Sober Living Stories
Welcome to the "Sober Living Stories" podcast, a platform built on the power of personal stories. Each Tuesday, Jessica Stipanovic, your host, shines a spotlight on individuals who have undergone remarkable life transformations to inspire hope in listeners worldwide.
Each guest shares their story giving examples of bold beginnings disguised as endings and life lessons that teach how the darkest moments often hold the key to unlocking the brightest light.
This podcast inspires positive life changes. Whether you're sober curious, living an alcohol-free lifestyle, have overcome a challenge and lived to tell about it, or support someone who wants to shed a habit in light of a new one, our episodes promise to leave you feeling understood, hopeful, and motivated to create meaningful transformations in your life.
Join us for powerful new episodes every Tuesday where the most difficult life experiences serve to uplift and inspire. Regardless of your background or belief system, the "Sober Living Stories" podcast is your ultimate destination for uplifting narratives where hope shines from the most unexpected places.
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Sober Living Stories
From School Shooting Survivor to Healing Advocate: Melissa's Message
Surviving a school shooting and witnessing the tragic loss of her brother could have defined her path, but instead, these challenges fueled her passion for nursing and healing. Melissa Armstrong's story is nothing short of inspiring. She opens up about her chaotic childhood with addicted parents to finding peace and purpose as a nurse, health coach, wife, and mother.
Throughout the episode, we uncover the profound impact of stress and trauma on both mental and physical health. With insights from experts, we delve into the significance of the mind-body connection and explore alternative healing methods such as EMDR therapy. Melissa's narrative illustrates the importance of acknowledging past traumas while striving for holistic well-being, offering hope and strategies for listeners seeking their healing paths.
The conversation also emphasizes the transformative power of neuroplasticity and therapeutic practices. By sharing her experiences, Melissa illustrates how reclaiming her authentic self has allowed her to create a healthier environment for herself and her family.
This episode is a testament to the belief that healing is possible for everyone.
I encourage listeners to prioritize their health and explore the resources Melissa generously shares to aid their pursuit of clarity and emotional freedom.
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Your story matters.
Welcome to another episode of the Sober Living Stories podcast. Meet Melissa Armstrong. She's a wife, health coach and mom of two. Melissa faced significant childhood and young adult trauma, leading her to explore, later in life, natural medicine and somatic healing. She now helps women heal from personal and intergenerational trauma and she empowers them to live their best life. Join us as we sit down to hear Melissa's personal story. Hey, melissa, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here.
Speaker 2:Hi Jessica, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:You have a really interesting story. I'd love for you to go just as far back as you're comfortable going, sharing with listeners your past that brought you to the present of helping women heal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my story starts as a very young child.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a very chaotic, traumatic household.
Speaker 2:My parents were both addicts.
Speaker 2:My dad was very physically abusive toward my mom and everything that went with that, so he would beat up my mom and we were really poor and periods of homelessness and random people in and out of our houses all the time because of the drugs, and that they divorced when I was about six and then my dad left and never really came back in any significant way.
Speaker 2:He's since passed away from drugs, but my my mom, as a result of her own trauma and things she had been through as a kid and then again more with my dad, she was very verbally abusive and emotionally unavailable and that continued for much of my all of my childhood into young, you know, into my teen years, when I was 15, survived a school shooting and then when I was 18, my brother was killed in an accident right in front of me and so my I already had this huge burden of mental health issues and anxiety. And, like I remember being really, really young I have a four-year-old myself right now I remember being his age or even younger and having anxiety. I didn't know what that was, but I remember that feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so from the period of time from you know, the time that I was about 18, when my brother died, until well into my twenties I was very died until well into my twenties I was very, very unwell physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all of it. I had severe anxiety, depression, panic, insomnia. The panic was the worst of all of it I had just I couldn't function, I couldn't go to the store, I had panic attacks daily and I was just really unwell. Like eventually that kind of evolved into. I started to manifest a lot of physical symptoms. So I had a lot of GI issues, I had skin issues, I had migraines. I already said I had insomnia. I didn't sleep. I slept horribly in my early twenties, if I slept at all. There was days where I didn't sleep because the panic was so bad.
Speaker 2:And yeah, when my brother died, I also made the decision at that time that I wanted to be a nurse, because the nurses had helped him and our family and you know so much. Ultimately he passed away, but they were just angels on earth and I wanted to help people and I kind of always knew that I would be in medicine. I think I was born to be a healer with my story. So I at that time declared nursing as my major started going toward that, and I really don't know how I got through it because I was so unwell, but I did. And then, when I was about 24, was the first time that I actually that was really where my healing journey started my now husband, then boyfriend, suggested that I try meditation. He said to me one time, and at the end of a panic attack you're just so like up here all the time, like if you could just calm yourself down sometimes I feel like you would just be so much better and so much happier. Have you ever tried meditation? And so I went oh wow, no, let me try that. I don't know why I was able to, but I was. And that's kind of like the beginning of of the healing and that really made me realize I, I was, I had just become a nurse, I had.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden I realized like, oh wow, in traditional medicine, you know, and from the time that I was 18 to 24, I was going to the doctor pretty frequently. I was on antidepressants, I was on sleeping pills, I was on steroids. I would wake up covered head to toe and rash, go to the doctor and they'd be like, yeah, we don't know, here's a steroid, and then it would happen again in two months, you know, and they just give me another steroid. They wouldn't actually. I kept asking like, but why is this happening? What is this? Nobody could tell me. So I feel like I was, you know, kind of failed in that way.
Speaker 2:And then come to you know 24, I start meditating. I realized all of a sudden I was like, oh boy, I can calm my mind down, like this is incredible. Why has nobody ever told me about this? And and then I started consuming a lot of that information and just like researching, like what is meditation? Why does meditation work? What is, you know, somatic release? What is neuroplasticity? How does the mind and how are the mind and the body connected? And, um, it just kind of evolved from there, um, to where I am now, 15 years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think um listeners can definitely relate um to perhaps maybe growing up with alcoholic or addicted parents or being in that themselves and having transitional people come in and out of the home and what that does to your security and where you're experiencing that anxiety and the domestic abuse of course. And also you know school shootings have been such a prevalent thing in the past years that it's a real fear of a lot of people. So when you were 15, when that happened, what's the residual impact of that being a survivor of a school shooting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think now I've done a ton of healing. So I feel, you know, strangely like okay with it, if that's the right word. But there was a long period of time after that where I had like complex post-traumatic stress disorder and like to the point where when I would hear a loud sound like I would drop to the ground and curl up in a ball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oftentimes you think of the victims that lost their lives, right, but I mean, every single person in that building is affected from that, obviously.
Speaker 2:It's taken me a long time to heal through that sort of like jumpiness that I. You know I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress right after that happened and then that was like one of the hardest parts for me to deal with. Was that panic and that like that, that stress response that would come over my body, that I was not able to control. If anything in my environment even remotely resembled danger, particularly those loud noises, so like a car door slamming, would literally put me into a panic attack because it was just loud. And if I wasn't, especially if I was on it, you know, if it was unexpected. I think now, like the residual is is obviously like it hurts my, my heart to like go back to that place and remember those details. But I think I feel like that's like the extent of it. You know, I feel like that's part of my journey. I, I, it happened to me, but I don't, I don't own it, it's not, it's, it's not, it's a part of me, but it's not my story, it's not my whole story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, that's interesting that you say that, because in healing you know, when you can say something out loud too, is is very powerful, because that essentially means that you have come to a different place in it, that you can actually speak it. And then I really love what you just said, because within my own healing I have healed certain things, but when I do return to them in my mind, there is that pull on my heart, but it's not an ownership, like you just said. And so I think what you just said to me and to listeners is that it's okay to have that pull. It was something that did take place in your life, but it doesn't own your identity anymore, you know, and that's very powerful. But and it gives permission to have that heart pull and to be like wait, am I not healed from that? No, it's just in a different place.
Speaker 1:And so, too, with your brother's accident, that was probably very I mean, unbelievably tragic for you and your family, and so you chose to be a nurse as an outcome to that and a healer, which changed the trajectory of, maybe, your career path. So if you could talk a little bit about when you began your nurse nursing, a lot of people go into Western medicine and they find answers and a lot of people don't you know, and yours resulting in physical symptoms like they came out in your body, like that happens all the time, like with stress, it results in a physical response and people are treating the physical responses without treating the stress. Can you talk to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a huge part of my work. Is that mind body connection, they say. Like research is more and more research is coming out that showing the connection between stress and the physical symptoms that were just plagued with in this, in this country and in the industrialized world, 95%, they estimate, of conditions are either caused by or worsened by stress. So it's like why do we not talk about that? I think that emotional toll and that our mind is so powerful and you can, it's all about. You know, with trauma, they say, dr Gabor Mate talks about it all the time Like the trauma is not the event, it's your response to the event.
Speaker 2:So that just speaks to the power of the mind. If you perceive something, as you know, stressful or traumatic or anything like that, like it you know. If your mind gets ahold of that and you continue to replay that or you are focused on that, it is. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when it's going to create some sort of physical ailment in your body, because those thoughts, that those your mind, can actually create toxic toxicity. Toxic thoughts are just as bad as toxic water, toxic food, toxic chemicals In my experience and opinion. I think that the mind is super powerful.
Speaker 1:What do you think are the top three physical symptoms that result? We talk about stomach issues or, I think, neck pain. What are the top three that you've seen in your work?
Speaker 2:or, I think, neck pain like what are the top three that you've seen in your work? Get definitely gastrointestinal issues. So like diarrhea, constipation, bloating, abdominal pain, abdominal discomfort, I see a lot of joint pain and I see a lot of gosh three. I do see a lot of like fatigue. I don't know if you could call that a physical symptom, but I think it is Sure. But yeah, like I think sleep disturbances and disturbances.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And it's not always. Sometimes people come and they're sleeping. They're sleeping great, like they're sleeping eight hours, but they're just exhausted all the time and it's just speaks to that like um, the effect that your mind and your thoughts and the stress can have on your physical body, like it just creates this massive inflammation throughout your body, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and, um, you know, you wind up just feeling fatigued, no matter how much you sleep.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. Another point do you find a lot of women who come to you and I see this sometimes you know they're functioning in the world, whether they're successful, they're a great mom, they're running, you know they're family members, they're helping, you know, but their thought of themselves does not match their life, and so that to me is sometimes an indication of maybe something that they're hanging on to that's back there. It's just not meeting up with their adult self that if they healed that or had the courage to look at it and just uproot it and heal from it, it would all make sense and come together and their interior matches their exterior. Do you see that often?
Speaker 2:All the time, like in probably all of my clients, I think that there's, there is. We will only achieve the level of success that we believe believe that we are worthy of, and I think that everybody, everybody I've worked with I can't think of a single person that I've worked with that hasn't had some element of feeling like they didn't deserve it, they weren't worthy. It all boils down to what you think you're worthy of.
Speaker 1:Achieve what you just said. We will only achieve the level of success that we feel we are worthy of. That. I can look around and, as you were raised, I was raised like you can do anything. You will be and become anything you want to be.
Speaker 1:And when I was just speaking to someone and she said to me you know, I was raised in a home where my mother said that's not possible for you, you're not able to do that. It was just a complete negative verbal, you know degradation consistently throughout her childhood. And she said that she was about like 60 years old and she said said I still believe that today. So I don't become the business owner, I don't become the CEO, I work for those people and because that's where I decided to land. And so I thought, wow, that was really interesting to me. What she was listening to and hearing as a child just became her reality as an adult and I thought I wonder if people can change that for themselves. And I believe they can. And that's a large part of the work that you do, which is so important, because we all deserve to be exactly whoever we want to be and we can unattach ourselves from the systems in which we learned a message that wasn't our truth, but maybe somebody else's A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Learned a message that wasn't our truth, but maybe somebody else's 100%.
Speaker 1:So what kind of healing in your own journey, like when you went from Western to natural. You did the meditation, but what were some other pivotal alternative solutions that you came to that really helped you heal?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, one of the big things that I did early on in my healing journey too, was I was always in therapy. Like traditional talk therapy wasn't super helpful to me because I was just kind of replaying all of it was almost re-traumatizing me every time I would talk about things, but I did. Eventually, when I started meditation, I discovered EMDR therapy, which is eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing or reprogramming, depending on who you're talking to. I did that for a couple of years early on in that journey and that helped me.
Speaker 2:Dr Mary Catherine McDonald has this really great analogy about trauma. She has a new book out Gosh, the name escapes me right now, but Dr Mary Catherine McDonald, look her up, she's got a great book she talks about you know, your brain is like a filing cabinet and you have all of these files that you know are are different memories, and you have these little guys working in your in your file room and anytime something happens, these little guys take the file and they put the little you know label on it. That labels like oh, this is funny or this you know, putting little indicators so your brain can pull those files out when you need to recall those memories and and something about trauma. For some reason, all of a sudden, all of those guys go take a break and then, with this trauma, all of these files get just like dumped into your file room and then, after you know a period of time passes, these guys come back to the file room. They're like what is all this mess? Like? Look at all these files, where did all these come from? Like we don't know where the so they just start stuffing them places. There's no labels, there's no organization. It's just kind of like put random places Right. So it's kind of like disorganized. And so that's kind of like the premise behind like trauma and like why? Like sometimes the memories are sometimes hard to recall. You might remember certain pieces of it but you can't remember other pieces of it, or maybe you remember it completely incorrectly or your perception of it is different from somebody else who was there, or something like that.
Speaker 2:But with EMDR the idea is like you use two different the way it worked for me and there's different ways to do it. But I had two handheld devices that would pulsate to stimulate both sides of the brain while I was talking about the event, so I could kind of like reorganize those thoughts. So EMDR was super pivotal at the beginning. From there I really used meditation, tapping or emotional freedom technique, breath work, and then I really just started to try to understand like that connection from, you know, between my mind and my body, and like when things would happen that would trigger me. I don't love that word, but for lack of a better word that I would notice I started to be able to notice how that was showing up in my body.
Speaker 2:Okay, somebody said this, or this experience just happened. Like how does that make me feel inside of my body? Where is that? Where is the sensation? Excuse me, where is that sensation inside of my body? What is? What is the quality? Is it dull, is it sharp, is it hot, is it? You know? Just noticing that. And then, once I notice it, then I can change it. That's, that's the first step, is the awareness.
Speaker 2:So it's like, okay, well, I noticed that that person said X, y, z, and then suddenly I felt this like deep aching, empty feeling inside of my stomach. Like why do I feel that deep aching emptiness inside of my stomach? Okay, because I remember that my mom used to say the same thing when I was a kid. Okay, so it's not actually this person that said anything wrong. Necessarily it's this feeling that I have about something that is from my childhood. So let me go back and love on my little girl self, who was told she wasn't worth it or made to feel like she was a burden or all those things, and really just like kind of going back and loving on myself as a child and through all of the different stages and processing that energy out of my body.
Speaker 1:It's incredible to me because each guest that comes on this podcast like speaks to a certain selfishly, speaks to a part of my life where I'm exactly at, and it's just incredible to me. But EMDR I had heard about, I had a couple of friends that had gone through that process and when you speak about like burying a memory, like I've heard about that process, and when you speak about like burying a memory, like I've heard about that, like a memory will be suppressed and then in your far future something will happen and it will come out Well, I recently had that experience about a month ago and something that happened when I was 16, I was in like a domestically violent relationship for 2.5 years exactly, which didn't fit into my life but was my reality. It was a boyfriend that I had that was physically and verbally abusive. That I've never spoken about out loud because I took care of it and I never re-entered a relationship like that. So I thought I had handled that in the two ways that I did. I volunteered at a coalition for rape and abuse and then I made a t-shirt for the I think it's the Washington clothesline project when I was in college and I got away from it. So I thought, okay, I'm tying that up in a bow and I'm putting that here and I'm moving on with my life. And I did so fast forward.
Speaker 1:Um, a couple of weeks ago or a month ago, I was in a meeting in my home and somebody said one line and said she made a list. She's talking about being organized, and I had made a list back then of things not to do to upset him so that I wouldn't suffer the consequences of what was happening. And I tell you, within that moment, something happened in my brain and it's like all the memories just flooded back and were bouncing around and I just had a complete. I felt like the need to share it, but I didn't want to interrupt the meeting and it was off topic. But I took a chance and I did and what happened was a complete visceral response.
Speaker 1:I cried from my feet and shortly thereafter, about a week later, I had entered into EMDR and I'm only in my third meeting. So I'm just learning that process. What I was doing and what people I think do, is they? I'm trying to think the best way to say that, if you take my husband, for example, it's like something he's saying. I'm attaching it to something that was said to me when I was 16. So I'm like, unintentionally, or I'm giving him an unwarranted, I'm taking what he's saying and he's not meaning. The meaning is incorrect.
Speaker 2:Assigning the meaning to it. That's not actually what he's intending, right.
Speaker 1:I'm misassigning his intention of what he's saying to something that happened so long ago. So I'm thinking it's him and what I'm learning is that no, I'm not assigning the correct response to that. It is mind blowing and it was like a true gift given to me that day, even though, of course, it's difficult to go through. In a sense it's a gift because the freedom that comes from that, the increase in love that's going to be in my marriage, like we're just so excited, it's like wow, that it no longer is going to be a part of my.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm not going to own that anymore. I'm going to be able to feel that heart tug, but I'm not going to own it and it's not going to hijack my current relationship.
Speaker 1:I would have never in a thousand years thought that that was still an issue within my body and it absolutely was. So I had that experience. So I'm glad that you brought up EMDR. It's certainly a different type of therapy that really realigns your brain. Talked about brain neuroplasticity. Could you speak to that a little bit? What kind of healing did you do in realigning that as far like after EMDR?
Speaker 2:So neuroplasticity Dr Caroline Leaf does, her her life's work is based in neuroplasticity and that that idea is just that your, your brain is actually like there's been so much in the past. You know, in the past medicine, really looked at like your brain is, is static, like the neurons are there, they can't be reformed, reshaped, reconnected, and and her research has really proven otherwise that your, your brain is actually very, very of rewiring and it just takes some intentional focus to get those neurons rewired. To attribute something that your husband said to what he actually means, rather than something from 20 years ago. So that's the whole philosophy or all the research behind neuroplasticity is just showing or talking about the possibility and the capability of the brain to rewire itself.
Speaker 2:There wasn't things that I specifically did outside of what I've already talked about, but all of those things that I've done have helped me be able to rewire my brain and reconnect those memories, heal from that trauma, let that emotion when that traumatic event happens to you and you have a response to it, that you have an emotional response to it. And emotion is just energy in motion. So you think like we're all energy, everything is energy right, all of our cells, everything's moving and energy in our environment, around us and when you have that emotional response, you have that energy inside of you. You need to be able to process that energy, that emotion, out of you and yeah, that's really like part of the process and getting your brain to rewire like part of the process and getting your brain to rewire.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of times people have negative self-talk. You know, I have children that are 8, 11 and 18. And so that self-talk that they start their day with, you know Dr Amen, do you know who he is? He does a lot of brain, brain work as well, and I he talks about hitting the ground and saying I'm going to have a great day today. Every morning I'm going to have a great day today, and it's like, before you go to sleep, my kids say, god, I'm ready to go to sleep now. And sure enough, they all go to sleep. It's just like telling yourself something and then that's the cutoff, and then that's what it is.
Speaker 1:And throughout the day, you know, we can have negative self-talk, or we can start to reframe and retrain what we think about ourselves just by what we're saying to ourselves. And it's attainable by our own means, like it's not something we have to go get a prescription for or we have to go see a doctor every week, for it's something, these little practices that we can do on a daily basis to help ourselves get to our best selves, that we deserve to be at. And so let's talk a little bit about women getting to the best version of who they are. I think it'd be hard to find a female that hasn't gone through something you know, or a male, that it's hard to find anyone that hasn't gone through something. Whether you know.
Speaker 1:When you talk about getting through a chaotic childhood filled with addiction, surviving a school shooting and you know, observing the breath, the and getting you know having the tragedy of your brother pass away at 18, you have the life experience to have come out the other side of that. Who truly would you, would anyone else want to have them heal is somebody who's gone through it themselves. I know with listeners that have gone through sobriety or addiction, but the person that's going to or addiction, the person that's going to help them, is the person that lived that. They're going to understand exactly the feelings and the emotions, the behaviors, the necessary things that they're going to need to walk back into their new life. So I think that your work, that you're doing I mean who better to help people heal than you? So what are you doing now and who are you helping? Can you talk a little bit about your coaching and how it's helping people get to the best version of who they are?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I help women overcome trauma and heal their whole mind, body and spirit. So I believe that that trauma is something that holds us back. So I believe that that trauma is something that holds us back and it's even little. You know like they talk about trauma big T, little T trauma. Lots of people have heard that big T trauma is like war zone, you know, natural disasters, that kind of stuff. Even little T traumas are just as bad.
Speaker 2:The response to it can be just as impactful in somebody's life. So even a car accident or being fired from a job or breaking up with a, you know, a spouse or a boyfriend or things like that, having a friendship and like all of those things are traumatic. So sometimes people come to me and they say, well, I don't have any trauma and I'm like, no, no, you do, you just don't know it, you're just not admitting it. But really helping people. Because once you have that trauma that really impacts, like you said, our self-talk, our belief about our own worth, our trauma responses, and when you have that negative self-talk, so much of what we, we live our lives, most people in our subconscious, and that negative self-talk is just playing speaking about earlier, is when you have that toxicity, have inflammation in your body as a result, and when you have inflammation and you have that toxicity, you feel worse. So you don't exercise and then you don't eat good and then you're not doing things that are actually going to make your body, just to serve your body. You're doing things to get a dopamine hit because sitting scrolling on Instagram or something like that is going to give you more dopamine than going for a walk. You know acutely. But once that dopamine wears off you're going to feel even crappier in the long run. So like really helping people shift out of that heal, that trauma, recognize and become aware of their thoughts, their self-worth and really heal their whole mind, body and spirit.
Speaker 2:I use functional medicine. I use a functional medicine approach, so I'm always looking at a root cause, meaning I use labs to assess where the imbalances are in the body so we can really target those imbalances and help restore that balance. So the body returns to homeostasis. While working on all of the lifestyle, you know the mind stuff, you know somatic release, processing through that emotion. That's deep, deep work, but it's incredible and the freedom that comes from it is just insane.
Speaker 1:Freedom is amazing. It's well worth it because you're able to really live out your authentic self with others that you love, and so let's help listeners right now identify. I think this would be great because I think we have a tremendous capacity to minimize, deny and just undermine things that have happened to us. You talked about big T and little t, so I call them taglines. I just started, you know like I had a tagline for my 16 year old self. You know, the reason why I didn't revisit that and I tied it up in a little bow is because I said well, he never broke a bone, so it's not worth talking about. Saying that out loud is slightly horrific, right? If anyone said that to me, I'd be like excuse me, that's worth talking about.
Speaker 1:I went through the 2.5 years of abuse, but because he never broke my bone, it's not worth talking about. That's a huge, huge minimization of what took place for me, and I never allowed myself permission. Now I'm 51, I was 16 and it came back because I felt like my belief and my faith is God and I thought he's gifting me with this because he wants me to be clear this for the next chapter. So I am allowing myself now to know that that tagline is worth looking at. So, like for listeners, they can think what are their taglines? What have they been telling themselves that's insignificant, what are they minimizing? Or what is their line that they say to themselves about a situation that happened to them? That they're pushing down and just saying like doesn't really matter, when it really does? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is so powerful.
Speaker 1:You know, like just to identify that, because then they could start to be a little bit more aware that maybe it does count, you know, cause we think, we think it doesn't Right and um, it does everybody. You know, not that I think work is hard, like looking back is hard for some people, or I don't want to do all that, or you know, but sometimes it just comes, and it comes because it's given to you as like a gift, to like, hey, you don't have to carry this for another decade. You know, let's clear you out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the you're right. It is so hard to look back and the problem is is that we lead these like busy lives. People are like I don't have time. That was, that was insignificant, I need to just get over it, I don't have time to deal with it. It's really not that big of a deal, like you said, minimizing it, but our nervous systems are still holding onto that and, like our nervous system, people have to understand that your nervous system is literally designed to save your life, like that's what it's for is to save your life from danger, right? So, like a tiger, is there? What do you do? Fight, flight, freeze, you know.
Speaker 2:So you, your, your nervous system equates safety with the familiar. Things that are unfamiliar are dangerous. So I once heard this and I use it a lot in my practice is the familiar hell versus the unfamiliar heaven? Because if you, your safety equals familiar. So your nervous system is always going to try to keep you safe by putting you in the familiar hell, even if you know consciously a lot of people don't know consciously or they're not putting it, connecting the dots, but like, even if you, you know that that familiar hell is actually disruptive to you or or not serving you. I should say you're still going to go there versus the unfamiliar heaven, because the unfamiliar heaven is unfamiliar, thus equals, you know, not safe. So, like your nervous system is is trying to save your life, but right.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Push through that. And how many people are walking around using survival mechanisms that once kept them safe as a child or a young adult and they're bringing it into their adult life where they don't need them anymore. But they're coming up. When you're unloading the dishwasher or you're making dinner, you're using survival. We're not surviving anymore. Everything's safe, it's secure bringing the. We haven't shed those survival skills.
Speaker 2:And your body, your body and your mind are still thinking like okay, there there's, the danger is still there. Okay, there's still a tiger. But it's really, it's not a tiger, it's just the dishes or something you know it's not, not a tiger, so my response doesn't have to be the same, but awareness is the first step.
Speaker 1:That's just a gift to the rest of your life. You know, to reframe it not as hard work, but just as a complete gift and absolute freedom so that you can live the life you were meant to live so well. This has been a really informational, educational talk. I'm so grateful that you came on and shared your personal story too, so that people can relate. Can you let people know where they can find you and what services you offer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my website is holistichealthbymelissacom. I'm also on social media Instagram and Facebook. At holistic health by Melissa, my, I offer one-on-one coaching. I offer group coaching. I should be launching my course here soon. There's some freebies on my website. I have a top 10 tips to regulate your nervous system guide and workbook. It's 22 pages of like a serious like, in-depth, like tips and assessing, like how those tips are working for you and really like trying to pull out some of that suppressed emotion about you know, whatever you've got going on in your life or have experienced in your past. And then I also have a nervous system assessment so you can see, get a good idea of if your nervous system is regulated or dysregulated. And then, obviously, like any questions, feel free to message me. I handle all my own emails and Instagram messages and all of that.
Speaker 1:So I just downloaded your quiz and also your workbook and I'm going to put those two resources in the show notes along with all your contact information. So, as we tie up the interview, I'd like to just ask you. I know that you live an alcohol-free life, so for listeners that are going toward that lifestyle, oftentimes this kind of work is the next step. Oftentimes, when people get sober, they are in like new territory, and so they'll maybe seek out therapy, to kind of now that they're clear, their awareness is at a higher level and they can start to make the connections of, maybe, why they chose to do what they did.
Speaker 1:And once they shed that bad habit. That's where they can come to therapy. That's where they can come to someone like you and what would be the top benefits of that and how they can get started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I totally agree. Like when you're, when you're drinking alcohol or using you know things to suppress your emotion, that's really what it is. It's a depressant. People tend to use that kind of as a crutch because they they want to numb out, they don't want to feel if they're not drinking. They feel these feelings that are like okay, that's not comfortable, I don't want to feel that. Let me just have a drink, because then it kind of goes away, but then you know it comes back and actually alcohol just perpetuates that feeling. It's a depressant. So like, as soon as you come down off of alcohol, you're going to feel more depressed later and you got to keep drinking to feel the same way and then and then you get into, you know, very slippery territory there. But yeah, that's I.
Speaker 2:I promote an alcohol free life, I live an alcohol free life. For me it was a choice. Actually listened to a podcast last year where Dan Martell was talking about his relationship with alcohol. He was an alcoholic for 10 years and said that he or maybe he I don't remember how long he was an alcohol, or maybe he wasn't even an alcoholic but he chose an alcohol-free life because he realized, wow, I use alcohol for everything.
Speaker 2:If I have a good day, I have alcohol. If I have a bad day, I have alcohol. If I have a. If I'm bored, I have alcohol. If I'm celebrating, I have alcohol. If I'm upset, I have alcohol. And I went, oh my gosh, that is so true. I was not an alcoholic, but I felt like I was kind of using it for everything and I didn't like that and I was like I just want to be completely sober and so that's what I'm doing. And I think anybody who gets to that place and wants to be sober and wants to address their past traumas and live a fulfilling, happy, you know, emotionally free life Like that's the benefit, is emotional freedom, is clarity, is, um, living your authentic self, really delving into those things, while it may be hard in the moment, really is only going to serve you in the long run and it's going to serve your whole family. It's going to serve your children I speak a lot to moms who your children are going to benefit from you healing yourself.
Speaker 1:That's the best thing you could do for your kids is heal yourself. Absolutely, I agree, 100%. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to encourage listeners to download your resources and once again, it's all going to be in the show notes. Reach out to Melissa Armstrong. She is definitely someone who has lived the life and has experienced the healing solution, so, and I know that you believe that every single person can heal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. That's what that's kind of my tagline. I say you know, no matter what the experience, the situation, I don't care what the doctors have told you, healing is always possible, Always. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me.