Kim 0:00
It's miraculous. I believe in magic. I live by magic. I'm a manifester like nobody is. And my husband, to this day, he's like, oh yeah. She's, you know, no doesn't work for Kim, and no doesn't work for me. She I don't even know what no means. No means, like, I got to think about it in a different way.
Josh Lavine 0:19
Welcome to another episode of what it's like to view. I'm Josh Lavine, your host, and today my guest is Kim joswiak. Kim is a type seven self press, social seven with a six wing, 712, tri fix. And she's also a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor who has certifications in EMDR therapy as well as internal family systems, and she also does equine therapy, works with horses. Kim reached out to me for this conversation because, in her words, she would like to shed light on the misconceptions of seven as the extroverted, shallow, sort of dumb life of the party. I agree that's a very useful misconception to shed light on, and I think Kim does a very good job of that. Her life story is one of the most extraordinary stories of resilience in the face of trauma that I think I've ever heard.
She tells the story in in detail. This is a long interview. It's probably the, I think it's the longest interview that I've ever released, just about a person's Engram type and I just couldn't bring myself to cut anything. It was just everything was so rich in the way that she shared. And there's so much seven energy in her sharing, in the pace of her telling, in the referential nature of her telling, in the Oh, and then there's this thing, and I have to tell you about this thing. And there's a way that Kim has had a resistance to being trapped,
and a sense of running away from running away from entrapments that she's had for her whole life that I think is quite amazing. Her story and journey up to becoming a therapist is also quite amazing. I think it's I love meeting therapists that have rich journeys to becoming a therapist because they felt the calling based on their own personal lives. And Kim is certainly one of those people, something interesting about Kim in particular, is that there is a way that Kim has found herself in different moments of life, realizing that she has trapped herself, or that she has been stuck in an inner split where kind of she absorbed. This is maybe her six wing talking kind of
frames of how one should live a life that she then found herself kind of stuck in, that she then had to break out of. And I just find that interesting being a core seven that she still struggled with that typically, we think of that as an attachment struggle. But turns out even hexad to even triple headset, hexat types can struggle with that
too. And anyway, I just love Kim's energy and her forthright her openness about sharing, kind of like all of the critical moments in her journey where she had kind of ahas, and then the steps she took to confront herself and to get grounded. One other really important piece of this is that, you know, as a mental type we talk about, kind of like the frothy mental energy that is like the shook up snow globe that we see in well, it's the monkey mind. Everyone has this. But in particular in mental types, we see that, especially six and seven and Kim's journey to discovering modalities that could help her settle the inner snow globe so that she could actually get to the substantive material psychologically that she needed to work through to get to the ground in place that she's now operating from. So I love the story. It's a story of redemption. It's a story of healing, and it's told in
a very, very seven way. Please note that this episode deals with themes like sexual trauma as well as drugs and alcohol addiction. So do it that way, you will. And without further ado, I'm very excited for you to meet and learn from my new friend Kim.
Kim 3:49
So yeah, like I just even noticing my body right now, so hands are starting to get a little sweaty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My my extremities get affected when my anxiety shows up in that way and and I just am very familiar with my anxiety, like it's been part of my life, my whole life. I didn't know it though, like, typical seven, right? It was kind of like, what is this? I don't know. I'm gonna run away from it. I'm gonna run away from it. And actually, I was a runner. I was a long distance runner. And
as early as seventh grade, oh, my God, that's young to be running long distance. But I was running long distance because I
I was running like somebody was after me, you know, and at the same time discovering what was out there through my running. And I loved it. I loved the high. I've always been a lover of highs. Oh my god. I've always been seriously when I was little, I was that kid. I was that kid, like, spinning in circles, and I would just, like, spin on those tire swings until I until I puked, and I do it again.
yeah, and my teachers love me, but they're like, can you please shut up and stop moving Uh huh, you know, because I was precocious. I was, I was moving early, like my mom tells me stories that, um, like, I learned to walk early, like I was, I was and I was frustrated about it, too. Typical frustration. I was, like, pissed that I couldn't move fast enough and so, and that's the story, like, she's like, Oh yeah, you were moving as fast as you could away from us all the time. They actually, literally had to put a latch on our front door because I figured out how to open the front door. And I'd escape as early as, like, three years old, I'd be out. I'd be out in the cold sack, and they're like, Kimberly, what are you doing? Oh, yeah, I can't even imagine. There is, there's so much. There's so much here already. It's hilarious. So Okay, camera on, boom. We have the metaphor of running. We have this anxiety that was showing up in your in your palms, and, yeah,
Josh Lavine 6:08
I think maybe a good way and into this is I'm interested in what you said about not realizing that you were anxious. And I've heard that from some mental types the not relating to the word anxiety. And I think in particular with the case of seven, it's kind of like that's not really where your attention is. Your attention is on the thing that you're escaping to or chasing or the fun you're having or whatever. So can you talk about like, yeah, just go ahead, yeah. Like, that
Kim 6:36
energy is a buzzing energy, and it's very much like exhilaration. They're very, very closely related in my body. And there's also a tenderness there too, and it always shows up, like, right here, and then, of course, in my like, in my extremities. And, yeah, it's like this hyper Ness that, like I used to talk really fast too. I remember people saying, like, where are you from? And we're all, you know, Southern California and, and I'm like, Southern California, why? And they're like, You talk fast. And I did. I was like, get the information out. Let's go, like, I just wanted to get the information out, and then I don't know it was just everything was urgent for me. And sometimes that is also a symptom of trauma, okay, like a sense of urgency is that overwhelm? And I figured out, like, I figured out how to deal with overwhelm pretty early, like, just get moving, get things going.
Josh Lavine 7:47
You know, yeah, yeah. You know. What's occurring to me in the moment is there's this incredible book that I recommend to everyone called how emotions are made, and it's by a neuroscientist named Lisa Feldman Barrett. And the punch line is that an emotion is not a pre ordained physiological fingerprint that has like a particular label. It's not like your heart's beating fast in this whatever, and that means you're angry. An emotion is a interpretation of a physiological states, depending on your context and your what she calls a goal. Anyway, it's a whole thing. But as a mental type seven has this extraordinary way of framing anything to what to serve, a certain sense of keeping them uplifted and stimulated and excited and to experience a physiological state of arousal. And then to claim that that's anxiety would be sort of counter to the seven way of framing things. Yeah. And so it makes sense to me what you're saying about why seven is, why you didn't relate to even the word anxiety, but you would rather or your words were exhilaration, or whatever else you would use so
Kim 9:01
and it also, I think you bring up that that is beautifully said, and I can't wait to read that book. But also, in my family of origin, anxiety and anger were not valid expressions, because if I was anxious, then that would cue my mother to say, Be anxious for nothing. She'd start spouting verses to me, and then she'd say, you need to trust in the Lord. And so there was never any like, what you're anxious, what's going on, sweetie, right? There was never any inquiry into the anxiety. In fact, like part of my story, and we'll go into it, is something horrific happened to me at an early age, and nobody noticed. And I actually have pictures before and after, I am noticeably different. I mean, I was this cute, bouncy, like, long hair, and at some point I cut my own hair, and it was like, I cut it off. Like, all of a sudden I got and that's actually for young one to do that. That's telling. And then I started cutting. My sister's hair too, so, and then I cut all the Barbies hairs, like something was going on with me, and I kept getting in trouble for that behavior, but it was just a reaction to this horrific thing that happened to me. And so, like I was already, I believe I was born with this kind of seven way of seeing the world, but it was like, it's like, our family systems heighten those abilities to survive our stuff, right, right? And so, yeah, like it, I'm back. It's taken me a long time. It took me a long time to go to therapy, yeah, because my family of origin, that wasn't a thing, like, you just don't do that. And so I didn't really have any context or paradigm, right? And then I met some people, and those people, one was a therapist, and she became my friend, and then she normalized it for me, wow. And then the other one was in therapy, and she normalized it for me, and I'm like, oh, okay, yeah. So it's like, we do, we carry biology, we carry environment, and then, like, I think the rest of our adulthood, we kind of, some of us, kind of kind of figure that out, because we're not living our best lives, you know, yeah,
Josh Lavine 11:24
since it's here in the air, are you willing to share your story and what happened and how you ended up processing it and and just, just to set a frame too, is, you know, it's, it's relatively recent that you have become a therapist. I mean, well, recent. I mean, in the last, within the last decade, and you know, and what you're about to describe happened very early. And so this, there's been really this lifelong journey of, yeah, well, I'll let you, I'll let you give words to that. So
Kim 11:55
yeah, thank you. And I'm just checking within Yeah, and I got consent yesterday, because after I told you I talk about it, I'd be okay. I had some parts going, you never talked to us about that. I'm like, shit. Oh yeah, okay. And so I did a journal entry yesterday about that, and really talked to that little girl, because she and I have done a lot of work together with this, with a with an attachment oriented therapist. He was very he really helped me with some early attachment wounds. And so what she told me, and what she reminded me, is that we created something from that, like, we transmuted that experience into this collage. And I call her the Angel of Death, and she this little girl, loves this collage. She's, like, it really helped her, like, go, Yeah, I'm badass, and don't fuck with me. And so when I was so I, I'm an eldest of five, and actually, all of this, I just want
Josh Lavine 13:07
to make sure. I just want to really double check, is it okay to talk about it? Yes, it is. It is okay. Okay, yeah,
Kim 13:13
yeah. I've got her permission. I actually have the Angel of Death looking at me right now. So because she wanted that, she goes, put that Angel of Death up. I'm like, Okay, I will, I will, and and maybe I'll show it. I don't know if we can share stuff
Josh Lavine 13:26
on this, but yeah, of course, yeah, if you want to show it on the screen,
Kim 13:29
you can do that. I will. I'll show it after this little bit. So when I'm an eldest of five, five kids, and we're all really close in age, and we were in an old fashioned family where mom stayed home. Dad was a pastor and very involved with church. He was gone all the time. I mean, he was either helping parishioners, being with parishioners, studying for whatever he was doing. And so it was mom. Mom had had a severe brain injury a year before she got pregnant with me, and it was so bad that they said that she would probably never learn to walk and talk again. And she did, and she learned she remembered things like finally remembered things she had lost her memory. She was in a coma. She literally got propelled out of a car and hit the pavement with the frontal lobe. And so the family says she wasn't quite right after that, but nobody really knew enough about what that would mean. And so before the accident, very competent secretary. She went to school for it. She was competent. She kept books. She was a bookkeeper. After the accident, had a very hard time managing her emotions. So she gets pregnant with me, I come six weeks early in the middle of a potluck, church potluck, which that makes sense, because I love potlucks, and I. Yeah, I do. It's like, it's a seven stream. Like, what are you gonna bring to eat?
Josh Lavine 15:04
Self pro seven right there? Yeah,
Kim 15:06
it's all about the food. Oh, we can go into that too. I'm very, I'm actually attracted to being vegan. But anyway, um, so, so I get born into this family. She's like, she's still in recovery from a major brain trauma, like her hair. Actually, in pictures, she's still wearing a wig because they had to shave her whole head because her brain swelled, you know, and they had to release it. So my sister is born 15 months later, and then my next brother is born two years after that, and then another brother, another two years and then another brother. So by the time I'm six years old, and I've kind of figured out when this happened for me, we would go to my grandparents house, and my mom and dad would get away a little bit, but this was during the time my second youngest brother was born, and when he was born, us girls stayed with my grandparents, and my other two brothers stayed with somebody else, and we would play hide and go seek with my grandfather. Though this is like a choppy memory in a lot of times early memories like this, especially when you're like five and six years old, they're mostly body memories and emotional memories, and I have had kind of a chronic nightmare of being trapped with a Mexican man looking at me. My grandfather's Mexican 100% so his grandma, my mother, is 100% Mexican, and, and I have this sense that I'm being suffocated and I'm gonna die. And I just always would like, I'd have this, I would have this nightmare, and then I brush it up. I'm like, Oh, I gotta stop watching those crazy movies or, and I was also attracted to that kind of stuff. I mean violent movies, poor book, like Stephen King, fan like the more, right now I'm watching True Blood like again, because there is something in me, I think, at an early age, that had a direct contact with pure evil. Yeah, and I was molested. So my grandfather had got me, I had hidden in a closet, and I had been separated from my sister, my cousin, and he he molested me, yeah, and, but I do believe it was only that one time, because I do have memories of never going back into that part of the house again, and I'd only go outside. I would never go inside. In fact, they would never they sometimes couldn't get me to come inside. And there was a story about that, right? And I was this adorable, adorable girl. I mean, I was like, fanciful. I pretended. I was always pretending. After that, the story goes that I started, like, getting in trouble, not paying attention. I don't remember any of the first grade. I don't remember even the move. Like we moved between first grade and second grade. Don't remember that? Like, I don't remember my teacher. I just don't. And then these school pictures, like, there's this cute, adorable picture of me. I've really long hair. I'm holding a stuffed animal. The next picture is, I've lost a couple of teeth because, you know, it's that age. My hair is a mess. I'm like, I've had, I've had chopped it up. My mom had, I kind of remember this. I got in trouble for it. My mom had taken me to a hairdresser to try to fix it. And from then on, I was really afraid of people and and afraid of my grandfather. But at that time, I don't think, I think I kind of stuffed it away somewhere, which we do as children. I blame myself, yeah, meaning, I think, you know, children do this, we kind of, like, the only process we have is, I must have done something to deserve that, right? But I hid that away too. And so, you know, really gave birth to my incredible social anxiety, like terrible people, I wasn't shy, I was actually quite precocious and almost too quick to trust. It was kind of an opposite, like during my middle school years. I found myself in situations where I had no business being in, but it's almost like because I had to put that away. Like I lost my ability to discern Safe, safe situations, right? And I would chronically get myself into like situations with older men, with when I started drinking, with just boys and guys. Days and really, like, had no ability to have boundaries, and felt shame about it. Felt like I was a terrible person because I allowed it. And it was just like, Oh, Kim, poor Kim, you know, I Yeah,
Josh Lavine 20:13
yeah, gosh, I'm just taking that in, and I'm taking a breath to be with it. And thanks for being for being willing to share it. Just Typologically speaking, what's coming up for me is that. So you have that six wing and also one and two fixes, which are pretty hard on yourself, you know? And so even though you've got core seven, which is permissive and reframing and things like that. There's a lot Typologically in you that kind of crack down on your inner system. Oh,
Kim 20:48
that's a great word for it. Yes, yeah,
Josh Lavine 20:50
yeah. And, and the other thing too is, yeah, because they're all three super ego types. But the other thing is that, like with attachment theory. My understanding is, when you have an experience like that, where the the figures that are supposed to be safe for you are also dangerous, it creates disorganized attachment, right? So it's like, how do you don't know what to do, because the people that yeah, you're running to for safety are dangerous. And what do you do with that as a kid,
Kim 21:22
absolutely and neglectful. My mom actually was quite neglectful. I mean, she I don't think she was in her right mind most of the time. And so us kids, we were like a wild pack of dogs. Seriously, when we were set out into the neighborhood, I think neighbors complained about us because we would just be out there till evening. My mom would finally call us in when my dad got home. And there was a lot of fun, like, a lot of laughter, a lot of playing, but also a lot of like I did, a lot of withdrawal, like, my introversion showed up with more, like, I just want to read a book. I would rather read a book than be with people. And so I was really I also learned to read really early. So, like, I was reading, like novels, like Bambi, the full novel. And I was like eight, I was young, and I was dealing with this, and there was something within me that was like, yes, the heartbreak of Bambi losing her his mom, right? And this strong father figure of Bambi is Dad. It's like, that was my dad. My dad to me at that time, was my rescuer. With him. I always knew kind of what I was dealing with, and he was kind, but he was very rigid in his thinking, and so he he was like Marine Corps trained, you know, I spent four years in the Marine Corps, and then he was a pastor, and like he, you it was all about excellence. We do things with excellence. You know, I told you what to do. Please don't make me repeat myself. There's going to be a consequence to the behavior. So I was always working to go, Yeah, I want to get in line with dad. Mom was born, I think she's a nine. She was a she would just kind of, kind of shift all over the place, and she would really get absorbed with my dad, like she was completely enmeshed with my dad. And so whatever my dad said, my mom did, and then whatever the context was, the way she understood it, like she she's still today, like, really absorbed with the concept of Jesus as her friend and so, and then she lives out this really kind of weird, I think it's weird, weird way of being Jesus's Friend and and, and then when I'm with her for periods of time, she'll absorb into me. She'll like, start to like, she won't show like, what are you going to eat? And I used to get furious about that. Oh, my God, so furious. But I've done a lot of work around my mom too. Like, she
Josh Lavine 23:58
the repel, the repulsion of someone merging into you, yeah,
Kim 24:01
oh yes, oh my God. And I don't know if that's a seven thing, but, like, I cannot stand that. My sister is even worse, and she's actually a nine. She's, like, an, I think she's a Bermuda. I think she's an obvious Bermuda, but she, she and I, she's so like my mom, it's, I think it's really hard for her. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 24:24
so I'm, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about you as a young kid around maybe seven or eight, after this whole event happened, and after you started getting into trouble, you were cutting your hair. Yeah, you're reading things like Bambi, and you're a seven and a mental type. And when you were talking about your fascination with, like true crime or these kinds of things, I had the thought it was kind of like a like a counterphobic mental response, like an unconscious counterphobic response to an to just be near that psychological material that you knew unconsciously was there that needs to be processed. Like,
Kim 25:00
yeah, well, I and the kind of friends, the kind of friends I attracted, I'm telling you, I attracted all the like people on the margins, like my best friend, her father was schizophrenic, and she was kind of, she was really messed up, and my parents would let me go to her house. And the mom was like a practicing witch. And, I mean, it was the first time I got, like, it was crazy, like, it's like, the kind of people that I just didn't have felt like filters or things and so, and I think you're right. I think there was a kind of energy there. And I know she was molested, she actually told me, and I didn't know what to do with it. We were, like, in the fifth or sixth grade, and I'm like, oh, let's put that somewhere else. Do you want to go to go to church with me? Like, I thought I knew, you know, and it's like, yeah. And then even later on, like, somebody called me the when I were in middle school, they were doing, you know, remember when they did the student body stuff, and I was running for some sort of student body thing, and they're like, Yeah, you're like, the president of the misfits. And I'm like, what? They're like, yeah. And I'm like, I think you're right, because I would hang out with all the ones that were just kind of probably neurodivergent too. I know that I look back like, and I might have a little bit of that. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but I have all the all the symptoms and, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's like that kind of experience, and just being in that kind of environment that's kind of minimizing doesn't deal with things. It's a little fanciful. My mom's kind of fanciful, and, yeah, it's like it produced in me this desire to read and get into story, and who done it, and will they find the killer? You know, like, isn't that a cry from like that? I wanted somebody somewhere deep in you. Yeah, about, yeah, please, somebody find that person that killed me. Yeah. And
Josh Lavine 26:59
also, just being in the environment where your genuine emotions are reframed from a religious point of view, and that's just what your environment is giving. Yes? So, so what happened? How what and take us through the journey of how you started to confront and process? Yeah?
Kim 27:18
So we, we moved several times, and then in middle school, in the seventh grade, I was beaten up terribly. One of my friends was in a fight. I walked into the fight. My friend was already, like, five foot eight, and we're in the seventh grade, I was a little thing. I walked in. I'm like, you don't hurt my friend like that. And that girl turned on me and pummeled me, and she like, bashed my head against the cement, and so I stumbled home. My mother can't even handle it. She kind of like, she loses it, right? And I and I don't remember a lot of it, but what I do remember is there was decision made to get out of Anaheim, California, because it was turning too scary for my parents. Okay? And so my dad had this dream of moving to rural Arizona, and we would camp there at times. And it was, it was like, near Sedona, beautiful. I was kind of upset because I was just starting to make friends, not the greatest friends. I mean, they were all smoking pot. I wasn't quite yet, but I was already interested. And they're like, Yeah, you got an you got this happened to you? We've got seen other things. We really want a more productive space. So I think my parents kind of like drew in the wagons, right? And so we all moved to rural Arizona, like there's nothing around, like we literally live in two trailers for three months while my dad and his friend build our house. And it was crazy, like I didn't know what to do with that, so I would go off on long walks with our German Shepherd, and I met some kids in the area who, of course, were all doing drugs and drinking. What do you do in those areas with that? So literally, my parents weren't I wonder if neither parent was self prize, because we they just didn't think things through and like, listen to well, this is part of the story. I think my dad was self prized blind, so he was like a dreamer, always doing things. He left the ministry. He started like a car dealership. He loved cars. Boy from Detroit, and so he starts this car corral. He calls it in Cottonwood, Arizona, and can't get anyone to buy the cars, so he has to drive from there to Orange County, California to buy and sell cars. So again, Dad's gone a lot, and we're, like, running around trying to figure it out. We build the house. I get a horse, which is my I'm like, obsessed. I'm like, so excited. I get a horse. I get to, you know, be with that horse. I also meet all the kids that's in the area. They're all. Partying it up. I'm introduced to pot. I'm 14. I'm introduced to pot. I'm introduced to alcohol. I'm like, oh my god, I love this stuff. I loved it. It was like an instant love affair. I'm like, oh my god, the chatter quieted down, right? Yeah, no more anxiety. All of a sudden I was cute and funny, and everybody loved me. Like, who doesn't love that? But the weird thing that happened the second time that happened like I was out with friends at a party, somebody slipped something in one of my beers, oh God, and I was blacked out. Only thing I remember is I woke up naked next to an 18 year old, and my friends gathered me, but that opened up something inside of me that I couldn't stop. And so all of a sudden, this, this pattern, would we go out drinking, I turned into the easy girl like everybody knew that they could, you know, basically, and, and it was like there was such a split already, I think, in my personality, that there was that girl who was full of self loathing and shame and the other girl who was like daddy's little girl. So good, go to church, lead the little kids at Sunday school, and those two started getting farther and farther, and then my dad's cancer came back. So he was diagnosed with cancer right before we left for Arizona, wow. Okay, his cancer comes back, and it went three months. He's dead. He literally the cancer metastasizes. We watch him disappear before our very eyes. And the rule of the household is this, we will have faith, and we will believe that Daddy's going to be healed. So my mom's like, you do not talk about it. We didn't prepare for his death. We were like, all told we couldn't do that because that would give the devil some sort of, I don't know. And so it was horrific. It was like, then my dad dies and we're not prepared for it. We're our whole family's not even financially prepared for it. And so I think my mom too. I think she's self press blind. I think both of who those people are. And so my dad dies, and I find out this way. So my dad is starting to get sicker and sicker, and now he's on a morphine trip, and he's seen angels and singing the angels at the hospital, and my grandparents come in, and we're still not allowed to talk about it, and we all go there one night, and he's gone. He's kind of gone in his mind, like he's no longer conscious, yeah, I go to school the next day, which is fucked up, but I do, and I go to school the next day, and I'm kind of out of my mind. I'm like, don't know what to do with it. How? Just, like, at this point this I'm, I had 14, yeah? So this is after, like, all the things too, like, all this stuff happens, you know? And then I'm 14. Here, I'm almost 15 by this point, it's in March, and I call the hospital, the nurse answers, and she's like, Oh, honey, hold on a second. And I already know my mom gets on the phone, yeah? And she's like, weirdly, your dad's with Jesus now. Oh yeah, okay. Like not even crying. And they come and get me, I'm a mess. And they're like, just trust in the Lord, Kimmy, just trust in the Lord. And then, like, that whole thing happens. So our world is blown up. We have no money, like my dad was really irresponsible with money, and so we lose everything. We go bankrupt. My mom gets her family to help us. It's like this grand adventure in her mind, I'm smoking more pot than I need. I mean, I just can't be there. I can't, and so I'm smoking weed as much as I possibly can. And within four months, we moved back to California, and my mom this is kind of funny, though. I just love it. I'm seven, see, I can laugh at stuff like this. But so our first house we rent, and it's in a primarily black neighborhood, black school. It's 80% black. It's in LA and that was an interesting experience. And I'm kind of glad I got that experience, because I guess this is probably what black people feel like when they go to all white schools. But I'm like this little, cute girl. I'm going to my through my preppy stage. Remember, I don't know, back in the 80s, like I'm wearing my little alligator shirt that we found at a, like, a thrift store because we had no money, so we, like, with five thrift stores, and I'm, like, just this little preppy girl, really cute, kind of hiding, like I would most a lot of people, like, what is going on? Why are you hiding? But I would be sitting like the. Is usually reading something, and the boys from the basketball team and the football team, I was in classes with them, they would pick on me, try to get a rise out of me. And I was just like overwhelmed and but I didn't tell anybody, like nobody ever knew. I was so unable to speak of anything, because, again, I'm like, What am I doing wrong? To wear another layer or something? Why are people noticing me? That last thing I wanted were people to notice me and and so I got, I got found a group of kids there. We just got high all the time. I actually there were a couple of Mormons that I completely corrupted. It was awesome, but I was like, Come on, we'll have fun. You try. You're gonna love this. And so, yeah. And then we moved into another home, finally, but it was a wreck. My mom couldn't afford to fix it. Had to get a help with the loan, and it was falling apart. We were on food stamps. We were we could barely make ends meet. My mom couldn't hold a job, but nobody knew why,
and I think it was her brain injury. I just don't think she she had no critical thinking, none. And so I started getting aware of like, the way she was raising my siblings, and I would get mad at her and have conversations with her. I'm like, You are not doing it the right way. My little one, one energy was coming out, and she's like, you don't get to tell me what to do, sweetie. And the one time I told her to fuck off, and that's the first time she ever slapped me across the face, she was non. She would just disappear in a room and pray. And if there was a problem, she's like, let me pray for you. And then she'd pray tongues. She speak tongues over us. It was so bizarre, because we grew up in a charismatic, also charismatic household, and so, yeah. And so she'd have, like, visions, honey, Jesus is really sad that you're doing things. I'm like, oh my god, please stop. And so, but I didn't have the capacity at that time to make sense of it. I just would get just go get high. Go get high. Go get Yeah, right, right, you know? And so I met a like these group of kids that that's what we all did. And so this was, like, sophomore, junior, senior year, and then between junior and senior year, all my friends had gotten kicked out and were going to the alternative school because at certain point they were all found with possession. I never was caught because I was an expert at not getting caught, because I'm a seven you're not going to trap me. I'm telling you, it's one of my superpowers. And it was like, people never thought I was like, they're like, I'm so glad you're hanging out with Kim. She's I'm like, Here you go. I knew all the ways to get away with it, totally all the ways, yeah, and they're like, they're like, we want them to hang around, Kim. I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna get them into pod with smoking, drinking. I know who to talk to. Let me, let me hook you up, and your parents will never know. And so, yeah, it was crazy. But then in my junior year,
Josh Lavine 38:14
just real quick about that. Just just on the seven thing, it's interesting to me how you know it's like, what I hear from most sevens is that they have a pretty clear sense of just what they want, you know, and you know what you're wanting, and it makes sense that this is what you're wanting, is to hang out with these kids and to sort of obliterate yourself with with marijuana and alcohol and stuff like that, and just to to help quiet the mind. And yes, there's an amazing book by Gabor Mate called in the realm of hungry ghosts, which is about addiction. Yeah, and yeah, one of his main points is about, it's not about the the addiction isn't the problem. It's what is the addiction trying to solve what do you actually get out of the experience anyway? So there you are, young seven wanting to do these things, and yeah, this kind of like seven mentality of knowing how to get away with it, you know, knowing, knowing how to create the circumstances so that you can do
Kim 39:15
what you yeah, oh yeah. It was brilliant. Like, I got away with everything. I got my car. I actually drove myself to get a driver's license. I was already driving. I was taking the car out at night. Time my mom would be asleep, and I would go take our orange Volkswagen bus with a white top. I learned how to do stick shift in that thing, and I would roll it down the street with all my friends. We called it the party van. We'd all jump in turn on the tunes. I was a big head banger. Loved the scorpions, Def Leppard. I was like, we were like, rocking and rolling. We drive all the way down to Huntington Beach. We'd sit around one time, oh my god, I lost my keys in the sand, and it was like, three in the morning. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, this can't be happening. And so everyone's like, no, no, Kim, can. Kim has to get home. Because I was, like, the only one that was responsible. I'd already had a job at this point. Yeah, I was the only one with cash, because I was not going to be trapped, like I was really even by then. I'm like, I will not be trapped by not having enough money. And so I went down to the Bob's Big Boy. I became a hostess, then a waitress, and I just was like, I would love having the cash, right? So I was the one that would and then we found the keys. Thank God. And my mom did not know what was going on until one night, I was too drunk to come home, and I think I had alcohol poisoning. We had all been sitting in a hot tub drinking vodka straight out of the bottle, and I kind of remember some of it, but I they couldn't get me off the couch, like I had collapsed, and I was like mumbling, my mom comes and gets me. My mom's little she's this little Mexican lady, and I think at this point we're probably the same height. And I do remember her telling me about this. She goes, Kim, I never, never heard such language. That's all she cared about. And then I was using the Lord's name in vain, and so and so, she just kind of deposited me like in my sister's bed, because my sister was on the first floor. And I do remember waking up and I'm still in my wet bathing suit. My whole body is like a prune, and I am so sick, and my mom doesn't really do much about it. She's just like, what like she was. So I think she was probably suffering from pretty severe depression too, and just under overwhelm, like here she is, five kids, no husband, but yeah, it was crazy. And so that was my life. I was just for a couple of years there, until I went so I'm waitressing at Bob's Big Boy, and this elderly couple would come in, and they'd never leave much of a tip, and everybody hated waiting on them, but I would because they were really cute, and they reminded me of my grandparents, but they'd always leave us these tracks. And back in the 80s and 90s, there were these little pieces of paper that would have, like, the story of Jesus, and mostly it would be like, be saved or go to hell. I mean, it was really and there was like, these graphic pictures, like a demon and Jesus choose Jesus. And so they'd always leave me attract so this one day, and I always had them fooled. I was like, Oh, thank you. That's so sweet. I love your necklace. Where did you you know I would I was already, like, really charming, and hopefully to get more tips. And they're like, Kim, we, we the Lord is telling us something for you. I'm like, really? What is the Lord saying? And they're like, you're supposed to go to the Billy Graham crusade. I'm like, I am, all right. And this is my like, I don't know what that is, but I don't know. It kind of sounded like fun. We I get me and my friends, we go down to the Angel Stadium, and we're as high as a kite, sit up in the bleachers and watch this man preach. Something shifts inside of me. Okay, there's something that happens. I'm like, What the fuck am I doing? I don't know. It was almost like I had an out of body experience. There was something that was happening down on that field that I was both attracted to and scared of. Yeah, and I'm like, I'm gonna come back tomorrow. Came back the next night by myself, walked down to the field, and just like did the whole evangel, like the evangelistic thing, except the Lord Jesus Christ is my personal saver. And I did, and I felt something, there was something
Josh Lavine 44:02
like, or was it kind of a fat,
Kim 44:05
okay? It was a fascination, and almost like a clarity in a moment. It was as if something stilled inside of me, uh huh, and I'm like, and I knew all the things I'd grown up, very religious and so, so in seven fashion, I became a Jesus freak, like in a day, stopped hanging out with those friends, stopped drinking and smoking, started going to church, started all of it all at leading Bible Studies on the campus, getting involved with The whole Christian punk movement and the Christian head banger movement, and, like, gave up all my worldly music, and that lasted for about two years. And then, because I'm antsy, as you know, I graduate high school, I don't know. I want to do. I'm in this really weird relationship with this guy that's starting to stalk me, and so I decide I'm going to go Bible school. So I go to Bible school in the mountains for a semester.
Josh Lavine 45:11
Wait, mostly on that, so on this, this moment of awakening. It's, it feels I'm using that word in a very
Kim 45:18
Yeah, it's a first moment of awakening that, you know, I see this at like, as we're growing in life, we have these moments of clarity now, I think a lot of times, especially when we're young, they kind of close back up a bit, but there's some sort of narrow pathway that's that's starting to be like, just
Josh Lavine 45:41
thinking, yeah, you're this way, using your hands. I was thinking about some channel opened up in you some, some
Kim 45:46
channel opened up. There was some longing, like longing for and maybe this is where I go in my one two. I mean, I've got a lot of you know, you're right. Super ego energy. I wanted this direct, um, unblocked access to the divine. And so I and I felt it all of a sudden, like I felt like I was in the Divine, whatever that was, and it felt like pure love and acceptance. And I was like
Josh Lavine 46:22
that that actually touched you, and you were aware of it in that language at that time, when you were around 17. Okay, okay, no, that's
Kim 46:30
the language I give it today. I think at the time, I thought it was, you know, Jesus, just Jesus coming in. And I would have these visuals of like Jesus, just me sitting at the feet of Jesus.
Josh Lavine 46:43
Did you feel at the time like you? Because I'm fascinated by this, is that you had lived in this environment. Yeah, that was essentially gaslighting your experience. You know, like you had, you had very intense and severe trauma, like acute moments of trauma. And I'm thinking, like, not just, I mean, yes, it started with the thing with your grandfather, but then there was the time at 14 waking up, blacked out next to an 18 year old, and then your dad dying, and then, and then all the drugs and alcohol you're pumping into your system, and then the way your mom is being sort of dissociated, taking comfort in a religious fantasy, and nobody actually meeting you. And so you sort of having to take care of yourself in this way, by play acting, this role of the perfect little Christian girl, and then all of a sudden, having a sincere religious awakening that makes the play acting no longer a play act, and actually something that comes from a real place in you. And that is like a really radical shift
Kim 47:54
it was, and it was very body centered. Yeah, there was no longer just ideas. And I still remember it I was on the grass. I could smell the grass because we were on the baseball field, and I remember the bright lights. And I remember the woman, she was probably middle age, and she had so much just kindness in her, like she was really listening to me, like she queued into me.
Josh Lavine 48:22
There you go, yeah, like, a heart. I
Kim 48:23
hadn't. I had not, I don't think, yeah, a real attunement. And I don't think I had had that yeah for a long, long time, sounds like and so something about that drew me, and then I and then I quickly went back into mentalization. Because, I mean, that's just, that's what you do, right, yeah. And so I started becoming really attracted to, like, scholar, scholarly interpretations of the Bible, okay, yeah. Like, what does it mean? What's the cultural context? Don't take things out of context. I never did get into the whole witnessing evangelical I was too introverted for that, and I just felt like, why would I ever want to do that to a person to me that felt like entrapment, even then I didn't have the words for it. I'm like, I'm not going to entrap anybody. I mean, around this time, my mom actually went to a KISS concert and stood outside a KISS concert with her friends witnessing, oh my goodness, it was crazy. It was crazy. It was like Southern California head banger hen bigger like my our youth group ministers were both long haired head bangers. The kids have come in or tatted up like real extreme stories of alcohol and drugs found Jesus now we're singing like striper songs. And, I mean, I still haven't seen it. My daughter wants me to. But there's that, I think there's that movie called Saved that's my era. That's like in the 80s. We're all just kind of like, ha. High on the emotional Well, I think a lot of us were from really messed up families, like broken like, that was the age of, like, latchkey kids, for the first time parents were working or divorced, or, in our case, you know, single parent, and there were a lot of that. And so we were all kind of gathered together trying to figure it out. Yeah, and, you know, and I was a leader. I I've always had kind of a leadership I'm an eldest, I'm a seven. I mean, we have a lot, a lot of assertive energy, so I have a lot of hyper quality. Totally, I had a lot of followers. And tell you the truth, what's weird about this is because I was so disconnected to people, I actually wasn't connected. I don't remember a lot of those people, sure, and so when Facebook came around, I had people finding me, and I'd have to talk to my sister, who was the connected. She's a nine, but she's very observant, and she kind of is like a she's like, Well, she didn't do as much drugs as me, either, but she really remembered everything. She's like, Yeah, that's those people, and that's that person that you did this with, and and I still, I was the one that would sit with the outcast out of our circle, like we had a boy that wasn't taking showers. And the ministers were like, Kim, can you tell him to take a shower? I'm like, I am not going to tell him to take a shower, but I will sit with him and see what's going on. And I remember listening to his story and and in this kind of looking around his house and seeing it, it was in disrepair, and I think he had alcoholic parents and and just remembering just knowing, like I had a real sense that, you know, we all don't, I don't know. I saw a lot of like, marginalization growing up. He didn't grow up in a nice area, you know? And so I think I took that with me, and then later on, I I heard from him on Facebook, and he goes, Kim, you saved my life. And I'm like, What do you mean? And he goes, I was gay, and my parents were alcoholics, and I had had all this trauma, and you just listened to me, yeah? And I it brought me to tears. I'm like, at least I did something good there. You know, it's like, and I don't know, I think I've always had that with me, yeah, from my parents too. My my dad would sit for long that we would have people over all the time for dinner. We'd hear the stories, and my parents were very much about serving people. And so, yeah, so I think that's a little bit,
Josh Lavine 52:37
but just to just so I'm clear that was a that was an example of a person that you had this huge impact on, but it like was the memory was foggy or almost non existent. I hardly remember, don't remember it, yeah, yeah. That's amazing, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it makes sense, given everything that was happening in your life, yeah, yeah.
Kim 52:55
So, like, there I am, and 18, and then 19, you know, I'm out of high school. I'm really antsy. I want to move somewhere. My friend wants to move somewhere, and she and I literally get a map out. I'm like, where should we go? Like, it's so boring. Here she goes. I don't know Seattle might be cool. Like, yeah, it rains all the time. She goes, I have family in Chicago. I'm like, Chicago. That sounds interesting. Let's do it. And that's how we decided. We both, like, worked two jobs, waitressing jobs, got all this cash together. We packed my little Volkswagen bug with all our belongings and two black garbage bags in the front, because that's how they were. My car broke down before we even hit the border. The starter broke. Didn't we didn't turn around. We're like, we'll just push started all the way. So push started the car all the way to Chicago. It was a blast. Sounds like we had some Yeah, yeah. We had just, oh, I blew a tire, and this trucker stops, and we're both kind of like, oh God, here we go. We're gonna die right now. Big, gruff, old guy comes out, and he's like, What the hell are you two doing out here? If I wasn't a man of honor, I could kill you two. I could do worse. And we're like, oh, he's like, but I'm, come on, we're gonna get your car fixed. And he does, gets us get we get the car fixed, spend the cash we have come to we'd come to Chicago. And I'm like, This is amazing. We moved there in like, September. The colors are changing. It's a city. It's so diverse, so different than Southern California, and yeah, then I ended up never moving again. I mean, I ended up staying there, you know, for many reasons, but yeah, that's just kind of where my energy went. Yeah, I'm in the northwest suburbs. Yeah, if I could have moved, I would have, but I was broke, and that first February. I'm like, What the hell is this? I thought I knew cold, but I didn't know cold, and I wasn't prepared for it, even though I'm a self prize. But I didn't have my money, so I was just like, I went to the army surplus store and got a wool coat, and I lived down on we lived down on Belmont and Sheffield, which is a real punk area, yeah, and so just kind of and fell into drugs and alcohol, like, almost immediately, like after leaving California, I would go to church and I did the same split. I was so there was so much transition, it was actually very anxiety provoking. And so I started smoking pot again. Yeah, in the that, yeah. So I was just like, back at it, right, right.
Josh Lavine 55:48
What was the the impetus for moving was, was it was, was that it was bored or, I mean,
Kim 55:56
and I didn't really have anywhere to go, um, like my mom, but you knew you was leave, that I knew I wanted to leave. I did leave at age 18. I just had to get out of that house. She was driving me crazy. I couldn't handle watching her with my brothers, like my bit. My middle brother is a total alcoholic that has a mental illness, and he drops out of school. So I'm like, watching all this, and I'm like, I can't be here, and so we get apartment somewhere, but I'm still, I've got all this, like energy I don't know what to do with. And it's that flight energy, like I just need to go somewhere else. Something will be better somewhere else. Yeah, and so, and it was a really, it was like, through those years of my life, it was this powerful wave. It would just kind of like it was a machine of its own. It would just like, boop, let's go. And I my friend. I don't know why my friend agreed with it, but she was in a hard space too, and she and I had been friends since second grade, and I was kind of like, I mean, maybe she had a lot of this energy too. She and I were kind of like rebels without a cause, in a lot of ways, you know, yeah,
Josh Lavine 57:07
sort of this, like, pushing the fuck it button, you know, energy just like, oh, fuck
Kim 57:14
it, yeah. That was, like, my motto, yeah, yeah. And, and then I Yeah, and then I moved to this really beautiful city. We lived in the DePaul area with her cousin until we drove her crazy, and then found a place of our own. And really, it was a big adventure. It was a brand adventure. I was already into positive thinking, because my mom kind of that's just the way we were wired. And so I'm like, I'll get a job. How hard does it get a job? I go down to the Palmer House, you're supposed to be like, I think you were supposed to be 20 years old to serve wine. I'm like, Yeah, I'm 20. I don't know where my driver's license is, and they didn't check those days. They didn't really care. And yeah, I know how to chuck lobster. I had no idea. And so, like, the first night I'm out there and someone's asking me about wine, I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, run. And now I'm filled with anxiety. I don't know it's anxiety. I'm also filled with shame, because I'm like, How the hell did I get in this moment? And then I'm fired, like, two days later, because they're like, you don't know what you're doing. I'm like, I don't and so and but then I pick myself back up, and I get another job, and I get this other job, and it's like, I'm moving so fast all the time. That's like, my youngest brother and I, I'm, like, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna figure it out, because nobody's gonna trap me, right?
Josh Lavine 58:27
Yeah, what's amazing is, I mean, your story, it really puts into perspective how much the personality is a survival mechanism, and that's
Kim 58:39
what the personality is. Yeah, I really believe that, yeah. I'm
Josh Lavine 58:44
kind of, like, just amazed at how, yeah, how you navigating that situation. I mean, it's like your seven, your core sevenness, like I feel inspired actually hearing you talk about it. I mean, like things happen really that were very intense to you and very painful, but the way you were able to, like your resilience, and the way you'll pick yourself up and just keep moving, you know, and to follow those inner impulses that had, like, a real wisdom, like, Okay, we got to get out of this place. And, okay, I need a job. I need to get. I need resources. So let me try this thing. And who cares if I've never had experience, I'll just lie. I'll just make it work, you know, right? But a certain like needing to or another thing that's coming up for me is like, there's sevens. Got a pretty bad reputation sometimes for just being impulsive and selfish and whatever. But when you hear a story like this, and you're like, Oh, this is the this is what seven is for. It's like, yes, is like,
Kim 59:45
I'm very grateful for that. I mean, I don't know how else I would have turned out, but it's like, that's course seven has saved my life over and over and over again, right, right, right. He is, like, she is that part of me that can really think on her feet. It and and I shows up over and over and over again in my life. And so I, yeah, like I, and then I meet a boy. And this is the self. This is where, like, you start to see I have a lot of self Well, I'm self prized, so like I, and I am, oh, God, am I. And so I meet a boy. He's a musician. He's I'm not that attracted to him, but I meet him and his family, and he's the youngest of four kids in an Italian family, and the mother is amazing, like the mother sees me, and she goes, Sweetie, are you eating enough? And I'm like, No, I'm eating yogurt and ramen noodles every day. She goes, honey, you come here and I will give you food. And I'm like, Holy shit, I just hit the payday, and I did. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I fell in love with her. I wanted her to be my mother. She was really capable. She ran a household. She would feed me. She thought I was adorable again, the
Josh Lavine 1:01:09
first adult figure that actually could meet our needs in the way that you
Kim 1:01:13
totally did. And because I'm so damn charming, she's like, Oh my God, you're perfect for my boy. My sweet little Tony, and he was just like, the baby of an Italian family, and he was like, got everything he needed. He was he just and he was a guitar player, and we'd go to the rock band shows, and he was also photographer, and I beat this little groupie, and it was a bunch of fun. And then, of course, we started having sex, and I got really nervous about all that. And so because my Christian morality, it was all twisted up. And I'm like, we got to get married. We're having sex. Oh, a sweetie. I just wish I was there, but then my kids wouldn't have been born. But I was all mixed up inside, and I think I just wanted to be in his family, and I just didn't know how to do any of that. So we got married. I was 20. We got married a couple, you know, a couple years later, and boy, we were ill equipped. I'm Fauci just real
Josh Lavine 1:02:13
quick about that, because it's, it's like, well, you have the six wing, right? And the the kind of loyalty to the mental constructs that you were raised in, even though they were so destructive or, yeah, just is a good word, actually to you in a way, there you go, oppressive is a better word, yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, this inner split of, you know, oh, huge, yeah, massive inner split,
Kim 1:02:39
it starts to get wider and wider throughout my story, like, okay, yeah. It becomes like I am making decisions from one place and living at another place. And so I get married, we have and then we get pregnant a year later, and we're not prepared, and I had gone off birth control. It was a night of partying. He was pot smoker. We were partying it up, and we conceived on our anniversary. And like, it's like, I was terrified, like, through my, through my pregnancy, it was like, I didn't know I'm like, I can't be a parent. Shit. I never felt old enough, and so but we have our first born. How old were you in that? I was 23 when I had him. And, you know, no college, I'm working at a ad agency, kind of working my way through it again, learning things I didn't go to school for, but they're like I had a way of opening doors. And he actually was a good provider. He was only interested in playing music, so he's in and out of jobs, and then we have a baby, and he's still in and out of jobs, and it's like amping up my it's amping everything up for me. So I just press in harder to get the money, so be a waitress and go to church more, because that's the only things I knew what to do. But as I waitressed, I started hanging out with people that drank really good wine. We had to do wine tastings. I worked for Morton's of Chicago, so it's fancy steakhouse. I mean, I bring home, like, 300 bucks in cash, and I'd be like, holy shit, this is awesome, but I'd also start drinking afterwards, and so I had little kids at home. I'd drive home drunk, never got caught. Wake up in the morning, get the kids off the way you're supposed to. Get the kids off, be present as a mama. And that started this just horrible cycle of this split life of not being happy in my marriage. We really, he was he, he is tied to himself. And I think we all agree he's actually a core six, okay? And we were like, bouncing off of each other all the time. He's like, most things gonna happen. I'm like, No, it's not just ignore. It'll be fine. And why are you complaining about that? You're always complaining like I hated the complaining. But that's who I picked. I picked the thing actually that needed to be talked about. I and this is the way I see it is like my attraction to Tony was I couldn't say all those things, so I picked a person that vocalized all my fears, even though I was in denial over him all of the things. You know, he called me. He's like, What are you doing? Why are you doing that then this? And what do you Why are you changing your mind so much? And can't you hold like a job? Because I would, I would switch job, job, job, job, but I was always doing stuff. I would, I would be over involved here, over involved there. The game for me was just keep moving. Keep moving. And it's typical seven like, I became like a master at none. I just kind of skimmed it all. Never, like, never leaved, not really, didn't leave room for digestion, right, right, you know. So anyway, yeah, so have this marriage. We were married for 15 years. Finally got started going to therapy with him, okay? And we just started like, I was like, oh, there's some stuff underneath and but basically, first
Josh Lavine 1:06:22
contact with therapy that right there. Okay, yeah,
Kim 1:06:26
the guy was great. Jewish guy, kind of half comedian, half therapist. I mean, he start, I started seeing me for the first time, like, instead of being run by this personality, I started seeing it. Read the book boundaries, and I'm like, oh, oh, wow, I have no edges in a lot of ways, like I just allow, allow, allow, if I don't like it, I just run, but I never just stand firm with a boundary. And so I started learning about that, and that started my journey in therapy. It took me about, well, we were in marriage therapy for three years, but that last year, this therapist helped us get divorced in a way. I had read all the books on it. Of course, I didn't want to hurt my kids, but there's a great book out there called the good divorce. And just we were really did our best to help keep our kids in the same house so that they wouldn't lose their house, on top of losing their parents marriage. And so I think we did the best we could. He and I couldn't be civil for a long, long, long time. Okay, we are now, thank God, but in those days, I was too triggered, and and then seven, my my seven style, I met my next husband while I was getting divorced. Okay, yeah, isn't that incredible? He was my mortgage broker. And you talk about self press energy. I was just thinking about that, yeah, yeah. And I didn't know it, I just felt really drawn to him. He was so kind to me, and he really, and I had really, literally written out what I wanted in a man. I had just read the secret, and so I was trying to, like, manifest all this stuff, yeah, and I'm like, I just really want a kind man and a man that, just because I was always getting in trouble, like in my marriage too, like my intention was always questioned and and it was like I I couldn't seem to like for with us, with Tony and my our relationship, we just we became enemies of each other. And so it was like, It was horrific. It was horrific to be thought of in that way. And I'm sure for him too. And so with Joe, he was like, Look at you, you shiny, sparkly thing. And so I was not in the really mind frame of, like, meeting another guy. And so I kind of resisted it for a little while. I was like, I really don't, not No, I'm not going on a date with you. And then he really persisted in this really sweet way. He's really sweet and and I'm like, well, I'll go on a date. Where can that hurt? And we, like, really clicked in some ways. And then I got curious about it, and I was like, I'll go on another date. And then I started dating him after that, but kept, kept the kids from knowing him for about a year. But I had, I never dated. I went, I mean, after my after, after knowing my husband since 19, and then 15 or 20 years later, or how many years, I don't know. I'm terrible at math. I'm like, never dated before, and I meet Joe, and it's like, I just fall in. I fall in. And when,
Josh Lavine 1:09:44
sorry, when was your divorce? 2005 so how long I was
Kim 1:09:51
married? 15 years. Oh, oh, wow.
Josh Lavine 1:09:54
Okay, I had a different Okay, yeah, so that was a significant
Kim 1:09:57
period of reframed. Mean, so the the net, or the darker side of reframing is we will put up with for long periods of time, since I'm not connected to my heart space, right? Like it's really hard for me to be connected to that can, like relational connection. I just kept connecting to ideals, connecting to ideals, connecting to ideals and ideas and morality, and really disconnected to what my body was saying. Just connected to what this connection was. There was no connection between Tony and I had no connection for how he had a broken, very toxic connection, actually, from the day one, from the beginning and day we got married, I was like, fuck. What fuck am I doing? I mean, I'm in pictures that day, and I'm like, I can't I can't stop it. Now, the train left the station, and I really believed that. It's
Josh Lavine 1:10:53
amazing to hear that from someone who's typing as you know, triple hex at 712, to have that much self abandonment, you know, in a in a in a moment, or for that prolonged a period of time. But it also speaks to the trauma. It's the trauma, and it's also the the inner split that we talked about around, you know, there's what you want, there's how you raise there's the mental models that you're trying to justify your actions within or trying to have some kind of Compass about the right way of being, and also one, fix two, fix super ego. There's a lot that you could say about that. So there's, I
Kim 1:11:31
know, and you know, it's been so helpful for me to understand the tri fix like when I when I first was typed with that I had done another try fix model, that woman, I forget her name. He was tri type, but um, and I was a little different with that, but with this, this kind of felt like I'm like, Oh, this is what the inner war is. Because, you know, it's an inner hell. It was an inner hell for me for many, many years, like there was no peace and serenity inside me. There was just a chasing. There was sometimes pure enjoyment. There was but there was no quiet, like I had no quiet, even when I started doing yoga during that marriage. It wasn't driven from a quiet place. It was driven more I gotta, I gotta strengthen my core. And, oh, look, I can get really good biceps with this. And so it was very much body molding or objectifying. I did a lot of body objectifying, seeing
Josh Lavine 1:12:28
the body from the mental center, as opposed to being in the body. Yeah,
Kim 1:12:32
yes. Absolutely, absolutely, like, I would like, I have also knee issues because I ran so hard and so past pain tolerant, like, my pain tolerance was so high that my kneecap went out. I've had, I've actually, I just had a knee replacement two years ago because of all the damage. It's like I literally used my body as a tool, yeah, because my body was used as a tool, that's right? And I think, yeah, so it's like, it really reinforced that mental state and furthered that split. And so being married to Tony, I was mostly married to the ideas, like what it was supposed to be, yeah. And even in the beginning, my God, I was in so much fantasy. I saw something in him that was not there at all, at all, and I just made it up in my head. And I did, I still can have that tendency. I can go, Oh, this looks like fun. I'm gonna show up to it. Holy shit. This is not like I imagined. And then it was just like, you know, that's really
Josh Lavine 1:13:42
interesting, that point you're making there. Because what I've experienced with sevens before, that I've found, like, sort of bewildering and confusing is how they can, like, I have a friend is a seven that we've kind of is a very difficult relationship for me, so that I'm just going to preface it with it, but we've, we've made a lot of progress, and we're doing a lot better as friends. We've known each other for a long time, but there's way that in his world, he can kind of there was a long period of time in our relationship where I felt like he wasn't actually seeing me. He was seeing some glossy, shiny version of me that he had digitized and placed in his own head. It's like he's holding this kind of garden of Eden vision of his life in his head. And it's like, and here's my friend Josh, who's like a musician, and he's got this stuff going on, but it's kind of like a mentalized yeah thing. It's not, it's like he's not actually with me, you know what I'm saying? And so there's a way. I mean, I guess what I'm saying, I experienced that on the receiving end of it, from a person who I wanted to be like, attuned to, and I felt very frustrated by that. But what I'm hearing you say is that you, you kind of found yourself like that, created suffering for you because. Yeah, not actually seeing him in the real way that he is, and instead kind of being loyal to that inner digitization of him, you could say, or whatever, the fantasy ideal that you were holding in your head Absolutely
Kim 1:15:13
and it still happens. Like, that's not something I escape. I think my brain is wired that way, like, I'll work with clients, and I'll first, like, I see the potential, sure, I just do, yeah, and so my work as a therapist, stuff
Josh Lavine 1:15:31
in there, too, a little bit, a little bit of two, like the or that two, three area, I would say, like, a way of, like, on the one hand, like what gets emphasized with two is the the offering and the giving and the wanting to help and all that kind of stuff. But what they're often, I think, like the mental center of two is trying, is trying to see that place in you that is really good, that I can, like nurture anyway. So I'm, yeah, 727, maybe I
Kim 1:16:04
love that, that you you, because I'm married a two. Joe is a. Joe is a, what do they call it? I think it's two. I think he's a 269, anyway. Like he sees me as good. And even when I'm up, like, I'm not doing I'm not being good, he's still he's like, You didn't mean that. Yeah. And so constantly, like, updating my and so we have an interesting relationship, because we're both very optimistic. And so it's been we've been together now going on, oh, 19 years this year. So yeah, like we've really in a lot of ways. I see that my two tendencies, when I watch him, like how he also created this kind of vision of who I was when he met me and and I did the same with him. And here we both are. I mean, because we're both sexual, sexual blind, and we're both just like, I don't know what that is, we're both like, we got it. Both got movies in our head. And so for us, over the years, it's really been like we've had to do some real tough work to connect. And today it's like more of a practice for both of us, like, his tendency to gloss over everything has brought him a ton of pain, and my tendency to gloss everything has bought me a ton of pain. So we both like, I have practice. We both have a practice in the morning, when he gets up, we sit down, we look each other in the eye. How you doing? What's going on? How was your sleep? Let's just do a check in. Because before it was just like, we'd both be, Oh, I'd be over in my work, my journaling, my creation, he'd be like doing his thing, would have breakfast together and listen to a story, go on our day, and then do our stories. And it's just like it became just kind of like we were both these kind of orbiting planets instead of being on the same planet. So it's been really interesting to kind of see that mechanism. And I really, and I think I talked about it earlier with you, yesterday or the other day, that the only way I can really connect to another human being is to start to pay attention to my body.
Josh Lavine 1:18:35
Okay, yeah, yeah,
Kim 1:18:36
to start to come back. So, okay, yeah. I always start here. I think this is just me, because it's that's the heart. Okay, I've got some energy here. What is that telling me, overall, what's going on and all right, here I am with this other human being. Wow, that's cool. What's going on with this other human being? And just it kind of brings me back. And then with the therapy, being a therapist that's actually home to that because, I mean, literally, for 50 minutes, I am, I am in, and I am, I am focused, I'm engaged, I'm tuned in, and I'm really good at that. And so that has been my training, I believe, or I think maybe because I've had therapy and I had someone do that for me, like my therapist, Stephen, that's what he would do. I'd literally walk in and sit as far away from him as possible. And the only reason I saw a man is because he was my friend's supervisor, and he worked with horses. And so he was kind of like, my cowboy therapist, okay, he'd literally, like, take off his cowboy boots. He kind of, he's got a lot of aid energy. And he was, when we were, I was like, really into the Enneagram about 15 years ago, brought in the RISSO and Hudson book. I'm like, I think I'm seven. He was like, I bet you are. I. Like, what are you? He goes, I'm an eight. Oh, okay. And so he would just like be planted, and I could just feel His presence and His attunement. And I did not have that before, like that. That really started to help me. And then gradually, it took me a couple of years to realize I'm like, do people normally sit all the way over here, or do they sit by you more? And he goes, and he kind of laughs, and he goes, Yeah, they usually sit right here. I'm like, he's like, yeah, you've got a direct line to the door. Did you notice that? I'm like, Oh my God, no, I didn't know that. And so with this kind of work, I was able to start to see, I call the shenanigans my shenanigans. Like, I mean, we would have whole sessions, and at the last 15 minutes, I finally the bubbles started coming down, yeah. And then I'd like, oh, he goes, I know he goes. I'm gonna write this down and we're gonna start next session with this. Because we'd have to, like, sometimes it would take me so long, yeah, to get into the meat of what was going on, to really digest what was going on. And some for a decade, and it took a long time for me to so
Josh Lavine 1:21:15
that's fascinating to me. And, yeah, man, okay, there is part of the underlying theme in your story is that you were in this essentially flight mode, and and had an inner split for a really long time. I mean, since early childhood, you know, and, and throughout your whole first marriage, you had this kind of inner split and a way of convincing yourself why you needed to stay in it, and through the couple's therapy with him, that was your first contact with therapy, and you started getting more language under you and integrating a new frame to understand what's really going on with you and starting to actually encounter yourself in an interior way. So that was the first, that was the that was kind of your first entry point to that, and now you are a therapist. So that's a quite that's a pretty extraordinary journey right there, which I'm curious about, what drew you to that? I have a sense of it because you've, you've talked about how even as a kid, you had almost like a sixth sense, ability to be with people, you know. And I find this to be true of people who have experienced some element of darkness in their life. They sort of, they have that, they have that intuition, or the intuition gets awoken in them about how to do that and and that's even true for you as a seven as a triple hex side type, that the stereotype of seven is, well, not necessarily the best kind of drop in and listen kind of person, but there, there it is. You had that when you were young. Oh, yeah. And what I'm building to is I'm fascinated hearing you talk about your work with your therapist, where you could go in a, let's say it's an hour session. You could talk for 35 minutes in just the, in just the kind of the the material generated in a mentally frothy way. And it's, it's just like, it's almost like, I think of it as, like, I think of mental types, especially six and seven, as having like, a little blender in here, you know, Oh, yeah. Oh, that's exactly, what are you those? And the blender, it's like, you know, when you when you're, like, blending a smoothie, and, like, you can see the little, there's, like, the the meat of the smoothie and the berries and stuff that, like the pulp down here. But then there's that, like, froth layer up, up top, yeah. And mental types can do get so ping ponging around in that froth that, that's the, it's like, and so you pour the blender out, that's the first thing that pours out, is the froth, you know? And it's like, it's like you have to burn through all that froth before you can actually get to the bottom of the thing. And it almost makes me question, like the model of an hour therapy session for a mental type, because it's like you need more to get you need more to get through all that before you can actually settle in and and then experience the body and get to the worst I'm gonna give you.
Kim 1:24:03
I'm actually gonna tell you what works, yeah, remind me of that, because there is a model that works for mental types.
Josh Lavine 1:24:09
Oh, I would be, I would love to hear Yeah, but yeah, no, so I'm fascinated by this. Like, how, yeah, how did you do that? How did you get through the froth to this place? And it sounds like your therapist was helpful.
Kim 1:24:20
He was, you know, yeah, good, yeah. So, like, as I remember it, like, during our sessions, you know, this probably was like, three or four years in, I started realizing, like, I come up with the meat of it at the end, and it's just so frustrating, right? And so we started talking about that and what that was. And then I think, what happened? First, okay, then my my mother, I, I literally saved my mother from a very toxic. Marriage. She married a sociopath. I'm telling you. This guy was creepy as hell, and said he loved Jesus, all that. And I started noticing my mom started changing. So at the time, she was living in, like, right in the middle of Kansas, and it's a whole story. But I my husband and I, she had called me because I kept saying, Mom, at any time you feel in trouble, if you feel endangered, you call me and we will come down and get you. And she's like, well, I'll never divorce. I'm like, I'm not saying that, just saying there is something about him. I'm scared, and you are telling me some things that are very concerning. Yeah. And so one morning, she calls me and she goes, Hi, how you doing? How's things are going good here, but I think it's time for you to come down and get me. I'm like, oh, okay, so we go and
Josh Lavine 1:25:49
get classic. That's a good nine moment right there. Yeah, things are going great. Could you give me? Can you
Kim 1:25:55
help me? Get me? Because she's scaring the shit out of me. And so we went down and got her, and it's a whole story, but we got her, and we brought her back home, and she lived with us for nine months. I lost my mind. Literally lost my mind. I was just like, what the hell I wanted to kill her. I literally would have dreams about killing her, and I had never really worked on this, and because when I was 19, I moved away, I never had to deal with her like this. And so I'm working with Steven. I didn't know about EMDR, I knew a little bit about, Oh, that's right, I had had some EMDR before I had worked with Steven over something else. And so I come in to my session on Steven, I want to kill my mother. Blah, blah, blah, he goes. I think maybe there's something attached to us. So we started doing EMDR. EMDR is not a mental space talk therapy. EMDR is somatic. Can you say EMDR? EMDR is eye movement reprocessing. I'm sorry, Eye Movement Desensitization reprocessing. And it's really kind of an unfortunate moniker, because it actually was more than that. It's not just the eyes moving. It's about the process of getting in touch with the thing that's the most disturbing about the situation, okay, and at the time. And it's called the targeting. So we target a sequence. We don't process it, make sense of it. We just go, what is so disturbing about this? Why do you want to kill your mother? And then so I, I targeted it. And then you go to Image, what image comes to you that matches that target? Interesting, yeah. And then what is your core belief about this situation? Why is it so disturbing for you on a scale to zero to time? How disturbing? Seven? Oh, wow. Okay, so what's your core belief here? Mine was I can't get away, and so I can't get away. I can't get away from her. I can't get away from her weirdness. She's living in my house. I can't get away. And then what would you rather have that be? What would be more adaptive? This is called adaptive information processing. So you're taking the information and you're, you're, you're processing it through your system, through all your centers and so
Josh Lavine 1:28:29
and just real quick, an image, just image comes from the right brain, which is more connected to your body, yes, than a left brain rationalization process. And so it's that's just to name that. And
Kim 1:28:40
just side note, some people can't come up with images. Some people have only can do conceptualizations. They actually can't do pictures. I can do pictures. I got a lot of pictures. And so we started to go through that. And we we did classic EMDR, which is watching the hand, the fingers, go back and forth at like 30 seconds, 45 second intervals, and what it does to gives your brain a chance to deal with the material, come back out, deal with the material come back out. Deal with the material as something else is happening. And it's called dual processing. It's also called, it's like taxing the working memory.
Josh Lavine 1:29:25
So brilliant model. I've never experienced it, but I've read
Kim 1:29:29
about a lot. Oh, the story on how the person came up with this is pretty cool. But, um, yeah, so it so we're doing this, and I'm starting to get, I haven't dealt with my molestation yet before this, right? Okay, yeah, yeah, that starts to come up. Because what we start, what starts to happen is it's a it's allow, it's almost like loud, allowing the brain, allowing the neural network that moves all the way through our body, like we have neurons in our heart, we have, we have neurons in. Our gut, it allows them to start to piece together the story of what this is connected to. Because if there's a disturbance in their body, the body is telling you something is disturbing you. But it doesn't sound like it's right now time this disturbance comes from somewhere long ago. And so as we started to do EMDR, which there's not a lot of processing, it basically is like, watch my fingers. What do you notice? Oh, you notice that? Go with that, okay. What do you notice? Nothing. Go with nothing. Go with that, yeah, okay, yeah. What do you notice? Go with that. What do you notice? Go with that, and then I was it happened pretty quickly that I was like, Oh my God. And he's like, what I go, I was molested. He goes, Did you know this before? I'm like, kind of, I've kind of talked around it, but I just got a flash. Go with that. Wow, I just got more. Go with that. You don't even have to talk about it. I have a client right now I'm working with. I go, go with that. I go, What did you notice? Go with that. What did you notice? Yeah, go with that because they you don't need to, you don't need to talk about it for your brain to process it. So, yeah, so EMDR is powerful modality for those that intellectualize. I mean, it's powerful modality, I think, for anybody, but particularly for our intellectual that like to talk about it, talk around it, okay, right?
Josh Lavine 1:31:34
Yeah, wow. Okay, that's, that's powerful cool.
Kim 1:31:38
So that started opening me up to more of this sense of there's a lot more going on underneath. And so I started doing morning pages, yeah, through Juliette Cameron's work. And then I started, really started devoting myself to writing I had all actually always been a writer like that was a good modality for me. And again, you think about it, that takes it out of the head space, moves it through your body, and you're able to, like, watch your hand, you're able to interact with the words, and so they become becomes more embodied. You know, it's like you almost get to see it from
Josh Lavine 1:32:20
the outside. It's a slow it's a slow process, right? It slows its
Kim 1:32:24
own and then you can digest it. Yeah. And so around that time is when I was in a series of jobs that I hated and getting really burned out. And then I got laid off from the job I really hated, but this job, actually, I started as a receptionist, then moved into admin because I learned all the programs, because I was bored out of my mind as a receptionist, and people were like, Oh, do this for me. And oh, you do you know Excel. I like, No, but I'll learn. And so I had a real aptitude for learning software. And so I learned all the software, became an admin, and I was working for a diesel engine place. It was a Japanese owned firm, so my manager gets laid off. It's like, three years in, my manager gets laid off, and I'm like, I'm running this fucking department as an admin, and I want to be the manager. So I I was reading the four hour work week at the time. Did you remember that of course, yeah, Tim Ferriss, yeah, yeah. Totally inspired by Tim Ferriss, by the way. Love his energy, right? And is he a seven, three? What is he? He's a three.
Josh Lavine 1:33:28
I think he's a triple competence, 3315, or 351, and he's self, pro social,
Kim 1:33:33
yeah. Okay, okay, so loved him. And one of the, one of the questions was, like, do something really hard at your job. That really scares the shit out of you, but that might open up more opportunity for you. And I'm like, I'm going to talk to the President. I'm going to talk to naka oksan and talk to him and see if I can be the manager of this. Because I was, like, making 32,000 a year. I was making no money. And so I get it all together, I put it on an Excel spreadsheet with like, charts and graphs. And at the time, had just been trained for Lean Six Sigma, like, which is a very it's a process, right? It's like,
Josh Lavine 1:34:09
operational process thing, yeah, yeah.
Kim 1:34:11
And I was really good at it, and so I go in and I had to make an appointment. He's, like, he and he's a president that's, like on his last term, like in Japanese culture, they had terms where they would come out to the United States or into a different country, and then they'd go back, and then they'd come out. And he was on his last term, and he was going to be retiring, yeah, and he was an imposing figure. He was always dressed in this really nice suit. He had this big office, and I walk in and I go, Naka Oka sign, I have some ideas I'd like to share with you. And so I shared with him some improvement processes that I've been working on, and some of the like, some of the stuff that I achieved through it, and then some of the things that this department could do. You. And he's like, Kim Sun, we have no manager. How do you? How do you? How do we do this? I go, sir, respectfully, I can do this. He goes, and his eyebrows would do this crazy dance like he had these like eyebrows that move like this. And he goes, Kim son, oh, that takes a lot of, a lot of what do you call balls? Okay? And it was cracking up. And I'm like, Yes, sir, it does. And he goes, I don't know, you're not an engineer. I'm like, you don't need to have an engineer for this job. And I just showed him why. And he goes, you know? He goes, I'm gonna think about it. And then I had learned, you know, you got to close it with time. And I said, Well, sir, if you could get let me know by Friday. And it was like a Wednesday. Again, he's like Kim, so that is bold. And so by the end of the day, he calls me back and he goes, I, you know, thought about it, and I would like you to run the department for a year under my supervision and the sales staff supervision. I'm like, All right, he goes and this is what we will offer you. We'll offer you 51,000 I was making 32,050 $1,000 does that work for you? And I poke her face. I'm like, I need 24 hours to think about that. Because I was, I don't know, it's like, I read all this stuff, right? And so, and I'm really good at doing what I read, if it makes sense to me. So I got the job. I'm in over my head again. I don't know what I'm doing, but, but I'm sent all over the world. I got to go to Japan three times. I went to Milan. We had a factory there. I went all over the United States. I was the only female in the room most of the time. And by the end of the year, he's like, unfortunately, we need an engineer in this position. And I'm like, yes, thank God, he goes. So I'm so sorry. We're going to give you a $5,000 raise. Like, oh, okay, so I get a raise. I'm an admin, and then six months later, it's 2008 and the company, it's like, it's really hit by the economic downturn, yeah. And so they lay all of us off, and I'm laid off, and I'm so happy to be laid off because I hate this job by this point, yeah, I get laid off with a six month severance, and so I can't get a job because I don't have a degree. Doesn't matter. I've been a manager, and so I'm like, What am I going to do? So I go back to school, and I start volunteering at a Equine Assisted Therapy place, and then I go to DePaul get my bachelor. You
Josh Lavine 1:37:49
were aware of equine therapy, because Steve did that. Is that true? Yes.
Kim 1:37:53
And I read a couple of books on it, some really cool books on it, so I'm helping out with that kind of stuff. And I get my degree through DePaul. You had
Josh Lavine 1:38:02
a horse when you were a kid, as I remember, I
Kim 1:38:04
did, yes, I did, yeah. And so I get the degree from DePaul. Finally, a couple years go by, I get a job at the school my eldest is going to, so I get a couple of semesters paid for. I mean, this is the pattern. The pattern is a classic
Josh Lavine 1:38:19
seven thing I don't understand it. Honestly, it's amazing energy. Yeah, manifesting miraculous.
Kim 1:38:24
I believe in magic. I live by magic. I'm a manifester, like nobody is. And my husband, to this day, he's like, Oh yeah, she's, you know, no doesn't work for Kim. And, no, yeah, I don't even know what no means. No means, like, I got to think about it in a different way. And so, yeah, so I get this degree. I'm working at my kids college. Get him through school. I hate that job, too. I don't want to work in business. I decide I want to be a novelist. I want to I want to write some fantasy. So I go to the husband, I'm like, Honey, I know you're really excited about me having a job and I got insurance and everything, but I need to take a year off. And I'm right. And you know, by this point, I think Joe's probably just exhausted by me. He goes, I don't know about that, Kim, are you sure? Are you sure? And that's always the question with him, Are you sure? Are you sure? I'm like, Yeah, I'm sure. I'm always sure. And so I start that, and in the middle of this, I am really drinking a lot, meaning I'm not starting the day off, but I'm definitely topping off the day, starting about five o'clock when I get home, pouring my wine. I belong to a wine club. I'm just like drinking, and I'm not that happy. Actually, I'm not happy at all. I'm I'm really trying to find the next thing. So I take this time off. I'm starting to write, and I get into this really cool story, like I still love the story, and I'll probably go back to it someday, but I'm starting to write this fiction piece and and it's. About a young girl who's 12, who is a Mexican American, who can hear animals talk. And it's a whole story about her. It's kind of overlaid with a lot of the race tension in the United in probably in California, a lot of with Mexicans and white people, yeah, and just, and just this weird, but unorthodox way she is. And so so I'm starting to, like, write that out, but I'm drinking more at night. I'm, like, losing interest in it. And so then I take up, like, oh yeah. I did mosaics for a while, like I was I couldn't write, so I started doing mosaics, and then I come back to writing, because I feel guilty, because that's what I told Joe I'd be doing and and I and I'm feeling like I'm living a fun life, but it's just it's not going well. And then it turns into two years, and Joe's business is not doing well. It's like he is. He's a mortgage broker, so he's it's like there was another downturn a little bit later on, and so his business not doing well. There's a lot of pressure for me to get a job, and I can't wrap this story up. I'm at 50,000 words, and I can't figure it out and ending. And I really, and I kind of hardly remember this point. I think I was in such a depression that I just couldn't crawl out of this one. And I've had a couple of instances happen like that in my life where I had to go on antidepressants. I couldn't crawl out of it. I just I it was like the whole world was closing in on me.
Josh Lavine 1:41:39
I'm so fortunate by these, these moments of your life where you found yourself trapped in a project or a relationship and and it's, it's so counter to what we typically think of as seven, as like, when I feel trapped, I'll just like, fuck it. I'll just, I'll get out. But there's a way that you've found yourself in these trapped places, but this one was
Kim 1:42:03
a gluttony. I think the gluttony leads to entrapment, and so my race, yeah, yeah. So my my mentalization, so I'm a mental glutton. I mean, I still am. I've got a I can't get enough information and or stories or ideas or whatever to tickle my my little brain there, and so I think that just wears itself down. And I'm not dealing with the high cortisol levels of my body. I'm not dealing with any of it. And actually, at the time I was doing hot yoga, I was literally going extreme too in my body. But again, I even though I had done some EMDR, and I was starting to get some healing around that, I still had the last to me. It felt like the last, the last survival skill, which was my drinking. And it had gotten a hold of me like I was addicted, for sure, and so, I mean, it was an everyday drinking too much to the point where I just would pass out at the end of the night, and but it was all alone too. So not, not alone. I mean, Joe was there, and Joe would kind of go, what are you doing? Your personality seems to change when you do this. But he was so like, on, he would not. He was so on, like, he couldn't. I was scary. I can be scary. Like, if I want something, don't step in my way. And Joe was be like, okay, okay, I just want you to love me. I'll do whatever I can to make love me. You know, he's that totally was getting
Josh Lavine 1:43:36
in the way of, of of the alcohol, of your cooking, yeah, got it, yes, right?
Kim 1:43:41
It would do it his own two way, which was never very good for me, because I would just roll over him and say, you don't get to tell me what to do. This is me. This is my body. I don't have a problem and all the while. And
Josh Lavine 1:43:53
also it had, I mean, it was, I imagine it was in a certain way I could imagine, I don't know that you would have used this word, but like, it would have been sacred to you, because it's been the way. Because it's been the way that you've coped for your whole life, since you were young. You know,
Kim 1:44:06
beautiful word, it was sacred. It was sacred and it was a sacred ritual, right? It was a whole ritual, beautiful glass in a beautiful home. I had a beautiful home. I mean, we had a lot of money. It's like I came from poverty to, like, having all my needs met, being able to take like, two years and be able to write a novel I had it was like I was reveling in it, but so much so I got lost in it, and it was coming down on me. And so I, I, I was like, I gotta do something. I think I'll go get a master's degree.
Josh Lavine 1:44:47
Okay? And it was out
Kim 1:44:49
of that energy, yeah, I made a decision to become a therapist. And I think because, had you gotten a college degree yet? Or no? Yeah, I had gotten my Bachelor's with. Like a bit business in Minnesota.
Josh Lavine 1:45:01
I think you said that. That's right, yeah.
Kim 1:45:03
And so then I went. So I was talking with Steven at the time. I'm like, I think I'm a therapist. He goes, I think you'd be a really good therapist. And so, and I just, I think, because I love the idea of it, the idea of helping people as much as Steve helped me. Steve helped me so much, yeah. EMDR, helped me so much. And so I had this vision. And so I go to, I go to an online Capella. Capella is online because I don't want to be trapped in a actual building. And so, and they had all the cake crop credited, which is what I needed for my licensing, and so I did the journey. It's three years in the middle of that journey, I'm doing well in school. It's my jam. I had to, I have stopped drinking so much at night because couldn't do your work. And I had to be excellent at my work. I had to be excellent. And that was some of the stuff we were unpacking through therapy, it's like, I could not get less than 4.0 and so the goal was to try to get less than 4.0 but I wouldn't do it. And so I had this awful like, so I went dry for a while. I was like, I can't drink it's getting in the way of my success. And so for a little while, at first, actually, first year, the first year my master's program, I completely went dry. I thought, then too, I'm like, I think I have a problem. If I can't stop by myself, then I'll do something else. But so I stopped by myself, which I had been able to do most of my life. Like I could stop for long periods of time for a greater like, a greater good, a greater purpose. This is where one comes in. I really believe it. This is where, like, one's like, there's something better than this. And it has a moral it kind of has a moral flavor to it. And so, so I go to my first year I'm doing well, I've had a year I've had no alcohol in my system, and I go to my friend's house, and I'm like, you know, I don't think I'm an alcoholic. I obviously can stop. I'm like, let's celebrate with like, a glass of wine within the week, within the week, I had broken all my own rules. I wouldn't drink at home. I wouldn't drink by myself. I joined a wine club again, and I'm, like, spending tons of money on alcohol. And Joe's like, What the fuck are you doing? Yeah, yeah. Actually, he never asked me in that way. That's the way I would ask. He would be like, huh, hon, how many glasses is that? Don't you be telling me how many glasses I'm drinking? And so for that year, the drinking got worse, but I wasn't working, and I was able to cobble together my I'm still getting good grades, going to therapy, doing all the things. And a friend of mine, very good friend of mine, we were talking every day. She was a therapist, and she had relapsed and almost died. She had mixed alcohol in her sleeping pills. And I was mortified, and I think it checked something in me. And so I said, I'm going to come out to Florida, and I'm going to spend some time with you, to help you. And I think this was during a break of mine during school, and so I stopped drinking that day.
Josh Lavine 1:48:24
I had to fix activated there also, Oh, totally too
Kim 1:48:28
fixed, not activated, yeah. And, I mean, I call it my codependency, so I had a ton of codependency, and I think that's that too fix, how I go out to Florida, get off the airplane, I'll still remember this. I was shaky, I was I was not. I was a mess. And my friends like, let's get some food. Let's get some some water. She goes, You are not in good shape. And I'm like, I'm fine. I'm fine. She has low blood sugar. And she goes, would you mind? Would you want to go to a meeting with me? And I'm like, an AA meeting. I'm like, I kind of feel weird about that. Like, what do I say when they ask me, I'm not going to say I'm an alcoholic, I'm not an alcoholic. And she goes, No, you can just say hi. I'm here with my friend. I'm like, okay, and that was my social anxiety. Like, oh my god, there's gonna be all these people there. What? And I had no context for AA, except for maybe movies and stuff. And so we go to this meeting, and they're all talking about these things. And I hardly remember that meeting, but there was something about it. They were all women, and they were all like, normal looking beautiful women, like, just normal women, right? And something again, it was the same sort of experience I had on the angels outfield something, yeah, right, something pierced the veil. All of a sudden, it was kind of quiet inside, and it was this knowing that alcohol had become the thing that separated me from joy from life. Alcohol had come. Completely inserted itself in my life, and I was trapped in it, literally trapped in it, like it was a horrifying and relieving moment and one of the most, I think, one of the most important moments in my life.
Josh Lavine 1:50:19
It sounds like it, yeah. It also sounds like it had a slightly different quality than the Billy Graham awakening, which was, yeah, not to be too boxy about this, but it feels like the earlier one had the kind of, I feel seen, I like a sort of, I like a heart. Has a heart quality. This one has like a feels like a mental like a mental clarity, the Piercing Light of illumination, kind of like, Oh, I see. I didn't see before, but now I see. Now
Kim 1:50:48
I see, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wept, yeah. I wept all of a sudden, like, all that energy just released. And my friend, she was, she was, she was in a Hard Place herself, but she really helped me through that. And that first week, we went to meetings every day. I learned the lingo quick, because that's what I do. And I just listened to what they told me, and they just said, you know, alcoholism is a disease. It's not your fault. You got hooked, and it hooks you, and all alcohol wants to do is kill you. And I got that. I was like, Okay, I get that. So just come to meetings and don't drink. I'm like, okay, I can do that. In fact, maybe just do 90 meetings in 90 days. I'm like, I love goals, and I'm gonna get an A plus on this one. And so I did. I literally, when I get into something like that, and I hear there's some sort of thing you got to measure up to, and it's, it's, it's kind of competence, but it's mostly about achieving. I like achieving, because I get high off achieving, right? And so I did the 90 and 90, I found myself like, AA works for me. It doesn't work for everybody. I'm not wanting to tell anybody, but for me, I needed something to anchor me. And it's a very mental program, right? It's like, read this, do this, and then there is a heart of it. Start learning to tell the story. Okay? Start learning to listen to the stories. Okay, start learning to listen to their story and find this common denominator. And so it's just real training on coming back, I believe, into relationship with human beings, because at the core of addiction is disconnection, right? Like, addiction keeps us away from connecting to people, and so yeah, AA has opened up my life, and it took a few years, like the first three years were really me kind of coming back to my body and starting to do yoga in a different way, like yoga with another practitioner, and also like trauma informed yoga, I've done a lot of that, and we're learning breath techniques to do deep breath work, or yoga type breath to get me, like into my body. And so these practices over the years, I now have peace. I can now have empty mind, not for long periods of time and not 100% of the time, but I can reach those places where I can just sit and be that's been incredible. That's been the biggest gift. That's
Josh Lavine 1:53:46
that's yeah, that's remarkable, yeah. So you're sober, you're and you're there.
Kim 1:53:53
I'm a vegan and a therapist. Yeah, yeah.
Josh Lavine 1:53:57
It's amazing to have arrived in that place after, what's the vegan thing? Just like the headline of that. So
Kim 1:54:04
that is, it's actually very self pressed. So my father died of cancer because he didn't pay attention to his body. Okay? I had a girlfriend who got breast cancer, and I was part of her last six weeks of life down at the Burzynski clinic. It was a last dish effort, and I was their Cook, and I worked with their nutritionist, and their nutrition said, do not she's not to have any animal products. Animal products in a lot of studies. The China Study is one of them, suggests that too much animal products puts a body out of balance and and cancer cells like, eat that shit up. They eat sugar up. They eat that shit up. So I got really clear, and I loved to cook. Anyway, my mom was a terrible cook. Growing up, we my mom was an awful cook because she couldn't do timing well. So all of us kids, we're all foodies. And so I was really big on vegan, finding good vegan foods at the time. And this was like, so it's been about I was a vegan before I was in AA, so I've been a vegan for about 12 years, but um, so she ended up not making it. She was, she was, she actually died of MRSA because her immune system was so screwed up. But after that, it just like made an impact on me. Plus, I do love I have a thing about animals, and I'm friends with animals, and like, when I was growing up, I was talking to all the animals because I read all those fantasy books, and so it was really a real easy thing for me to do, is just to give up the animal proteins and, yeah, yeah, plant based to eat. Here it's,
Josh Lavine 1:55:47
it kind of strikes me that the vegan thing, I mean, yeah, it's a self pressing, but it also has this way of connecting you to your sense of self, like your heart, who you are, your values, you know. And there's a way that there's been this gradual over time. Yeah, the the sobriety piece being another element of it, right, coming home to yourself and living from the inside out and and reintegrating all the split pieces that were once asunder in you. And,
Kim 1:56:22
yeah, yeah, because I gotta say, I think animals for me were my like, we always had a lot of animals, and I would spend a lot of time with my animals. They were safer to me than people. And so even today, like when I go and hang out with my horse, I am centered, calm. There is no there's zero anxiety, because I just feel like, I don't know this horse. He's in his own being. He's true to himself, his nature. He's not going to do anything toward me that's going to hurt me. And so I don't know, there's just this real connected. I mean, I'm probably like that with nature. Anyway, my dad was kind of a naturalist, and so he introduced us a lot to trees and outside and camping. And so whenever I need to kind of ground myself, I can just even, I got these three willows out in the backyard, and I just kind of watched them way back and forth. And, yeah, it just helps. It helps really remind me that I'm a, I'm a little cell in some bigger organism here, just a part, you know.
Josh Lavine 1:57:32
So I'm noticing a time we should probably come to a close in a little bit. But I have a couple, one or two final questions for you. So now that you are here, and you've arrived in this place of life where you're, I mean, literally sober, and also, I'm thinking of the virtue of seven, which is called sobriety, which is, you know, a kind of like mental clarity of seeing, of like being able to just not have the snow globe all shook up inside you, and then entertain all that gluttony, but there's a way, like an inner stillness that starts to become more ever present, yeah, and I guess what I'm wondering is like, how, what's your current relationship with gluttony, or the the revving of the mental sensor and that frothy blender stuff that we talked about. Does it still come up for you? How does it? Yeah, so, how does it, and, yeah, and what do you do now? What are your tools for working with that?
Kim 1:58:33
Yeah, well, a lot of it is this, ifs work, okay, it's the it's the noticing, like when it's casting internal family systems for internal family systems work, yeah, and it's the noticing when it rises and she's a she inside of me, and she's about, she's anywhere between 12 and 14, and she's on the move, and she's looking For a hit of something. And I'm like, Hey, Hi, what's up? I just want to remind you that I'm a 50 we're 56 now. And I'm like, and then I do this. I This is a really cool process. I literally go across my midline and orient myself, and I look around, and I look at all of the beauty and all of the things that I created around me, and I'm like, You made it. We're okay, wow, I know you're really excited about this idea, and we're gonna get to it, but right now, we're gonna focus on this. And I've been doing this for a while now, and it really she feels like she's heard, because she does have a lot of excitement and a lot of like, I've got this generator inside of me. Gosh, I just generates, generates, generates, ideas, ideas, ideas. And I'm and so now it's like, I'm like, You know what? I love that idea. I'm going to put a pin on it. And then I'm going to talk to Joe, because remember Joe, we're in partnership with Joe, and he's really a good one to understand our scheduling. And or I look at the schedule, I'm like, This is what we have on our schedule, and this is what we got going on. I know that sounds like fun, but we literally, we like to do this stuff too, and this is fun. And so I'm just constantly doing this dialog, and that settles me down immediately. Now, immediately the frothing stops, and I'm able to sit and be in this moment and and just really go, Hey, I like this moment right now. And I've done a lot of work with like Byron Katie, work at her totally. I was really into her Tolly for a long time. I'm forgetting his name, but that surrender book,
Josh Lavine 2:00:45
the surrender Chairman, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is his name? Michael, something? Michael, singer, singer, yeah. Singer, singer, yeah, yeah,
Kim 2:00:53
yeah. I did a whole class with with a bunch of people with him, and it's just like continuing to orient oneself to the present, continue to orient oneself to the present. So yeah, so that's my process, like, orient to the present, orient to the present. The present is always a good place. It reminds me, actually, of work with horses. Like when I'm working with my horse, he learns that standing still right next to me as a safe and quiet place. And if he starts to do his shenanigans and he gets like not paying attention, I actually invite Him into running around a little bit, but my focus is on him. And then I release the pressure, I take a deep breath, and then he comes, and he stands right next to me, and that I feel like, is my, my process for me, like, sometimes I need a little direction. Like, if I have a bunch of ideas, like, I've got all this flight of ideas, I kind of check in. I go, okay, lots of ideas. But what is this a reaction to, oh, I'm hungry. A lot of times because I'm hungry,
Josh Lavine 2:02:01
sure, yeah, yeah. You
Kim 2:02:03
know, it's like, basic needs and or I just woke up and I had a weird dream, and so I got a little triggered, you know, or I had an interaction with a human being that kind of threw me off. Or, like, I know, sometimes with some of my clients, it doesn't happen as much now, but I'll get done with a session and go. I need to take another class on that. I don't know enough about that, and that's that. That's that mentalization going, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I can't help them. Holy shit. What are we going to do? Are they trapped? Are they feeling bad? Oh my god, let's get another class. And I'm one of those. I mean, I'm a class junkie. I've got way too many CEOs, but a lot of the energy I've learned over the years is that energy, like it gets frothy, and really, I know enough. And actually, when I'm in my self energy, I'm really wise. And so it's that self to part relationship that I've been growing, like my parts going, what? There's a self around here. We've never had a self around here. We've always been on our own, right? And it's like, yeah, here she is. This is the self, and she knows it all. In fact, I believe she knows it from the beginning of time, like I have a sense self energy is from the beginning of time, and that we do have everything we need to know at the moment and so, but a lot of times that's too abstract for some of my parts, and they're like, fuck that. Really, that's bullshit. And so that's that counter, counterphobic Six energy in me, yeah, that I do towards myself, even
Josh Lavine 2:03:45
I sometimes I've thought of the self like, just to for people who are listening what, what you're referencing is this idea and parts work, where you have parts in you that are well, like a party wants to get out of bed, a party who wants to stay in and then There's also self with a capital S, that's who you really are. And then you can have relationships with each of these parts in you. And getting into self is like, well, that's the way that the IFS framework essentially thinks about presence. It's the presence is, is when you're present, you're inhabiting self, and you're able to relate to these parts in you and not have the parts take over your whole consciousness. And I think of the self as being in alignment of your three centers. You have to be at least my experience of of my when I really contact and I'm inhabiting my own self, it's like I'm in my body. I'm feeling like myself in my heart and my mental center is open and clear and not cluttered with that frothy, Sparky energy. So yeah, well, I have to say, Yeah, I'm taking a breath here.
Kim 2:05:02
Sure this went by so fast,
Josh Lavine 2:05:05
I know, and we've talked for a while, but I actually don't think I'm gonna cut very much out of it. It'll be one of the longer interviews that I've I've shared, but I just your story is so remarkable, and just what you've what you've gone through, and the way that you've processed it over time. And these, the humility to have encountered yourself with these, like, very profound realizations, and now to be literally doing the work that helped you. It's a very cool journey, you know, and to
Kim 2:05:32
be in this I'm I have, like, a bit of tears in my eyes. I am so grateful, yeah, that I get to do this with people, and it changes me still, like being a therapist, we are changed in the work with people, and I am blown away by people's resilience in the way they figure it out, like, like I told you, I work with a lot of individuals with D, I D, dissociative identity disorder used to be called multiple personality, and I can really work well with it. And I think part of it is my 70 way of having a lot of a lot of different ideas at the same time, and ideas coming in and ideas leaving. And so in a lot of ways, some of these people have developed that in, in presence, in their personality structure, and so, like, there'll be a part for a while that's going to get their needs met, or their social needs met, or their sexual needs met, right? And to me, it's just fascinating, this this human experience. And I do joke around with my daughter. I'm like, I don't know what we are, but it sure does feel like maybe we did something pretty bad at some point. Now we have to deal with being in a human body, like, I don't know, because it can be really hard. Yeah, yeah. And she laughs. She goes, What do you think? I'm like, I think we're the fallen angels. I'm thinking, we're the ones that fell from grace, and this is what we do, and this is how we're trying to figure it back. We're trying to figure out how to get back to love. And something happened, and I don't know what it was, because it's weird. I mean, some of the stories I hear like, Are you fucking kidding me? He did what I want to go and kill that guy you know, or that family system and how fucked up they are for like, like, eons, generations, that generational trauma, I mean, oh, and so a part of it too, like, sevens, yeah, like, they do seem all frothy, but I think In some ways, we do know darkness. Maybe that's why we have to fly, because it's too young to it's too much, too young for some of us, and so and I think, and I think it's been discussed a lot on your podcast and on the enneagrammer that there are sevens that commit suicide. And, I mean, right? Yeah, I think that's part of it. It's like, you can't stay frothy and not deal with what's going on, right? Because you will get swallowed up in the darkness. I have been there. I have been at the brink. I've had suicidality. I've had the darkness come in, and it's because it's like, there's this disconnection from heart, there's this disconnection from body, and so thank God there's a path that I found.
Josh Lavine 2:08:32
I have one other question for you about So you mentioned, how you know when you're really in yourself, you are really wise, and to your point about sevens and mental types in general can sometimes be really frothy. You know, that's like, that's the the monkey mind version of the mental sensor. That's actually the distortion of the mental sensor. Yes, you know where it's just, it's just clutter, and it's like, my analogy is like, it's like your inner snow globe gets shook up, and you're just distracted by all the little particles. But when the when the snow globe settles, then light can actually penetrate through and there's this profound spaciousness and a clarity and a sense of genuine mental engagement with my experience that allows insights to arise freshly in the moment that are original and actually attuned, and that is actually a superpower of seven and and all the types in the mental center when they're really present with themselves. So I wonder what your experience of that is, of Yeah, how do you or maybe another way to ask it is, how do you know when you're being wise versus when you're being cluttered or,
Kim 2:09:44
Oh yeah, like,
Josh Lavine 2:09:45
genuine insight versus real? Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
Kim 2:09:48
Yeah, it's a felt sense. It's almost like, like, I'm working on this talk for this Sunday, and my process is very snow globe esque, okay, because I love Reese. Search, and I go off on tangents. I'm like, ooh, that's cool idea. Ooh, that too. I'm gonna note that one down. And so it's like, if I had a desk in my mind, I'd have, like, books and pages and everything's kind of thrown about. And then I'm like, we're done. Take a deep breath. And then I put it down on paper, and then it feels clear. It feels like I'm now kind of spitting out all the things I just consumed. And it comes out in a way that always feels almost like another person is doing that. And I think that self energy, it's like comes in. It's almost like I turn into a conduit. Instead of grasping I'm now a conduit, and it serves me every single time. So like, when I get up in front of people and talk, I used to get really scared about that. Now I just show up and I make I did my preparation. I know this stuff, this is in my wheelhouse, and then it just comes out. And then the feedback I get is like, wow, that was really clear. That was really like, you really took these, all these things, and you put them together in a way that was really digestible, yeah, yeah. And at times I did, I don't even remember the talk, and I see it, and I'm, like, almost, like, mesmerized. I watch myself on a video. Like, that's me. Like, wow, yeah, it feels like a channeling. And that's why I know I'm in self, self, I think self is channeling
Josh Lavine 2:11:35
beautiful, yeah, yeah. This is something that sevens don't get enough credit for. Is how, how clear they can be, you know, and how, like, penetrating and insightful and brilliant they can be. And, yeah, you talk about it for me, right? Yeah,
Kim 2:11:52
it can be really synthesize. I've heard that moment people like you really synthesize things. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, you know, it's like, and then I'm back to my, you know, 70, like, really, what was that? Like, oh, you know, like, I'm done. And it's like, yeah, you know, it's interesting, you know, like, even today, like, we got a bunch of friends coming over, and this woman, she's in her 80s. She's really cool. She's going to be taking us through this something called Zentangle. And I'm so excited to set the space to create a beautiful environment for these ladies to just have a delightful time. I'm looking forward to these women. They're just really incredible. And it's like there's a little bit of monkey mind, but not much, and then I just get honed in. It's like, I get honed into whatever that is, but being the hostess with the mostest or something, I don't know what it is, and it's just it feels clear, it feels self led, yeah? Like I'm not trying to, trying to do anything. I'm just creating this space, yeah, yeah, for people to have a real, real enjoyment, you know? So, yeah,
Josh Lavine 2:13:13
what's this been like for you to have this conversation?
Kim 2:13:20
Well, I feel deeply listened to. Thank you for that. You're You're very good at listening and thoughtfully keeping the story going without ever feeling like. I never felt like there was an agenda. And so I thank you for that, and I just it felt safe, and I felt like, I don't know, I think from some of your words that my story might encourage people and might help maybe some of the more mental types know that we do have a path to get connected, and it might look different from other people. For all the types, really, like, there's a reason why we got specialized and and it served us. It got us through. And now, how is that working for you? You know, like, we can expand it more, and we can actually, actually, I think, fully live into the specialization. Like the specialization can be a beautiful thing. Yeah. So thank you for that. Thank you for just and you know, I think I need to write a story. I think I need to write this all down. I've been having that sense for a long time, and this really encouraged me to maybe start to spend some time to really write my story in a concise because there's actually a lot more to it, and I could really have a whole book. And yeah, I feel encouraged you. For whatever reason, your energy just encouraged me to maybe start to go down that path. So thank you for that.
Josh Lavine 2:14:51
Yeah, you're welcome. I just had the thought I was wondering maybe, because I heard you'd get lost in the novel you were writing and you couldn't figure out the ending. And. After that you went on your whole therapy journey and become, or became, became a therapist. So some I don't know, yeah, maybe there's something there, yeah, I
Kim 2:15:09
like that. Yeah, that that sits well with me. Yeah, yeah. I couldn't know the ending of the story because I was right in the middle of my story. I couldn't write it. Yeah? That poor little girl, she was stuck. She was stuck at 12. She just she had nowhere to go from there. Yeah.
Josh Lavine 2:15:29
I also, just before we close to I want to check in with the part of you that gave you permission for this and how she's feeling.
Kim 2:15:37
She wants to show you my, um, my angel of death.
Josh Lavine 2:15:40
Great, let's do it. I'd love to see it. Oh my gosh. This is it. Are you seeing? That's
Kim 2:15:45
her, yeah. Isn't she cool?
Josh Lavine 2:15:50
Wow. This is gorgeous. What is this? Is that amazing? Who made this? Or this
Kim 2:15:54
is my young part that really I was creating collages during the time I was getting typed, I got really into it. And I'm really I'm a photo shopper, and I do a lot of that stuff, and I really sensed that I had to have some nightmares. Those are the three horses. They're nightmares, and they're nightmares. There's the owl in the back, the owl of wisdom, but also he's a predator. And then there's this really, there's this kick ass Angel, and she's the Angel of Death, and she is what my little part who went through so much she is now she puts to death anything that doesn't serve the highest good. And so it just came to me, and she reminded actually, I hadn't looked at this in a while, and when I was kind of talking to my little part yesterday, she goes, You got to show them the angel of death. And I'm like, Oh, I will. And so I've done a whole kind of collage series. I haven't like shared them with anybody, but I also have some my sun sign, moon sign and rising sign. I also have some other angels that I created collages with.
Josh Lavine 2:17:05
Is this, yeah, is this angel just so I understand another part? Or is this what your little girl part grew up into?
Kim 2:17:12
Or, yeah, this is what my little girl, my little girl died. She she goes, I died that day, like you did, okay? And she goes, and this is what I became. So this is kind of like, she's, I'm like, I'm like, How did you die? And how do you want to be? What do you want to have happen? And she goes, I want to be burned into ashes, and I want you to spread my ashes over the ocean. I was like, okay, and I did that. And then she goes, and I want you to create, I actually had already created this, and she goes, and I want you to know that that's me. I'm the Angel of Death.
Josh Lavine 2:17:48
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. That's really powerful, and the image, I'm so
Kim 2:17:52
glad I did, because she would have been pissed. I was supposed to share that, and she would have been like, you made me a promise. Yeah. Yeah, well, Josh, thank you. Thank
Josh Lavine 2:18:02
you, Kim, too. Yeah, no, this
Kim 2:18:04
opportunity to share with you and talk more. And I just, I love this. I love what you're doing. You're
Josh Lavine 2:18:10
You're welcome. And yeah, no, thanks for the kind words. I I can't wait to watch this back, and it's so cool to hear just your story. Your story. Your story is incredibly inspiring. And to hear this journey from the mental center into the rest of you and back to self given everything that you went through, it's really it's really powerful. And I just really, yeah, I really respect you and the journey you've gone on and I don't really have words for it, I just feel like a certain sense of resonance and like I just found this very beautiful. So thanks for sharing yourself.
Kim 2:18:53
I'm feeling it. I'm feeling that energy. Thank you.
Josh Lavine 2:18:57
Well, okay, yeah, so thank you very much. And let's we'll close here and we'll be in touch.
Kim 2:19:02
Okay, thanks, Josh. Take care.
Josh Lavine 2:19:05
Thank you so much for joining me for my conversation with Kim joswiak. If you connect with Kim and you resonate with her story, and you would like to connect with her as a therapist, then you can check her out on her website. I'll put a link in the show notes. She does therapy from the point of view of EMDR, internal family systems, equine therapy and various modalities of mindfulness. If you're watching this on YouTube, then I would love for you to click the like button and the subscribe button. It's a zero cost and very effective way to help me out and my work and the Enneagram school. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, then I would super appreciate if you left a review. You can leave up to a five star review. Those are really helpful. There is a lot of really exciting stuff happening at the Enneagram school. John and Alexander just wrapped their pain of the blind spot seminar, and they are about to launch their sexual instinct class, which is starting on July 30. You can check that out at the Enneagram school.com I also invite you to subscribe to our email list, which is where we'll be announcing all of the feature. Events that are happening, we have a new class that's about to be announced on dreams and the instinctual drives in the Enneagram, taught by Kristen and Kaiser from this insomnia podcast. They're amazing and brilliant, and I'm really excited to kind of re introduce them to the community and to shine a spotlight on the work that they've done, which has been quite extraordinary, exploring the role of the unconscious and what dreams are showing us relative to our kind of instinctual blind spot, how dreams can help you process your unconscious material, particularly relating to your instincts and how they operate, operate in your life. Their work is original, and I think, revolutionary, and I'm very, very very excited to give them a platform to show it. If you would like to be interviewed on this podcast, if you think that you're a good candidate, then please reach out for you. The school preference goes to people who have been officially typed by the typing [email protected] who I think are the world's most expert typers. You can also check out their weekly classes where they type celebrities in real time and make very precise distinctions. And finally, if you know anybody who is a practitioner of an inner work modality, and you think they're really, really good and also very articulate about that modality, I would love to hear from you, and I'd love to potentially interview them. So that's it for me. Thank you so much for watching, and remember to subscribe to the engram schools email list, where we will announce all future podcasts, workshops, classes, etc. All right, see you next time you.
