[LISA SMITH] The Am I Ok? Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. Welcome everyone to today’s episode of the Am I Ok? Podcast. This is Lisa Lewis, your host. I’m so excited to have our guest on today coming all the way from New Zealand. Stephan Neff is an anesthesiologist and has had more than a fair share of trauma in his life. He has tried to drown PTSD, depression and anxiety, and industrial doses of vodka, but had to learn the hard way that those critters can swim. Nowadays, he lives a very different life where self-love, humility, integrity, and transparency actually means something. His aim is to demystify addiction and mental health problems. He hosts the show My Steps to Sobriety and has just released the second edition of his book under the same name. Welcome to the show, Stephan. [STEPHAN NEFF] Oh, thank you so much, Lisa. It is an honor to be a guest on your show. [LISA] Well, thank you. It’s an honor to have you on my show. As I like to ask all my guests that come on the show, do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person or not and if so or not, can you share a story about that? [STEPHAN] Well, I had to think a little bit when you asked me that question first, because it has so many meanings, but when I reflect in my own life. I very much feel tremendous amounts of emotions, and sometimes they can be beautifully overwhelming, especially when I actually allowed myself to feel those emotions. For many, many, many, many years I bottled everything up, and the only time when I actually could release my emotions was with some alcohol. Then, I mean, it was actually quite easy then to tap into it. The only thing I needed is some time off, some red wine and the soundtrack of Le Miserable, and I would ball my ice out, I mean, snot and tears, and it would come with waves of intensity. Unbelievable. That’s equally how I felt love, the first twin dress, these were my butterflies, these were groundbreaking earthquakes in my gut. So there were times in my life and I actually felt beautiful, beautiful emotions, literally overwhelming me. I also feel those emotions of other people, and maybe that made me a very good doctor on the one side, on the other side, since I specialized in chronic pain medicine, I fell into the trap of taking too many of these emotions on. So transference is a very, very clear risk when you can’t set boundaries, and when you actually let those emotions of others flood over you. I would often be completely emotionally trained physically trained, literally the whole body blah at the end of the day. It was then a glass of alcohol or five where, and finally I had this, the release of it all washing away literally. So, yes I have to, after reflection, I more have to agree yes, I’m one of these people. [LISA] Oh, okay. Thank you for sharing that story. I love the way that you express yourself and the words that you use, and it has like a lot of meaning and description behind them. I’m wondering did you have to reach rock bottom before you realized that, oh my gosh, if I keep going this way something maybe really awful is going to happen, and then like, I don’t want to be in this position anymore? Like, how did you know that I need to get out of this or maybe have some different words that you would use? [STEPHAN] Well, first of all, as alcoholics, we have denial as one of our strongest, strongest features. So I was unfortunately like that, “I’m all right, I don’t need that.” By the way, I’m a doctor, I know it all. It’s this attitude, was in reality, alcohol is a wrecking ball. I was a high functioning alcoholic so the gutter, as you may experience it or may have it in mind from films or, so, no, I never reached that. I never had a DUI, always had respect for the law, even drunk. I was holding it all together, so I thought. In reality, there had been so much pain in my life that I ended up running away from, first with work and then I was retired and with our goal, which gave me a second wind, and I was burning the candle this way for far too long. It was basically this running away from my emotions, and I didn’t want to feel those emotions so the alcohol became a good way of certainly pushing the negative emotion, the shame, the guilt, the darkness, the depression, the PTSD that I had not really appreciated how strong it actually was. I was trying to push that away. I was trying to escape my reality for far too long until really my wife and the boss of my department staged an intervention and finally took the choice away from me. If I think that I need help or if I want help, they just said, you will get help because you’re going to get admitted to a rehabilitation hospital and on Friday, here is a mission date, like it or lump it. That was the most beautiful thing that could have happened. [LISA] Oh my goodness. So I hear you didn’t have a choice. You were going, whether you liked it or not? [STEPHAN] Oh, no, I just, let’s rephrase that. She had it all organized, and therefore it was, there was still a choice there. I could have said no, but instead of our fighting, oh, you’re drinking too much, et cetera, et cetera, they came in the next morning. So Tuesday night I was just sobbing again in the garage and being really down and out and drunk, of course. Next morning my family came in, my wife came in, and I expected, again, a fight about drinking and instead they all lay on my bed and told me how much they loved me. That, by the way, behind our back, behind my back, they had organized an admission to the rehabilitation hospital and, “Don’t worry. You don’t need to worry about anything now. It’s going to be fine.” That, someone looking after me, someone showing me the love, I recognize that, wow, maybe just, maybe that may be the way forward. That’s when I stopped fighting. That’s when I stopped denying. That’s when I stopped putting up the strong macho man, “No, I’m all right,” whatever lies I was telling myself, or to be more precise, whatever lies my depression and my addiction were telling me [LISA] Wow, what a beautiful gift that your family gave you. And I’m wondering how hard that must have been for them to do that. [STEPHAN] Well, let’s put it like that. My wife was just as heavier drinker as I was, and, but she, with the help of her church got sober. She was a white knuckling alcoholic. I call it like that because she didn’t have the psychologically interventions and the guidance that helped her to overcome the reasons why she was drinking. She just stopped and as in many cases, she then became an anti-alcoholic. That was, it was hard. So a lot of fights broke out there, and it was, yeah, it was not nice, not nice whatsoever. But in all fairness, some 10 years prior to that, my wife went through nasty postnatal depression, and I stood by her side. So we had a track record of fighting like cats and dogs, worse than that, yet there was a deep respect and love there that helped us to move through the darkness in our relationships and move forward. We, nowadays joke and look at each other and say, what the hell are we still together, well, are we still a couple? Because the odds were so stacked against us being both relatively broken in our core beliefs and in our psychology being, having, we had a core belief that drove us, that deep inside, that were instilled by our parents and our society in our younger ages, crikey, how stuffed about how crazy were they? Maybe it’s not surprising that we both ended up drinking like fishes and tried to make our own life only to realize that we were basically like a drunk chimpanzee hitting on a keyboard somewhere and expecting something sensible to come out of the life. and no, no, no, no, no, no. Nowadays, very different story because had it not been because of all the darkness in our lives, especially in my life now, had it not been because of the darkness, I would not cherish the light so much nowadays. It is only someone who has been in the darkness, who has then transformed and now tries to make sense out of it. That is the real gift and that is why I say addiction is actually my superpower, because it is driving me nowadays to be the man that I am now, or at least I, there is this picture that I’m striving to be. There’s these set of attributes that every day, every minute I’m feeling the privilege that I can make choices and I can take action to be this man. Had I not been going through the last, whatever 40 years prior to that then I would not be that man. So I’m actually grateful with hindsight. It’s just a bit of a shame that it had to take such a long time and that I was so stubborn and did not accept help maybe at an earlier stage. [LISA] Wow, powerful story. I have a couple questions just by what you shared. What would you recommend to someone who may be going through something similar with themselves with an addiction or in a family system that both the parents have an addiction? [STEPHAN] First of all, love the addict, hate the addiction. This is not addiction is not a set of bad, well, it is a set of bad behavior that is for sure, for true. That’s certainly true. There are a lot of things that we do that we are not really proud of, the guilt and shame are part and parcel, unfortunately, of addiction. But it’s not a weakness. It’s not a, you’re not a bad person and in reality, you’re a sick person. I think addiction needs to be treated like a sickness, like a disease or a chronic condition rather than by law enforcement or by society as thinking, oh my God, look at him. What an addict. This picture of the down and out drunk on the street that is so not true. Alcohol, or let’s get go broader chemical addiction affects one in free people in the Western society. So therefore, and if you then actually say that each of these one in three people has got at least one significant other, then you have to say that addiction actually affects half of the population. So that’s a hell of a lot of people, so let’s, first of all, get rid of these cliches that, oh my God, you have to be a certain person to be an addict. If you go to your PTA or if you go to any club, et cetera, you look around, you are seeing a hell of a lot of addicts, yet we are not accepting that. We are trying to believe in this picture of the white picket fans. We look at social media nowadays. There are people out there who only have got one side of a face. I’m sure they only have, they have got one side of a face. There’s no other face because that’s the only face you see, a little bit of powdered lips, a little bit of just dried, and it just makes me sick. That is, and then add 15 filters on it. That’s the same as the 50s with the white garden fans or then whatever cliches they were, the else they were about how you have to be in a society. It’s the same shit still ongoing. So we are not true to ourselves and I think that’s where it starts, the recognizing that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to go through hard times, through dark times. It’s okay to not know the answer. It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay to shut up and let it all eat you out from deep from inside. So I think there needs to be a bigger recognition that all those things are normal. Addiction is normal. Mental health problems are normal, especially depression. Depression will hit one in three people around the world, my goodness. So how the hell can be, still think, oh my God I feel so bad. I’m a bad mother. I’m a bad husband. I’m a bad whatsoever. All that guilt that you put on yourself you wouldn’t say, oh my God, I’ve got asthma. I’m a bad person, oh God or diabetes, or et cetera. Diabetes is, you could say, well, much of the diabetes in nowadays society is unfortunately self-inflicted. With asthma or with, let’s say a broken bone or something like that. You would not have those guilt feelings and the shame feelings. Let’s get rid of that. Only then can we actually move forward and maybe be more open to discussion. The moment we actually open our mouths, like right now, us talking about addiction, maybe we can show that when you’re in the midst of it, addiction and depression, they tell you lies, big lies, big fat lies. There is no help. There’s now hope and you will never get better and look at you, and all these dark voices that we have got inside ourselves, who are often our worst critics. I mean, we treat ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t treat anyone else. But I mean, that is our standard really and we need to get rid of all that. We need to be clear about these absolutely stuffed up core beliefs that often run in our subconscious that then leads to our actions. Only by us talking about these things can we actually start the discussions around the dinner table where people can actually be honest and come out with their feelings. Maybe once we have achieved that, then we can encourage that people actually seek help. Often enough, it is a matter of finding connection and finding a tribe that you belong to. It is, for example, there are so many self-help groups out there, so many groups who are dedicated to help people in certain situations, let that be alcoholics, let that be people who are emotionally overeating, gambling, sex addiction, pornography, you name it. There is so many things that we are not proud about, but these are all signs or these are all things that we do to escape our reality. It’s typically the trauma underlying, it’s a depression, it’s the mental health problems that we then hate and we hate ourselves and we try to escape by doing those things that then further add to ourselves not feeling very well about ourselves. It’s sort of a vicious circle, our vicious cycle. [LISA] You mentioned trauma is on the line. Can you say more about that? What do you mean by trauma is on the line? [STEPHAN] Well, trauma is the typical reason that leads us to do whatever we are doing. And trauma is weird. It is sort of such a cliche but in reality, our lives are not straightforward. Some of our lives, we are set up maybe with circumstances from an early childhood onwards, which are not so nice. So the amount of sexual abuse and physical emotional abuse that some children undergo is tremendous. When you look at the risks of woman in her lifetime being sexually abused or is one in three and for a man, it’s one in seven. These are bloody big numbers. That’s just the childhood abuse. Then down the line, trauma comes, I mean, in my life, I became the victim of a gang assault at age 14 and that completely changed me. It turned me into a fighter. I was proud to be Rambo, and, but it was all the, yeah, the wrong things. That was all happening in the 70s, 80s, and I had heroes like Mel Gibson and Bruce Willies, the anti-heroes of the time where alcohol is part and parcel of it. Yes, you’re broken, but you’re a man. You don’t talk about your emotions, all that rubbish. So yeah, that is, that was what is holding me back. But whilst our society might be, has changed a bit, and Rambo is no longer in, and maybe some people don’t even know who Rambo, it’s still the same runaway coping mechanisms are still the same here. So ultimately trauma is different for everyone in their lives. So trauma could be you literally seeing your best friend blown up on a battlefield. Then some people say, okay, I felt fair enough. I mean, I can understand that, but trauma can be as bad as a lute gesture or a otherwise seemingly innocuous thing for that person. It is not for that person. They’re deeply, deeply affected by something. So trauma is unique, but the flow on effects of self-doubt, reduced self-confidence, all those negative flow and effects, they are there and so many of us have never learned how to deal with that, so many of us somehow think they have to be strong and don’t need to help, don’t need to talk about it, don’t need maybe more advanced interventions to sort themselves out and that is the sad thing. There’s so much help out there, and there’s so much, there’s so many people out there who have been in similar boat like you. If you’re a listener listening there are so many people out there who have gone through similar traumas and who have transformed to a degree that you would never deem possible. Yet these people are walking and talking next to you. You just have no bloody clue. If you’re a mom and you’re picking up your children at school and you look around, they will be other moms who have gone through the same or even far, far worse than you have and you wouldn’t know it because they seem to get, have to act together and that’s, wow. There are also the mums there who seem completely to have to act together but if you go just that little bit closer, you smell that a little bit of a funny smell. That’s probably the vodka because vodka is the wonderful alcohol that has the least smell. But if you just get close enough to give them a little kiss on the cheek, then you would know. So it is, everyone tries to look okay but some of us really are okay. If you look in their eyes, you see that real, oh, what is it, there’s a light there in the eyes, there is a, you feel the first for life, for passion, the passion for living. That’s beautiful. You can be that person. But unfortunately, it’s not, like it doesn’t happen overnight because once you actually stop and get off your own hamster wheel and actually realize what is really happening in your life. That all takes time. And trauma comes in layers, pretty much like an onion, so you can’t just deal with it all. You have to deal with the obvious and peel that layer back and then underneath, unfortunately, the next layer of the onion, you find another little bit of puss that you had completely forgotten about, but you need to address that and so on and so on. Before that, well, if you have been putting that onion in the cupboard and try to forget about it that is typically what we are doing with our life, being so busy, being distracted or on purpose, distracting ourselves so that we don’t have to deal with the negative emotions, don’t have to deal with the trauma, unfortunately, that festering puss in the onion will only get worse. So it is when you actually stop and begin to feel and actually going out there, trying to make a difference, then that is where the magic happens. That is when a new life starts. That is the post traumatic growth that people experience when they actually are willing to reevaluate their life, to stop running away with the alcohol, with the workaholic, with the whatever behaviors we are doing and to address the trauma and then the magic happens. It took me until I was mid-forties when I went into rehab and I had this beautiful, beautiful experience where I was given the privilege to be in this safe bubble. I was taken outside of my life and was put into this bubble at rehab where I was able to really be me or at least figure out who is that person, because I had no idea. So I was, oh, Stephan know who are you? Well, I’m a pain physician, and no, no, who are you? I told you I’m a pain physician. That was all I could say. I had no idea who I was. I knew the persona that I had taken on but when it came to me, wow, I had a lot of work to be done. I had a lot of things to experience and that was the beautiful thing. That is where miracles happen. So now it is, guys, there is help out there. I think that is so important, everyone needs to understand that whatever you have gone through, whatever is happening to you in your life, first of all, realize it will not last. Whatever darkness there is, it will not last. Things will change. It is often darker just before dawn so that is affect in nature and it’s also affect in your emotions. So just hang in there. The sheer effect that you are listening to this podcast means that you are willing to seek help. You have already taken action by listening to this podcast. So therefore, take it one step further, whatever is eating you up, go to your GP, to your family physician and have a word because sometimes the darkness is actually the sign of a physical problem within yourself. You’re down and out feeling. For a woman, that might be because you’ve had heavy periods for the last few years and you’re anemic so there is, and you feel like crap just because of that. So sometimes a single blood test can point you to the right way and we can rectify things. Well, that’s the exception. But at least rule out those things that are easily cured. Then by you just opening up to your family physician, to your GP suddenly you again have taken action and that makes you feel good. He might or she might offer you solutions that you had not even thought about. It’s not all about drugs. It is about, hey, did you know there is that and that group out there? Because so many of us, as I said, depression affects one and three. Well, guess what? Your GP will have certain solutions for you. That might very much be of help. Certain groups of like-minded people who have gone through darkness and are now far better off for actually having a walking group out there who are very open-minded about mental health or people who have been through trauma and are survivors of sexual abuse and who are now going out there and helping other women. There’s so many situations out there where people have gone for similar circumstances, came out the other side, transformed and are now making a point of helping others. You just don’t know that all this help is out there, and if you stay quiet, you will never know. But the moment you actually open up, magic happens because the other person might very truly be able to help you, number one. Number two is the moment you actually spell it out, literally words coming out of your mouth, somehow your ear hears these words and suddenly your brain says, huh, okay, let’s do something about it. Because your brain always, always wants to go out there and find solutions for you. It’s just a matter of asking the right question. That is what this journey is all about, learning how to ask the right questions. If you ask, why me, why me, oh, guess what? Your brain is coming up with about 20 reasons why you should feel the way you are. If you ask, well, actually, how can I today serve others, how can I today look after myself, certainly the brain will come up with an answer. It’s the same as if I say, don’t think about the color blue. Under no circumstances, think of the color blue. Your brain will think of, yeah, exactly, no stakes, but the color blue. Here you are, ask the right question. Your brain will come up with answers. If you then ask similar questions to those people who actually have been there, done that, and are now really having to act together, wow, can you imagine that you turbocharge your brain and that you can grow into a more resilient person, into a person who is more self-aware, can live more intentional, can take actions in a much easier way? It’s like with everything, when we start off with, if you go to a gym and your first weight that you lift, you think, oh my goodness, my god, the smallest weight is barely, I’m barely able to lift it. Then after six months in the gym, you’re throwing these weights around as if it is nothing. Well, that’s exactly what you can do for your emotions, with your coping mechanisms, with your resilience, with the way you face challenges in your daily life. It is beautiful. There’s a beautiful journey waiting for you out there if you are willing to take it. And often to do the first step, it’s the hardest but you have already done that, guys. You’re listening to this podcast. You have already taken action. Congratulations. So now the question is, you’ve done the first step. A next step I think is, should be, yeah, your GP or family physician or maybe a counselor or maybe someone, a group out there. I mean, nowadays, especially after Covid, so many things have come online and it’s beautiful. It’s just a matter of searching out there and maybe listening to different podcasts because all these people who, like Lisa, who has gone through her own transformation, she is trying to make this world a better place. She’s bringing on people like me who try to make this world a better place. So together, there’s already a huge community out there so even if you don’t, if you are not yet ready to actually physically speak to someone, listen to more people like Lisa, who maybe, just maybe can plant more seeds in your head. I just have got that feeling that it is a very fertile soil that is waiting there. I think many of you listeners out there, you are just under cusp of some beautiful transformation. So look forward to it. This is an amazing journey. [LISA] Thank you, Stephan. Wow, that was well said. I just want everyone to just take a breath and digest that. The light that is shining from you is so beautiful. [STEPHAN] Oh, thank you so much. But the light that shines is because of the darkness. Otherwise, this humility and this transparency, this would’ve not been there. I’ve been the self, the same cocky bastard, self-righteous and oh, all the negative emotions that come to my mind and all the labeling, unfortunately, much of the labeling was actually correct. So I was the, probably not the nicest guy, but that was the past. So again, the lesson is the past does not equal the future. Whatever you guys have done out there that you’re not proud of, forget it. That was the past. Not forget it, wrong, it was the past. You can’t do anything about it, what you have done but you can now, right now, live intentionally and can make, draw a line in the center and say, no, today I will behave differently and learn to make amends down the line. That’s beautiful. Learn to do living amends. Even if you can’t go back to those situations and undo damage that you have done, you can now live a different life that is full of action and action all in a purposeful way, not just action, us playing six hours of Candy Crush, watching Netflix, but maybe going out there and actually doing something that is truly, truly nurturing and feeding you, that person who you want to be. At any one second, you have got a choice to work towards a better world or towards a not so nice world. You can work on your recovering or on your relapse. You can work on a beautiful, healthy life, or you can work on your depression. It’s your choice. We sometimes forget that. No, no, sometimes, most of the times we forget that. So switch off the phone. Go out in nature, find yourself somewhere, something where you can just sit down and look around and be quiet and listen to the voices inside and maybe just try to figure out what these voices are saying. Are they lying to you or are they actually at a moment coming up with a really good idea? Yeah, it’s just, the moment we start connecting a bit more with ourselves deep inside of, as I said, your brain knows the solutions to many, many problems and if it doesn’t know the solution, then it knows where to search. Maybe, yeah, keep listening to Lisa. Maybe they might, but the other solutions are other guests there who are gelling with you. That’s beautiful, taking action. For that, I commend you. I say, wow, well done. You did a great job today. [LISA] Thank you. Thank you for all that. I know for me, my heart is just beamy. I want to just add some things to that for people that are listening, considering their next steps that you may hear a lot about nature. This past summer when we, I like to camp and I went camping with my husband. Something about nature is when you turn off everything else, all that noise, like the noise of just people or the phone, whatever it is, when you turn that off and you’re just with your own thoughts and you give yourself enough time to allow that noise to dissipate or get more quiet or put it in the background, and then it’s so amazing what comes out of that. What comes forward is clarity for yourself. For me, I noticed truth and all the questions or the doubts went away. In that experience with my husband, like our first night at camping, we were just arguing, fighting, and then went to sleep. The next day it was like a cloud lifted, and it’s like, wow, like something went away, something disappeared, and now I can really see you, who you are, the person that I know from the very beginning. It wasn’t until after that experience, maybe months later, that I really realized that, and being in nature, whatever you’re going through, I always think, God, if I could just go to nature and live like a month in nature just to get away from all this extra noise in my life. I can get so clear. It’s really coming back to your heart and your core and getting centered with yourself and finding out what really matters to you and how you want to live your life. That darkness, I see it as the little kid who is hiding in the closet because something happened to you that you had no control over, didn’t know how to cope, didn’t know how to fix it, and you were doing your best to survive in that moment. Maybe it was a one-time moment, or maybe it was over many years, but as soon as you take that step just to open up that closet, even if it’s just a little bit, a crack of light that comes in, it’s going to change your life. And before you know it, that door, the closet’s going to be wide open, and that darkness is going to disappear, and you’re going to come out of it. It might, it’s going to be hard, and everybody can do hard things. Life is not easy. So first we got to get that out of our heads that life is not easy. Life is hard for all of us. We all have challenges and your challenges is no less than or greater than anyone else’s. It’s your challenge. So meet you where you’re at, just like Stephan said, reach out, get some help even with a friend, a stranger. There are people out there who’ve been through it and want to help you, guide you, give you the courage, the words to your own healing and transformation. [STEPHAN] Absolutely, beautifully said. [LISA] So Stephan, where can listeners get ahold of you, where can they find your book? [STEPHAN] I’ve been quite prolific and there are many things that I do to My Steps to Sobriety that is my flagship and because that was really sort of, is the corner from which I’m bating out, mystepstosobriety.com is my website. There you can see what I’m up to. I’ve released a number of other books. I’ve written a children’s book, SM: A Mindful Mouse, because I believe that it’s easier to grow strong young people than to repair broken adults. So therefore, maybe we, if we can start at an earlier stage, maybe that’s not bad. I have curated and put together a book called Depression Light to Me, and it’s by 14 female storytellers who describe their experience with depression and the lessons that they have learned. Again, all these things are there to show you that the past does not equal the future. I’ve got my show and on YouTube and as a podcast, I have got my own transformation this year where I’m an active project and I’m impacting lives around the world because I have partnered up with a company who provides help to others around the world, let that be safe water, or may it be a vocational training for a former sex slave, or all these beautiful things. So for every person who I have got on a show, I donate money and for every time I am on a show, I give money to people who need it a bit more than I do. So my life is all about leaving the impact. If you want to check me out, mystepstosobriety.com is my website. That’s pretty much all. So either Steps to Sobriety or My Steps to Sobriety is good handles to find me on all social media platforms of your choice, including TikTok and Facebook. Everything is out there. So check me out and see what crazy things I’m doing and take it as an inspiration and just think of, wow, okay, maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe I should consider writing a book or maybe I should consider telling my story. That’s the most beautiful thing, is once you open up and tell your story. My God, something happens when you take action, something happens when you become honest to yourself and it’s amazing. So yeah, Lisa and I are on this journey. We are just a little bit further underlined than you are probably so and I come along for the right. It’s fantastic. [LISA] It sure is. Thank you so much for coming on this show today, Stephan. [STEPHAN] An absolute pleasure. It was an honor, it was a pleasure, and it was beautiful because in those short moments that I was allowed to spend with you, I have grown, I have transformed. I have maybe shared a story in just a little bit different words where suddenly my own brain says, huh it is, I have grown and for that, I’m grateful. Thank you very much for providing this beautiful platform Am I Ok? The question is probably no and that’s good, at least that’s a good start, where you can start working from. So Lisa, thank you so much for your time and for all the beautiful work you’re doing. [LISA] You’re very welcome. This is Lisa Lewis reminding each and every one of you that you are okay. Until next time, be well. Thank you for listening today at Am I Ok? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want to professional, you should find one.