Transcript of Episode 517: Tania Khazaal: Building Emotional Resilience Through Discipline, Discomfort and Accountability
Habits and HustleHi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.
All right, you guys. Welcome to Habits & Hustle. We have a special guest. She's Canadian, so automatically, I love her. Her name is Tanya Cazal. That's right. That's right? All right. And she is an emotional healing expert. I found her on Instagram, one of your reels, one of her reels just popped up, and she was so articulate. I loved what she was saying. And it was also very unusual content, which we're going to get into. We're going to talk all about estrangement from families. It's a huge epidemic now. One in four families are estranged from each other and the family. I can't believe that number. It's a scary number. It's unbelievable.
Right. Especially in the last, I'd say 10, 7-10 years, especially.
In the last 7-10 years. It's been growing. Is it because of the, I guess, the rise of gentle parenting and coddle culture and how we parent and how we grow up in today's culture is very different. So are kids becoming more estranged to their parents? Tell me what's going on.
So I think there's a lot that fed into this. It's that tied in with the rise in therapy as well. There's a perfect correlation between the reduction of mental health, the rise of mental health issues and the rise of therapy. It goes hand in hand. And I think that if you want to know the history, this has been happening for a while, is because in the '70s, Carl Rogers introduced the personal first therapy where it was like, my feelings are facts. It now turned into whatever I feel is real, and it's the truth. And that started to bleed into the culture of the '80s and '90s, where you've got the operas and the doctor fills that really pushed toxic parent books, boundaries, protecting your peace. And then it slowly led into, we can no longer build emotional resilience in people because they don't want to work through the hard emotions. They just rather succumb to their feelings, which I think is also feeding into the gentle parenting, which is coddling them, being too nice to them, letting them whatever they feel as facts and reassuring them instead of saying, No, you need to grow emotional toughness.
You have to go through the discomfort. I need to let you fail. I need to let you cry. I need to let you hurt and actually grow from it instead of just trying to whatever you want it is.
So it's really interesting you just said this because I just saw something that came recently about Oprah and how she was the the O. G. Or the beginning of what's happened now with therapy and focusing on yourself so much. There's this whole concept, and it sounds like you're on that camp, which is the more we think about ourselves and our problems and ruminate about what's wrong, we're getting more mentally ill. A hundred %. And more mentally sick versus how it used to be, where we had to build a have a thick skin and know we have issues, but we still trudge along anyway. And we know how to... We had the coping mechanism and ability to persevere. Yeah. Perseverance has become a lost Like a lost trend, so to speak.
It almost doesn't exist because it's the protecting your peace culture, which is actually protecting your pain. If you're not working through the pain or accepting it as like... I think the biggest thing is why it feeds into the mental health because now people are stuck in a victim and villain mentality. I'm the victim to my story, and I want to stay in the victim mindset because when I'm a victim, which is what's happening right now in the emotionally weak society we have, is there no longer They get so much attention. There's so much attention on the vulnerability and the victim mindset that they want to stay there. They're not actually healing through it being like, No, I'm not a victim. I'm going to be a victor, and I'm going to work through this, and I'm going to overcome it, and everything like that, which ties into, you mentioned the family estrangement one and four because it has a lot to do with her childhood hardships. Now when you go to therapy, and I know because I was in therapy, and that's what fed my culture of not talking to my mom, and it was like, Oh, she did that to you?
That must have been really hard. How did that affect you? What else should she do to you? So it started to be like, Right, my mom did that to me. It got me stuck in the victim mentality instead of saying, Wait, my mom grew up with 16 siblings. Her dad died when she was three. She was the 15th out of the 16th. Of course, she was neglected unintentionally To her, she did the best she can with me. Instead of teaching us that resilience, I was feeding into the, you're right, she did cause me pain, but there was no repair. Therapy is telling you your feelings are facts, but then there was no leading to the repair of, okay, so what do I do now and how do I toughen up to say, get over it?
Because it sounds to me like it's true. Therapy tends to villainize- Exactly. Whoever caused you that pain. Whoever caused you that pain. That's exactly it. Even if it's your mom or dad doing the best they can because it's their first time being a parent. Exactly. And then you're feeding into this.
And first time being a human. It's the first time on Earth. They're making the same mistakes that we are.
100 %. Okay, so you're saying it's become very prevalent in the last, let's say, 10 years? 100 %.
Last decade, for sure.
Okay, but if the Dr. Phil's and the Oprah's of the world were in the '80s, which were, let's say, 30 years ago.
And that's why it's the highest in millennials. It's the highest in millennials, and it's feeding into the younger generation. So the millennials, right now, my audience, the primary people that purchase my programs and everything are between '60s and '70s. It's their children who are running our age, which is perfect. I'm 37 years old. It was exactly the age where I was talking to therapy and I cut off my mom because we are the conscious generation. We're the ones that are breaking the cycles of what our parents did or didn't do, which I think is incredible because we are. But at the same time, because of that, we're now leaning into more than ever protecting our peace, living this Zen life where it's like, no, but at the same time, life is not Zen all the time. And how do we build this emotional resilience?
It's unbelievable because I don't know if it's because I live in LA, right? And I'm in LA a lot. I'm in New York a lot. I'm in these big, very Metropolitan cities a lot. My friends are that. And even the rhetoric and the chatter is all about my therapist.
It's in style now to see a therapist.
It's in style. Not only it's in style, within four sentences meeting somebody, even on a Zoom, a business person. They're like, Yeah, I have my therapy in one hour. I got to go to therapy. It's become like something's wrong with you. So common Hey, I'm going to have chicken and broccoli for dinner, or I'm going to put my underwear on before I put on my pants. It's now become the thing where if you don't have a therapist, you're the one that's odd. You're staying stuck. Exactly. You're stuck. Which is interesting because I've been going through a very difficult time of late, and Every single person is like, well, go see a therapist. Who's your therapist? Or like, oh, my God, you really need to see a therapist. I'm like, well, why can't I just work it through? Why can't I just talk to my friends? Or why can I just work it through? You become ostracized if you want to deal with your problems on your own.
And that's why I've read My Way Through Life. This is why I read so much neuroscience and psychology books and everything for so long is because I felt like it couldn't get answers. So I had to read My Way Through understanding the emotion and what's happening from a neurological level, physiological level. That's what got me to that understanding. I was like, Oh, I see what's happening and why people are staying stuck. Because now if you go and see a therapist, it's like you're validating that something is wrong with you. And it's like, No, what is wrong with you? You had childhood hardships. So how can you rewrite the story or make sense of what happened versus staying stuck there? And I feel like even though people go to a therapist to not stay stuck, they're more stuck than ever. Yeah.
I also know people who've been like, they've been going to therapy for 20 years, 10 years, 30 years.
I see it all the time. I had someone buy my $27 program who's like, this helped me more than the last six years of therapy.
It becomes a habit. Exactly. A very expensive habit. And that ties into the fact that, by the way, I don't know how much it costs in Canada. Here, $400 an hour, minimum. And you can't even get an appointment. It's become such a- It's months. Exactly. It's a racket. It's a racket. Okay, so explain this to me. In the last 7-10 years, where has been the evolution of you go see the therapist, You're telling them how your mother and father did this and that to you. And then the next step is estrangement?
Yeah. So what's happening is if you're triggered, that's another word. To trigger, yes. If you're triggered, they're toxic, and that goes hand in hand. So now it's turned into, Oh, they're triggering me. They must be toxic. I got to protect my peace, so I'm going to keep my distance. I'm going to keep my distance because they're triggering me. And it's like, no, this is why when I say emotional healing, you got to look in the mirror and say, Why am I triggered? What do I got to work through? Because if I'm allowing someone else to have that much control on me, it's a me problem. It's not them. You can't expect someone to change in order to change you being triggered. And so that's what's happening is people are consciously aware of their triggers, so then avoid the person that's creating that discomfort instead of saying, Wait, what do I got to work through so that I'm no longer uncomfortable? And that's what exactly what it did with my mom. It was like, I started to rewrite her story. I started to work through it and said, I got to get to a point where she can do the same thing, and I'm just like, Okay, but and what?
Okay, a couple of questions. Is it more prevalent in environments and cultures that have more money because they have more access to therapy? And they have that whole culture of... You don't see people who are struggling to put food on the table worrying that much about their mental issues. I love that you said that.
That's a very good question. So can I say it's very prevalent? I've definitely noticed there's a pattern of people who are just getting by in survival mode. They're right. They don't even time to think about that because family is what's keeping them together and surviving. I'm definitely noticing a trend with people, the children who are very entitled, who are given everything, who were bought everything, who, you know what I mean, didn't have to go through life struggles to grow that resilience. But I'm also seeing the pattern of I was a single mom or I did the best that I can. It was a bad divorce or whatever it is, and the child went off to college. And now it was the societal influence, which you're seeing more in the younger generation, but our generation was more societal influences. Think about, like I said, the Opras. Opras' biggest books that she promoted on her show was literally called Toxic Parents and another one called Boundaries.
Those are the biggest books she had?
Yes. And if you think about even the movies in the shows, it was always condition. Think about Disney movies. I mean, my kids don't watch it, but Disney movies, the stepmother is either terrible, the mother is not in the picture, the mother died. It was priming us. I truly believe that for years and years, we've been primed to believe that the family unit is replaceable. Now when you look at the internet and the online connection and everything that is happening at such a fast pace that people are finding where they belong outside of the people who raise them from their roots. I will always say, because Amavathy is very faith-driven, is the devil loves nothing more than disconnecting the family unit because you're that much more easily to be manipulated, to stay in the victim mindset, to stick to where you belong in the outside culture. Then when you break that root, that foundation, You're easily swayed into any direction. It's almost scary sometimes.
Then what happened to you? What was your story that put you on this path in the first place?
Of why I was estranged? Yeah.
Why were you estranged?
I grew up, My sister is two years older than me, and she had health issues when we were younger. From a very young age, my mom spent a lot more time with her, taking care of her, doing all of that. My mom also was going through abuse and different issues, and she was a young mom. But it got to a point that we grew up in community housing, so we really didn't grow up with money or anything like that. Because of it, I got a job by the time I was 14 years old. Where it started was I was 14, I got a job in order to pay for stuff myself. On my 14th or 15th birthday, I didn't get I didn't get a cake and I didn't get a gift. My sister's birthday is nine days after me, and she got it. I remember I asked, Why didn't I get one? She's like, Well, you're working now. I thought that you would buy it for yourself if you wanted it. That started the, You don't care about me. Everything's about her. I'm the daughter. You don't notice me. Because my sister was so close to her, my sister and I argued my mom would always take her side and come and attack me without giving me a chance to talk.
It continued that way until my early 20s. Then it got to a point where I was the first one to graduate college. I was supposed to get a car, like a used car as a gift, and instead my mom spent it on something for my sister. Then I was in a relationship that my mom said, I don't like who you're dating. I was in my early 20s at this point. I had graduated and I was working now. I'm a woman, essentially. She said, We don't like him. You're either breaking up with him or don't talk to us. I was like, How are you giving me an ultimatum when it came to love? By the way, because of the estrangement, I started dating at a young age, trying to seek that outside validation of worthiness and love that I lacked at home. I said, I'm not breaking up with him because you want me to. I'm an adult. Okay, all of my stuff were put in garbage bags outside of my house, and I was kicked out of my house. That's when it started, and I was like, Fine, then I don't need you. I've been doing all this for myself.
I don't need you, all that. She was doing it in the name of protecting me because he really wasn't a healthy person for me. And that's how it really started until eventually I myself saw that he was not healthy for me. And yeah, working through- Well, how lucky.
So really, you were estranged from your mom because you were jealous of your sister's attention that your sister was getting. Yeah.
And I was not getting that love from her.
And you weren't gaining that love. Exactly. So from what age? How many years were you estranged? Two years. Oh, that's not even that terrible. It's not that long. So what's actually very interesting about your story is people get estranged for much less than that these days. A hundred %.
That's what I find. People hear my story and they're like, your mom is terrible. And I'm like, okay, but so what? You could sit here and analyze her. That's my point. But so what?
Well, that's what I find to be interesting. This is why I think this is where the coddling, the entitlement, the lack of ability to say no to your child, that's where I really hook on. Because what I see is what we were saying a little bit earlier is when that's happening, the kid, for whatever whatever reason, has much more leeway and ability to cut off the parents or the parents, right? Because of that feel of entitlement, right? I don't see it so much, like I said, in people who actually probably have reason. I've had a lot of people here who have been molested as a child and still talk to their parents.
And I get a lot of those messages of kids wanting that reconnection. So I think it's important in terms of the resilience. And there's a big by the way, between only children and ones with a sibling. Because kids with siblings argue 3,000 times more than an only child. So the only child is a lot more entitled, where people with siblings are more Or they learn better communication. They have more patience, reconnection, because you're used to arguing, coming back, arguing, coming back.
Exactly. They're used to that whole back and forth. Exactly. How long do it... I guess you don't really... Maybe this might be too broad, but how long does Does the family estrangement last?
Oh, yeah. It's a big difference. Some people have been months. I have people have been 10 years longer.
Do they usually come back to each other?
It's often not permanent. It's often not permanent. And that's why I really try to get the parents the tools to understand what's happening. But obviously, society right now is doing... You should see the TikTok trends. So it's constantly validating that toxic culture. If your mom is narcissist, if she does this, you got to cutting off a narcissistic person is the best self-care that you can do. And it's like that label is thrown around so easily. It's like, what's narcissism? Someone who has unhealed trauma that they haven't worked through that are projecting their pain? Okay, so what are you going to do about it so that you don't have to just cut off anyone who is uncomfortable for you?
The reason why I'm nodding here is I can't tell you that is all the content I see now. Exactly. I can't tell. It's on my algorithm. I'm like, Am I asking for that content? Because every second I'm looking at is who's a narcissist? What happens to deal with? How do you deal with the... The word narcissism in general is so overused- It's the labels. And tired or no contact. Exactly. All these very harsh ways of, to your point, protecting your peace, where I think what's happening is not only is the mental health crisis becoming absurdly high, but loneliness is becoming high. Exactly. Because now we're giving this validation that, Oh, yeah, you're strong. You're taking care of yourself, self-care. But then what? You're alone by yourself? Now what?
Now what? Exactly. And it feeds into their health. I was doing health consultations for so many years, Jen, and the correlation between their inability to communicate, right? Suppression of expression is probably the leading cause of autoimmune. Forget the toxins and everything else that people deal with is ability to not be able to articulate and communicate your feelings. And not just to articulate them, to be able to have a conversation with the person, a confrontational conversation that leads to an understanding of both sides. And that's the biggest thing that's lacking right now in marriage and relationships, like siblings, everything. And that's happening with the child, too. People are not learning how to effectively communicate. When you talk about gentle parenting, they're not communicating to the child and showing tough love. There's no tough love anymore. And tough love means you're telling me something that's really uncomfortable that I got to work through in order to become more mentally capable of dealing with the crazy world that we live in.
So what are some solutions? So let's say, for example, if therapy is one of the driving forces of why people are basically having not less mental health issues, but more, and their emotional healing is actually being stunted because they're ruminating and thinking about all their problems, what is an alternative to doing that? How does somebody emotionally heal without seeing a therapist and taking ownership of whatever that issue is?
So that's a good question. I obviously talk about that in a community because it's not just a one step. But one of the biggest steps I do is two things. One is When you think back on the people who hurt you the most, rewrite their story. Take yourself out. Stay on the estrangement topic. Me, myself as a child, I said, I'm removing myself. I'm no longer her child. There's no emotional. What is her story? In detail, what can I think about her story? What did she What are the pains? What are the hardships and everything? Then something happens that most people forget about is compassion. It's like it grows that compassion, and then you have space for their mistakes. That's the number one thing that I do. The second thing is mirror work, and that's the hardest thing for people to do. That means you look in the mirror and you say, what are some of the things that people have said to me that is not nice? You're aggressive, you're mean, you're narcissistic, whatever the terms are, what are the things that I know people have said or that I'm not 100% about myself?
And what's the first thing I'm going to do to start improving it? Where's the truth in that? It's hard. Mirror work is so hard because it almost makes people feel like, Am I a bad person? Nobody wants to feel like a bad person. Instead of just saying, It's not about that, I need to be able to look in the mirror. I'm going to give you a real life example. I was told growing up that I was aggressive in the way I communicate. You sound aggressive. Why are you angry? I'm passionate, but sometimes the way that I communicate comes off as aggressive. I would get so defensive when that was said to me until I had to look in the mirror and say, Maybe there's some truth in that. What is it? That's when I started to study communication and why I'm so passionate about communication. I said, Okay, so let me start getting better at communication. How can I articulate it in a way that's not so aggressive? What do I have to do? I have to learn how to pause. I have to learn how to absorb. How can I say it in a different way?
It's like, I can sit there and be defensive because I don't want to think that I'm a bad person. I have these bad qualities, versus mirror work and say, Let me work through step by step the different things that I can work through.
So mirror work, what was the first one that you said? So I can just write that. Rewriting their story. Rewriting the story.
Yeah. The villains of your story, rewrite their story without you even being in the story.
That's hard to do.
It is hard to do. But it grows compassion because even if someone... I was in an abusive relationship, a domestic-violent relationship. If I were to even rewrite his story, I'm like, I feel bad for him. His older brother who was in and out of rehab and stuff like that, used to literally beat him. His dad used to beat him. He knew nothing I could sit here and be the victim. Okay, obviously, thankfully, he didn't stay with him. And domestic violence is a very scary place. It's not to say, Excuse abuse. But when it came to my healing, yes, I chose to walk away, but I had to say, Okay, it wasn't an indication of me and my worth. It's he did not know better. These are his circumstances. That's it. The same way I did it with my mom, the same way I did it with anyone else, the same way I did it even with my own sister, who I didn't talk to for a little while, too, because of the whole situation with my mom. It's like you rewrite their story and you grow this compassion that you're like, So How am I going to sit here and hold on to that story when this is my perception?
That's the thing. People are so stuck in their own perception that they don't recognize that the reason that this hurt is happening to you is not because it's you and your worthiness and everything. It's usually 100% their perception, what they went through, what they're projecting onto you. So when you can start to make that association, you feel more empowered in a sense of like, I have more patience for you. I see what you're doing. I wish you healing. I hope you find your path, and I'm okay, and I know what I'm worth.
Okay, I like that. But how do people find their way back to each other after estrangement? If they're not mirroring, if they're not rewriting someone's story, what is typically the path back?
So what I What I do is I do two things. From the parents' perspective, I try to have the parent understand what the child is going through and how to better communicate for the child. And that does include accountability. I help the parents understand exactly what I'm teaching you right now. What we're talking about right now is I help the parent understand the child's perspective and how they raised that child affected their upbringing along societal influences and everything like that.
Okay, so then there's self-awareness. The parent understands.
That's the awareness. Exactly. And then, okay, so how do I approach the communication, which is crazy. Jen, I get it all the time where parents are like, Oh, my God. I provide them with sometimes scripts just for them to understand how to... It's not what you're saying, it's how you're saying it. Most often than not, I teach parents. The number one thing that parents do is over a apologize, over justify, everything like that. Which means a child comes to you and says, You really hurt me when you did this. You really hurt me when you kicked me out of the house because I didn't want to end this relationship. And what does the parent typically do? Yes, but I did it because of this. And that pulls the child further away because the child's saying, But you're not seeing my pain. I just want to be acknowledged. And the parents just like, Wait, I just want you to understand my perspective because if you understand my perspective, you won't pull away. So I'm telling the parent, Stop that. Why don't you just tell them, I'm sorry that that hurts you. And then once the When the child feels safe and their pain acknowledged, eventually you can say, I want to walk you through my perception.
And clearly, that wasn't the right way to deal with it, but this is the reason why. But that's not how you approach the conversation when someone is so hurt. I helped the parents see it from that perspective. Meanwhile, From the child's perspective, I help them to understand the parent, rewrite the parent's story, and have more compassion and all of that for the parent. Everyone has to lead because a lot of people will say, Well, there has to be both sides willing to do the work. No, one has to lead. Sometimes it's the that lead, in my instance, and sometimes it's the parent that leads back to the child. Then you see that reconnection, that child seeing the parents trying. They're communicating differently. They're not so controlling and overbearing or feeding the entitlement where children don't talk to their parents, but then call them when they actually need something. The parent will throw it at them just to have any form of communication. So it's still those healthy standards. I don't like the term boundaries, but those healthy boundaries have stopped feeding the beast, essentially.
Giving into the child, that's a no-no. If a kid giving you ultimatums, I don't want you to do this. I want you to do that. And the parent feeding into it because they're so desperate to have a relationship.
Yeah. As soon as desperation and panic and fear is coming in, that's not healthy for the relationship because you're leading from like, I'm willing to- Do anything. Do anything for a relationship. Relationship, and that feeds the child's behavior. They're just going to get more and more of it. So you have to nip it in the bud, and they're going to test you, and they're going to try and take it even further. But eventually, it's like when they have that consistency and their nervous system starts to get used to it, they don't react the same way. It's like And this is why I talk about neuroscience, because it's the neuroplasticity, right? And it's like they're so stuck in their behavior. The neural pathways are just so used to it. But the moment it's not treated the exact same way or they're not reacting the same way, they're forming new neural pathways, so they're forced to change.
What are some What are the top things you've been seeing recently of reasons that children are becoming estranged from parents? Politics.
Politics. Which is crazy. Because to think that someone's like... And I see this a lot where I cut my parents off because they voted for Trump, regardless of who, but I see this a lot. They voted for Trump, which means they don't care about my future, so why should I be in their life? Crazy. I'm like, since when did politics become a reason? Another one that I see is the narcissism and toxic. My mom was very I hear it, narcissistic. I will ask them, What does narcissism mean? What does your mom do that was narcissistic? Oftentimes, exactly the example I gave is, well, she makes everything about her. If I try to talk about it, everything's about her. She doesn't care about my feelings, all of that stuff. I was like, Is that narcissism? What is that? Is that Corsism is a diagnosed word. The third, actually, I'm going to name two other ones. Parental alienation is a big one. A family goes through a divorce and one parent is badmouthing the other parents or the children. Stop talking to that other parent. Then oftentimes what happens is I see the boy who's not talking to his dad, grow up, want to reach out to his dad, and now resents his mom for not allowing her to talk to dad because the male psyche needs that male figure.
No matter how toxic father is, they want to reach back out to dad. The other one is the daughter-in-law. It's probably the number one thing. The daughter-in-law is convincing the son that his mother is toxic and gives boundaries to the mother-in-law. Now the boy, the father, is stuck between my wife and my child that I have to protect as my new family, and I'm going to listen to whatever my wife says against my dad, my family.
I've seen that a lot, too. A lot.
A lot. I know. It's literally... And it's the daughter-in-law.
I do say that now that you say that a lot. What does that say about the husband or the son that he would cut off his own mom?
Well, the thing is- Is it because he just wants to protect the peace? Right. It's called power shift estrangement. Power shift estrangement is essentially the daughter-in-law came in and she now took the power and the control of the relationship. Oftentimes, what really sucks is the boy, the son, he's not leading estrangement, he's surviving in it because now he's in a place where I'm trying to make people happy. My actual family is this now, so I'm just going to go this way because I don't want to not have my family. Then choose my mom, which is going to come off as the mama's boy. It ties into like, Oh, mama's boy is not good, and da, da, da. That's how it's fed into that system. It's so destructive because I also see how often children are learning that behavior based on how their parents dealt with it. They're They're learning that love is disposable. Because they're learning that love is disposable, it's so easily thrown away and you'll find it somewhere else, but you don't find it that easily.
Let's start with the divorce one because you said that as well. Parental alienation. It's called parental alienation. What age does that typically have? Is it older kids or younger kids?
Well, I mean, it starts when you're younger. Often, the stories that I hear is I escaped an abusive relationship or I left their dad who was a narcissistic, who was horrible, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. The mother who's now a single mom sacrificed everything for her kids. But oftentimes when you're sacrificing everything for your kids as a single mom, what happens? You're surviving. So you don't have the emotional capacity to deal with their emotions. You are literally surviving. The same way I made a post about immigrant parents. Immigrant parents don't show their love very differently because to them, if you have a roof over your head and you've got food on your table, I'm showing you what love means. Where now, it's like they look at that like, well, you should take care of me, but they don't show me love in other ways. And so you start seeing that pattern.
I do actually think immigrant parents, a lot of times I actually know, listen, you see it way more than me, but kids tend to appreciate their immigrant parents a lot because in retrospect, they know that they struggle. Kids who come from somewhere else and they come to America, whatever, they recognize how hard their parents and what they sacrifice for their kids. I haven't seen that much of that in terms of the alienation. I've seen a lot of the divorce situation, a lot. The daughter a lot, a ton. Again, I think it's so much, it seems to me it would depend on where you are socioeconomically, culturally.
I do see it still in a lot of immigrant family, though, when they've immigrated here and the child was young enough to now be North Americanized. Yeah. They think my parents were toxic. For example, being spanked. The amount of people that my parents... One mother actually told me, Jen, that my daughter stopped talking to me because I don't remember what she did, and I smacked her, and she smacked me back, and the mother apologized. The daughter cut her off, and she's like, I've apologized so many times. In my head, I'm like, What? Your daughter smacked you back? I remember being smacked by my mom, and I remember lifting my hand—I never actually hit her—and got another smack. She's like, Where's your hand at me again? There's no discipline anymore. And that's not to say go and smack your kids, but there's zero Discipline now, and now they're letting the children discipline the parent on how to be.
Okay, that's something I want to talk about because you just said the word that I had written down, the lack of discipline. A hundred %. And what's happening when there's no discipline. Tell me from your expertise, give me the 360 of how that plays itself out.
Well, if there's no discipline, you feel like you're invincible. And when you feel like you're invincible, you'll do whatever it is and you don't care about the consequences someone is going to come and save you. Versus the discipline is you're learning that your decisions have consequences, so how can I take my time or work through the decisions that I have to make in order to not hurt people, to not hurt myself, to not create damage, all of that. And people now, exactly like gentle parenting, there is no discipline. They're so afraid that if I discipline my child, they're going to miss out on something that I might have missed out on. But that's not actually what's happening. Now you're actually stopping your child from being able to experience what built the emotional resilience in you in the first place?
Yeah, you're preaching to the choir. Like I said, I did a talk on this, a Ted talk on this whole topic of mental resilience, and everyone gets a participation trophy. God forbid that you tell your kid no and how you speak to the child. I'm so happy I grew up in the '90s thing, you know what I mean? Because I feel like it did help me build a thick skin and become more resilient Brilliant. And the Latch geek era, you know what I mean? My mom was working when I was coming home from school. But it built some armor of the knowing- It's the toughness. Yeah, the self-efficacy. Exactly. It's the self The discipline, the respect, the toughness that I can handle these hard conversations.
People are now protecting their children so much, protecting their peace, protecting their kids. They're avoiding them dealing with the real world. And the real world is freaking scary. It's shitty some days. It's hard.
People are taking their moms to job interviews. I mean, it's really unbelievable. So let's talk about emotional healing, how it affects your health, your happiness, your business and relationships. Let's go with how emotional healing affects your health. Let's go with that one first.
For many years, I was a practicing herbalist, and I got into it because my mom was actually on her deathbed from too many pharmaceuticals. She was on narcotics, which obviously led into a big reason why I started talking to her again, where I was like, I'm not ready to lose her. But I was like, there must be something natural that I can do. When I started to study it as much as I can, she became my guinea pig. She got off of her narc. The doctors are like, there's no way. I just had this new passion that I wanted to share this knowledge with people because I was like, wait, there's natural alternatives to all of this healing? Through that, I started to do health consultations for so many years, and I saw the biggest pattern that was almost jaw-dropping, where I would have people come to me and look, I'm eating organic, I'm exercising, I'm doing... My house is non-toxic, I do everything, but they've got stage 4 cancer. They've got an autoimmune disease. They've got all of this. When I started to dive in to the emotional and physiological part of things. I haven't spoken to my mom in four years.
My marriage is falling apart. Whatever it was, and I was like, there's an emotional component here. From that emotional component, it made me realize how much of that affects your health so much more. Then, like I said, the suppression of expression, which means I'm protecting the piece by not vocalizing what I want to or need to in order to keep the piece of the home. But what's happening is that destruction is happening internally because you're not releasing it. It affects your health like crazy because if you're not able to communicate effectively and have the emotional healing and look at yourself in the mirror and grow as a person, by the way, the number one reason of happiness, which is the next one that you had talked about, is progression, that growth. It's like if people are staying stuck, then they're not growing. If you're not growing, then you're actually declining at that point. That affects your level of happiness, which your level of happiness affects your level of health. Because if you're not laughing and you're not enjoying little things in life, you're not feeling like you're growing as a person, that 100% also feeds into your health.
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So you can see why I'm obsessed. Go to joinamp. Com/ joinamp. Com/jinn to learn more. That's joinamp. Com/jen, because strength should fit your life. Okay, so with that, though, emotional healing. So if someone is going through a tumultuous time, it could be anything, right? It could be whatever it is that's causing them to get sick. But how are they supposed to heal? Forget about the estrangement part. Let's talk about other forms that people can have emotional disruptions.
Going through the hardship, it doesn't necessarily affect your health. It's how you choose to get past it.
Okay.
That's the thing. People will naturally go through that. If anything, I think that's what builds the resilience. But it's when you stay stuck there. So for example, how many families or mothers stayed in an abusive relationship, everything for the health of their kids. So now they no longer were expressing themselves, but they got sick because they stayed in that abusive relationship for the love of their kids and all of that. Or that's what I'm saying versus how can I heal through that and work through it and say, okay, this happened to me. I'm dealing with hardships. How can I take care of myself to release and know that I'm not stuck here?
So how does people... Give me a walk me through how someone can start to emotionally heal.
I mean, that's a big question.
It is.
On top of the mirror work, it comes back to the mirror work. You already mentioned the mirror and rewriting the story.
It's like- But those are for when you have When it's about somebody else.
But through the situation?
Yeah. In general, let's say you don't want to have a therapist that you talk to at nauseam twice a week or a week, and maybe you can afford it, or maybe you don't have the time for it. What are some other ways people can start to emotionally heal?
But you rewrite your own story.
You rewrite your own story, right?
How?
So walk me through. If someone's listening to this podcast and they're like, I'm really going through a really hard time. I'm really stuck in this breakup. I'm really stuck in this whatever. They're unhappy. They're depressed where they are in their life. What's their step-by-step plan to get them unstuck?
Yeah. I would say, and Joe Dispenza talks about this a lot, where it's like, breaking the habit of being yourself. And it's like, how do I rewrite my story. So it's when first is coming to the understanding of how much I'm a product of my environment and what I've been programmed and understanding that, wait, what do you mean I could change my thought process? I could change how I live. I could change how I speak and all of that. That's where I would start. As simple as understanding that way I can rewrite my entire story. So how do I start with first, okay, my confidence, my ability to believe that I can have a different life. Because I feel like where people are stuck is they don't believe that there's a better future for them. And it's like, so how can I start to write and know and believe that there is a better future for me and I could change my current circumstances. Because a lot of the times where they're stuck is they don't believe that their current circumstances are ever going to be changed. But it's like, yeah, it can. So where do I start?
How can I build, which is actually what I do in my community too, is how do I build this renewed sense of belief in myself to be able to come out of this better, stronger, happier, healthier, whatever it is. I look now at hardships as perfect. This is where my growth is going to happen. I'm going to learn new skills here. I'm going to go through all of that because I'm sure you know the four stages of success in life, the valley of despair?
Tell us. Well, I might know, but they might not know.
There's four stages of life. In business, in life, relationships, every single one, you go through four stages. Stage number one is uninformed optimism, which means I'm so excited. Life is good. This new thing, this new relationship, this new job, this new promotion, whatever it is, and you're so excited and you see all the positivity of it. And then you hit informed pessimism, which is stage two. And that's like, pardon my French, oh, shit, this is getting real. It's not as great as I thought it was. It's requiring a little bit more from me. In a relationship, I'm seeing the not so good qualities, whatever it is. In business, it's like, this is requiring a lot more out of me. It's demanding. It's not the same job that I thought it was. And then boom, you hit the valley of despair. And valley of despair is where it gets freaking hard. And 99% of people in business give up at the valley of despair. And guess what they do? They end up back at the uninformed optimism. So they're always following that shiny new object, and people do it in relationships, which is why they break up and they go find that new relationship, and then they go through constantly.
And not realizing that stage four, valley of despair is where the growth happens. When you're at that, it's like hitting rock bottom almost. It's so bad, but this is where I'm learning the emotional resilience. This is where I'm learning the patience, the perseverance, everything that I need to get to stage four, which is the success. And most people get so caught up in the valley of despair that, look, this is not meant for me, this is not good for me, this is hard, all of that. Instead of saying, this is where my growth is going to happen and I need to lean in now more than ever and not look at the next shiny object and go through it. Then you're at four and you're like, oh, shit. I'm so happy that I did not give up. That applies to every situation in life. Like I said, relationships, business, health. How many people will go to the gym for a month or two and see no difference and give up and then go get a different membership or a different trainer? You see it in relationships where people are breaking up or they end the marriage and think the grass is greener on the other side instead of working through it, certain things.
Family business. This business idea didn't work because I've been trying so hard and now I give up and I'm going to go to the next shiny object or the next idea.
That's a great... I love that. I don't know why I've never heard that before.
Yeah, the valley of despair.
Because people do stop in the Valley of Despair. All the time. They give up right there, and then they seek out number one again. Exactly.
That's where people stay stuck, is they don't allow themselves to stay in here. Sometimes, maybe they're a little bit longer, But it's like, then you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel and you're like, Oh, now I'm seeing it. I've gone through it so many times that sometimes I'm like, Oh, I'm in the valley of despair right now. This freaking sucks, but I have no choice but to stay. I have no choice but to stay because I'm not going back to stage one, stage two, stage three, stage one, stage two, stage three.
Because you're going to always just be playing that same thing. Exactly.
And when you're aware of it. I teach people about the valley of Despair. Because when you're aware of it and you know that you're there, you're like, Do I want to go back and restart this? Or do I want to just stick around here a little bit more and do what I got to do? What do I got to do to get more resilient and patience and the perseverance and prayer and whatever you got to do to get to stage four.
But is there a amount of time that is too long to be in the valley of despair?
I mean, yes and no. It's not like it's a year's thing. If you're there for years, it's because you're not leaning into the skills and what you're meant to learn there. It's like you're allowing yourself to stay stuck. A lot of people, when that's happening, they're still stuck in the victim mentality. It all ties into it, Jen. They're stuck in the victim mentality. This is happening to me. This is happening to me. Versus, why am I here? What do I got to learn from this? So once you lean into that, no, you're not stuck there for long because it's like, what am I learning? What am I learning? What skills? What everything? But if you're stuck in the victim mentality of like, It's never going to change. Everything always happens to me. Yeah, you're right. You're going to stay there for a very long time because you're not ready for stage four.
Talk about what people tend to get out of the valley of despair and get into number four, which is success, and the ones that stay stuck.
The ones as you start to build that emotional resilience or even the belief system and the confidence. It's 100% a belief system and discipline over motivation. That works in everything. It's like that discipline. People think that... We talk about business People just think like, Wait, everything is so hard. I don't feel like working today. I don't feel like doing this today. Cool. Most of the time, we don't either. But you're disciplined because you're seeing it's future pacing. People lack future pacing, and future pacing is so important because future pacing, which means I'm so caught up in who I'm becoming and where I want to go that I got to do what I got to do now to meet that person. People would rather say stuck in their current circumstances instead of making decisions in their current circumstances to meet who they're becoming.
Say that again.
People have to make decisions in their current circumstances based on who they're becoming versus making life decisions based on their current circumstances.
That's such a good thing to say. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Yeah. Your current circumstances, which means I'm stuck on I'm going to relate it on business. I'm going to talk about estrangement because I think they're both very important. In estrangement, it's like my current circumstances are my mom is triggering me, my family is triggering me, they're upsetting me, all of that. Based on the current circumstances, my decision is I'm going to cut them off. Based on future pacing is, well, no, if I have a family and I have kids and I want them to be around my grandkids, what do I got to do to fix this relationship? You're going to approach and look at it very differently. But same thing with business. In business where someone is like, I'm not progressing. I have no money to invest in myself. I'm broke. My business not moving forward. But no, it's like you're making... So you won't even invest in, I don't know, maybe $100 or a mastermind or a coach or whatever it is that you want to get yourself to that next level. You're making it based on your current circumstances where if you're future pacing, you get so excited about the person that you're going The goals that you're going towards that you're like, no, I have to make this decision now because that's where I'm going to go.
And I need to make decisions based on who I'm becoming, not who I was or where I'm at right now.
That's a great point. Now use it for relationships.
In marriage, for example, your current circumstances are Or if I were to think about my relationship with my husband, for example. He, by the way, was estranged from his mom. Not a coincidence. His mom abandoned him when he was 13 or 14 years old. She left a really bad relationship. She left the country. And fast forward to Now, without getting to too much detail, she lives with us. We have best relationship ever. So it really helped to reconnect that relationship. But if I were to make decisions on the current circumstances, when we first met, he was so angry. He had a lot of anger. He was holding a lot of that anger. Current circumstances would be what? You are not You have a lot of aggression. You're abusive in some ways. Never been abusive, but people could obviously take it at that way. It's better for me to walk away. It's better for me to walk away. Future pacing was no. I think that we can heal through this together. I think that we can work on better communication. As long as there's improvement and all of that, we can work through that. I would future pace and say, no, I truly believe that.
I think he's a great person. We have a great relationship. We don't fight. His anger is not towards me. It's towards outside people. I would think about that. I would literally visualize and almost manifest that perfect marriage, and I would make decisions on based on where I'm going. And guess what? That's what happened. When he reconciliated with his mom, he was no longer angry. He was always doing this. He never went to therapy. He never went to therapy. I was essentially his- Sounding more? Yeah. I helped him navigate the emotions because the emotional healing, I helped him navigate it, how to deal with the anger. He ended up talking with his mom, and I pushed for it for four hours. He cried, she cried, she explained her perspective, he explained his pain, all of that. And then he I could sit here and be justified in my pain because he absolutely is because she left you, and you're justified in that pain. But what now? What is that going to do for you? It's making you angry. Are you going to hold on to that anger and that pain? Are you going to heal through it?
So then he said, Okay, you know what? She didn't make the best decision, but she thought she was. Then they healed through it. Like I said, they have the best relationship now. She had the best relationship with the grandkids. It's like future pacing of like, Well, what do I want the relationship to look like? What do I got to do? How do I have to work? Someone always has to lead a relationship. In this instance, it's like, I'm going to lead I'm going to lead the relationship, and I'm going to lead by example in every relationship of how I want it to go. That doesn't mean that it's going to work like that, perfect for every single relationship. But the reality is if you see an increment of improvement, that means that there's hope. People don't have patience. They want it from A to Z versus his anger. I saw it from seeing it weekly to monthly to yearly. I was like, Okay, I'm patient. I'm going to grow that patience because I see the improvement, and I'm going to be patient for you as you're trying to understand what's happening. That's what's happening is people are lacking the compassion or the patience to allow people to grow because people expect everyone to grow in their same timeline, which is happening with the generation right now where it's like, Well, I've gone to therapy, so you should go to therapy, too, or I've done all the healing, so You should, too.
And if you're not, then it's on you. So I'm not going to talk to you until you're ready. And it's like, you can't put that expectation on someone because your healing is now waiting on someone else's timeline.
That was so well said. Thank you. You're welcome. Let's talk about a type of emotional healing that we haven't touched upon. Well, What we did, but not really, is because I understand what you're saying about belief. It all starts with belief, belief that you can find better, do better, be better. And if you don't think that you're better or you can be better, that's when people really stay stuck and they have that loop. That is very difficult. I only smile when you were talking because I just came back from this thing where I did a whole speaking thing on exactly what you're saying about discipline, motivation, and how discipline is what carries you through to that, I to that fourth level of success, right? But let's talk about betrayal, because I think that's another big one where people get really stuck, and it's really hard for them to move past it and move on. Would you just say How would you tell somebody, one of your patients, clients, whatever in your groups, how they can move past and through betrayal? Because if people feel that way, that's what also gets them sick, right? It's like, that's what we're talking about, right?
That's what causes a lot of this gripe, whatever. Do you have anything to talk about or say about that?
I mean, what form of betrayal?
It could be anything. It could be...
I mean, the reason I don't think changes anything. It doesn't. It doesn't change anything because the betrayal, it's like, okay, well, you're right. They did something.
I guess your husband was betrayed by his mom, right?
That's what I'm saying. It's not like, Oh, you betrayed me by cheating. That's a whole other situation.
Can you ever heal from cheating?
I truly believe, yes, in certain circumstances. It has to really be, what is the circumstance? Is it, for example, I had a good friend that I grew up with who was married and found out that he was in an affair for nine years. Is that cheating? No. He had a girlfriend of nine years, and they were together since high school.
He had another girlfriend on the side? Yeah. For nine years? That's cheating.
But that's not even cheating.
That's That's a lifestyle. Yeah, that's a lifestyle.
That's a lifestyle. I would say that's a betrayal. It isn't a betrayal. That's what I mean. Can you get over something like that? No, because that's not a mistake that you're going to work through. And there has to be growth. If he's fully accountable and it's like, I'm going to do what I got to do to prove to you to do this.
I think that's true. I think that makes a difference. If it's a lifestyle?
No, I don't know if you can work through that. No, you can't work through that. Because what happens is your belief system, your worthiness, and everything like that is now saying, this is all that I'm worth. I'm going to state and stick to it.
So the stuckness is the thing, right? The stuckness. How does someone stop the rumination and the looping of thinking about how, why, all those things that get people not to move on to the next point? What do you tell your clients?
I would say, let's remove everything right now. What is your purpose? Why are you here on Earth? You're here just to be a wife and just to be a mother, and that's it. That's what God put you on here. Then your kids are grown and they're on their own and your husband passes away. What are you here for? Let's think about that. Let's talk about that because that means that you have completely lost yourself in the circumstances of your life and you need to find who you are before the world told you who to be, before the roles told you who to be and everything like that. So I'd really try to ground them in like, Wait, you mean that even if I'm 60 years old, there's something more for me? I'm like, Yeah, there is. God has a purpose for every single person.
You're You're about... It's very much like reframing your story. Exactly. And every way, shape, reform. You use the word rewrite the story or belief. It's all the same stuff, though, right? Exactly. At the end of the day, you got to find a way to believe that there's a purpose behind whatever it is.
Every circumstance that I'm going through, every hardship I'm going through, everything. The amount of parents, moms especially, that have been like, and I take them back to it. They're like, You're right, I was so stuck in my estrangement that I have found God again. I have started to live for me again and everything during that time that I'm a better person. I said, Perfect. Now you're in a place where your child can come back. It's like you had to find yourself through that. So it's like you could stay stuck and like, I'm the victim. Look what my child did to me and all of that. Or I got to become a better person. What am I going to do? What is my purpose? What am I meant here for? And so that's what it comes down to. It's reframing, rewriting your story, your circumstances, and knowing that there's, for me, I believe that there's a higher power at play here, and sometimes they have to break you in order to rebuild you. And that's it. You have to be okay. People are so scared to being broken that they'd rather stay stuck, not realizing that staying stuck is already almost going to start breaking you.
Right.
That's a great point. All right. So let me ask you something. I like this whole belief thing because I talk about that a lot on the show and my whole platform, whatever, self-belief, self-efficacy, confidence. In your opinion, what would you say would be one of the keystone habits that someone can start doing to start building their own belief in themselves, their own confidence, their own feeling that they deserve more, should basically believe in themselves?
I think the number one thing that they could do is start to, and I know it might sound a little bit cliché, but start real life affirmations and start reprogramming your neural pathways. That's the number one thing. Because when you're reprogramming your neural pathways, it actually changes your belief system. From a scientific physiological level, your belief system starts to change, which means if you say something enough times, your body and mind start to believe it. So it's like, what do I tell myself? But when I say affirmations, I don't mean like, I'm going to make a million dollars, I'm going to make a million dollars in a year. I mean like, I'm a strong, independent, confident woman. It's like you look at yourself in the mirror, which has everything to do with mirror work. And you look at yourself and you say that, which is awkward at first. And it's like, I'm a strong, independent, confident woman. What happens is your body, your nervous system at first is like, Wait, what's happening? What's happening? Because this is so different. My neural pathways are going crazy because they're not used to it. I'm going to explain this a little bit.
It could be a little bit scientific, but once someone understands it, they're like, Okay, that's what's happening. There's a sheath. I don't know how much you know about it, but there's a sheath on your neural pathway that's called myelin. That myelin is pretty much what strengthens the crap out of those neural pathways. When you start to change it, the myelin starts to weaken and new neural pathways are formed, and then the myelin tries to go to those new neural pathways. It's like if you repeat this enough times, what happens is your body starts reacting from that nervous system and that resistance, which is so normal when you're doing it at first, and starts getting used to it. It starts getting used to it. When it starts to get used to it, what does it do? It starts looking around its environment to build that belief. Whatever you're saying, your body is naturally now looking to find something that's going to build that independent, confident, strong woman, whatever it is that you're telling yourself. So then you start to do things differently. You look for opportunities differently, and it starts to actually change your entire belief system.
Okay, I'm going to say two to that. Number one, I do believe in the concept that you will start seeing things around you, whatever you are thinking and believing. Law of attraction, 100%. If you're saying things like, I want to see a red car.
You bought a red car, you know it's a red car.
You see every red car, right? Or like, brown. I'm going to see everything brown. I do believe that. 100%. But here's where I'm going to push back on you a bit. Because I believe, and my research has shown me that if you say a thousand times in a mirror, I'm I'm beautiful. I'm confident. I'm wonderful. Whatever that is. I'm independent. But if you actually don't believe it, your brain knows that you're lying. If you're somebody who has a low self-esteem, it has the opposite effect. Right.
So when you're saying the words, the resistance at first is very normal, though. It's not that you don't believe it. It's more resistance. Like, is it true? Is it true? And so you can reword it. So it's like, I wouldn't say I'm beautiful if you don't believe you're beautiful. I'm just making it up. It could say I'm capable of being. So changing your words of I'm capable of being a beautiful, confident woman. I'm capable. You tell yourself that it's normal to have resistance. You're going to have resistance. But then when you say I'm capable, it does start to reprogram you, essentially. But it doesn't mean that you can't take action.
Well, that's the thing.
It needs action.
I'm not a believer in just affirmations for the sake of affirmations.
If you don't read it with actions, then that's it.
I just find it to be like, it's such a Like, such a silly thing. Like, okay, I'm independent. I'm strong. Really, are you independent? What are you doing to be independent? Are you strong? You look feeble to me. You don't act very strong. You're right.
You have to meet it with action.
Yeah. I think the best way to actually do an affirmation more than anything is to prove to yourself that you're capable and competent.
It's 100 %. So when I say affirmations, it's like that's what it starts, and then you have to meet it with action. There's a term that I was taught growing up. It's an Arabic term. It's called Tawakil. When I really understood this, it changed. I've been practicing manifestation for years, but I always felt like there was a disconnect. The reason being is because Tawakil is essentially manifestation meant, built with trust in action. So a lot of times when we talk about affirmation or manifestation, it's like we're made to believe that if you just say it enough times, then it's just going to happen, but I don't have to do anything. No. To what kid, when I was taught this, is you have to do every Everything within your power to meet that place. And then you leave the rest. You trust the rest of God. That's it. You don't stress about it. You don't worry about it. How's it going to happen? What's going to happen? All of that stuff. And that ties into when you talk about affirmation, manifestation, it's like, you're right. I'm capable of being a strong, independent, confident woman, and you keep repeating yourself, but you have to meet it with the action.
What's something that I do? What's one step that I can do to work towards being a stronger, independent, confident woman? Or whatever it is that you're working towards, you have to meet it actions. You cannot just sit there and not do anything because then it's empty promises to yourself, essentially.
Right. And also it's like, well, what are you doing to prove that you actually are these things?
Yeah, which has everything to do with the progression that you need to be growing as a person in order to be a healthier, happier, more successful person. Yeah.
I'm still on this Oprah thing. I think it's fascinating, right? Because she still, by the way, they're still doing... It's still very, very popular, right? But you're saying that the older people, like 60-year-olds are your biggest They're reaching out to you more than anybody, right?
Because their children have.
Because their children. Do you see the pendulum swinging the other way eventually or no? Have you seen it just getting more progressively worse?
Right now, I feel like it's around the peak of being the worst or in that stage of being the worst. I do believe like anything else, it ends up being cyclical where our children's generation are going to start seeing that there's lacking so much emotional intelligence in this consciousness and everything that I feel like it's going to break. It's like it's not going to last. It's not sustainable. So I do feel like that can happen. Is it going to happen in the next 5, 10 years? I don't know. It could be a decade before they see it.
What do you think the impact of social media? Would you even mention that?
Oh, it has everything to do with it, especially for the younger generations. Everything. Because exactly like you said, everything that you're seeing on your algorithm is what? Is feeding this culture. So it's validating their feelings. And as long as their feelings are validated, their feelings are right, and they stay stuck in those feelings versus working through that.
But let's just talk one more thing, and then we can wrap. Because the validation of feelings in leadership and business, right? Because they're saying for someone to be a good leader is that they need to validate and they need to allow people to have their feelings felt, meant, whatever. What have you seen in that? Do you see a lot of people in your clientele? Do you see mostly women, right? Right. Do you see women in business? Do you see women more like, what's the main struggle? Are they seeing mostly... Where do they come to you with? Where are they getting stuck? How has it affected their lives the most?
I think the biggest thing that I see is they have no idea where it came from. So then that's what I'm telling them when we're talking about exactly what we're talking about today, when you think about the therapies and the TVs and the shows and the conditioning and the social media, they haven't made that correlation. So they had no idea when you think about the college and all of this, the wokeism, there's just so many factors in where it's like they didn't recognize how much the identity formation was forming their way of thinking that they're like, okay, now I can actually see where it started. Now I can see exactly what happened.
I really love your stuff. I think it's very interesting to me. I'm fascinated by it. Where do people find more about you and dive deeper if they're curious?
Tania Cazal, my website, social media. I really dive into it. In the programs and social media content, I post multiple times every day just trying to- Multiple times a day?
Yeah. Which content does the best for you when you post about what exact topic?
The content that probably does the best is when I say it's our parents' first life, too. They're also human.
So people do... Are you finding now?
People have a little- Yeah. I have children I have a friend who have messaged and said, You completely shifted my way of thinking. I have so much more compassion for my parents. Thank you for that. Really? And then I have the parents being like, I took your advice and my child... All the time, Jen. My child of six years, we're now going for lunch next week. All the time. I haven't seen my... I've never met my grandchild. Yesterday, yesterday with my sister, I took a screenshot and I cried on Rodeo Drive. I'm not kidding. I cried and I saw her email and she said, I've never met my grandson. Thanks to you. I've just met my grandson. And this is then she started a picture. Those are the things that I literally live for because like I said, I do believe that the devil's at work here. I think it's a spiritual war to an extent because it's when you disrupt the family unit, he loves it more than murder, stealing, everything like that, because when you break that, you break generations to come. And so So for me, I live for that. And to see that where it's like people are, even if they're not estranged, they're now aware of the societal conditioning and how they're raising their child, how they're going to approach it, how they're okay with the tough love and learning communication that's more important now than ever.
I love that. Okay, by the way, we never did this shot. We do this performance shot on this podcast called Magic Mind, and I got so excited to talk to you. I forgot about it. Awesome. So we shake it. And by the way, do you have another podcast after? Because it can help you be super focused for them. Not for me. I don't today. Apparently, I missed that moment. So we shake it. I had a couple of read today. This one has no caffeine, by the way. Okay. Ready? Cheers.
Cheers.
It's good, right? That's very good. I know. Are you having one, too? They're delicious. I don't really drink the caffeine.
Mine's main, Bacopba.
Right, you're a herbalist. Right. Rodiola. Tell me What do you think of the ingredients.
Mindsman is incredible because I'm sure you know this. Yeah, tell me. It's a rhodiola, it's an adaptogen, Cordyceps, another mushroom, ashwagandha, altianine, tumeric, the vitamins, which gives you energy, which is the vitamin B1, 2, 3 is where the energy is coming in from.
I forgot. She's also a herbal, ladies and gentlemen.
I can't read the last one.
I'm sorry. I'm blind, by the way, too.
I'm like, What does the last one say? Don't ask me. I have no idea what the last one says.
Just one second. Guys, I'm going to let you guys off. Okay, bye.
Cutting off family and chronic therapy have become normalized, yet people feel more disconnected than ever. What’s labeled as healing often rewards avoidance and quietly erodes emotional resilience.
We dive deeper into this in the latest Habits & Hustle with Tania Khazaal. We also chat about why therapy can keep people stuck instead of healing, how “protecting your peace” often protects pain, and why most people quit in the valley of despair right before real growth begins.
Tania Khazaal is an emotional healing expert with a background in herbal practice and extensive study in psychology, neuroscience, human behavior, and communication. Her work centers on emotional resilience, relational repair, and the mind body connection.
What We Discuss:
(05:24) Why family estrangement is rising
(06:27) How therapy culture can keep people stuck
(08:24) When “protecting your peace” becomes avoidance
(14:06) Triggers vs personal responsibility
(23:03) Emotional suppression and physical health
(36:54) Gentle parenting, discipline, and resilience
(39:17) How emotional growth affects health, relationships, and performance
(44:37) The valley of despair and why people quit(
49:12) Discipline and future pacing over motivation
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Find more from Jen:
Website: www.jennifercohen.com
Instagram: @therealjencohen
Books: www.jennifercohen.com/books
Speaking: www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement
Find more from Tania Khazaal:
Website: www.taniakhazaal.com
Instagram: @taniakhazaal
Facebook: @taniatheherbalistofficial
Youtube: @taniakhazaal