The Fearless Road
Entrepreneurial insights, stories, and advice on embracing fear, breaking boundaries, and achieving goals on the road to success.
Join Michael on a captivating odyssey down 'The Fearless Road' and brace yourself for a life-altering transformation. This groundbreaking podcast is not merely a conduit to success; it is a profound exploration of courage, authenticity, and the pursuit of passions. With each episode, Michael and his dedicated team embark on a quest to uncover the secrets to triumph and support the unwavering determination required to chase dreams fearlessly.
The Fearless Road is committed to exploring the road to success and empowering our audience to navigate this journey with confidence, resilience, and fearlessness. Pursuing your passions and being yourself requires tremendous inner strength and vulnerability. It’s important to consistently recognize and appreciate the confidence it takes to follow your heart and your dreams. Stay Fearless!
The Fearless Road
03. Emotional Armor: Turning Pain into Power, Janet Barrett's Fearless Journey to Emotional Wellbeing
Imagine if you could turn your pain into power and your fear into fuel? How transformative would that be? This episode brings you a riveting conversation with Janet Barrett, a mental health advocate, author, and speaker who has done just that. She's the CEO of Cerebral Health and the author of the book, Stop the Break. Her journey from surviving to thriving is nothing short of inspirational.
We unpack a wide range of topics with Janet. She shares her experiences with fear, trauma, and the journey to emotional resilience. You'll get insightful tips on how to be proactive in managing mental health, from understanding how your emotions can aid personal growth to the importance of setting healthy boundaries. Janet's approach will challenge your perception of societal norms and encourage you to prioritize your emotional wellbeing.
In this episode, we also delve into how language shapes our perception and understanding of the world. We consider the impact of societal expectations on self-perception and self-love, and explore the significance of teaching emotional intelligence to children. The conversation with Janet is sure to inspire you to embark on your own fearless journey towards emotional wellbeing. So, join us and let's learn together!
Okay, so the show is back up, my stuff is back up, the computer is repaired.
Michael Devous:I mean, it was kind of a disaster. You know lessons learned. Y'all make sure you back up your stuff twice in multiple places to the cloud and locally, because you never know. I thought I had, I thought I was on top of it. I consider myself to be relatively tech savvy, you know so, and yet I was just so busy going and doing that I forgot to do some of the things to take care of my files and my product and my production. But luckily for me, you know, the files are saved. So here we are.
Michael Devous:Episode three finally coming out with Janet Barrett, whose author of Stop the Break, is an exploration of how to stop the cycle of the mental abuse we heap on ourselves, that we do to ourselves as a result of our conditioning or training or upbringing, and to discover our emotional core and how, by abdicating responsibility for that, we can wind up miles and miles and years down the road, waking up one day only realize it, just to realize that that. How did we get here? What's happening with my life? What's happening with my marriage? What's happening with my family? What's happening with my emotions? A lot of us learn coping skills and coping mechanisms that do not serve us and that's no one's fault in particular, but it is our responsibility to do better for ourselves, and this book and what Janet is trying to do to help us, is to find out how to have a better relationship with our self and our emotions and to begin to bring those things to the surface and allow them to guide us, which is what the fearless road also does, which is, I hope, provides some way of guiding us down our road to success as entrepreneurs, authors, business people, just in life in general, you know, because we can get lost, you know, in the minutia, we can get lost in the busyness of life. We can get lost with our children and our families and work and our efforts and our businesses and stuff, and forget that taking care of ourselves emotionally is crucial to our well-being and to our success as humans on this planet. Having an amazing experience, hopefully, yeah. So episode three emotional armor with Janet Barrett. Let's get into this. Let's armor up and stay fearless. Okay, all right, let's get into it there. So let's see we are going to start with.
Michael Devous:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to all my lovely listeners to the Fearless Road podcast. Thanks for joining us today, giving us your time, your attention, your lovely ears. I think they're lovely. I hope they're lovely they're if they're like mine. They're super tiny and small, because that's what I got from my mama was teeny ears, but I can hear really well, so that's a good thing. Don't let it fool you.
Michael Devous:So on today's show we have an incredible guest I'm very excited to be sharing our fearless journey with, to be looking at and exploring some of the things that she's been writing about as an author. Our guest, janet Barrett, the proactive and mental health advocate, speaker and writer. She is the founder and CEO of cerebral health, a company focused on eliminating the stigma around mental health and helping individuals learn to thrive. Her new book, by the way Stop the Break, which is out on Amazon you can get it right now takes readers on a journey to help them learn how to be proactive in their own mental health and on their mental health journey. They're through this road and today she's going to talk about her particular journey on a fearless road and she's going to share with us what she's learned about stop, about not just stopping and surviving, but beginning to thrive, so welcome.
Janet Barrett:Janet.
Michael Devous:Barrett, that's where we do this. I don't know if I'm going to put applause in here, but, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure people are applauding like crazy out there, so of course they are.
Michael Devous:I mean why wouldn't they From surviving to thriving? I mean, this is one of the things that I think most of us hopefully a lot of us find out, where we discovered that that's what's happening. We discover that we've been spending the majority of our life just surviving, that all the tactics and all of the methods and all of the things and skill sets and experiences that we seem to have accumulated, that have allowed us to just sort of put it on cruise control and manage things, you know, suddenly we realize, oh my God, we're just surviving, we're not thriving anymore, we're not chasing the dream, we're just sitting back and kind of cruising. By the way, I thought that that's what I wanted. I thought that's what I deserved was to relax a little bit right and take my foot off the pedal for a minute and enjoy some of the fruits of my particular labors.
Janet Barrett:When I discovered that's not where my happiness lies, I totally understand Absolutely, and I feel like so many people do feel like they just have to push through and keep going and not really focus on what they deserve and what they should be able to get out of life.
Michael Devous:So a little background on you. I know that we did this beautiful intro and everything, but do you want to give the audience a little bit more of a? I don't know? Take us back a little bit and share with us a little bit more about yourself and your journey, specifically as an entrepreneur, of course, but in your personal life too, which I know has a lot of extra. There's a lot of stuff to unpack there.
Janet Barrett:I am extra, I'm sure we'll get into it I am extra. I will absolutely take that moniker, no problem.
Michael Devous:Own that. I own it. I own it Right here.
Janet Barrett:So I found myself a few years ago and what I like to think of as kind of the second stage of my adult life. So my first stage is what I think most everybody does. They finish their education and then they get their first real job. And I did that. I finished actually my first master's degree and went out and to the corporate world and became a management consultant.
Michael Devous:And I worked with. Wait what? Right out of college, you became a management consultant.
Janet Barrett:I did yeah.
Michael Devous:It was news fast.
Janet Barrett:I know it was not like yes, it was not that exciting. I worked on skew rationalization and product procurement strategies.
Michael Devous:Wow, I know how long did it take you to say that without stumbling over the words.
Janet Barrett:Well, let's see, that was 30 years ago, so about 30 years, yeah, I know Skews.
Michael Devous:Does anyone recall skews for the listeners out there? A skew is like a QR code, but the original way that the UPC codes that we used to put on packaging so that we could follow inventory through its supposedly through its logistics trail. So I'm really smart.
Janet Barrett:I know it seems like you may have had some skew experience yourself.
Michael Devous:I have. I have. I have a personal relationship with organization and I have to admit that I use smart labels when I moved, and so every box had a smart label and a photograph so you could scan it and you could see what was inside of it, and then I could put it on a chart in my Google Drive to show me where in the storage it was placed.
Janet Barrett:Oh my goodness, so I could find it yeah, ups has nothing on you.
Michael Devous:Dude Container store. I go like, take me, you want to take me on a date. Take me on a date, get some fro yo and take me to a container store and I'll geek out.
Janet Barrett:So you're like all right, we're getting married now. That's what it is, and it's all going to be spacial. That's basically the Like. I will be able to track it as well. Oh, my gosh, that is amazing. I've never heard of anybody moving and doing that level of tracking an organization that is, I might need help.
Michael Devous:It's extremely impressive.
Janet Barrett:Is it you need help, or maybe you need to teach others how to do the same?
Michael Devous:I would love to share the joy of packing well, so.
Janet Barrett:I mean honestly, I feel like that is something that you could teach others.
Michael Devous:I think you're right. I might add that to my list of things I can Well I'm sharing it on this I'm going to lean into packing, exactly. So if you guys want to know smart labels, go on Amazon. You can find them on smart labels. You can get them, you can enjoy them, you can stick them on anything and label stuff and then, if you forget where it is, just pick out your phone and look for the label. Search the inventory.
Janet Barrett:Like smart label. You need to sponsor me, yes.
Michael Devous:Just saying right now Hashtag smart label.
Janet Barrett:So there you go. I mean a couple other similarities.
Michael Devous:I know you did this sort of logistics supply chain and everything else, but did you know that we have something else in common?
Janet Barrett:What's that?
Michael Devous:We were both ugly babies. No, you were too I read your book and I love that. Your mom told you about being an ugly baby and my mother cried her eyes out when they brought me to her because apparently I was born early and there's a thing known, I guess, when you're in the womb that you are covered in hair, and I believe you sloughed that off just prior to the actual birth. Well, I was born early. I was covered head to toe in black hair. I looked like a monkey and my mother I said you were a monkey baby.
Michael Devous:My mom cried so hard and she was there with her best friend, who also had a baby on the same day, and they were like comparing babies and both of us were so ugly. He went on to become a super model, by the way, sure.
Janet Barrett:You defined the odds.
Michael Devous:You both turn out ordinarily handsome. Exactly, I didn't do too bad. I kept some of the hair.
Janet Barrett:I was going to say that you still have the hair going and the little, the little monkey ears. The little monkey ears. And yeah, you have good hair.
Michael Devous:Thanks, I try, your mom should be excited for that you do.
Janet Barrett:You have great hair.
Michael Devous:She would be if she were here. So God rest her soul. She's up there, she's watching, and or no, she's not. She's busy. I know her. She's not watching. She's out running around handling all these big angels and doing all major you know what I mean Like she's like VIP level stuff up there.
Janet Barrett:Like she's a super star.
Michael Devous:So she's up there managing other souls and probably has them right now, if I know her in a garden somewhere on a padded pillow digging in the dirt and planning some stuff.
Janet Barrett:So I love that. That's a wonderful.
Michael Devous:I love that image of your mom when she really right before she died, which because I was lucky to move them up to their house in Missouri literally 10 days before she had a massive heart attack and died.
Michael Devous:Oh my telling she gathered her children, my babies, like my babies, and she said that she felt like when she was, that she's the tender, she's tending her garden of flowers, when she cares for us, and that we are her little flowers in her garden. And so when she passed away, you know, every time I see a garden and every time I think about that and I think I'm just her little flower down here on the garden of the earth and she's tending to me somewhere, you know, taking care of me. So it's a nice feeling.
Janet Barrett:I love that. That is a wonderful, wonderful memory to have of her and then to have that reminder as you go through life is really special.
Michael Devous:Yeah Well, from one ugly baby to another.
Janet Barrett:You know, we find each other, we do. There is the ugly baby club.
Michael Devous:We should start one on Facebook and be like who wants to join? I mean, you know it's not something you can control when you're that small, but my gosh, I think we are all part of a very select group of people.
Janet Barrett:We'll get t-shirts.
Michael Devous:Exactly.
Janet Barrett:That way we can see each other on the street and be like oh, you were an ugly baby too.
Michael Devous:I recognize you. Yes, the UBC, the ugly baby club. It's going to be a thing.
Janet Barrett:I am starting that. I agree, we are starting a Facebook page.
Michael Devous:We digress, but it's okay, because the Fearless Road is a winding journey and not all these roads are straight, so that's just fine with me.
Janet Barrett:I have yet to take a straight road in my life. They're boring.
Michael Devous:They're good for speed.
Janet Barrett:They are, I will tell you so. I grew up in the Midwest and there are mainly straight roads there. It's a very big grid system, so if you see a road on a diagonal, you take it because it's faster. Well, when I went to look at grad schools, I went to from the Midwest, I went down to North Carolina, and my best friend and I ended up road tripping. It was like a 24-hour. We didn't sleep keep on driving road trip. And it was. I mean this was back in the 80s, so a long time ago, yep and atlases.
Michael Devous:So Google maps, not even map quests. Map quests, or what's the other one that we used to have the physical maps.
Janet Barrett:They were called. I can see it in the back of the car, just an atlas Like the big book. Yeah, that's what I had and so yeah, so I basically would page through that and we'd figure out our route. And as we're getting closer, we're getting more and more tired, and I finally found this road that went on a diagonal through West Virginia.
Michael Devous:And.
Janet Barrett:I will tell you right now. If you are out driving and you're on a road and a sign above it says entering mountain parkway, turn around. Okay, it is neither a straight path and there are very large animals on there that are roadkill. Oh, I don't know what kind of animal it was, but the amount of blood that was left on the road was enormous.
Michael Devous:And yet my friend and I kept plowing through because we're like it can't be that bad, oh it can Just dead bodies everywhere in the middle of the night, right, and you're just like what the stories you were probably filling your head with, oh my God.
Janet Barrett:Well, we ended up stopping at a waffle house and in the back of a car at the waffle house was and I'm not making this up a burning Jesus in the back window Wait.
Michael Devous:Then we went inside Is a car?
Janet Barrett:Because that didn't deter us A car.
Michael Devous:There's a car parked at the waffle house.
Janet Barrett:At the waffle house and in the back, imagine like a figurine of Jesus. Yeah, and it was. Basically. It was on fire but contained. I have no idea how they did it. I'm still confused.
Michael Devous:So if you guys hear the rain, it is pouring down over my head right now in this studio. I'm in a cabin in the woods here at the ranch, but it's if it gets loud I apologize. So please continue you. The Jesus is burning in the back of a car. Well, where? How did we get here?
Janet Barrett:Jesus is burning in the back of the car. That didn't deter us. We're like nope, we're going in. So we go in, and it's probably about three or four in the morning at this point in time. Needless to say, there's people at the waffle house, because why wouldn't you be? And we go in, we sit down to. You know, young blonde women go in, sit down and these two men who neither one of them had a full set of teeth, in fact, I don't think you could have combined them. I am not making this up, I'm not stereotyping.
Michael Devous:This is truly the people that came up to us Too easy.
Janet Barrett:And they came over to us and they're like you want a ride? We just looked at each other and we're like we are not staying. I put a 20 down. We left as quickly as we could because we know that the burning Jesus, that was their car and we were about to be put into the slave trade.
Michael Devous:So when you were driving away, did the two of you like look in the rear of your mirror for the burning Jesus? You're like, if the burning Jesus is following us, we're in trouble. Gun it.
Janet Barrett:Like pretty much. Yes, and I was driving a car that, by the time we actually made it to the grad school, the muffler had given out.
Michael Devous:And so.
Janet Barrett:I literally pull on campus and you can hear me from a mile away.
Michael Devous:I love the cars. I mean kids. Look, today you guys are so spoiled, I swear to God. You guys get. You get these nice new cars with all these features, where your phone attaches to it and you can talk to it and do stuff. No, no, no, no, no. Back in our day, if you could see through the floor without falling through your car, you were in good shape. If it had four wheels and genuinely had some kind of braking process, you're fine.
Janet Barrett:Absolutely, and if you had air conditioning, you were luxury.
Michael Devous:Oh my God, yes, it was called. Roll the Windows Down.
Janet Barrett:Oh yeah, by hand Crank the thing down.
Michael Devous:I literally I literally because the stereo system was broken on my car, plugged in my bedroom stereo speakers. I opened the panel doors, wired it all the way to the front. It's box speakers from Sony, Pioneer or whatever. It was in my bag seat so I could listen to music. It was janky, it was pretty bad.
Janet Barrett:So that is epic, yeah, but yeah.
Michael Devous:So I don't think that there's ever been.
Janet Barrett:So any of the straight roads, I feel like, have no good stories, but those winding roads, those have the good stories.
Michael Devous:Well, speaking of a good story, do you have an origin story for your fear, like where it all began for you, or?
Janet Barrett:do you?
Michael Devous:look back at all and think of it that way, like your relationship with fear.
Janet Barrett:So my relationship with fear, I didn't honestly discover it until like in my twenties, because I had some trauma as a child and I learned to dissociate and I could basically get through anything and nothing would bother me. In fact, I didn't really embrace my fear until I was in my fifties. So, yeah, so, but I didn't realize how disassociated I was until my twenties because I separated my mind from my body so well that my kids like this story. I was living in London and I was working in a part of the area that was not that great and I was ending work a little late, I'll say 10 or 10, 30 at night. It was dark out and I was waiting for the bus stop, or I was waiting at the bus stop for the trolley.
Janet Barrett:And as I'm waiting for the trolley the trolley and as I'm standing there waiting there's, I can see out of the corner of my eye that there's three gentlemen kind of walking towards me and I'm just standing there minding my own business, just waiting, and they get up to me and they jump at me and I stood there, I turned my head very calmly and looked at them and I said, yes, they ran Because they completely expected me to scream, because they thought they were gonna scare me out if they were planning on doing anything. But they thought that I would at least have some reaction, and to not have a reaction freaked them out so much that they ran away. And they're like what is wrong with that woman that she didn't freak out? Wow. And but I was able to completely separate my physical reaction to anything from what was happening to me for decades.
Michael Devous:And don't you think it's fascinating that? I think a lot of us and when we reach our fifties and maybe this is just something that we do because it is part of our life's journey Although I've examined certain things in my thirties and then I looked back in my forties and stuff but it was very different and now I feel like I looked back at my coping mechanisms, even though they worked for me for so long. I began to examine the coping mechanisms I was using to get through life and begin to wonder what the patterns were there with my relationship with fear and how I was handling stuff. And it sounds like you had already developed a coping mechanism that allowed you to separate, at least temporarily, from the emotion of the moment Absolutely.
Janet Barrett:And so what's interesting is, I didn't even realize I was doing that. Sure, I had no awareness that that is what was happening as I was going through life, because when I started doing it, I was at such a young age that I was using that coping mechanism to get through some sexual abuse, and basically I would literally put in my mind I was somewhere else and what was happening to my body was not me. Yes, and so I completely separated but I maintained that separation for a very long time.
Michael Devous:I'm a fellow survivor myself of that. Yeah, I think it's interesting because I can recall pretty with pretty great clarity the moments that this stuff took place. And it's just like and it's a weird thing for me because and I'm talking about the molestation when I was younger I was my babysitter that started it and it was three sisters who played games and I always thought it was a game. I always thought that it was supposed to be fun. I had no idea it was supposed to be full of shame and full of all of the harm and all that stuff, and I didn't know about that until much later.
Michael Devous:So there's a part of me that's kind of grateful that I didn't carry that burden of guilt and shame with me that would have been heaped on by other people's assumptions about your experience, telling you that this is bad. And this is one of those areas where you know, when you do a lot of reading about these things, with either conversations with God or philosophical things where they go nothing is good or bad less thinking make it so. And I feel like there's one of those places where there's an innocence that we carry with us until an adult tells you it's bad and you did something wrong. Right Up until that very moment you probably don't carry too much unless you know differently, and maybe I didn't. I suppose I was too young to know differently, or at least it was shared with me in such a way that felt like it was supposed to be.
Michael Devous:We were having fun until years later and I always wonder if that's something that has such a massive impact on certain individuals about how they received life after that, how they receive anything that they move forward into, if they're already starting out by carrying this loaded self of self-worth and guilt and shame that just sits there, you know.
Janet Barrett:Yeah, and I definitely did, because I was raised in a very religious family and so anything involving sexuality was not acceptable until marriage, and my abuser told me that one no one would believe me, and the time that I did try, they were right and so no, I definitely carried a lot of guilt and shame. And why was this happening to me and why would nobody help me? And how can I get somebody to help me? And I was completely unsuccessful at making that happen. So I carried that with me for a long time. In fact, what I ended up doing was not only did I dissociate my mind and my body from some of those physical things, I actually suppressed the memory for a very long time, until I was in college and I was actually engaged to get married.
Janet Barrett:And the story of that one is, when the gentleman was asking me to get married, I didn't really want to, but I didn't know how to say no, because I am a people pleaser. And so he came home, got down on one knee, said will you marry me? And I said oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And I literally kept going until he finally stood up and said Janet, is that a yes? And I looked at him and I said, sure, I think so.
Janet Barrett:And so I made literally. I said sure, it was horrible, absolutely horrible, that that was my answer, because it should have been no. And had I respected myself and him enough, I should have said no. And I didn't. And as I was going through that year, I was, as I was getting closer to the actual time I'm like I really need to call this off. I really need to call this off. And then one day I went to the mailbox and there in my mailbox was a letter from a person I knew, but I'd never gotten a letter from before and it was my abuser writing and asking for my forgiveness.
Janet Barrett:Whoa how did he have your address? He was a family member.
Michael Devous:He was somebody familiar with you.
Janet Barrett:He had my address. Yeah, I don't talk about who it was.
Michael Devous:Well, no but, I, mean talk about another insertion of violating your sanctity and your space. That had to have like turned you upside down.
Janet Barrett:Completely, and so I basically couldn't handle that and canceling the wedding, and so I ended up getting married, even though I shouldn't have, and we stayed married for several years.
Michael Devous:Compartmentalizing decided I'll just do the wedding part and I'll just shove that down even further.
Janet Barrett:Well, I was actually starting to deal with that. It was like I couldn't deal with that and cancel the wedding because you know, there was just so much wrapped up in it that I couldn't handle doing both things at the same time. So, yeah, it was a lot.
Michael Devous:Geez, that's okay. So I'm assuming I didn't get through the whole book and I didn't get a chance to read thoroughly all that. Do you share this in there when?
Janet Barrett:you talk about this yeah, it's in there.
Michael Devous:The you say in there I believe it's in the chapter on trauma that, knowing that no one was ever gonna read your story and judging yourself that, you released your fear and started writing. Can you share with us a little bit what that's like to release your fear and begin the journey of writing this down? Writing all this down.
Janet Barrett:So for me, when the way that this all ended up happening was after. So I went through kind of my early 20s. I had my career, I ended up getting married and having kids and becoming a stay at home parent, and then one day I found out my husband was having an affair and he wanted a divorce. And it just absolutely crushed me. And that was when I had to start dealing with everything, because it wasn't the divorce that really crushed me After I went through all of that, I realized it was the fact that I had decades of trauma piled up that I had never really dealt with and I needed to start really dealing with them.
Janet Barrett:And the way that I did that. I did a whole bunch of different things. I went to the doctor and went to my therapist, I increased therapy, I did yoga, meditation, I went on walks, I have a dog, I had lunches with friends all of the things they say that you're supposed to do and I needed something more. And the way that that happened was I started journaling and I started working on reconnecting my mind and my body and learning that a lot of my response was simply because I couldn't acknowledge, I feared acknowledging what was happening and actually really engaging with it, and so I would talk about it with my therapist. But I wouldn't really let myself feel it, and so I kept hanging onto it, and so when I would write it, I would then figure out a way to physically express it, and that's a Okay, so I'm sorry to interrupt you there.
Michael Devous:It's the we see, if I can get into this space with you that you are so practiced at the art of compartmentalizing and disassociating yourself from moments where you could or should or might need to be feeling something that you're unaware that you're doing it. So how does one begin to recognize those moments when you're doing it, when in fact you're doing it so well that you don't know you're doing it? It seems like you're in a loop, or so you know what I mean, like it could be very confusing or questioning yourself. Yes, right.
Janet Barrett:So it literally it took that break of during the divorce where I mean I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I was a complete mess and I just had to start digging into why. And when I really started to look at it and read about it and research it, I just I came across some research about the mind-body connection and to your point about how I had been doing it for so long. When I read about it, my first reaction was, yeah, right, who needs to do that?
Michael Devous:I don't do that.
Janet Barrett:I've been doing it for 50 years and I am totally fine.
Michael Devous:I'm in touch with my emotion. Yep, exactly.
Janet Barrett:So it was like, okay, when I started to really be honest about it, it's like you know what You've done a whole bunch of other stuff. Why don't you actually learn about this and see if it's something that can help you? And so I did. I went and learned everything I could about this concept and there's a lot of science behind it. And if you couldn't tell from my first career the exciting ski rationalization. I like logic, I like data, I like facts. I'm a very emotional person, but I like that stuff. And I like that stuff because there's a solidity in it. There's something very exactly.
Michael Devous:You can rely on it, you can recreate it, you can depend on it.
Janet Barrett:And so when I went through this and I was looking for how to fix myself, I found the science very reassuring, and so I started to apply it in my own life, and I did that by writing about the events, and then and again it was just for me. This was never gonna be for anybody else. I wrote about them and then I found ways to physically express them, and the one that I struggled the most with well, there were two, but the main one was anger, because I had a lot of anger in me decades.
Michael Devous:A lot of that you did.
Janet Barrett:And so I had to find ways to safely physically express that emotion. And so what I would do is I would take what I had written and I'd start thinking about it and then I would do something that would express that again in a very safe way. Some of the things I would do I box, and so I have a punching bag in the basement, but it had to be. It wasn't just exercise, it was linking that thought of the emotion and actually feeling that anger well up inside me as I then would start hitting the punching bag. Or another favorite one of mine is smashing something, and in the book I actually give you the way to safely smash glass. After much trial and error, figured out the number of bags and pillowcases and things that you need to put around something in order for it to not fly everywhere.
Michael Devous:If you've ever had ricochet therapy my mother used to take because I had anger issues too growing up, no wonder, but we used to get. You could go to Lake Salvation Army or Goodwill and you could buy boxes of plates and China and stuff and we'd get this big black marker and we'd write on it Whatever that particular anger was or that feeling was, or if it was a person that made you angry or an issue or whatever, and then we would smash them against the back wall of the alley by the house.
Janet Barrett:Your mom was ahead of her time.
Michael Devous:It was so therapeutic, it was very therapeutic.
Janet Barrett:And it's scientifically proven that that is helpful.
Michael Devous:Just be careful, wear goggles. Yes, exactly, things can shatter and fly, so just be careful.
Janet Barrett:You have to be very again, very safely, how you safely release these emotions. And so I did that for everything that I had written about, and the other emotion that I really struggled with was full on sadness. I suppressed sadness not quite to the degree that I did anger, but I still suppressed it. And so I learned to give myself time to just sit and cry about some things, because when you go through a divorce or many other things, you need a grieving process to get through it. And so I had to let myself grieve not just that, but in my childhood, the loss of the innocence that I never got to have and a lot of other things that I went through, that it was just I needed to honestly let myself grieve them. And so I did. And I realized, once I went through and did that and let that physical expression take the weight off of my back, off of my mental load, that the memory wasn't gone, but its control of me did. It was gone. And so what I ended up-?
Michael Devous:It's influence over you seem to just dissipate, I still get sad.
Janet Barrett:I still get upset about things, but they don't. It's not that it's overwhelming type of thing and it doesn't keep me up at night anymore and I don't need to talk to anybody about it and feel like I need to deal with it. And so I realized after the way a kind of very long story here sorry came out, is that I, on Facebook, did the gratitude challenge, and every day for the month of November I wrote what I was thankful for. But I didn't do stuff like oh, I'm thankful for toilet paper and I'm thankful for indoor plumbing. I wrote things that were a little bit more personal, and one of the things that I wrote about was I'm thankful for tears because they allow me to release my sadness and sometimes they actually reflect my joy. And then, when they're gone, I know that that emotion has passed. And the last one that I did, I wrote about what my therapist said to me as I was going through this, before I figured everything out. She said to me Janet, tell me three things that you love.
Janet Barrett:So I was like okay my friends, my family, my dog. Okay, tell me five things. I love nature. I love yoga. 10 things. And after I did the 10, she looked at me and she said why aren't you on that list?
Michael Devous:Ooh, that's a good therapist Right.
Janet Barrett:Dang, and I was like, oh, darn it, it's almost like I failed the test, darn it. Of course I should be on there, dang it, but it really did. It's like you said. It's like it really makes you think why am I not on my own list of things I love? Because I should love myself.
Janet Barrett:And so when I got done with that and I shared a lot of things throughout that month, I had so many direct messages from people saying how thankful they were that I shared my story, because a lot of people have been through a lot of the things that I've been through. I'm not the only one shocking. I know I'm not that unique and the response I got was very inspiring because they were like I feel seen, I feel heard and I know that I am not alone. And so I realized that part of the reason why I could never have written my story earlier was because there was too much emotion inside of me to actually put it out in the world for anyone else to engage in. And since I had let it go, I had it had lost that hold on me and I felt like if I put this out there and I talked about my story and I talked about what I learned, about how we could actually do better in dealing with our emotions, that it may help even one person. And so I did.
Janet Barrett:I wrote a book. I wrote a book that's kind of broken into thirds. The first third is, I guess, pseudo my memoir. It's very small sliver of my life, but part of my life. And then the middle third is all of the research that I did and I actually ended up going back and getting another master's degree and the book is based on the thesis that I had to write for that degree.
Janet Barrett:And then the last thing the last part of the book is my proposal for how we can make a systemic change in society in how we deal with and treat mental health in a much more proactive way. And I talk about Maya Angelou all the time, because her quote and I realized that this is not a direct quote, but what it's been turned into is, now that we know better, we can do better, and we've learned so much about mental health in the last 20 years that we can do better now, and there's a lot of things we couldn't have done.
Michael Devous:We should be doing better.
Janet Barrett:Absolutely. There's a lot of stuff we couldn't have done even five or 10 years ago, but we have the technology.
Michael Devous:Yeah, well, I would agree because I don't. Well, part of what I think is the technology. I think the other part of it, ladies and gentlemen this is Stop the Break is the name of the book by Janet Barrett, our guest on the show. Part of that, I believe, is our. You know, even in the 80s we talked about, well, we are the therapist and I'm good, you know, and we're doing so great at discovering our needs. And you know, it still surprises me that, this 40-year journey, we are still not good at taking better care of ourselves in the mental health and emotional department, that the very act of you describing your gratitude and leaving yourself off the list tells me that our understanding of love is an action we give away to others.
Michael Devous:It's something that we do for other people, an expression outside of ourselves, not something we do for ourselves. And I think that's so sad to me that we aren't doing better at communicating that and sharing that with our kids, with the next generation, with our doctors and our therapists, and that we are still in this sort of weird space where understanding and loving ourselves is such a big, unknown, vast universe of like stuff. You know, and I think that's where the fear comes from. I think, because we don't, because we haven't identified that kind of relationship and we're not really in tune and we're not in touch, that those fears creep in. You know that I'm a firm believer that most of the fears and I'm not talking about clinical fears or psychological fears or phobias and things like that I'm talking about the kind of fears that we tell ourselves about ourselves, the things that we say about ourselves when no one's around, the things that go off in our heads when we're trying to do, be or have something new than what we currently are, and it's that self-doubt, that image of self-worth that creeps in. And I believe that, because we are creatures of storytelling and our brains love to tell stories that there's this, that the future is always a massive unknown story. We're always moving through time and we're always moving into the future, and the future is always an unknown. You just don't know how it's going to turn out and I think, partly because of that, our brains are constantly trying to project into that space what they think might happen or what they think is going to happen, based on the little pieces of information and data that it currently has. And sometimes, if it's not enough, you get these wildly. You know what if? Scenarios that are bad and you know things could turn out bad or whatever? These fear, things that come up in your head to tell you you're not worthy of this, you didn't know enough, you didn't learn enough, you didn't teach enough, no one loved you, you were raped as a child, you were molested. I mean, look at your past. How do you think that you are worthy of doing any of these things? Right To me, all of that is just a version of your personality who's terrified of a future it doesn't know the answer to and can't see into far enough, and I think having these sessions that you're talking about especially writing it down, I suppose, and exploring it further is where we, we, the person, the individual, answers that question for our fear, answers that question for that little child, that inner child that we're trying to take care of, that we're trying to reinvent a world and a safe life.
Michael Devous:For you know, we need better. We need better tools and ways of filling in the end of our story confidently by saying don't worry what happens, I got you, I'm always going to be here for you. I've got this, we're going to, we're going to make things happen, we're going to make magic happen and it's going to be incredible, the ride's going to be amazing. So don't worry, and I don't know that we do that, I don't know that we have that sort of self-talk that we've practiced that as much as we've practiced the other. You know.
Janet Barrett:And I think the thing that compounds all of that is what we hear from the outside, especially as children. Yes, you know, if you think about a child's reaction to anything when they're young, it is a real raw emotional reaction and if we don't like it, we tell that child to stop. You know, if a kid throws a fit, the famous saying is we get what we get and we don't get upset. And I actually had a conversation with a woman the other day where she said oh, if she got upset in her house, her mom sent her to her room and locked the door and said you are not allowed to come out until you can act like a lady. So she learned that what she felt naturally was wrong and it's unacceptable. If you want for her it was literally if you want to be let out of your room and be with your you know your parent you have to act. The way that I tell you is acceptable, even if it doesn't feel right for you. You have to follow that.
Janet Barrett:And we still do that to this day and we never really go back to kids and say, hey, you know, you had that reaction for a reason. Let's talk about that and let's talk about why I said that, because most often I don't think that it is a negative reason why people say those hat phrases of you know, don't be a baby, act like a man. I believe that people are trying to give perspective to children where you know, if you get a paper cut versus cut off your hand, your reaction should probably be different. And some kids tend to overreact to those things. So it's like, all right, let's just make sure that we're on the correct area in the spectrum of reaction. But that's not what they hear.
Michael Devous:Well, and I think, as adults dealing with a child, like you said, they are in the rawest, most natural, you know, space of feeling, not the nuanced version, not the one that said I'm really feeling upset right now, but I'm going to set that aside for a minute so I can deal with what's in front of me. No, no, no, that's the feeling, and it's up and it's front and center and it's live and it's 100% active. It's not at 40%, it's not at 30%, it's 100% there. And I think, as adults, we're like whoa, like we.
Michael Devous:We don't know how to have 100% of our own feelings. We can't even own, let alone name, 100% of our own feelings because we've treated them, some of them, like redheaded stepchildren, we've treated them like things that don't belong here, aren't allowed to have a voice, don't belong in the conversation. Just like with fear, we run from it, we shove it away, we turn it down, we want to destroy it, we want to conquer it, we want to kill it, all these different things. When fear, it's just simply an extension of your expression. Just like joy, just like sadness, just like happiness, Fear is a part of you and if we've spent so many years pushing it away and kicking it to the curb. It's no wonder that we find ourselves truncated at 50, wondering A how we got here, B why isn't my life better than what I thought it was? And. C how come I can't feel joy, how come I can't feel happiness, how come everything just?
Michael Devous:feels, blah, you know, and and I'm just sort of floating as you said, like you know, we're just surviving, Exactly, we're not thriving.
Janet Barrett:And we try to show those emotions that are acceptable. So to your point, like we try to show that we're happy, you know, if anybody out there has ever said to you you know, hey, how's it going and you're fine, even though you weren't like, that is that's what we do. We can only show those socially acceptable emotions. And yet yes, fine.
Michael Devous:And for you, ladies and gentlemen, cover your children's ears. Fucked up, insecure. What is it? Fucked up insecure, neurotic something? Yeah, exactly.
Janet Barrett:I actually never heard that before. Now I want to look it up.
Michael Devous:Yeah, yeah, it's like I was like, but my mom used to tell me she says how are you feeling? I said fine, she goes really you're fucked up, insecure, neurotic and something or other, and I'm like oh God, I don't think I'm all those things. Well then, what are you? Let's pick a feeling, you know. And I was like okay, let me, let me think more about.
Janet Barrett:It's true.
Michael Devous:She was always so good at that where she was like digging out of me. You're not going to hide behind one comfortable little Pat response.
Janet Barrett:That's amazing.
Michael Devous:You know you're going to need to. You're going to own your feelings.
Janet Barrett:I have to say I know your mom isn't around, but I wish I could have met her. She sounds like an absolute inspiration.
Michael Devous:She taught me a lot. I think one of the biggest lessons of my life was when she abandoned me at the airport during Christmas, when I was coming home from college. I was malady, abusive, disrespectful to her relationship, and you know, I just hadn't. I hadn't. She was already changing. She had already been through the therapy, she was already making the changes post divorce, she was already doing the personal work on her journey and I was stuck in this place of chaos that the family had adopted, where yelling at each other, screaming at each other, creating abusive scenarios was acceptable and tolerable. And she had moved on and she was like that's not going to happen and if you can't learn to treat me with better respect and my people in my home with better respect, you can stay at the airport for Christmas for all I care.
Michael Devous:And I was shocked. I couldn't believe it, but it was a great lesson. It was a hard lesson but it was real. You know what I mean when a parent stops and says no, enough is enough, and the kids not getting it, the teenagers not getting it or whatever. You know, sometimes we have to have that tough love moment where we're literally put in our place and you know I had to sit there on a chair in the airport and think about what.
Michael Devous:I've done and I've really had to put the pieces together. It took me six months of not talking to her to finally get to a place where I was able to talk to her, because I was very upset, but it took me a while to get past being upset, to realize just what I was doing and how I was participating in the chaos and the emotional and verbal abuse scenario in order to stop it. So she was.
Janet Barrett:That is an amazing lesson. I'm sure it was very hard for her to do as well.
Michael Devous:Can you imagine that what it must have felt like for her on Christmas, not having me there and then and I didn't get to see that part of it, obviously, but I mean I just can imagine she must have felt terrible and lonely and you know, without her, her kids, but it's what she had to do she also respected?
Michael Devous:herself For herself. Yeah, yes, that self love and self respect was a big lesson for me to go oh, that's what that looks like. That's what self love and self protection and setting healthy boundaries actually looks like in its expression.
Janet Barrett:Right. I used to have somebody say to me they're like how much are you willing to put up with, like literally the stuff that I know happens to you, how much are you willing to put up with Because it seems absurd, and I was like that's just how life is and it's actually not.
Michael Devous:Well, I think that's what we tell ourselves yeah, but I think we tell ourselves that I think those little, the little mantras and the little statements and the little words, we go well, that's life, or I guess that's just the way things are gonna be. Whatever that stuff is right, who's telling you this? Who's giving you these little bits, these nuggets of bad information about life? It isn't that way, it doesn't have to be. That way you can have a happier, better, more well-rounded and balanced existence and you can show yourself love by enacting some of these things having healthy boundaries, recognizing when you're in a comfortable situation and you don't wanna be telling other people what your preferences are. I mean communicating to other people what your preferences for a situation whatever. How many of us just don't we abdicate that role where we don't go? Oh, I actually don't like that. We just go, okay, whatever 100% me, 100% me.
Janet Barrett:I'm just like yeah, share whatever you want. I mean, I am much better now, but that was how I grew up it was. If you wanted to be included and accepted, you did that. That's how I thought, that's just how you had to be.
Michael Devous:Well, so I talk about this a little bit on my speech too, and I say that we are rewarded for conforming. Our entire doctrinae, nation and school, from the moment we go to kindergarten on up, is nothing but a reward system for conforming Conforming to standardized testing, conforming to outfits and wearing certain things, conforming to knowledge base, conforming to behavior patterns, conforming to expectations from others about whether or not you should fit in, not fit in. Wear your hair this way, wear that outfit, do this date that person, whatever it is. We are constantly being told we'll be rewarded if we conform. And what are we doing? We are ultimately taking our original, authentic selves and we're telling you you don't have a right to be here, you don't have a right to exist, we're gonna do something different. So I don't know what to do with you, but sit down over there and be quiet for a few years.
Janet Barrett:Yeah, you get punished you know, If you don't conform, it's not even just that you get rewarded for conforming, you get punished for not conforming.
Michael Devous:If you don't.
Janet Barrett:And there's never any grace for any options. You know, that's no.
Michael Devous:There's no consideration for any other options.
Janet Barrett:This is the way that it is and you have to abide by it and sadly, I talked to my kids about how there's times when you should fight that and there's times where it's not worth it to fight it, and the hard part is figuring out which is which.
Michael Devous:True, I think knowing the hill you're gonna land stand on is a good lesson, also in life to learn. I thought everything was a battle and everything was. You know, I'm gonna show them and I'm gonna prove them wrong. And I did stuff just because people said I couldn't do it, like I was like, yeah, I'm gonna show you. I mean, how much of my energy and my time did I waste doing stuff because someone said I couldn't do it? Now did I learn a lot of things? Yeah, I mean I gained a lot of skill sets doing stuff I wasn't probably 100% interested in it simply because someone said you can't do that. And I was like, well, watch me, that beautiful, blissful ignorance which is afforded to youth for some particular reason, we don't get it when we're older.
Janet Barrett:Oh, we're still young.
Michael Devous:We're still young, yes, but this is like I love I talk about this with when I share an origin story with Mary Kaye. I used to be a performer, a dancer, many years ago and I was performing for Mary Kaye and her big conventions in Texas. And she has this story. She tells about the bumblebee pendant that she wears and I was escorting her on stage nightly and we would stand backstage while she was getting ready or whatever to escort her on stage and I always kept staring at that little bumblebee and I was. She's just like, are you looking at my bumblebee? And I was like, yeah, I just. I mean, it's cute, it's a pendant, it's got lots of diamonds. I just don't get it. Like, what's the bumblebee about?
Michael Devous:And she tells the story about the bumblebee and how it's physiologically not supposed to be able to fly, but because it doesn't know that the bumblebee flies anyway, and I just it stuck with me for so long and I realized I was like, oh my God, I'm like a bumblebee, Like I don't know that I can't do all these things, so I just go and do them, you know, fail or fall or whatever, it doesn't matter to me because I don't know that I can't, and so I just go and try. And I think that's a beautiful, magical spirit to hold onto. I don't know how many other people have that or experienced that. I was blessed because my parents were like fly, you know where do you want to go, how far do you want to go, Like try anything. And that was great to a degree. But it also lacked some structure, I think, in terms of guiding me down a set of places where I was like well, focus on one thing at a time I was very sort of you know, squirrel with it, you know, for a long time.
Janet Barrett:I think we needed to combine our families because mine was figure out something safe that you are guaranteed. So I had to take college level typing in sixth grade because my mom said, well, you can be a secretary, but I don't understand the statement.
Michael Devous:Figure out something safe that can be guaranteed when nothing in life is. And my gosh the journey between there and the other side after college or after whatever I mean. My God, anything can happen. It's not like you're guaranteed to get to be successful at it just because you picked something safe.
Janet Barrett:Yeah, well, in the era that they grew up in, you know, most people did lifetime employment.
Michael Devous:That's right, that's right.
Janet Barrett:So my parents, my father's past. He would be in his late 80s and my mom is in her mid 80s, and so that era that they grew up in it was it was lifetime employment and at that point in time women could be nurses, teachers or secretaries. And apparently I wasn't going to be a nurse or a teacher, but my mom thought I could be a secretary. I don't know why, I don't know what skill I had.
Michael Devous:Well, not with your passion for UPC codes, I mean. Well, I clearly did not follow that path.
Janet Barrett:But I will tell you, my typing skills are out of this world. I can type at like 120 minutes of work. Yeah, I wish I'd heard I Words a minute.
Michael Devous:I'm a master hunt and pecker, but that means that I also have to have word spell on, because if I look up for the screen, all of the red lines are so much red. I have to go back and fix everything because I can't. I just I suck at typing. I have terrible handwriting too, and I always felt bad about that?
Janet Barrett:Yeah, I do too.
Michael Devous:All right. So I have another question for you. I want to dive in a little bit further for this book, ladies and gentlemen, stop the Break by Jeanette Barrett, which is out now In chapter two. This is a scary moment for you. You had a real scare where you felt your son came to you and uttered these terrifying words.
Michael Devous:I think the world would be better off without me. And you go on to say that you felt this intense fear. You had lost a cousin to suicide and their parents were still dealing with it to this day, and you were terrified that he would kill himself, even though he didn't use those specific words. But your mind went there and you tried to comfort him by wanting to hold on to him tight and tell him that he's worthy and that he's a good person, and to let him know that he's loved and that the world wouldn't be better off without him. Now, I've had those thoughts so many times, and I think that's something that a lot of people face in their life, when there's these moments that you think, oh, the world would just be so easier, wouldn't it, if I wasn't here anymore.
Janet Barrett:Can you?
Michael Devous:take us back into that moment, as a parent specifically, of course. But then, when you heard those words, where were you? What were you thinking? What happened?
Janet Barrett:So my son I can't remember his nine or 10 at the time he came to me and did exactly what he said. He said mom, I think the world would be better off without me. And my world completely stopped in that moment. Imagine, and I don't know how, because I don't remember expelling my breath, but all of a sudden I had no breath. But I also had to be his parent, even though I was scared. He needed me to be strong and so I hugged him and I'm like why do you say that? Nobody, of course not.
Janet Barrett:And as I was going through it, I realized this was something that was bigger than anything I could possibly deal with on my own. I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do, and so I ended up contacting a therapist and said this is what's happened, and unfortunately, because, as you said, I had lost a cousin to suicide and sadly, since then I've had several friends whose children have also died by suicide and I had no idea if that's what he was thinking, what he wasn't. I didn't know at the time that it's OK to talk to any of your kids about suicide and by saying that word to them it won't make them more or less likely to actually it doesn't.
Michael Devous:It doesn't open the door.
Janet Barrett:It does not open the door, it doesn't close the door, it doesn't do anything. It's simply a conversation. But I didn't know that.
Michael Devous:Well, and the thing too, I think, on this is that kids are also learning language. They're learning how to express themselves in a world where words don't make sense. And, by the way, the English language is the worst. I mean the way we use words in the English language. Certain words mean this and certain words mean that they both sound exactly the same. A child trying to figure that out and then also learning to express their feelings and their emotions about their place in this world might say I think the world will be better off without me. I would wonder what experiences he had had up to that moment that got him to that conclusion that he understood enough to make that statement.
Janet Barrett:The therapist that ended up working with him. He called me two or three weeks after he started with him and he said Janet, I think I know why he said that to you. I was like, oh my gosh, please, why, what was it? What can we do? He was like because he thought that the bad thoughts he had about other people, that he was the only person that had those thoughts. Now, the bad thoughts that he had were like I hate my brother, he's a jerk, or that person cut me off, they're gross or whatever. This is a nine-year-old kid, so the kind of language that they had. But he thought nobody else had those thoughts, that he was the only one in the world and because of that he shouldn't be here. He had no idea, wow.
Michael Devous:I mean, I get it, I totally understand, I totally get it Like he's very sensitive apparently and it feels very empathic to some degree. He has a complete empath and I said to him I'm measuring his feelings, like he's measuring them against other people, how it might affect other people if he feels this way and it's so advanced.
Janet Barrett:I will say, until I went through this with him and I guess I'm proud to admit it and not proud at the same time I don't think I ever really realized that, that everybody has those thoughts. I never took the time to sit and just realize that. Intellectually, yeah. But if you don't actually sit through it and have that cognitive awareness, yes, it gets hard to go through and be like, oh, you're right, everybody does.
Michael Devous:And if somebody doesn't tell you that, as a kid, what are you supposed to know Exactly? I mean, we live in our own heads. We have no grasp or understanding for how other people feel, think or behave. We only see them through a very set of specific, filtered lenses and experiences that are afforded us by our family, our family, home and our world. And then, if you go out a step further, the media that children would consume could consume movies, tv shows, things like that don't necessarily ever share the perspective of a kid going through this stuff, like I don't know that it's actually. I mean, unless it's an after school special, I don't know that we would have encountered what other kids are thinking.
Michael Devous:I think I was blessed because I didn't care. I was one of those self-absorbed children. I'm still self-absorbed. People will say that I'm sure, but I never thought about what other people thought and that didn't occur to me until much later. So I love that he was so sensitive to that, being concerned about his thoughts being damaging in some way to the world. I mean, his understanding of the world was such a small space and yet he could think that his impact and his presence there was not a good thing because he was having bad thoughts.
Janet Barrett:Yep, exactly, it was a relief to get that information. But then I also realized and that's part of what ended up driving me to this and talking to people about it is we don't tell kids that we don't even like adults. To your point, adults don't acknowledge it. I heard this statistic and I'm not a big statistics person, even though I do like data. I don't relate to statistics on a personal level, but I heard this statistic. I love True Crime Podcast. Yes, Hello. They oh yeah.
Michael Devous:My favorite murder shout out.
Janet Barrett:And they oh, that's so good, sorry, ok, they had this statistic and I can't remember specifically which podcast it was, but that over 50% of the people Will report, so they will admit to this that they have thought about how they would kill someone else. Not that they'd actually do it, but like would you run them over, would you stab them, would you shoot them? 50% of the people admit that they have had some thought about that, not that 50% have done anything bad or anything, but just simply had the thought.
Michael Devous:I think, if you can see my face and I realize right now it's because I'm trying to recall whether or not I had those thought. I've thought about myself Thousands of times. Yeah all the different ways and I'm so self-absorbed that I can't harm this. I want to remain pretty and I don't know. I don't know how. I don't like bleeding, so I can't do that.
Michael Devous:So you're totally keeping it right, like, but it's so funny that I would have these thoughts about, like you know, I would be better off dead and then go. Well, I wonder how I would do it and then go through all the processes of thinking, oh, but that's gonna be too hard. You know what I only think about. What if I throw up? But I don't like that at all. Nobody wants to drown, so you know what I mean. I can literally Go through the steps, but then it comes to thinking about whether or not I wanted to kill somebody. I've had those feelings are like oh, I want to kill you, and like you know that, but I don't know that I've ever thought Would I lay out the plastic, would I use a butcher knife? What I? You know I'm saying like I don't think it's ever.
Janet Barrett:And I don't think it's like they don't get to the real details, but it's more like you're like oh my gosh, you know I would do something and this is what I would do 50% and I think what 50%. So to me, what was crazy was that 50% of the people actually admitted to it, which, to me, knowing statistics, there's more. Oh, there's a lot more people that probably have thought Even if it's, you know, just a passing, fleeting thing, people have those bad thoughts.
Michael Devous:Well, it's very alley-mick. Deal with those little dreamy moments where you're like, you're like at the behind your car Like oh no. I'm not gonna run you over at promise, but what do I want to?
Janet Barrett:Well, there's times you're like wouldn't that just be? Oh sorry, Whoops, I didn't see that. I swear um. There's a meme out there that it's showing somebody that sees their ex and they say to the person next to them you know the meaning of I'd hit. That has really changed over time for me.
Michael Devous:Yeah, I would agree. Yeah, I used to call them throat punch Thursdays Because I'd be like don't, don't today, because it's throat punch Thursday and I will punch you with the throat like I've had those moments, but I, I did that.
Janet Barrett:Okay, yeah, but it's you know, it's not the thought, though, and that's what I keep telling me, because I'm like having those thoughts totally normal.
Michael Devous:Gosh, if we it's acting we responded and I'm not disparaging your son, for you know the way he responded to his thoughts and thinking that it we would be better off. But if we all responded to our thoughts that way, my god, the number of thoughts we'd have. I mean, I'd be a cocoon like wrapped up in a hospital somewhere if I, if I reacted that actively to all of the fleeting Concepts and thoughts that enter this thing on a daily basis, let alone and throughout my life. You know, thank God for journaling, yeah, thank God for programs like this where I get to like Spill it out and get it out in front of me so it's not in here. You know we're working away and you know planting seeds and creating toxicity in my life.
Michael Devous:I really believe that that's key. I think there are people that push it down, shove it down, pack it up. You know, and I think there's, the body has a physical response. I think you, you manifest enzymes and proteins and chemicals, that that that your body wouldn't normally do. When you do that to yourself and is that was your, was that your did you experience physical response to your compartmentalizing?
Janet Barrett:You're oh yeah, I. So in second grade I had ulcers what in second grade?
Janet Barrett:what second grader has officers? And then I started having dizzy spells and I Went through a lot of different, very odd Illnesses. The last one that I had I was in a situation that was very stressful to me, and I was probably 47 at the time and I apologize if this is too much information for your audience, but I had my period and I started hemorrhaging, and my brother is a doctor and I mean literally I had to stand in the shower because I couldn't get out of it and go anywhere. And I talked to my brother and he said Janet, that's your body telling you you have too much stress, you have to go deal with that.
Michael Devous:It's interesting that he knew that about you in that moment. Yeah, and that you had internal bleeding.
Janet Barrett:Just from the amount of stress you were going through, I mean I could go through my entire life and list out all of the things that I had. But yeah, the the start was the ulcers in second grade and the end was internal bleeding. And Since I finally dealt with all of that and released all of those emotions in that physical way because they do know Scientifically that that is very important to do and so many therapies have come out of it. I actually just listened to this amazing podcast with the guest. It was Ginger. Oh shoot, she's a burlesque dancer, but she's also a dance therapist. So she has, she is a certified psychological therapist and the her specialty happens to be in dance.
Janet Barrett:So we have come up with various forms of therapy. There's EMDR, there's tapping, there's dance, there's there's a whole bunch of different areas within psychology now that use physical expression to actually release all of your stress and your emotions. And we're beginning to understand how critically important this is to do. And that's because I kept trapping all of mine. My body is like, okay, you've kept so much in there, we got to release it somehow. So, hey, guess what? You get ulcers. And then you know I got canker sores. I one point in time I had 15 canker sores in my mouth when I was in seventh grade and I can remember it like it was so painful, but I couldn't do anything about it.
Michael Devous:No, your body was wanting to speak its truth. Yeah, your mouth was physically responding.
Janet Barrett:It was it. My body was like Okay, we're screaming at you. Yeah, but because I had so disassociated, I never paid any attention to it. It was just oh, this is what my body is going to do now. Woo, this is fun.
Michael Devous:I have a guest that's coming on the show it this, I think it's next week that cat the cohe, who is a burlesque dancer. Her speaking platform and her workshops do exactly the same thing, where she uses the art form of burlesque and the art form of performance to help people get more in tuned with their bodies and their fears and their inadequacies, by allowing them to place it in this persona. That gets to reenact this moment, and I think it's just so amazing. I mean it's brilliant. I think it's such an incredible experience.
Janet Barrett:I finally remember that was performer you know I was gonna say you were a dancer like a legitimate dancer, and yeah so I had that physical release.
Michael Devous:I had the opportunity In fact this is interesting that when I was raped at 16. I, the very next more was overnight and I got drugged and he dumped me out in the back of a 711, behind a dumpster and about and it was like near my school. But I managed to get dressed and get up and get to school that morning and I was obviously hung over and recovering from this experience or whatever. But I wore my black trench coat and my hair was down. I was very, you know, emu before emu was emu, I think it was goth. We called it back. This is the 80s.
Michael Devous:But but I, my first class that day was my theater class that had an assignment where you had to come to class with a prop and you had to build a character around a prop. And lo and behold for me. I got called up, of course immediately, because I was running late to present myself in front of the class and their job was to interrogate me, was to question your character and to find out things about your character. And I sat down in this chair and I'm just like I'm gonna go to the bathroom and I'm gonna go to the bathroom and I said I want to find out things about your character and I sat down in this chair and I'm, you know, with the. The chair was backwards.
Michael Devous:You know how you sit down and sit on the chair and I'm like I am sweating profusely drugs, I'm sure, coming out of me left and right from being, you know, drugged the night before and and I'm just sick I'm gonna throw up, and I pull out of my pocket this bottle of pills. I can't think, make a sentence, let alone do much of anything. Well, this is the 80s, late 80s, where teen suicide was a huge deal. This was going around everywhere. All the kids jumped on it immediately and began asking questions about what the pills were for, what's the bottle for, what are you planning on doing?
Michael Devous:And I vomited the entire experience in front of them. I told them from top to bottom what I could remember, because I woke up in the middle of it After being drugged. I woke up in the middle of it twice, trying to stop.
Janet Barrett:Oh, my God.
Michael Devous:I described everything in great detail as much as I possibly could, just spitting it out through this persona of this individual in this theater class and the teacher had to stop the class. Kids were crying. I ran to the bathroom, threw up like whatever was in my stomach. But the weirdest thing or the most brilliant thing about that was the cathartic release of that moment for me. Being able to immediately release my responsibility and shame for what had happened in public to everybody immediately placed that experience over there and me over here, and I was able to distance myself from it and I didn't carry the weight, I didn't carry the scars, I didn't carry the shame and it was so cathartic and I think a piece of me knew that.
Michael Devous:I think a piece of my brain latched on to that process and from there forward, anytime I had a moment of tragedy, you know thing that happened in my life, somehow I went I'm going to spit it out, I'm going to throw it over here and then I'm going to turn and pivot and become something else immediately and that's sort of a form of dissociation. I suppose it's a sort of a form of, of, of, of, of placing the responsibility in the action on something other than yourself, or a version of yourself, if you will. That can carry that for you and you get to move on and reinvent yourself and be oh, I'm fresh and new. You know I find it fascinating, but that was my I don't know release, having that release that you talk about, you know I was a.
Janet Barrett:I had a therapist once say something to me that made me feel really good Because I had a lot of I don't have. Shame is the right word, but it's probably the easiest word over what, how I got through, the ways that I was able to cope with what happened to me. And my therapist looked at me and he said whatever you had to do to get through is okay, and that was a part of you was telling yourself so I?
Michael Devous:why didn't you know better? Why didn't you do better? Why didn't you like, were you like, judging the very act of coping, that those skills helped you survive? Right, and now you were feeling some sort of guilt and responsibility for the coping.
Janet Barrett:Yes, because, like I drank, I did a lot of stuff that were unhealthy behaviors, but it allowed me to actually get through the situation and I have to say him saying that to me was so impactful in my parenting Because now, when my kids come to me and I've had a couple of them tell me about friends that are using more destructive behaviors. A friend that you know, he I learned a new word. He was turned and that apparently means you're drunk and high and I was like, oh, okay, like had to learn that word. But they came to me and I had to explain to my kid I'm like they're not doing that simply to be drunk and high. They're using that to cope with something.
Janet Barrett:I don't know what it is, I have absolutely no idea, but there is not a kid out there that isn't doing that for some reason. Maybe it's because they feel the need to fit in, maybe it's the need to forget something, or like there's a million things out there. But I said, don't judge how they're getting through what it is. Try and help them figure out what it is they're trying to get through and find a different way to do so, and having that conversation with my kids has allowed them to come to me about a lot of things which I love.
Michael Devous:Well it's interesting because I think you know we as a society, one of the things we learn to do not just judging ourselves, we learn to judge other people based on a certain set of small criteria and all of a sudden we think we know what that person is doing, or why they're doing it, or that they shouldn't be doing it at all, and we make some kind of judgment about it.
Janet Barrett:Or what my one of my kids said is like well, what could possibly be wrong in their life?
Michael Devous:I'm like bless Literally.
Janet Barrett:I could name five million things and I still probably wouldn't cover them all. Yeah, like, but you don't see it. Like that's the thing is. You don't know what's going on, so don't assume nothing is going on. Because you think you know, assume something is going on.
Michael Devous:I guess a beautiful way of tying that back together for your son might be, just like you didn't know, that all the thoughts in your head that you're having Other people are having the same thing. They have that relationship with their thoughts and those thoughts can sometimes drive them a little crazy and they can have when they need to deal with it. Sometimes we don't deal with it well and as a result, yes, they may experience this. So exactly, well, I would love to keep going because I we've been going for a while and I love this, but I want to get to a couple other things before we wrap this up. We have to have an episode two. I say we're going to have to have a two part or we are.
Janet Barrett:I know it's like there's too much to dig into here. This is so much good stuff.
Michael Devous:I may have to break this up into two episodes. So you're on a journey as a female entrepreneur, You're an author, you're a public motivational speaker. Do you have or have you developed what you consider to be a philosophy on entrepreneurship?
Janet Barrett:No to be completely honest, I do not have a philosophy on entrepreneurship, what I tend to believe, because I actually had another company before this. I was an interior designer for a while and I was actually very successful at it, but, long story ended up deciding to have kids and blah, blah, blah. So, but similar to how you were talking earlier about, nobody told me I couldn't. Yes, that's kind of what this is.
Janet Barrett:It's not that anybody said, oh, if you can't possibly do that, it was more like, well, yeah, sure, I can do it. I feel like entrepreneurs have this ability to be like well, you know what other people have done it, I can do it too. I can have my own company, I can write a book, and I've done that in a lot of the parts of my life. I mean I kind of joke most of the things that I did in parenting. I kind of looked at it and thought, okay, how many people before this have given birth? I should be able to handle this, just putting it out there or breastfeeding A lot of people have figured it out before me.
Janet Barrett:I think I will be able to figure it out, and by having that mindset it's really helped me be like you know what, you can do it, and if I fail I'm okay, because I've lived with very little like. I can remember having to literally count pennies to be able to eat. And you know, I tell the story of I went, I was in Europe and I would have to hide from the train connectors because I didn't have enough money to pay for the fares. And I'm like you know what. I know I will be able to survive. It will not be the life I have right now, but I will still be able to survive even if it fails. And so I think for me that's what allows me to do the entrepreneurial thing.
Michael Devous:I think the reason why I.
Janet Barrett:Probably a lot of stupidity.
Michael Devous:I think we all have a little bit of that. I just just just enough. You know what I mean. The reason I ask that question is I think that today's definition of entrepreneurship is this highly competitive space where success is being defined by the amount of money you have, the mansion you live in, the cars you drive, the you know private jet that you got and all these things entrepreneur do. And I want the fearless road that explores entrepreneurial journeys to realize that success isn't a measurement of those material items, but more a measurement of the journey that you've taken to get where you are. That success can be found and be had and be defined by enjoying, embracing and relishing in those moments where we don't fail, we learn, we fall, we might not succeed specifically right, something may not come to fruition, but out of that journey comes all of the other things we bring with us. And that is not a failure, that is a massive, massive success. And for those of us that are on the journey currently doing it, then kudos to us and kudos to everybody out there listening. You know, these are the small victories and these are the wins and these are success. You are successful and it can be found and it can be had.
Michael Devous:My guest with us today is Janet Barrett. Stop the break is the book that she has. That's out right now. You get it on Amazon. It's been a joy sharing this time with you and talking to you. Do you have three things you'd like to leave? Actually, I'm going to ask for this little differently. One is give me one challenge you face and two things you want to leave the audience with. How about that?
Janet Barrett:Okay. So the challenge that I face is keeping myself honest with all of the things that I now know. So what I mean by that in a little more detail is when I had to finally admit to myself that I was scared my fear is facing my emotions when I finally admitted I had to do that to truly become healthy. I did it and I went whole hog. I went through all of that really intense, but life doesn't stop.
Michael Devous:No.
Janet Barrett:And stuff keeps happening. Yes, and I have to keep myself honest and keep doing this process, because when I don't, it impacts my ability to really thrive in life. And so that's why I say, like there's the surviving, which I did for years and now I'm actually thriving. And I had a very small example of that the other week where I got something in the mail and I'm on the board of something and there was an invitation that came out and I'm on the committee that was sending out the invite and so all of the committee's names are on there and my name was the only one that was a single person. All of the other ones were cops.
Janet Barrett:And it was the first time that it really hit me that I don't have a partner and in some ways I'm in the minority, especially in this particular instance. And that was hard. I didn't create the life with my four children without a partner, and now here I am and it just really hit me and it made me really sad and I ignored it and it kept bugging me and it would wake me up at night and finally I sent a text to one of my friends. I said I had something really stupid. Just make me sad and she called me right away and she's like what is going on. And I told her and I started bawling as I'm talking about it and I'm expressing it and I let it out and then guess what? I was fine, I'm totally fine, like I moved on, but for several days it stayed in me because I didn't really fully own the fact that I needed to release that sadness.
Janet Barrett:And I have to keep myself honest and that, for me, is the thing that is the challenge that I face every single day. So the two things that I want to leave your listeners with is one. One of the ways that I keep myself honest is I have a list of things that I want to leave your listeners with, and I have a list of things that I call my warning signs. So the way that I know that I'm not being honest with myself, I have some physical signs that I now know to pay attention to. One is my shoulders tense up, I get headaches, I just have a variety of things that happen. My stomach starts to get upset, and so I've listed out all of those things.
Janet Barrett:I have what I call activities that I do. Most of them involve social media. They I'm scrolling through. I'm spending way too much time. It also involves me avoiding people. I'm an introvert by nature and so I will avoid people. So I literally have printed out here and it's attached to my computer because I sit here all day long and there's a list of things that I know. If I start to see them happening, I'm avoiding something, I'm not being honest with myself, and so I would encourage everybody here to actually do that, to come up with a list of things that you know you do when you're avoiding dealing with your life and your emotions, and if you keep it someplace that you see, it will help keep you honest.
Michael Devous:So that is one thing I believe Well, self love is a practice and, by the way, everybody, you got here down your fearless road, down this road, to this moment, practicing all the other coping skills and mechanisms that we've used to avoid dealing with life, to avoid dealing with emotions, to avoid dealing with fear, to avoid dealing with a lot of things, because that's how we cope. Yeah, and it's okay, it's absolutely okay.
Janet Barrett:It is.
Michael Devous:But today we know better and we can do better.
Janet Barrett:Thank you, Maya.
Michael Devous:Angelou, make your list.
Janet Barrett:Thank you, maya.
Michael Devous:Angelou, make a list of love for yourself, ways to sort of some self care, and check in with yourself regularly, because it's important. And if you need to check in with us, you can check in with us at the fearless roadcom. If they want to check in with you, janet, where do they find you?
Janet Barrett:You can find me on my website at Janet hyphen barrettcom and all of my connections are there. So if you want to follow me on any socials, you can find all of the links there.
Michael Devous:Yes, and of course, we will put the links down below when you see this. It has been an absolute joy and a pleasure for me. I am so excited to have had you on the program today to share your journey with us, your fearless journey on the fearless road podcast. I definitely think we're going to have to have episode two. We need to revisit this because there's so much more to dive into and to dig into and to share. But, audiences, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today, with your, your blessed time, your ears, your listening. As I've said before, there are no new words, but there are new ears to hear, and we hope that this has helped you on your fearless road. Thank you again, janet Barrett, thank you, stop the break, it's out on Amazon.
Janet Barrett:Thank you so much.
Michael Devous:Be fearless, you're welcome.