoint, Chris. I’m telling you, I’m so happy that I reached out to you. I’m so happy that you responded. My family’s not happy because I screamed very loud, like I said in my kitchen when you did respond on. But if someone wanted to get a hold of you, whether that be for coaching or if someone wanted to find you on Instagram to see all the great reels that I see regularly, how would someone get a hold of you?
Chris [00:50:21]: So on Instagram, it’s True north motivation. It’s one, obviously one long, you know, tagline True north motivation. And then my. My website is tncoachingcollective.com I have other coaches that work for me. I have one that is on the website. I have other coaches, but I have one on the website that deals specifically with addiction therapy and getting through all sorts of forms of addiction. But, yeah, you can get a hold of me there. I have a whole clothing line on there. My book is on there as well, which is 41 days of freedom, which is a mental health journey based and rooted in the Bible. So, yeah, those are the two ways you can get hold me.
Erin [00:50:59]: Love it. Well, you have a follower for life with me. I will continue to watch. I will continue to heart. I will continue to enjoy all of the things that you have to say. I’m so very appreciative of you taking the time to be with us today on More Love to show us more Love to show our listeners more love. Please get a hold of Chris for additional information to connect with him just to make your life a little bit better. Thanks again for being with us, Chris.
Rebecca [00:51:22]: Thank you, Chris.
Chris [00:51:24]: Thank you, ladies, for having me on.
