How to Heal the Physical Cost of Your Parents’ Divorce | Dakota Lane: #165

You might be “over” your parents’ divorce.

But your body might not be.

If you grew up in a divorced or dysfunctional home, chronic stress can get stored in your nervous system — quietly shaping your sleep, energy, digestion, hormones, and mental health years later.

In this episode, I talk with Dakota Lane about how stress doesn’t just affect your emotions. It can literally rewire your body and keep you stuck in survival mode long after the chaos ends.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why your body remembers what your mind moved past

• How chronic stress disrupts sleep, gut health, hormones, and energy

• The link between family dysfunction, inflammation, and burnout

• Why doing “more” can make stress and health issues worse

• Practical ways to calm your nervous system and restore your body

If you’re exhausted, anxious, on edge, or wondering why your body feels stuck — especially if you grew up in a broken family — this episode is for you.

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Get the Book or FREE chapters: It’s Not Your Fault

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Joey Pontarelli (00:57)

Welcome to the Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorced or dysfunctional family, this show is for you. We mentor you through the pain and help you heal so you can avoid repeating your family's dysfunction and instead build strong, healthy relationships. What if you think you're over your parents' divorce but your body isn't? What if the anxiety, exhaustion, gut issues, or constant tension that you live with didn't start in adulthood at all but started years ago when your home stopped feeling safe? A lot of people think that stress is just something in your

but the truth is stress can get stored in your body quietly shaping how you sleep, think, feel, and function. This might explain why you're always tired no matter how much you sleep, why your nervous system feels stuck on edge, why you struggle with motivation, focus, or health issues that don't seem to have a clear cause. And if you never deal with it, you can spend years thinking something is wrong with you when in reality your body has just adapted in order to try to get you to survive.

In this episode, we explore how chronic stress, especially the kind that comes from growing up in a divorced or dysfunctional family, doesn't just affect your emotions. It can literally rewire your body, your physiology. We talk about what stress does to your nervous system, hormones, gut, sleep, and energy, and why healing often requires way more than just talking it out. My guest is Dakota Lane, a fitness and nutrition coach who's spent over a decade helping people rebuild their bodies from the inside out. He's worked with about 1,000 clients across

all 50 states and 20 plus countries from teenagers to single moms to pro athletes to people who are just burned out by life. And he's seen firsthand how unprocessed stress shows up physically years later. But Dakota also knows this personally, having lived through his own parents' divorce, the family's stress dysfunction, and watch how it silently affected his own body and health even years later.

And so if you've ever wondered, why am I always exhausted? Why does my body feel stuck in survival mode? Why do I feel like I'm carrying something that I can't explain? This conversation is for you. Because even if your mind moved on beyond your parents divorce, beyond the dysfunction in your family, your body might still need healing. And with that, here's a conversation.

Dakota, welcome back to the show, Always good to talk with you, bro. This whole topic of stress is so fascinating. Obviously everyone deals with stress, but when you come from a divorce or really dysfunctional family, there's a uniqueness to it. It could even be constant sometimes, but it's especially heavy in my experience and the experience of all the young people we work with. And I think it shapes you in ways that a lot of people don't even realize and don't talk about. So I'm excited to get into all that, but if someone just kind of stumbled upon this podcast, interview,

Dakota Lane (03:08)

Thanks, glad to be back.

Joey Pontarelli (03:34)

⁓ Why should they care about what we're about to tell them? How might it help them?

Dakota Lane (03:39)

question. Stress actually reframes your entire physiology. like stress doesn't just affect your mind from like a stress perspective, but like it actually changes your biology to the point where your body operates differently from a cellular level so that what you were doing before, you can no longer do that in the same way. So it literally affects everything from the foundation up.

Joey Pontarelli (04:04)

So really it inhibits you basically from maybe doing things that you normally could do you wouldn't be able to do in a stress state, is that right?

Dakota Lane (04:11)

Totally, yeah, it changes your physiology. So the way that you approach things, which we'll get into, has to be different. You have to start to change some of that or address some of that. ⁓ Or just simple things like exercise, nutrition. Your mental health is not going to operate the way that it should, the way that our bodies are made to operate, given the underlying circumstances. So yeah, it kind of reframes a lot of how we are as humans. So it literally just changes your biology. But it's not permanent. It can be fixed. But that's kind of the trick.

Joey Pontarelli (04:39)

Wow, fascinating. Yeah, I don't think most people realize that. And so I'm excited to dive in and learn from you. I'm curious, take me to the moment, maybe when you started realizing how big of an impact stress has on the body on us as people.

Dakota Lane (04:52)

would say just one example of really intense stress affecting my body. ⁓ When I did my last competition prep for a physique show, it's a really stressful process, cutting down to extreme levels of body fat and really intense workouts in cardio, really low nutrition. I got down to like 3.3 % body fat ⁓ and I would fall asleep. Yeah, it's crazy. would fall asleep for...

a couple hours and wake up like I had slept for 12 hours, just completely wired, ready to go. And my body was under so much stress, your liver stores glycogen and that's part of the way that our body regulates our sleep. And so when you're that depleted, my body just didn't have any liver glycogen. And so it would essentially just give the signals that like, you're good to go, you're rested. Even though eventually it does kind of domino effect, you know, I would just...

I would be mid-sentence talking to somebody and my brain would just completely shut off. I would be mid-sentence and I could not remember what I was talking about. Or like I would just break out in sweats randomly. things like that. Like obviously that was very physical stress that wasn't necessarily emotional traumatic. But things like that make you start to realize like, so this like immaterial and this material, you know, the soul and the body, they are not separated. They impact each other. Stress is a, it's not a tangible thing that we can

grab per se, but it affects us tangibly.

Joey Pontarelli (06:12)

No, that's so fascinating. I've even noticed like when I, like you said, when you look back on different periods of life that were like really stressful, whether it was like your parents divorced or all the fighting and the dysfunction that maybe led up to it or like the aftermath of that, like once you kind of have a second to breathe and your body like chills out, that's when I've realized like, wow, I didn't even realize like the weight I was carrying.

Dakota Lane (06:34)

Yeah, and that's what I described to lot of clients and people that I work with is if your very first car was a beat down 1999 to Honda Civic and that's just what you learned to drive in and then all of a sudden you upgrade to a 2025 like Range Rover, you're not even going to realize that what you were driving before until you kind of had that you're like, holy cow, didn't know cars could operate this way. It's the same with our bodies. just get our bodies are so adaptive that they will do their best to make do with what we give them. And it's not until you start to change.

that clients are like, I had no idea that I was so low energy before that my brain just like was not functioning as best as it could be, or just like my emotional confidence, things like that, like just were not at their best until you start to realize like, wow, there's so much more quality of life that I could be having. ⁓ So yeah, it's a beautiful thing because there's so much more life out there, but so many times we just take what we have and we just assume this is the cards were dealt and we just kind of have to go with it. But there's so many things that we can change, which is the good news.

Joey Pontarelli (07:33)

Yeah, and I'm excited to get into those things that we can change, the things we can do. Before we do, you hinted at some maybe transformations that people have had that you've worked with when it comes to managing stress or better handling it. I'm curious, do you have any particular stories where maybe someone was really in this stress state, they did these particular things that we're going to talk about, and then they had this transformation and now they're in a better spot? I'm curious if anyone comes to mind.

Dakota Lane (07:56)

I want to talk about two because they come from different angles. One that's pretty easy to think about is parents that I work with, particularly parents like moms who have a bunch of kids, stay-at-home moms. That's one of the most stressful ⁓ things is just managing a household of a bunch of kids who are just constantly demanding things of you. So lot of moms will come to work with me with lot of kids. And it's very easy to think, like, first of all, I just don't have time. I don't have time for my health because I'm just constantly giving.

And it's so important that I try to remind them that when you take a little bit away for yourself, it's going to make giving so much better. So that self mastery is going to lead to so much more self gift. When you can possess yourself, you're better able to give of yourself. So I see it all the time where I really push them like, okay, let's figure something out.

What is that going to look like with the kids, with food, all this kind of stuff? And then once we figure something out and they start to implement it and they start to take the time to prep their foods and make sure they're getting the right nutrition and getting the right recovery and getting the exercise without a doubt, every single time, I cannot believe that I was not doing this before. Like I was just missing out on so much. And of course, like the physical transformation is awesome because that just helps your confidence. That just helps like waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror. Like those things take a toll on us if we're not.

confident in that. And so it's nice to be able to do that in a way that feels comfortable, but also physiologically, just like the energy, you know, parents telling me I can play with my kids at the park for the first time without having to take a break. Like I can just keep up with them. And like I'm actually calling my kids on to challenge them to like push themselves. I remember one particular instance, a dad, this is just a very practical one who couldn't fit down slides at the park. He was just too big, ⁓ lost a bunch of weight and he was able to

hold this kid on his lap and go down the slide. Like seems like a minor thing for some people, but for somebody who's not able to do that, more life. Like you just have more life and you experience life more to the full when you take that time for yourself. being able to, yes, yes, it's stressful to try to figure these things out and add another component in. But from, know, supplementation, nutrition, hydration, arrest, recovery, exercise standpoint, when you're able to order those things properly, everything starts to kind of fall into place.

Now the other side of things is that also when we are in a stressed state, sometimes more is not always better. So for example, I had a girl who is just one of those very driven, always been into exercise, struggled with her weight for quite a while and she would do whatever I said. If I gave her the most intense workout, she would do it and she would bust it out. And so for somebody like her, we have to kind look at the big picture because

Stress also has a cascading effect, which we'll get into physiologically. And like I said, it kind of changes your physiology. And so for her, we actually pulled her workouts way back. We increased her calories, because being in the calorie deficit is a stressful thing for the body. And once we did that, all of sudden, the weight loss started happening. So you have to kind of change your thinking, because you're like, wait, she's working out less, and she's eating more, and now she's losing weight?

Yeah, because she was under so much stress that if you add more stress in that situation She was under so much physical stress. I should say that you know that that would just compound So sometimes you have to be strategic more is not always better So it's important for people to know that like it doesn't have to mean that you have to do these crazy regiments or these crazy things ⁓ It just means that being strategic and intentional with how you implement some of these things is really important so yeah, it's really beautiful to see and then you know, just the

which will get into kind of how it rabbit holes into our digestion, into our brain, into disease markers and so on and so forth. It just starts to have that cascading effect, both negative and then positive on how we operate and again, the type of life that we're living.

Joey Pontarelli (11:47)

Okay, no, so good. Yeah, that's what my experience with fitness as well is that at first, especially when you're first getting into it, it feels like such an extra thing. It's like I already have a full plate, like I can't do more. But once you kind of invest in that, the energy you get back, the confidence, like you said, the even the clarity of thinking, you know, even being more articulate, like there's so many benefits. It's such like a kind of a cornerstone habit, a linchpin habit where it's like, man, if you get that area of your life, right,

everything else in your life can get better too. But I know we're going to get into all that. I was curious. So yeah, you mentioned these transformations and was there anything like that for you personally? I'm just curious if there was, I mean, I know you've been doing this for a long time now, but was there a point at which like you were like, man, I need a better way to deal with this stress that you mentioned the physique show, but I'm curious if there was anything else that you can kind of, yeah, I get this. relate to seven through it myself. Yeah.

Dakota Lane (12:39)

Yeah, I mean, when I was younger, single, kids, I would just work like crazy eight hours a week and seven days a week. It was just crazy trying to get my business up and going. But once I got to a certain point with the family and then a full business and then trying to expand, it just gets to the point where you have to be able to prioritize that yourself or something is going to give. So for me, it kind of came in the form of just intense GI issues I started having earlier this year.

⁓ I'm very in tune with my body and with my input, all this type of stuff. so, I basically kind of ended up figuring out that it was ⁓ kind of a stress-related thing. so for me, yeah, I've had to just be a lot better at being just time management and being able to take that time for myself to decompress is so important. think one of the most important things, which I think we'll get into in the end, just some practical tips, a couple of things just kind of to tease that for me is,

routines around sleep. This is something that is so missed nowadays and it's honestly like an epidemic I think. People wake up and they immediately get on their phone and they start scrolling. Number one, just practically the blue light is going to throw off your circadian rhythm which is going to increase your cortisol levels which is a stress hormone which we'll get into. Number two, looking at your emails or social media and comparing yourself is going to just increase your stress.

people do that both before bed, they're just scrolling, they turn it off and they go to bed and then right when they wake up, they're back on it. And you know, that's, it's a temptation for myself. We have this kind of temptation to think that, the phone's going to help me to decompress. Like I'm just going to kind of scroll and just kind of mindlessly decompress. It actually does the opposite. So some lifestyle things for me that were so helpful is just setting aside time before I go to bed and after I wake up to just take that space. And for me, I feel that with prayer to be able to have

quiet time. It's sound, it's like it's these old cliche things of like having some meditative time to just like even just practicing breath work. Like if most people listen to this after this call, we're to just sit there for five minutes, which doesn't sound like a long time and do targeted breathing. Are we called box breathing where you breathe in for a certain count, hold it for a certain count, breathe out for a certain count, hold it for a certain count, do that for five minutes. You will literally feel your body just relaxing. So things like that are just

have been so good for me to take time away from work and from just kind of the craziness to be able to be a little bit more strategic, to recharge that battery a little bit. But yeah, it's definitely for me been something where I've had to do it in order to give the best I can when I'm working because I found that there would be times where I would just be grinding and grinding and my brain would just be like mush. I'm sure you get to this point too, like where you're just like, I got to step away and come back to this because my brain right now is just not operating.

how I know it can be. And so sometimes like doing more and just like pushing yourself and just like grinding isn't going to be the answer. It's important to be able to take those times to recharge.

Joey Pontarelli (15:42)

Yeah, and it feels so counterproductive or it feels like a waste of time, but it's so not because I'm sure you've had this experience too, like when you do, the way in which you like tackle life, your relationships, your work, everything is just so much better. Whereas if when you're in that stress state or that survival mode, you're just kind of like, you're reacting, you're saying things you shouldn't say, you're doing things you shouldn't do, you know, way easier to fall into like bad habits, sentations, things like that as well. So there's so many costs to

kind of staying stuck in that survival state, which no, not all stress is bad. I know we'll talk about that too. It's good to have a little bit of pressure to get you to move, but when you're in that kind of constant state, which so many people listening right now, going through family dysfunction and the parents divorce, they experienced that. It could be so taxing. And like you said, they might not even realize it until they take their foot off the gas and they're like, woo, this is like, I'm exhausted and I really need this time to rest and recover.

Joey Pontarelli (16:36)

For countless teens and young adults, their parents' divorce is actually the most traumatic thing that they've experienced, but so many feel lost and alone in navigating the challenges. I've been there myself. It's really not easy and it shouldn't be this way. My book, It's Not Your Fault, guides them through those challenges by helping them put their pain into words and begin to heal, work through the emotional problems that they face, cope in healthy ways instead of falling into bad habits, improve their relationship with their parents, navigate the holidays and other life events, and build healthy relationships and so much more.

One Amazon review said this, this book is packed full of really practical help. If you come from a broken family, or even if you don't, but you love someone that does, this book is so helpful. I can't recommend this enough. By the way, it's a quick read and it doesn't need to be read cover to cover. Since it's in question and answer format, you can just read one of the questions and one of the answers. And so if you want to join the thousands of people who've gotten a copy, just go to www.reswordministry.com slash books.

to get the book or download the free chapters. Again, that's restoredministry.com slash books or just click the link in the show notes.

Dakota Lane (17:39)

Yeah, one point you said I think is really important to target that stress gets a bad reputation nowadays. But I remember hearing a talk from this guy. He's got 16 kids. Amazing, amazing guy. Wrote a really cool book on family order. And he talked about just stress. did the word stress, where did it come from? It was used in architecture, basically in engineering, to describe the amount of force that a bridge could hold before it.

would collapse. That's what stress is, is how much force it could withstand before it would collapse. So it was an engineering term. It wasn't a bad thing per se. was more of a mathematical thing of how much force is there before it breaks. And so we kind of adopted that term. And now it's just become this very common thing for us. And I think that people

fall into that of just like, oh, I'm just stressed and I'm just busy. And like you said, not all stress is bad. think stress is actually a good thing in some ways because it means that there's probably some good things happening in your life. If you don't have things to lose, you're probably not as stressed. When you have valuable things, it can be more stressful, like a family, children, a business, whatever that is. So yeah, I think it's important to highlight this, that stress in and of itself isn't a bad thing. We're all going to experience it of some kind and actually can be very transformative if we allow it to be.

But from a of a physical standpoint, it's good to be aware of some of the ways that it can kind of cascade negatively.

Joey Pontarelli (19:00)

Yeah, totally. And what I've been learning about stress is like, you can get over this like threshold or this tipping point, kind of like the bridge you said, to where you get into the state of overwhelm. And then the overwhelm could lead you to then burnout and just to being like in this trauma state where you're like, your body just shuts down because it's just too much on it. So I'm excited to get into all that, but I agree. Like there's like different kinds of types of stress and at a point at which

It becomes too much, but shy of that, like you said, it's good. It moves us in life and we need that. But I wanna get more specifically, you already said a lot of different things about maybe the way that stress impacts our body, but let's get deeper into that and anything you would add. I'm curious about how does stress specifically impact our bodies, our minds, everything?

Dakota Lane (19:44)

We spend a lot of time even just on one of these aspects. I'll just kind of go over an overview. But yeah, think the main thing to remember with stress is that, again, our bodies are going to figure out a way to operate no matter what. It's going to do its best to kind of fight and find a status quo no matter what the situation is.

⁓ You know if somebody's in a car accident, they're trapped in their car, like your body's going to go into a lot of different mechanisms to try to just keep you alive. So it's important to remember like our bodies are doing a lot of these things behind the scenes that we're not typically aware of and those things behind the scenes take energy, they take emotion, and they take a toll on our body. So cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is used by our bodies to wake up. So when we're sleeping,

⁓ with our natural circadian rhythm, at some point our cortisol is in the morning, will start to elevate, and that's what will wake our body up. So in the morning, our cortisol is typically always higher. Cortisol also though makes it a lot easier for our bodies to store adipose tissue, which would be body fat, because in a stressed state, our bodies are made to survive biologically. So having less body fat is not conducive to survival, because if you are out in the wilderness and you're trying to survive,

having more food storage is gonna be better. So when cortisol is elevated, we're gonna see a cascading effect of a lot of things. But again, it can kind of start mentally, can go down into the gut, can go into even histamine-based issues, hives, hair loss, stomach ulcers, lots of different components. Cortisol regulation, it would be kind of like the tip of the iceberg, but stress in general ⁓ is going to have just kind of a cascading effect. So there's a...

wide variety of areas that it's going to impact. First of all, nervous system dysregulation. So this is just very easily seen when we get super stressed, you do anxiety, you know, just like more shaky, more tense, you kind of snap at people, know, heart rate, heart palpitations, things like that, elevated blood pressure. Another big one is going to be our HPA axis, which is our hypothalamic pituitary and adrenal. So this is basically our brain along with our

hormone pathways, the way that our body kind of processes from our thoughts, our brain activity, and how it regulates our hormones. It's going to start to impact that. So stress can really impact hormones. ⁓ You see this especially with women because they have a lot more hormones that their bodies are trying to regulate. ⁓ That's when stress comes, like a very common one that I see in my industry is women lose their menstrual cycle. So if you're over-exercising, if you're under-eating,

or if you're just extremely stressed, women can lose their menstrual cycle. So again, we're seeing kind of that stress component having that impact physiologically. ⁓ Chronic inflammation. Stress is going to increase our inflammation and as a result, it's going to start to impact our immune system. All of this is connected though. A lot of people don't necessarily understand the body from a holistic standpoint, but everything is connected. So many things start in our gut, our immune system.

a lot of our hormones, a lot of components that we might see symptoms elsewhere are starting in our gut. And so when that gut starts to become compromised, which stress is going to do, you're going to start to see that dysfunction elsewhere. So as the gut becomes compromised, you're going to see, ⁓ you know, just from a basic standpoint, you know, an upset stomach, but as that gut microbiome starts to get disrupted, you can start to see, you know, things like dysbiosis, or you can start to see

a beneficial bacteria decreasing or bad bacteria increasing, you start to see stomach ulcers, you start to see things like leaky gut. So it becomes compromised and then the immune system from there becomes compromised. And so then you can start to see a lot more issues pop up depending upon how the person is pathologically, it could spring into something more autoimmune based, it could spring into something more mental based, it kind of depends on the person. From there, another one would be mitochondrial dysfunction.

Our mitochondria is basically just the powerhouse of the cell. It's the baseline of kind of our cellular activity in our body. And so as the mitochondria starts to become dysfunctional, it's going to, again, it's going to start to cascade into a lot of these different things. What people are going to see ⁓ is diagnosis. It's going to be, you're diagnosed with some autoimmune issue or depression or ⁓ even cancer, different types of diseases that spring up.

that actually starts to become traced back to the way that stress is impacting your body. From the most foundational level, it's going to be inflammation. Inflammation is going to be kind of the blanket statement that I could say of how stress is going to negatively impact your body. When our body is inflamed, there's going to be tons of processes that happen to try to regulate it. But as part of that inflammation, things are going to start to happen. Oxidative stress is going to start to happen.

our body starts to release these things called cytokines and it's going to start to again have that kind of domino effect where our body's trying to just regulate and it's trying to find a comfortable state but in order to do that it starts to kind of attack itself in some ways. So you start to get a lot of this oxidative stress that builds up and when people's nutrition, their recovery, they're not exercising, when those things aren't in line that inflammation is going to start to pop out in certain areas. One you know one interesting

kind of example would be with cholesterol. Like people hear about cholesterol like, it's this bad thing that's ⁓ related to the fat that we're eating. an interesting aspect on the flip side of high cholesterol, low cholesterol, because our brain actually produces some cholesterol, most is in our body and from our food, but our brain actually has some cholesterol. And when our cholesterol is low, then our brain's not getting enough. Typically, you're going to see depression every time.

Depression is not a mood-based thing necessarily. It's not like a sadness. It typically looks like the form of fatigue. if you ask people who show depression, how do they feel? It's not really like Eeyore. They're not just like sad all the time. They just feel base. They just feel flatlined, like no energy, no motivation, nothing excites them. So even something like that, it could be a cholesterol-based issue, which can come from stress because again,

when stress increases, cortisol increases, and a lot of these things start to kind of break down. So from a brain standpoint also, stress is going to change, like I said, kind of our neurological pathways. It's going to change our brain. So our amygdala starts to become overactive. Our prefrontal cortex starts ⁓ to go offline under stress. Our hippocampus starts to become impaired. just those types of things that people don't think about from a physiological standpoint, when they're just like,

I'm just stressed. I just need a glass of wine. I just need to relax. But it's like, there actually could be some things underlying that you're not aware of that are going to work against you. let's say some of these things, let's say you're just chronically stressed growing up in a family-based trauma. This is huge. You're a kid. You're growing up. Your parents get divorced. You go through this traumatic thing. For most kids, it's like, yeah, maybe it was really traumatic. But for most kids, like, yeah, it was sad. they don't really know how to process it.

But your body remembers, the old, I think that book, Body Keeps the Score or something. So, you know, later on, your body's had this chronic inflammation, if you will, that it's been trying to figure out. Then you're 25 years old, you're having all these gut issues, you have no idea what's going on, you go to the doctor, they diagnose you with IBS. You're like, where did this come from? Well, it could have come from when you were eight years old and your parents got divorced and you watched your dad walk out yelling at your mom because your body was never getting the support that it needed.

to take care of that oxidative stress, that underlying stress and the impacts that it had. For other people, again, it's just depression. And this is why on the flip side, when we start to implement good nutrition and good exercise, and for some people, you're going to have to need some extra support, you start to see so much, the research is just overwhelming, you start to see so much impact on depression, anxiety, ADHD, all these types of things, which typically speaking are just medicated.

This would be kind of a whole other conversation and you know, I don't mean to bash the pharmaceutical, but so many of these people don't necessarily just need medications. They need you need to figure out the underlying issues that are happening that have led them to this point, whether it's upstream or downstream in order to figure out how to regulate their body. Because dysfunction doesn't mean that it's broken. It just means that something's not functioning how it should be.

So instead of just putting a bandaid over it, let's figure out how we can get it back to how it was functioning, how it should be. And medications don't necessarily do that. There is a place for medications, absolutely. But I think they're just overused because it takes more work to kind of get to the bottom of this. most, you know, a lot of doctors aren't necessarily, that's not part of their typical training because they're studying with medical practices, they're studying diagnostic medicine. Whereas like for...

exercise, nutrition, supplementation, we're looking at preventative medicine. So, you know, good doctors over time will start to kind of put these things together and see like, oh, wow, you know, there's a lot more to this picture. So, yeah, it's so important to start to look at the big picture and realize that, you know, I think one of the most important things with mental health a lot of times is that to realize it's not necessarily your fault. It's not something that you did. It's something that you experienced that got you to this point. But it's really hard.

because people who struggle with mental health will make decisions that still have ramifications. And we see that within our culture all the time. And so it's like, well, how do we rectify this? You still have to have justice for behavior, but sometimes it literally can be outside of somebody's control. So like I said, the good news is that there's a lot ⁓ of hope here because when you can start to learn how these things operate and start to see it from the bigger picture and start to give the body the support that it needs from a cellular level,

And then from a nutrition standpoint, and then from a recovery standpoint, you know, it starts to have a cascading impact in the positive direction. And so many of these things start to clear up and just take care of themselves. But it can just become so difficult when you're, you know, 30 years old, you're having all these issues. don't necessarily just think about what happened when we were eight. And if we do, we're in, you know, talk therapy, and they're asking these questions. And that's great. But these people need more than talk therapy. They need

actual physiological support that's going to help them because when you're going through the talk therapy and when you're working through these things, you're trying to get some healing. That's also going to bring up a lot of physiological thing that's that can be a stressful thing on the positive side. When you start to receive some of that healing, you do start to feel that freedom interiorly. You're like, wow, I just I feel like I can move better. I'm just breathing better. But, you know, but these people, they just need more support. You know, I just need more support to be able to give my body what it needs. So

Yeah, there's a lot of rabbit holes that we could go down of like particular things. But some of the big things that we're going to see, obviously, is like gut issues. Oh, and then I wanted to touch on disease because most disease, well, not most, I would almost argue to say all disease is going to come from inflammation. It's going to come from dysregulated and unmitigated inflammation in our body. so a lot of those things. And again, this isn't to say that somebody who, you know, got cancer to say that, oh, if you would have just

mitigated some inflammation you could have fixed it. I'm not trying to say that. That's kind of a stretch. But what I am saying is that there's a lot of situations where people will struggle with disease that would they have been able to have a different lifestyle? Maybe it could have looked different. So that chronic inflammation and that kind chronic state of stress that we stay in, kind like we talked about, we just don't realize that white noise that's going on in the background until it's off. And you're like, oh, wow, it's really quiet in here. I didn't realize that there was so much noise going on. So yeah, I know it's kind of a lot of different directions.

There's so many things that it impacts. like I said, just from a, let's just take weight loss, because that's a pretty big topic for a lot of people. When you start to look at weight loss, maybe you're in your 30s 40s and you're just like, things aren't working the way they used to. Well, one of the things with stress, with that chronic inflammation, is that as cortisol starts to rise, we can have adrenal-based insulin resistance. So our body basically, from our adrenals and our hormones that our body's pushing out,

can basically start to increase our body's release of insulin. And so people think that diabetes or things like that is always going to you just think of food. And obviously there's usually a food component, but a lot of times there's also a lifestyle component that's going on that when our bodies are constantly in that adrenaline state, our adrenals get fatigued.

you can see lot of insulin resistance. And so yeah, when people are insulin resistant, insulin is supposed to lower the blood sugar in your body. And so when your body is resistant to that, it makes weight loss a lot more difficult. It wasn't necessarily a food issue, it's a stress-based issue. So that's where, again, a lot of these things, you have to think of it from a holistic perspective, because it's not just one thing. If somebody's insulin resistant, they don't just need a medication to fix it. It's very...

I wouldn't say easy, in some cases it's very realistic to fix it through lifestyle things. But a lot of people just don't get the opportunity or give their bodies the opportunity to heal itself. So in the same way that, you know, internal family system is the idea with that therapy is that we have what we need in us to heal ourselves. We just got to give ourselves a space. Same thing with our body. Our bodies typically have what it needs. You just have to give it the right context. So that was kind of a long, long spiel. I know there's a lot there. But yeah, it's a pretty big missed component.

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Joey Pontarelli (33:45)

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Joey Pontarelli (34:48)

Yeah, no, that's so good. No, I'm learning a lot. So kind of what I hear you saying, and kind of maybe summarizing in my own layman term, is that stress is not just like this mental thing. It's really down to like the cellular level. It impacts our body in so many ways. And if we remain in that state without giving our body what it needs, whether that's rest or nutrition or fitness, then it can develop all these.

problems which so often get treated as just individual symptoms without looking at the rest of the bodies. We throw medication at it, we maybe solely focus on that one problem and we don't give our bodies like what it needs to get back into being functional. Like you said, I like your definition of like dysfunction. It's it's not like completely broken. It's just, it's not working the way it should work, the way it ought to work, which I love, which you can like restore that. You can bring it back, which is so good. So.

One of the follow up questions I had was, been all these studies that have shown that children of divorce in particular are more prone to health problems. And so I'm just curious, based on what you just said, your commentary on that, is it just like this idea of inflammation and leading to all these other things? What do you think is going on below the surface there?

Dakota Lane (35:57)

⁓ 100%. Yeah, I mean, like I said, you're going to see it's very common. you know, an easy one that's a big thing would be like eating disorders. Obviously that's more of a mental.

thing, but with eating disorders, it's almost every single time that there's some sort of trauma component that's there. And that's a behavioral thing. That's not even something that, you know, just kind of a disease that you're just kind of happen upon. So absolutely, you know, the research, I've been curious, I was kind of digging into it a little bit. It's very common. And this is why I try to harp with parents. Like it's so important that kids start to learn how to take care of their bodies because

So many things that happen later on stem from our childhood. And that's from a practical standpoint. But then when you add in that layer of emotional trauma that goes into it, absolutely, when kids are in that chronic state, again, your body is going to go into protective mode. And so it's just going to shut down a lot of systems that aren't going to, that we just, our bodies are like, I don't need this right now. I'm just trying to protect and just self-preserve. And things are going to start to dysregulate. And so, you know, a lot of times, like I said, like it's going to start

It's gonna start in the gut and it's gonna go from there when we're not absorbing nutrients properly, when we're not digesting properly, when cortisol is chronically elevated, when our body has that constant state of inflammation, our body starts to have more oxidative stress. Those oxidative stress cells start to cause micro damage basically around the body when you're you don't get enough antioxidants to kind of clean the system out. When you're not getting enough sleep, which is gonna help to kind of clear the system out.

it's going to just continue to cause these things to kind of mount and mount and it doesn't happen overnight. It happens over years of just like these small things just kind of happen and cascading. then later on, you know, these people, like I said, whether it's from a mental standpoint, depression, ADHD or whatever, but from a physical standpoint, even serious diseases, heart issues, you know, a lot of gut based diagnosis is like I said, like an IBS or Crohn's.

And then you have like lot of like autoimmune type stuff, Hashimoto's or Graves or all these different things that can come out. Now, I'm not saying a blanket statement that like it's always going to happen that these people become diseased or that all diseases come from this. But there's a huge correlation there. And it's something that definitely should be paid attention to. But a lot of times, you know, when we go through trauma, it becomes more of a behavioral thing and more of a coping of how can I just get through this trauma mentally? But

Like I said, it changes our neurology, it changes our brain biology. So yes, it's important to do therapy and to try to kind of reframe how we're thinking and try to get healing, but there's also that physical component. We have to start to support ourselves from the inside and be able to kind of start from that foundation and build up from there. And then if you can, if you can work at it from both directions, then all the better. you can do the therapy, the...

or prayer, whatever, accountability groups, whatever that looks like. But then you can also have the physiological standpoint of getting your nutrition dialed in, having a right supplement protocol if your body needs some extra support, having good outlets with exercise, hydration, rest and recovery, sleep. So many people's sleep issues are stress-related, and they're going to come down to, again, just imbalances of vitamins, minerals, or other things that are in our body that are

not allowing their bodies to get to that state of rest. So, so many things like that, you start to of unravel it, people start to kind of think like, wow, maybe this could all be connected. A lot of times in the normal medical system, you're not going to make those connections as much because most doctors aren't going to give you a diagnosis for Hashimoto's and ask you, by the way, when you were a kid, did your parents get divorced? It's just not a typical thing, which makes sense. And really, it doesn't necessarily matter because at that point,

problems already there, but it's good for people going through it or for parents who are, you know, you know, if there's people going through divorce and they have kids, it's good to be aware of these types of things that it can impact them because it's not just a behavioral thing. It's not just a hard thing for kids to go through, but these trauma situations can really have a deep physiological impact on kids.

Joey Pontarelli (40:17)

Yeah, no, and I think like you said, the two-end approach of like going through the mind but also through the body makes so much sense. Because what I've seen with some of the trauma therapists that we work with is like when you do address the trauma and try to process and heal it, some of the symptoms just resolve themselves. It's fascinating. And so yeah, I think both make so much sense. So I want to get into like the solution side of this. you've thrown out a bunch of different things about

you know, sleep and nutrition. So let's go a little bit deeper there if you would. Like, let's go, I'd love your advice on like, someone's listening to this right now. You know, let's say they come from a broken family. They've gone through a lot of like dysfunction and stress with that, with their parents getting divorced. And maybe they're seeing some of these symptoms of like, man, I'm not sleeping well. I'm like addicted to my phone. I just stream, you know, movies and shows all the time. I don't exercise. I don't eat right. Like they're in this spot where things aren't great. They're in that survival mode. They're in that stress state and they want to turn it around.

What can they do specifically to get into that better spot where their body can be you know in its optimal state and be healthy and functionally?

Dakota Lane (41:18)

Yeah, I'll go into some some more practical things, but it's important, I think, to say that having somebody to walk alongside of this with you, that's going to be the most efficient way. So having some sort of whether it's a naturopath doctor, whether it's, you know, an experienced nutrition, fitness type based coach.

that's gonna be the most efficient way to really get into it. Because I can get particular things, but each person's case is gonna be different. So it's like for cortisol, could list off some supplements to help with cortisol, but it kind of depends on some other factors of how we want to inhibit that or blunt that or different things. As far as the practicals, it's helpful to have somebody to walk with you who's knowledgeable. But apart from that, if you're not in a state where you're doing that, some lifestyle things that are gonna be really helpful. I think the term nowadays is like,

crunchy, like the people who are just like into like the really natural stuff. Like there's a lot of good value in some of those things. So like in the morning when you wake up, do not get on your phone for 30 minutes. Do not look at a screen for 30 minutes, 60 minutes ideally. If you can go outside, if the sun's up, go look at the sun or in the direction of the sun. Get outside, stand on the ground with your bare feet. I can't tell you like if you, when you wake up, most people are like super tired. Their eyes are like, I'm just so tired.

If the sun's up and you go out and you look at that sun, you will literally feel your body like a flower just start to blossom, start to open. It's crazy. But when you start to get that natural circadian rhythm, so many things start to get better because sleep is our body's natural way, our God-given way to heal ourselves, to restore ourselves. Before bed, 30 minutes. Do not watch screens. If you can, highly recommend blue light glasses.

you know, blue light blockers that will block them. There's I think a brand Groove GROV. They have a lot of like solid options. yeah, blue light glasses. They have some, you know, ones that are more intense and have like actual like red lenses. Those are going to like block a lot more. But even like ones like you have that they're going to just kind of block a baseline like helps so much. So that's just one little lifestyle thing. When you wake up in the morning, instead of going right to coffee, go drink some water. Our bodies are made up of primarily water.

Caffeine is a drug. It's a stimulant and most of us just you know, culturally we're just like we're all okay with this one drug. We're just all okay with it, which is fine. Caffeine is great. It can be really effective for lot of things, but caffeine is a stimulant. It's going to cause kind of a little bit of stress in your body. So when I have these high stress based clients, one of the first things is just pulling caffeine out right away. It's going to be hard at first, but once you do it and your body is able to calm down and it's not constantly getting that caffeine spike,

it's going to reorient itself and you're going to be like, you're just going to have so much more clarity. Depending on how much you're having, might be a little rough at first. And so there are some things that you can include to help with that going to a tea that's not caffeine. Or some people just like the act of having that warm drink in the morning, but just drink some water. Go drink 10 to 20 ounces of water just first thing in the morning. Similar to the sun, how you feel like you're just like, whoa, it's the same thing with water. When you start to drink your water, your body's just like, wow, I just feel so much better. And then one of the...

⁓ Besides supplements, just from a natural standpoint, one of the best things for lowering cortisol is carbohydrates. This is where it comes in with a lot of women, is that a lot of women are afraid of carbohydrates, making them gain weight. Men too. We think that we have to limit carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the best thing for lowering cortisol. So having a balanced, and I'm not saying wake up and eat a bowl of Lucky Charms. We might want to be a little bit more intentional with the types of foods that we're having.

You know, having a well-balanced nutrition where you're prioritizing protein primarily, but not just skipping out on carbohydrates. know, having, including good carbohydrates is going to help tremendously with just like lowering cortisol. It's very soothing for our bodies. Getting outside and just walking. From a fitness standpoint, we would call this low intensity, steady state cardio, LISS, which is opposed to high intensity like HIIT training.

So low intensity steady state, just like walking at a very low pace outside is very calming for our nervous system. So things like that, just practically, again, having a space where you can just like sit and breathe. And again, for me, that's prayer. Like I have to be able to go to the one who made me to be reminded that the whole world is not on my shoulders. So practically, those are some great things. Then a little deeper, implementing an exercise routine.

Endurance cardio is a really stressful thing on our bodies. It's also catabolic, meaning it's muscle wasting. If all we're doing is just going for runs as our exercise, that's not going to be most conducive thing. I would rather have somebody just go for long walks or do interval runs where they maybe run for a short burst and then they have a recovery period. But much better to just have low intensity steady state or doing a HIIT.

and then having a resistance-based training program. Like our bodies, no matter what, no matter if you like any type, like triathlons or high rocks or Ironmans or CrossFit or bodybuilding, like it's always going to be good to implement some sort of strength-based, resistance-based training for the sake of our muscles, developing muscle, for the sake of our metabolism, it's gonna have the best impact metabolically, and then for the sake of our hormone regulation, it's gonna be so good for everybody.

no matter the age. So what that looks like for the individual two to three to four times a week, just plenty of free good workouts out there that you could just get into online. And then from a nutrition standpoint, have to number one, be eating enough calories. Again, especially for women. I see this who are under eating chronically. They lose their period. They're over exercising. They're like, I'm not losing weight. I don't know what to do. I'm just going to eat less. I'm just going to move more. And they just create this cycle of overdoing it. So a lot of times, again, this is where it's helpful to have somebody in this journey with you because they can

Number one, give you the right recommendations, but number two, give you the reasonings that you understand why, and that's going to help your brain when your brain's like, no, I have to do this, I have to do this. And then from there, also with that, proper supplements. There is really good natural supplements out there that can be really helpful if somebody's just struggling in the beginning to ⁓ mitigate cortisol or for sleep. Magnesium glycinate is amazing for sleep. Just 30 minutes before bed, having some magnesium glycinate is phenomenal. Most people probably need it.

getting enough vitamin D, most people are going to be either deficient or just not getting enough vitamin D naturally, especially in the winter. So really important to be supplementing with like vitamin D, but you need to pair that with vitamin K2 in order to have the right absorption. So little things like that. But if you can have somebody, most of this kind of stuff, you're going to get more from kind of a naturopathic type of doctor as opposed to like a more Western medicine minded. Again, there's some that will kind of see it from that picture, but

These lifestyle things, you know, again, aren't going to be thought about or asked about as much. And sometimes, you know, it seems kind of out of left field for, you know, I'll have a client who's just like struggling with their weight loss. And I'm like, do you look at your phone right when you wake up? It seems kind of like, how does this have to do with my weight loss? And it's like, well, there's again, we're working on the foundation here. And like I talked about with that girl, we pulled her training back a lot. We increased her cardio because, know, you can see you can test these things on blood work.

which is really important too, getting blood panels done to see what's happening under the body or under the skin because besides that you're just guessing, blood work is probably the single best thing that most people can do for their health if they have the right person to help them to navigate it, to just see what's happening. Because let's say you've had chronic stress your entire life and it's dysregulated, your hormones and your thyroid is not working properly. That's going to be the motor for your metabolism. So if you're...

thyroid's not working properly, no matter what you do with fitness and exercise, you're gonna just be running up against a brick wall. Once you can get a little bit of support there, everything's gonna become more efficient. So that's where blood work is really helpful, to get a full panel done, all your hormones, to make sure that you can kind of see what's happening under that. Most insurances will cover a blood panel if you ask your doctor when you do your physical. So when you go to your physical, you can also say, hey, can I also get blood work? And they'll do that. There's also ways you can order blood work online and then have somebody review it with you.

without insurance, you can just kind of pay for it. a lot of different things that you can do. But yeah, I would say just to take it back a little bit more simple, like I said, just implementing some basic workouts, you two to three times a week is going to be great. Making sure that we're getting enough nutrition, both from dietary fats, carbohydrates and protein. It's important to have all three of those as they're all going to do different functions within the body. And then from there, some lifestyle things, you know, working on the mental health if you need to, having good social

outlets if you're a workaholic like myself, it's important to force yourself to get out of that, to be able to decompress and to get outside of yourself. And then one other thing is just giving of yourself, volunteering for something that can be so good just for like this stress environment because it's very easy just to focus on ourselves. We just self-focus and we're like, my life's crazy and I have all these issues. When you go downtown, you volunteer at your soup kitchen, you go volunteer.

you know, with Christ in the City or whatever it is and you hang out with the homeless, all of a sudden you see that your problems aren't so big or that you're not alone. And that is also very soothing for us to give of ourselves. We're made to give of ourselves. And so when we give of ourselves, we also receive. So a couple of different components there. yeah, important to kind of not forget all the different pieces.

Joey Pontarelli (50:46)

No, that's so good. So we got sleep. We got hydration. We have rest and movement not just movement Sometimes I think of just movement like exercise, but we have the rest component to I'm getting in the Sun the supplementation component of it making sure you're taking the right vitamins and different supplements that your body specifically needs which is different for everyone and Yeah, like you said lifestyle stuff working through the mental health

processing trauma, healing, getting out, just being with friends, being with other people, and then doing things that matter, like meaningful things like volunteering to the soup kitchen, like you said, or just doing something to get you outside of yourself. Those are all so good, I'm sure I missed something, but those are great tactical things. And I love what you said about having someone to guide you. One of the things I've learned is there's a lot you can do with do-it-yourself. And it's often a good place to start. But if you wanna guarantee your follow through, if you wanna end see results, not just in maybe years, but in months,

or even sooner, get someone to walk with you. There's no substitute for that. And it looks different in different cases. Like you said, maybe in one case it looks like hiring a holistic doctor, in another case maybe joining a gym that has classes with a competent trainer or hiring a fitness and nutrition coach. And so I know it can look different in different ways, but having someone who really understands this stuff at a deep level and who cannot just preach the principles to you, which are helpful, but then like you said, tailor it to your specific situation, that's so bad.

Absolutely

Dakota Lane (52:08)

But

yeah, mean, that's what I do. yeah, I think about, you know, anytime we want to outsource something, yeah, we could watch some YouTube videos and try to figure something out. But sometimes it's a lot easier and more efficient and to have somebody who knows what they're doing to be able to do it well and to help you alongside it. Because it's not just the practicals that's important, obviously the ins and outs, but like...

Like you said, it's the accountability piece and the accompaniment. Not just somebody to kind of say, hey, are you showing up? Like, are you doing this? And it's like, kind of get on you, but also to just walk with you and be like, yeah, it's difficult. It's a difficult journey. I know these things are hard to do.

It's gonna pay off and working through those things that come up because as we all know, the trauma, it's not just a mental thing, it's a physiological thing, but also nutrition and fitness, there's a big psychological component with that, like our relationship with food and with our body. It's difficult and it takes a lot sometimes to work through that. And as you start to dive into that, a lot of these things can kinda start to bubble up and it's important, I think, to have somebody throw your values to help you to navigate those and help give you the right support.

in a positive way to kind of help accompany you through that.

Joey Pontarelli (53:17)

That's huge, yeah. Otherwise, mean, motivation's so fickle, discipline wanes, like, it's just too hard to do it on your own. And like you said too, when it's not just about information. If it was about information, it would have changed years ago. Because we have unlimited access to information. We have ChatChaiTina, we have Google, like, you literally can access anything you want. It's not about that. It's about, I think, like, first and foremost, which I know you do this with people, is like, really understanding your why. Like, why are you going to put yourself through this

pain to get to this better place in life. You gotta understand that, because otherwise you're going to never put yourself through that. But when you do, my goodness, you can move mountains. And then beyond that, it's like having the tailored guidance of like, no, this is exactly what to do, don't do this, this is a myth, everyone thinks it's true, it's not true, do this specifically, are you doing it? I'm checking in, like all that, all the things you offer in your program. ⁓ So anyway, yeah, not just.

not just promoting you, just I really think like, you whether they work with you or someone else, it's like there's so much benefit to having someone to guide you and the results you'll see and the, you know, benefits. People see financial returns on this too. It's like, you don't think of it in that way because you think of it's like, oh, it's just an expense, but no, it's like if you will, you know, do better at your job, you'll eventually make more money. I'm sure you see that all the time when you get to this healthier, better spot. So anyway, there's a lot there, but um,

Dude, so good. This is really, really helpful. And I think we all see too, just like one of the last things I was gonna say, like you spelled out really clearly, like if we don't do something like drastically differently, you know, let's say we have these bad habits around like health and nutrition, then we're going to just continue down this path. And it's gonna lead us to the same results that we've been getting the whole time. So on that note, I did want to tell people like, what exactly do you offer and how can people get that and find you online? I know you have a freebie you can offer as well. So tell us all about that.

Dakota Lane (55:03)

Yeah, so I started a fitness business about 10 years ago. So I basically build customized fitness nutrition plans for people all around the world, help them to implement it. I build it for people of all different backgrounds. My youngest client's been 15 years old. Oldest is almost 80. From professional athletes, stay at home moms, like you name it. It's customized for you to fit in your life, not take it over and then walk alongside of you.

⁓ and the journey and help you to implement it. I've had clients in all 50 states, 23 countries, all seven continents. So it doesn't matter where you are, what your situation is. That's my whole goal is to try to just give you premier experience and help you to be able to get the goals that you want to while making it realistic and sustainable. Yeah, you mentioned a freebie. I have a guide basically of just kind of the most common mistakes that I see with fitness and nutrition, some of the ways to just combat those. So that's in.

you know, little thing that you can just do to get started. yeah, social media, Dakota Lane Fitness. My website's dakotaleanfitness.com. Yeah, always happy to answer people's questions and help walk with people however they need. So that's what I do. It's beautiful to just see again, not just the physical transformations, which are awesome, but to see the life transformations. Yeah, I had a guy last week who just got a promotion at his job and he was sending me messages like,

I would not have got this promotion if I didn't join your program. Chelsea, that's crazy. I don't know if he could prove that, but that's how he felt. He's like, the drive that I've had, he's in sales and stuff. So it's just like that, motivation, his confidence. It's really cool. You get so much more out of it. And sometimes we just think it's like this, you we just want to lose weight because most people just think that that's kind of the end. But once you do that, there's, there's so much more, there's so much more to accomplish. And again, it's all about.

quality of life. It's all about experiencing the fullness of life and experiencing life at the heights and being able to do the things that you want to do in the way that you want to do them. That's really what it's all about.

Joey Pontarelli (56:58)

I love that, I love that. And you're such a good man too. bring just the meaning and the faith aspect to it as well. So I appreciate that about you. Yeah, so good. Okay, so they can get this free PDF. We'll link to that about what not to do basically, the mistakes to avoid. And then they can schedule a consult with you as well. Is that right? Is that still free?

Dakota Lane (57:18)

Yep, yeah. The concerts are free. You can email me to set that up. on my website. I'm happy to chat with people and just hear about where you're at and get some free advice if nothing else.

Joey Pontarelli (57:28)

Good. Yeah, I know a lot of people would pay for those consoles too, so that's really generous of you. Dakota, so good to have you, man. I want to give you the final word. What final advice, encouragement would you give to everyone listening, especially maybe that younger you who went through their parents' divorce, who's just dealing with a lot of stress in their life and their body. What final encouragement, advice would you offer to them? Yeah, yeah.

Dakota Lane (57:48)

It's not your fault, obviously. We went through this. It was something that we just had to experience. So it wasn't your fault what was done to you, but it's within your power and your control to make the change from here on out. And that you're the captain of your ship. You get to decide what happens. You don't have to just let life come at you. You can take the reins, maybe with some help, and you can make changes. And you don't have to let the narrative

kind of be dictated for you, you can actually set the narrative. there's so much beautiful resources out there now, and there's so much good research that we have so many more things at our fingertips to help and to change these things. ⁓ Yeah, because I mean, even 50 years ago, some of this knowledge and research, just wasn't available. We weren't aware of it. So you had these people getting diagnosed with...

with mental issues who probably, you know, really didn't. They just, they needed some additional support. Now we know so much more. So you have the power to make the changes, really what it comes down to. I just love empowering people to know that your story is your story and you get to write it. It doesn't have to be written for you.

Joey Pontarelli (59:04)

That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe and rate or review the show. You'll avoid missing future episodes and help us reach more people. In closing, always remember you're not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life and we are here to help. And keep in mind the words of C.S. Lewis who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.