Notes from the Edge

What happens when you begin grieving someone you love long before they’re gone?

In this deeply personal episode of Notes From the Edge, host Lisa Lacy sits down with Suzanne Sherman, author, memoir editor, and writing coach, to explore childhood trauma, schizophrenia, suicide loss, complicated grief, and the healing power of storytelling.

Suzanne was just four years old when her mother developed schizophrenia. At eighteen, she lost her mother to suicide. Decades later, she found the courage to tell their story in her memoir, Living in the Long Shadow: Surviving a Legacy of Mental Illness.

But this conversation reveals something profound: sometimes we grieve not only the person we’ve lost, but the life mental illness prevented them from living.

Through memories of her mother, decades of unanswered questions, and the decision to finally write her story, Suzanne explores how love, grief, and healing can coexist.

In This Episode:

• Growing Up with a Parent with Schizophrenia: How Suzanne’s childhood changed when her mother’s mental illness emerged, and what happens when children are left to make sense of experiences nobody explains.
• Suicide Loss & Complicated Grief: The emotional complexity of losing her mother at eighteen, including the grief Suzanne experienced long before her mother’s death.
• Mental Illness, Family Silence & Childhood Survival: How unspoken struggles, family dynamics, and the need to remain observant can shape a child’s understanding of safety and belonging.
• Memoir Writing & Healing Through Storytelling: Why Suzanne waited decades to write Living in the Long Shadow, how she found the courage to revisit painful memories, and what writing taught her about her own life.
• Love Beyond Loss & Finding Meaning: An extraordinary personal experience that changed Suzanne’s understanding of her connection with her mother, the importance of honest communication, and the simple words that helped her persevere: “I can do this.”
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From the lasting effects of parental mental illness to the courage it takes to tell a deeply personal story, this conversation reminds us that grief doesn’t always begin with death, healing doesn’t require forgetting, and some of the most important conversations are the ones families never learned how to have.

Connect with Suzanne Sherman

Explore Suzanne’s memoir, writing workshops, coaching services, and weekly memoir classes.

Website: https://suzannesherman.com

Connect with Lisa | INSIDE THE EDGE

Join INSIDE THE EDGE, a membership community for deeper human conversations, personal exploration, and meaningful connection beyond the podcast.

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What if artificial intelligence could give us more time to be human?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, host Lisa Lacy sits down with Jon Rossiter, entrepreneur and co-founder of Zoloto, to explore AI employees, business automation, leadership, and the future of work.

But the conversation goes beyond technology. Jon opens up about people-pleasing, authenticity, accountability, and why meaningful human connection matters more than ever in an increasingly automated world.

What happens when technology gives us back our time, but we still have to decide who we want to be?

In This Episode:

• AI Employees & the Future of Work: How specialized artificial intelligence workers are transforming business operations, automation, and the way entrepreneurs manage their companies.
• Entrepreneurship, Productivity & Work-Life Balance: Why eliminating repetitive tasks could help business owners reduce stress, reclaim valuable time, and focus on what matters most.
• Leadership, Accountability & Human Trust: Why taking responsibility, acknowledging mistakes, and building authentic relationships remain essential in an increasingly automated world.
• People-Pleasing, Identity & Authenticity: Jon’s personal experience of letting go of the need for approval and learning to show up without wearing a mask.
• Human Connection & the Loneliness Epidemic: Why technology cannot replace emotional honesty, meaningful relationships, asking for help, and supporting one another.

From AI-powered business transformation to the deeply human need for connection and belonging, this conversation challenges us to consider whether the future of work should be measured only by productivity or by the quality of the lives we’re creating.

Connect with Jon Rossiter

Co-Founder, Zoloto

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrossiterofficial/

Connect with Lisa | INSIDE THE EDGE

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What if your biggest financial obstacle isn’t your money, but the unconscious patterns controlling your decisions?

Financial advisor, former monk, and bestselling author Doug Lynam returns to Notes From the Edge for a live Enneagram case study with Lisa Lacy, exploring how personality, trauma, fear, and identity shape our relationship with money.

In this episode:

• Why financial stress activates survival instincts and unconscious emotional patterns.
• How the nine Enneagram personality types influence spending, saving, control, and financial decisions.
• A live examination of Lisa’s Type 8 personality, including power, boundaries, anger, and the fear of being controlled.
• How Type 8 and Type 5 personality patterns affect relationships, communication, and financial behavior.
• How self-awareness, compassion, and intentional choices can transform destructive money patterns into healthier financial habits.

Missed Part 1?

The Wealth We Can’t Spend: From Marine to Monk to Money Manager with Douglas Lynam.

Find it on Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/notes-from-the-edge/id1896943121

Connect with Doug Lynam:

https://www.douglynam.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy | INSIDE THE EDGE Membership:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What happens when the life you’ve worked so hard to build no longer feels like the life you’re meant to live?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, host Lisa Lacy sits down with Luke Mickelson, founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, to explore purpose-driven leadership, community service, personal identity, vulnerability, and how one small act of kindness can grow into a movement that changes hundreds of thousands of lives.

Luke had everything he thought success was supposed to look like. A six-figure career, financial stability, a family, and a comfortable life. But something was missing.

Then a simple project to build a bunk bed for children sleeping on the floor changed everything.

Luke shares the unforgettable story of Haley, a six-year-old girl who had been sleeping on her school clothes because she didn’t have a bed. When she received her very first bed, she wrapped her arms around it and kissed it.

That moment transformed Luke’s understanding of success, service, and what it means to make a difference.

What began as a small community project became Sleep in Heavenly Peace, an international nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that no child has to sleep on the floor.

But this conversation goes far beyond building beds.

Lisa and Luke explore the loneliness that can exist behind professional success, the unexpected fulfillment that comes from helping others, and the personal cost of believing that leadership means always having the answers.

Luke also opens up about letting go of pride, ego, and the identity he spent years performing, discovering that vulnerability may be one of the greatest strengths a leader can develop.

In this episode:

• Success vs. Fulfillment: Why achieving everything society calls success can still leave us questioning our purpose.
• One Bed, Thousands of Lives: How Haley’s story helped ignite a community movement addressing childhood bedlessness.
• The Five Steps to Finding Purpose: Luke’s approach to meaningful action: see it, feel it, act on it, repeat it, and share it.
• Community Service and Human Connection: How volunteering creates belonging, shifts our perspective, and reminds us that we’re not meant to navigate life alone.
• Leadership, Identity, and Vulnerability: Why letting go of the need to be strong, have every answer, and perform for others can be profoundly freeing.

This is a conversation about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, not because they have all the resources or answers, but because they decide to act.

And perhaps the most powerful reminder is that you don’t have to change the entire world to change someone’s world.

Connect with Luke Mickelson

Learn about Sleep in Heavenly Peace, find a local chapter, volunteer to build or deliver beds, donate, or start a chapter in your community.

https://shpbeds.org/

Connect with Lisa | INSIDE THE EDGE

Go beyond the public conversations with exclusive solo episodes, deeper discussions, and monthly live experiences.

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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In this Edge Note solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy gets personal about Bipolar I, trauma, uncertainty, and the exhausting need to control outcomes when your nervous system learned early that powerlessness could be dangerous.

This is not another “just let it go” conversation. Lisa explores what control actually looks like when you live with mental illness, why uncertainty can feel threatening even when you are clinically supported and properly medicated, and how to separate what requires action from what simply requires us to tolerate not knowing yet.

In this episode:

• Why trauma and mental illness can make uncertainty feel like danger
• The difference between taking responsible action and trying to control an outcome
• How hypervigilance can disguise itself as preparation, responsibility, and problem-solving
• How to separate facts from catastrophic predictions when your mind is activated
• Practical tools for grounding, shrinking time, regulating your body, and deciding what actually needs your attention right now

If you have ever done everything you could and still found yourself obsessing over what happens next, this conversation is for you.

The goal is not to stop caring about outcomes.

It is to trust yourself enough to know that you can survive the uncertainty between action and outcome.

Connect with Lisa Lacy Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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You can understand your patterns. You can know where they came from. You can spend years learning the language of trauma and healing, and still find your body reacting as if the danger never ended.

In this Edge Note episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with registered somatic movement therapist and educator Katy Slany for a conversation about somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, embodied healing, and why insight alone does not always create lasting change.

Katy explains why trauma is a whole-body experience, what people actually mean when they talk about “regulating the nervous system,” and how learning to tolerate and understand our physical sensations can change the way we respond to anxiety, fear, relationships, and the world around us. She also shares her own healing journey and how survival, illness, isolation, and the fear of connection became deeply intertwined.

This conversation is ultimately about something bigger than regulation. It is about recovering choice, autonomy, and the ability to listen to the wisdom of your own body.

In this episode:

• Why understanding trauma intellectually may not change the body’s response

• What nervous system regulation actually means and why it is often oversimplified

• How somatic work can help us reconnect with sensations we have learned to avoid

• Why healing is not a destination, but a changing relationship with our experiences

• How inherited beliefs, survival patterns, and conditioning can disconnect us from our autonomy and power

Connect with Katy Slany:

Katy Slany | Transformative Somatic Education

Connect with Lisa Lacy Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What happens when you achieve everything you thought you wanted and discover it still doesn’t feel like enough?

Dr. Jack Groppel is a pioneering sports scientist and co-founder of the Human Performance Institute whose work reveals a powerful truth: peak performance and a meaningful life are not necessarily the same thing.

In this conversation, Jack and Lisa explore how achievement can become addictive, why our need for approval can hide underneath ambition, and what decades of studying elite human performance taught him about energy, recovery, and fulfillment. Jack also shares how adopting his son and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro together ultimately forced him to reconsider his definitions of strength, fatherhood, success, and what matters most.

In this episode:

• Human performance and sports science
• Achievement addiction and overachievement
• The need for approval and people pleasing
• Burnout, energy management, and recovery
• Fatherhood and adoption
• Leadership and high performance
• Purpose, meaning, and fulfillment
• Mount Kilimanjaro and Mountains Within
• Redefining success 

Learn more about Dr. Jack Groppel and Mountains Within:

https://jackgroppel.net

Explore more from Lisa Lacy Inside the Edge:

Inside The Edge — Lisa Lacy

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What happens when the thing that made you successful, your ability to push through, perform, achieve, and keep going, becomes the very thing your body can no longer sustain?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author, transformational coach, and founder of The Rebuild Collective, Kristen Renee Appleby, for a conversation about burnout, autoimmune illness, the mind-body connection, and what it really means to rebuild your life from the foundation up.

Kristen spent years searching for answers while navigating autoimmune illness, chronic inflammation, demanding work, financial stress, emotional suppression, and the expectation that she should simply keep functioning. Eventually, she began questioning whether all of those pieces were actually separate.

We talk about what happens when achievement becomes intertwined with survival, why changing a protocol without changing the environment may not be enough, and how our relationships with work, money, emotions, purpose, and ourselves can influence the way we experience our lives.

This conversation isn’t about abandoning ambition. It’s about asking whether the life you’re building actually has a foundation strong enough to hold it.

In this episode:

• How burnout and high-achiever survival patterns can hide behind capability and success

• Autoimmune illness, chronic inflammation, emotional suppression, and the mind-body connection

• Workplace stress, unhealthy environments, and what happens when pushing through stops working

• Financial stress, money wounds, limiting beliefs, and the connection between physical and financial wellness

• Kristen’s Healthy Foundation approach to rebuilding self-trust, authenticity, purpose, and a life that doesn’t require abandoning ambition

Connect with Kristen Renee Appleby:

https://www.kristenreneerebuilding.com

Connect with Lisa | Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What happens when the strength everyone sees is actually survival mode?

Jenna Schutt, former cardiac registered nurse and stem cell transplant survivor, joins Lisa Lacy for a deeply human conversation about chronic illness, faith, fear, motherhood, and what happens when being incredibly capable convinces everyone around you that you must be okay.

Diagnosed with a rare, incurable disease at 30 while raising two children still in diapers, Jenna endured ten rounds of chemotherapy, serious medical complications, a stem cell transplant, and ongoing graft-versus-host disease. But this conversation goes beyond what happened medically. Jenna and Lisa explore the identity shift from nurse to patient, grieving the life you thought you would have, learning to listen to your body, and recognizing when strength has become a performance.

In this episode:

• Chronic illness and survival mode
• Performing strength while struggling internally
• Fear, faith and emotional resilience
• Motherhood during a medical crisis
• Grief, identity and uncertainty after diagnosis
• Stem cell transplant and graft-versus-host disease
• Why being capable does not mean being okay
• Learning that rest is medicine
• The Joy Reflex and retraining your response to fear

Connect with Jenna Schutt:

https://www.jennaschutt.com/

Connect with Lisa Lacy Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What happens when your mind creates a reality so convincing that everyone else can tell you it isn’t real, and you still know what you saw, heard, felt, and lived?

In this Special Edition of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy opens up about living with Bipolar I Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Complex PTSD, including what psychosis actually felt like from inside of it.

“The Psychotic Trifecta” is Lisa’s personal description of the collision of these conditions, not a clinical term. Bipolar I can include psychosis, while BPD and CPTSD can involve dissociation, hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, and disturbances in how we experience ourselves and other people.

This is not a clinical lecture.

This is what it feels like to live it.

Lisa also talks candidly about spending much of her life running on mania, why mania can masquerade as extraordinary productivity, and what happened when menopause brought a kind of depression she had never experienced before.

In this Special Edition:

• What Bipolar I mania and psychosis can actually feel like from the inside

• Why Bipolar I and Borderline Personality Disorder are often confused, but are fundamentally different

• How CPTSD, hypervigilance, dissociation, and trauma responses can overlap with both

• Why being highly functional does not necessarily mean someone is mentally well

• What Lisa has learned about reality-checking, treatment, self-awareness, and recognizing when her own mind may not be a reliable narrator

Mental illness does not remove intelligence.

Psychosis does not make someone stupid.

Trauma does not make someone weak.

And a diagnosis does not erase the human being living underneath it.

Connect with Lisa Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What if sustainable success has less to do with talent, motivation, or doing more and more to do with self-worth, self-belief, and consistency?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with Amy Lenius, personal development and success coach, professional speaker, and Director of Group Coaching at Next Level University, for a conversation about redefining success from the inside out.

After navigating chronic illness from childhood, Amy began rebuilding not only her physical health but also her identity, beliefs, and relationship with herself. She explains why self-belief is built through action, why self-worth can quietly place a ceiling on achievement, and why sustainable change rarely comes from dramatic overnight transformation.

They also explore people-pleasing, burnout, boundaries, perfectionism, nervous-system regulation, and what happens when you stop performing as the person everyone else needs you to be.

In this episode:

• The critical difference between self-belief and self-worth
• Why messy action and consistency can matter more than talent or motivation
• How people-pleasing, dimming yourself, and weak boundaries can erode self-worth
• Why sustainable growth means expanding your comfort zone instead of jumping straight into overwhelm
• How small, intentional actions can create lasting success without sacrificing your health, relationships, or identity

Connect with Amy Lenius

Next Level University Group Coaching: nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching⁠

Instagram: @amylenius

Facebook: Amy Lenius 

Connect with Lisa Lacy

Inside the Edge: lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What if the pain you feel and the damage seen on an MRI aren’t always the same thing?

Lisa Lacy sits down with neurologist Dr. Eric Anderson, MD, PhD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer at Lin Health, to explore chronic back pain, the nervous system, central sensitization, and what patients should understand before making major decisions about back surgery.

Dr. Anderson explains how chronic pain can become a highly sensitized alarm system, why imaging findings don’t always correspond with the intensity of someone’s pain, and how whole-person approaches may help some people retrain the nervous system and regain function.

In this conversation:

• Why pain and structural damage are not necessarily the same thing, and what MRI findings can and cannot tell you.
• How central sensitization can cause the nervous system’s protective alarm system to become overly sensitive.
• The connection between stress, trauma, hypervigilance, the limbic system, and persistent pain.
• How approaches including pain reprocessing therapy, CBT, graded exposure, emotional awareness, coaching, and movement can be incorporated into chronic pain recovery.
• The questions to ask before back surgery, including expected outcomes, alternatives, recovery time, and when structural problems or progressive nerve damage may require surgical intervention.

This is not a conversation about telling people their pain isn’t real. It is about understanding pain more completely so patients can advocate for themselves and make informed decisions about their care.

Connect with Dr. Eric Anderson

Learn more about Dr. Anderson and Lin Health:

https://lin.health

Connect with Lisa Lacy

Learn more about Lisa, Notes From the Edge, and her work:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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We are told to look for the good, raise our vibration, practice gratitude, forgive, move on, and trust that everything happens for a reason. But what happens when positivity becomes another way to avoid reality?

In this Edge Note, Lisa Lacy explores spiritual bypassing, false positivity, trauma, emotional avoidance, and the difference between acceptance and resignation. Facing what is painful does not make you negative. Sometimes it simply means you are willing to tell yourself the truth.

Two people can experience what looks like the same event and carry completely different emotional consequences from it. Trauma is not determined only by what happened. Context, meaning, safety, loss, and what happened afterward all matter.

Healing does not require pretending everything is beautiful. It requires being willing to see your life as it exists today so you can decide what you want to create tomorrow.

In this episode:

• Why false positivity can keep us from making meaningful change
• What spiritual bypassing looks like when spiritual ideas are used to avoid painful emotions
• Why two people can experience the same event and be affected completely differently
• The difference between acknowledging victimization and remaining trapped in a victim identity
• Why accepting reality may be one of the most powerful ways to reclaim agency over what happens next

Go deeper Inside the Edge

 https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

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What if the answers you’ve spent your whole life searching for aren’t somewhere out there, but waiting for you to finally turn inward?

In this Edge Note of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, mentor, and author Rosanne Annoni for a deeply human conversation about spiritual awakening, grief, forgiveness, self-inquiry, and what happens when we stop looking outside ourselves for permission, validation, and truth.

After decades as a psychotherapist and years of her own searching, Rosanne shares how therapy, meditation, loss, motherhood, relationships, and the Diamond Approach gradually brought her back to herself. Together, Lisa and Rosanne explore the difference between understanding our patterns and learning not to be ruled by them.

In this conversation:

• Why healing often begins when we stop focusing on everyone else and turn inward
• How victimhood, blame, and self-blame can keep us trapped in old patterns
• What forgiveness can look like without excusing what happened
• Why people-pleasing and doing everything alone can disconnect us from ourselves
• How curiosity, presence, self-inquiry, and accepting support can change the way we move through life

Rosanne’s debut memoir, Unfolding the Heart: One Woman’s Quest for True Nature, explores a lifetime of searching, loss, healing, spirituality, and the courage to keep standing back up.

Connect with Rosanne Annoni

https://rosanneannoni.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy

https://www.lisalacy.com

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What stories disappear when the people we love are no longer here to tell them?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with entrepreneur, business coach, former United States Marine, and founder of The Story Project, Brad Koch, for a deeply human conversation about family stories, grief, memory, legacy, and the things we often wait too long to ask.

Brad shares how the loss of his father-in-law, and the realization that his wife wished she had more recordings of his voice, face, mannerisms, and stories, helped inspire The Story Project. Lisa and Brad explore why knowing someone’s story can completely change the way we understand our family, our childhood, our trauma, and even ourselves.

This is a conversation about remembering where we came from while the people who came before us are still here to tell us.

In this episode:

• Why preserving someone’s voice, mannerisms, memories, and stories can become an irreplaceable part of their legacy

• How learning our family’s stories can deepen connection and change the way we understand our own past

• Why waiting until time feels limited can leave us scrambling to ask questions we could be asking now

• How The Story Project helps families capture and preserve stories across generations

• Brad’s experience entering the Marine Corps at seventeen, the role he performed to survive, and why asking for help is not weakness

Connect with Brad:

https://storyproject.app

Connect with Lisa:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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Why a special edition? Because every once in a while, a conversation happens at the Edge that feels too important to wait its turn on the calendar. This is one of those conversations.

At 18 years old, Liam Beville pushed a friend out of the path of a stolen car and took the impact himself. Both of his legs were shattered, his right knee was severely damaged, and he was told he might never walk again.

He did more than walk again.

Liam became an elite powerlifter, Guinness World Record holder, disability advocate, speaker and author. But underneath the records, the weights and four decades of competition was another story.

For years, Liam practiced the way he walked so people would not see his limp.

Strength became more than something he demonstrated. It became something he performed.

In this special edition of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Liam talk about what happens when survival becomes identity, when resilience starts looking like a mask, and what it means to finally acknowledge the parts of ourselves we worked so hard to hide.

In this conversation:

• Why Liam focused on rebuilding his mind before rebuilding his body after catastrophic injury

• The depression, PTSD and loss of dignity that accompanied his recovery

• How rehabilitation eventually led him into 40 years of competitive powerlifting

• Why Liam spent years hiding his disability, including practicing how he walked so others would not see his limp

• What changed when he stopped seeing disability as something that diminished his strength and began allowing it to become part of his story

Liam is a Guinness World Record holder, internationally ranked powerlifter, disability advocate and brand ambassador for Active Disability Ireland. His upcoming memoir, Unbroken: The Liam Beville Story, tells the larger story of survival, performance, identity and resilience.

Connect with Liam Beville:

https://www.liambeville.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

Listener’s Note:

Resilience is not the absence of pain, disability, fear or limitation. Sometimes the strongest thing we can do is stop performing strength long enough to acknowledge what happened to us.

Liam’s story is a reminder that adapting is not surrender, asking for help is not weakness, and accepting the parts of yourself that changed does not erase who you were before. Survival may require a performance for a season. Healing often begins when you realize you no longer have to keep performing it.

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What happens when the workplace you once worked so hard to succeed in becomes the place you no longer recognize yourself?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with employment attorney, workplace strategist, author, and former corporate people and culture executive Natalie Holder for a powerful conversation about workplace trauma, exclusion, toxic work culture, self-advocacy, and career reinvention.

Natalie explains why workplace trauma does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it is being left out of the room, overlooked for opportunities, quietly bullied, or repeatedly questioning whether what you are experiencing is “bad enough” to speak up about.

They explore why high performers may be among the last people to leave unhealthy environments, why having language for what is happening matters, and how unresolved workplace experiences can follow us into the next job if we never stop to understand them.

Natalie also challenges the idea that the answer is always to quit immediately. Sometimes the most powerful move is understanding what happened, getting support, planning your exit intentionally, and asking better questions about what you actually want next.

In this episode:

• How exclusion and workplace trauma can hide in plain sight

• Why high performers may stay in unhealthy workplaces longer

• Finding the language to advocate for yourself

• Knowing when it is time to stay, leave, or strategically pivot

• Building a career that supports who you are becoming

Connect with Natalie Holder:

https://natalieholderspeaks.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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What happens when the roles you learned to play in relationships start costing you yourself?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with relationship and intimacy coaches Natalie Vartanian and Glenn Nielsen for an honest conversation about marriage, somatic healing, nervous system regulation, inherited relationship roles, and what happens when couples stop blaming each other long enough to look beneath the conflict.

Natalie and Glenn share how even after years of personal growth and entering their marriage intentionally, old conditioning began showing up. Natalie found herself becoming a muted version of herself, while Glenn wrestled with the enormous pressure of being the provider after the collapse of a business he had built over decades.

Together, they explore why sometimes the intensity of our reaction has more to do with what is happening inside us than what our partner actually did, and how couples can begin creating a relationship based on conscious choice rather than inherited expectations.

In this episode:

• How the “good wife” and “good husband” roles can quietly create resentment and pressure

• Why your nervous system may be reacting to something deeper than the argument in front of you

• Somatic awareness and learning to recognize activation in the body

• Taking responsibility for your own patterns without turning relationship work into blame

• How couples can intentionally create agreements, connection, intimacy, and a relationship that allows both people to fully exist

Connect with Natalie & Glenn:

https://wakeuporbreakup.com

Connect with Lisa:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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What happens when accepting a diagnosis stops feeling like surrender and becomes the beginning of recovery?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author and podcast host Reza Ghaemi for an honest, funny, and deeply human conversation about living with Bipolar I Disorder, surviving mania and hospitalization, resisting treatment, and eventually learning to work with his diagnosis instead of fighting against it.

Reza, author of Bipolar Is My Superpower: How Acceptance Changed My Life and host of The Rez Podcast, shares why acceptance became a turning point in his recovery and why calling bipolar his “superpower” is not about romanticizing mania or psychosis. It is about the self-awareness, resilience, recovery skills, and responsibility he built afterward.

Lisa and Reza also dig into stigma, medication, faith, family support, disclosure, relationships, and what changes when you stop hiding your story and start owning it.

In this episode:

• Bipolar I Disorder, mania, psychosis, and hospitalization

• Moving from denial and stigma toward acceptance

• Medication, treatment, sleep, and building recovery skills

• Mental health disclosure in work, dating, and relationships

• Replacing shame and fear with self-awareness and ownership

Connect with Reza Ghaemi:

The Rez Podcast: https://www.rezpodcast.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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What happens inside your body in the seconds between a trigger, a craving, and a choice?

Dr. Deborah Rozman is a behavioral psychologist and President/Co-CEO of HeartMath. In this episode of Notes From the Edge, she joins Lisa Lacy to explore what happens physiologically when stress activates old patterns, why the familiar can feel safer even when it is destructive, and whether we can train the nervous system to create more space between an urge and our response.

They unpack heart-brain communication, heart rate variability, coherence, and real-time biofeedback, while Lisa shares how biofeedback became part of her own recovery experience. Dr. Rozman also walks through a simple heart-focused breathing practice that can be used when stress, overwhelm, or cravings begin to rise.

In this episode:

• Addiction recovery, cravings, triggers, and relapse prevention
• Why the brain can reach for familiar patterns during stress and overwhelm
• Heart-brain coherence, HRV, and nervous system regulation
• Using real-time biofeedback to recognize and shift physiological stress patterns
• Heart-focused breathing and creating space between an urge and a reaction

Connect with Dr. Deborah Rozman:

HeartMath.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

www.LisaLacy.com

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What happens when telling the truth about your mental health could cost you your credibility, your career, or the way people see you forever?

In this solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy talks openly about living with Bipolar I, psychosis, borderline personality disorder, addiction, hospitalization, and recovery while simultaneously building businesses, leading teams, earning six figures, and appearing highly functional to the outside world.

This is a conversation about what happens when a psychiatric diagnosis becomes a verdict instead of information. Lisa explores the pressure to hide serious mental illness in professional spaces, the difference between mental health awareness and actual psychological safety, and why people should not have to prove recovery by pretending they were never sick.

In this episode:

• Bipolar I, psychosis and borderline personality disorder stigma

• Mental illness, employment and the fear of professional disclosure

• High-functioning mental illness, leadership and hidden struggles

• Psychiatric hospitalization, addiction, recovery and rebuilding a life

• Why workplaces need real systemic change beyond mental health awareness

Connect with Lisa:

https://lisalacy.com

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Licensed marriage and family therapist and educator Renée Calhoun joins Lisa Lacy to unpack a deceptively simple question: when does “being strong” stop being resilience and start becoming survival mode?

In this conversation, Renée and Lisa explore why highly capable people can look successful on the outside while their nervous systems remain stuck on high alert. They talk about guilt-free rest, people pleasing, overfunctioning, emotional safety, family systems, toxic relationship patterns, and the ways trauma adaptations can become so familiar that we mistake them for personality. Renée also explains why intelligence alone can’t logic us out of relationships or behaviors our nervous systems still associate with connection and safety.

In this episode:

• Trauma and nervous system survival responses
• The difference between resilience and survival mode
• Why high-functioning people can still be suffering
• People pleasing, overfunctioning and emotional labor
• Why rest can feel unsafe or uncomfortable
• When trauma adaptations get mistaken for personality traits
• Internal Family Systems and parts work
• Emotional safety versus emotional discomfort
• Toxic relationships and repeated relationship patterns
• How family systems shape our earliest ideas about love and belonging
• Boundaries, self-worth and learning to say no
• Moving from autopilot into curiosity and conscious choice
• Why healing isn’t becoming someone new, but discovering who you are when you no longer have to survive

Connect with Renée Calhoun:

https://reneecalhounlmft.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://lisalacy.com

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What happens when being capable becomes the very thing that keeps people from seeing you’re struggling?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with Nigerian-American physician, novelist, and storyteller Dr. Nneka Oluoha for a conversation about high-functioning depression, cultural expectations, motherhood, immigrant identity, and the roles we perform to survive.

Dr. Nneka explores why the person who appears strongest may be carrying the most, why “I’m fine” can become a practiced performance, and how competence, strength, and responsibility can eventually become a prison when we never allow ourselves to put them down.

She also shares her experience moving from Nigeria to the United States, navigating multiple identities as a physician, mother, wife, immigrant, and writer, and finally reclaiming the part of herself that had always wanted to write.

Her novel, Live For Me Nkem, uses fiction to take readers inside depression not only through the person experiencing it, but through the family living beside her.

In this episode:

• High-functioning depression and performing “fine”

• Competence and strength as survival roles

• Immigrant identity and navigating two cultures

• Motherhood, responsibility, and mom guilt

• Why successful people struggle to ask for help

• Depression’s impact on the entire family

• Listening instead of trying to fix someone

• Reclaiming parts of yourself buried beneath responsibility

• The power of storytelling to create empathy around mental health

Sometimes support is not having the perfect advice. Sometimes it is simply being willing to sit beside someone in the dark.

Connect with Dr. Nneka Oluoha:

LinkedIn-Nneka Oluoha

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

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What happens when something that happened to you starts defining who you are?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author and survivor advocate Amy McKiernan for a raw conversation about sexual assault, trauma, identity, addiction, boundaries, consent, and rebuilding a life beyond survival.

Amy shares how being raped at fifteen shaped her identity, relationships, coping mechanisms, and sense of self-worth. She and Lisa explore numbing through drugs and alcohol, toxic relationships, motherhood, mental health labels, and the long process of reclaiming agency after choice has been taken away.

They also talk about why healing is not linear, how small choices can become acts of recovery, and why trauma can remain part of your story without remaining in control of your life.

In this episode:

• Sexual assault and trauma identity

• Addiction and emotional numbing

• Boundaries, self-worth, and toxic relationships

• Healing that is messy and nonlinear

• Mental health labels and identity

• Consent, intoxication, and accountability

• Reclaiming agency and choosing yourself

Connect with Amy McKiernan:

https://amymckiernan.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

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What if the person you became to survive is no longer the person you want to be?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with speaker and leadership consultant Jon Symes to explore the unconscious stories we build around identity, masculinity, success, leadership, and survival.

Jon calls this work Narrative Liberation: recognizing the roles and beliefs we adopted to navigate life, then deciding which ones still belong to us.

They talk about the cost of being “the strong one,” the provider, the good guy, the high performer, or the person who always has it together. Jon also shares how early survival adaptations can begin, including changing the way he walked as a boy to avoid social judgment and carrying that performance for nearly twenty years.

Together, Lisa and Jon explore midlife reinvention, masculinity, people-pleasing, leadership, family roles, authenticity, and what happens when the identity that once protected you starts costing you pieces of yourself.

In this episode:

• Survival performance and identity

• Narrative Liberation

• Masculinity and provider pressure

• Midlife reinvention

• The “good guy” mask

• People-pleasing and self-abandonment

• Leadership and authenticity

• Family roles and inherited stories

• Reclaiming the parts of yourself you learned to hide

Connect with Jon Symes:

https://www.wholeandfree.me

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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What happens when a pastor trades the pulpit for a 24-year career inside the FBI?

Eric Robinson spent 12 years in Christian ministry before becoming an FBI Special Agent, eventually serving 15 years as a SWAT operator and working investigations involving counterterrorism, crimes against children, gangs, drugs, financial crime, civil rights violations, political corruption, and national security.

But this conversation isn’t really about badges, guns, or cases.

It’s about what happens to your understanding of human beings when you’ve spent decades sitting across from victims, informants, criminals, survivors, and people living through some of the darkest circumstances imaginable.

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Eric Robinson talk about:

• Going from the pulpit to the FBI

• 24 years inside federal law enforcement

• What ministry taught Eric about interviewing, trust, and human behavior

• Witnessing trauma without losing your humanity

• Why context matters when we judge another person’s choices

• The relationship between trauma, circumstance, crime, and survival

• Why mentorship and nonjudgmental support matter

• The psychological weight of believing you have to be perfect

• Dropping the mask Eric wore as a pastor

• Fear, competence, repetition, and learning to trust yourself

• Why making the “wrong” decision doesn’t have to destroy your life

• Humanizing people without excusing harmful behavior

• Choosing curiosity over judgment

• Why Eric believes we need more kindness in difficult conversations

• His upcoming book chronicling the unlikely journey from preacher to FBI Special Agent

Eric’s story is a reminder that people are almost always more complicated than the headline, the crime, the job title, the mistake, or the label we’ve been given.

Sometimes understanding another human being starts with getting curious enough to ask what happened before we decide who they are.

Connect with Eric Robinson:

https://preachertobreacher.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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What if the behavior we’re trying to stop is actually trying to tell us something?

Bryan Post is a child behavior expert and creator of the Fear to Love Method whose work challenges parents to see difficult behavior not as defiance, but as communication from a nervous system experiencing stress, fear or unmet needs. 

In this conversation, Bryan and Lisa explore what changes when adults stop trying to control behavior and start looking underneath it. They unpack why a stressed parent cannot regulate a stressed child, how consistency creates safety, and why the feelings we learned to suppress in childhood can continue driving our reactions decades later. Bryan also shares his “Reflect, Relate and Regulate” approach and a powerful story illustrating what can happen when a parent gets curious about the fear beneath a child’s behavior instead of immediately trying to correct it. 

In this episode:

• Childhood trauma and nervous system regulation
• Trauma-informed parenting and difficult behavior
• Adoption, attachment and emotional safety
• Why punishment and control can intensify stress
• Parent self-regulation and co-regulation
• How childhood survival patterns follow us into adulthood
• Grief, emotional healing and unresolved trauma
• Reflect, Relate and Regulate
• Moving from fear-based reactions toward connection
• Why behavior can be an opportunity rather than a problem 

Connect with Bryan:

www.feartolove.com

Connect with Lisa:

www.lisalacy.com

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Why can peace feel more uncomfortable than the crisis you spent years trying to escape?

Lisa Lacy, trauma educator and host of Notes From the Edge, explores one of trauma’s strangest contradictions: the nervous system can mistake what is familiar for what is safe.

In this solo episode, Lisa gets personal about becoming extraordinarily good at functioning inside chaos, from building a high-pressure career around competence and crisis management to constantly monitoring the emotional weather around her. She explores what happens when the emergency finally ends, but your body is still waiting for the next one, and why ordinary moments of safety can become part of retraining the nervous system.

In this episode:

• Trauma, hypervigilance and the nervous system
• Why peace can feel boring, suspicious or unsafe
• When competence and productivity become survival strategies
• Overfunctioning, caretaking and monitoring other people’s emotions
• The difference between connection and intensity
• Why stable relationships can initially feel unfamiliar
• Learning to tolerate other people’s disappointment
• Resting without feeling like you have to earn it
• Teaching the nervous system that calm is safe
• How ordinary can eventually begin to feel like freedom

Connect with Lisa:

www.lisalacy.com

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What did we know at five years old that we somehow forgot along the way?

Tiffany Dennison is a kindergarten and first-grade educator with 22 years of experience whose work centers on play, belonging and social-emotional development. Her classroom offers a fascinating reminder that children may understand some of the fundamentals of being human long before adults complicate them.

In this conversation, Tiffany and I talk about what happens when children are given enough time to actually play, why belonging and emotional safety have to come before learning, and what five-year-olds can teach adults about repairing conflict without dragging yesterday’s resentment into today. We also get into screen time, storytelling, nervous-system regulation and Tiffany’s own journey of recognizing and releasing people-pleasing.

In this episode:

• Play-based learning and why unstructured play matters
• Social-emotional learning and childhood development
• Belonging, emotional safety and nervous-system regulation
• How children repair conflict differently than adults
• The effects of screens on connection, creativity and attention
• Storytelling as a tool for learning and human connection
• What adults model for children without realizing it
• People-pleasing, identity and learning to listen to your body
• Why slowing down may be one of the most important things children can teach us

Connect with Lisa Lacy

https://www.lisalacy.com

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Writer and memoirist Daniel Sterling spent much of his life chasing achievement, recognition, and the next version of success until he discovered that some of the hardest work a man can do happens in the few inches between his head and his heart.

Daniel and Lisa talk about the childhood hunger to be seen that fueled his drive, from becoming a top U.S. alpine ski racer to television, filmmaking, and screenwriting, and what happened when that identity finally stopped sustaining him. They dig into male emotional isolation, the mentor who helped Daniel rebuild his life through self-study and accountability, and why raising emotionally whole boys requires adults willing to examine their own patterns first.

In this episode:

• Male isolation and why emotional connection can be so difficult for men
• Achievement, validation, and using success as a substitute for feeling seen
• Midlife emotional collapse and rebuilding identity beyond performance
• Personal accountability, self-awareness, and dropping defensiveness
• Communication and healthier relationships
• Raising boys into emotionally whole men
• Why a meaningful apology requires changed behavior
• Letting go of ego and discovering who you are beyond accomplishments

Connect with Daniel Sterling:

https://daniel-sterling.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

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 Welcome to the Edge.

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What happens when everyone in your family knows the truth about your life except you?

Al Isaacs, author of Finding Mary Smith and longtime comedian and improv teacher, joins Lisa Lacy to talk about discovering at 52 that he had been adopted and what happens to identity when the foundation of your own story suddenly shifts.

Al takes us inside the ordinary phone call from his mother’s oncologist that accidentally exposed a secret his family had kept for more than five decades, and the search that followed through DNA, genealogy, Search Angels and the trail of a folk singer named Mary Smith. The conversation also moves into imposter syndrome, forgiveness, the power of improv’s “yes, and,” and the painful cost of family secrets, including the conversations we may lose when truth is withheld.

In this episode:

• Late-discovery adoption and identity
• Family secrets, truth and belonging
• Gray-market adoption in the late 1960s
• DNA testing, genealogy and Search Angels
• Searching for a biological mother decades later
• Imposter syndrome and reclaiming identity
• Forgiveness without erasing what happened
• How “yes, and” helped Al keep moving when he wanted to give up
• The memories and relationships family secrecy can cost us

Connect with Al: AlIsaacs.com

Finding Mary Smith is available in paperback, eBook and audiobook.

Connect with Lisa: LisaLacy.com

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What if the traits you think are your personality are actually things you learned to do to survive?

Simone Bowyer is a writer and founder of The Light Within Collective, whose work explores what she calls the “language of survival,” the patterns we develop to feel safe, loved, worthy, and less likely to be abandoned.

In this conversation, Simone and I talk about perfectionism, hyper-independence, control, and overachievement as survival adaptations rather than simply personality traits. She shares her experience with severe treatment-resistant depression, years of psychiatric treatment, and ultimately electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, which she describes not as a cure, but as something that finally created enough space for her to consider life beyond the darkness.

We also take the conversation into the workplace, exploring why we cannot simply leave our wounds at home, what human-centered leadership can look like, and why psychological safety matters when the person who appears to be your highest performer may actually have a nervous system that never learned it was safe to stop.

In this episode:

• How childhood trauma can become perfectionism, people-pleasing, control, and hyper-independence

• Treatment-resistant depression and Simone’s experience with ECT

• Why recovery does not erase survival patterns overnight

• Performing worth in order to feel lovable and avoid abandonment

• Trauma, the nervous system, and high achievement

• Psychological safety and human-centered leadership in the workplace

• Why healing is not linear and does not have a timeline

• Simone’s book, Chasing Light, and finding color again after years of depression

• Moving from asking “What is wrong with me?” to asking “What did I learn to do to survive?”

Connect with Simone Bowyer:

The Light Within Collective

https://lightwithincollective.co.za

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://lisalacy.com

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Would you look away?

Ruth E. Stitt is an author and licensed counselor whose family’s preserved letters from Nazi Germany reveal how persecution can unfold gradually, how difficult escape can become, and what happens when ordinary people decide whether to remain bystanders or stand up.

In 1938, Ruth’s grandmother in Bridgeport, Connecticut received a letter from relatives in Berlin desperately searching for a way out of Nazi Germany. What followed was five years of correspondence filled with hope, fear, bureaucracy, attempted immigration, love and devastating loss.

In this conversation, Ruth and Lisa go beyond the question, “Why didn’t they just leave?” They explore the financial, legal, political and emotional barriers Jewish families faced while trying to escape, the psychology of denial as danger slowly becomes normalized, and what fear and grief do to human beings under extraordinary pressure. They also talk about the choice that can remain when nearly everything else has been taken away: how we respond, who we love and whether we are willing to speak when someone else is being dehumanized.

In this episode:

• Holocaust history and life inside Nazi Germany

• Jewish refugee immigration and the barriers to escape

• Family letters documenting persecution as it unfolded

• Denial, fear, grief and psychological survival

• Why “Why didn’t they just leave?” misses the complexity of displacement

• Choosing love when control has been stripped away

• Turning documented family history into historical fiction

• The difference between a bystander and an upstander

• Moral courage, dehumanization and the responsibility to speak

• Letting go of perfection, overachievement and the need to always have the answer

Content note: This conversation includes discussion of the Holocaust, persecution, forced displacement, psychological trauma and profound loss.

Connect with Ruth E. Stitt:

https://scripturecomesto.life

Find Ruth’s books on Amazon by searching Ruth E. Stitt.

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://lisalacy.com

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What if the patterns you keep repeating are not who you are, but behaviors you learned long ago and never stopped to question?

Arky Jones, creator of Personality Peek, joins Notes From the Edge to explore how self-awareness can help us recognize the patterns quietly shaping our choices, relationships, work, and identity without turning personality into another label or box. 

This conversation gets practical fast. Lisa and Arky talk about what happens when we realize we have been living according to other people’s expectations, how toxic workplace dynamics can make us feel powerless, and why taking ownership sometimes starts with something as small as documenting your work, protecting your attention, or changing one percent of a pattern instead of trying to reinvent your entire life overnight.

In this episode:

• Personality as a mirror instead of a label
• Self-awareness and recognizing unconscious patterns
• People-pleasing and living without full authorship of your life
• Stoicism and focusing on what you can actually control
• Toxic workplace dynamics and protecting your work
• Boundaries, attention, and deciding what you are willing to give
• Why honesty with yourself matters more than the personality result
• Arky’s “one percent” approach to practical personal growth
• Money, debt, freedom, and intentional decision-making
• How small conscious choices can change the direction of your life

Personality Peek is designed to help people identify strengths, blind spots, and behavioral patterns without treating personality as something fixed or diagnostic. 

Connect with Arky Jones:

https://personalitypeek.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://LisaLacy.com

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Dr. Christopher Barker is a clinical psychologist and author whose work explores complex trauma, attachment, and one powerful idea: high functioning and psychological health are not always the same thing.

In this conversation, we dig into what happens when competence, independence, perfectionism, and overachievement become survival adaptations. We talk about why you can intellectually know a relationship is unhealthy and still feel pulled toward it, why “energizing” can sometimes be mistaken for love, and how the nervous system can keep anticipating danger long after the original threat is gone.

In this episode:

• Complex trauma and high achievement

• Attachment injuries in childhood and adulthood

• Perfectionism vs. healthy ambition

• Hypervigilance and waiting for the other shoe to drop

• Why “activated” may be more useful than “triggered”

• Trauma-informed relationships and finding safe support

• Why healing may be better understood as repair

• Rebuilding choice, trust, and freedom through repeated experiences

Maybe the goal isn’t to get rid of every survival strategy that got you here. Maybe it’s simply to stop letting it run the company.

Connect with Dr. Christopher:

https://drchristopherbarker.com

Connect with Lisa: 

https://www.lisalacy.com

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Why can leaving someone who hurts you feel almost impossible?

Lisa Lacy, trauma educator and relationship advisor, explores trauma bonding and why intelligence alone cannot protect us from relationships that reshape our attachment, reward, and stress systems.

At 40, while in inpatient rehab, Lisa was told she was trauma bonded to her husband. Her response was, “I’m too smart for that.” It would take three more years to go fully no contact, and another three to work through the anger and resentment left behind. In this solo episode, she explains the biology of intermittent reinforcement, why separation can feel unbearable, and why shame rarely helps someone leave sooner.

In this episode:

• Trauma bonding and intermittent reinforcement
• Coercive control in abusive relationships
• Dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol and the stress response
• Why people leave and return repeatedly
• No contact and breaking the cycle
• Moving from survival to self-trust

Connect with Lisa:

www.Lisa Lacy.com

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What happens when the life that looks successful from the outside is quietly falling apart underneath?

Rose Ann Forte is an international bestselling author and creator of the Choose Freedom® Program, and her work explores how lasting change can happen without building an identity around shame.

In this conversation, Lisa and Rose Ann talk about Rose Ann’s years as a successful executive and church leader while privately struggling with alcohol, toxic relationships, and the pressure to keep everyone else happy. They explore why traditional recovery language did not resonate with her, how neuroscience helped her understand deeply rooted behaviors, and how her Christian faith became part of rebuilding her identity.

In this episode:

• Alcohol use and behavioral habits

• Recovery without shame-based labels

• Faith and the renewing of the mind

• Neuroscience and habit formation

• Toxic relationships and people-pleasing

• Self-condemnation versus lasting change

• Identity after addiction

• Learning to choose freedom

Learn more about Rose Ann Forte:

https://choosefreedom.today

Learn more about Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

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What if suicide prevention is about more than keeping someone alive for the next 72 hours?

In this special September Suicide Prevention Month solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy speaks from lived experience about her first suicide attempt at 15, later attempts, psychiatric hospitalization, and the complicated work of finding reasons to remain when life has become unbearable.

Lisa remembers arriving at the hospital still wearing her cheerleader jacket, being met with shame instead of understanding, and later experiencing psychiatric interventions that contained a crisis without necessarily addressing the pain underneath it. She also explores what decades of survival have taught her about meaning, spirituality, mortality, human connection, and making life small enough to survive one hour, one breath, or one tomorrow at a time.

In this episode:

• Suicide prevention through the lens of lived experience
• Surviving a suicide attempt as a teenager
• Why shame can deepen an already unbearable crisis
• Psychiatric hospitalization and the limits of crisis containment
• Trauma, suicidal thoughts, and emotional pain
• Why asking directly and listening without judgment matters
• Finding meaning when purpose feels impossible
• Spirituality, ancestors, and feeling connected when physically alone
• Surviving one hour instead of trying to solve an entire life
• Why a temporary state of consciousness should not make a permanent decision
• What Lisa wishes the 15-year-old version of herself could have known

This is not a clinical guide to suicide prevention. It is one survivor’s perspective on what helped her continue, what did not, and why sometimes staying alive begins with making the horizon small enough to reach.

If you are in immediate danger or believe you may act on suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 in the United States, contact emergency services, or go to the nearest emergency department.

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://LisaLacy.com

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What if the thing you call your personality is actually something you learned to perform in order to survive?

Ashley Townsend is a transformational and integration coach and complex trauma recovery specialist who spent 15 years working inside the mental health system before deciding that traditional labels and approaches were no longer enough.

In this conversation, Ashley and I go straight into what made her become a self-described “former LCSW gone rogue.” We talk about what she witnessed working across domestic violence, addiction, foster care and trauma treatment, and how being blind shaped her own experience of trying to belong inside systems that often failed to see the whole person. Ashley also challenges the idea that personality is fixed, arguing that some of what we call personality may actually be protection we practiced until it became familiar.

Then the conversation gets even deeper. Ashley shares how she performed being the “nice girl,” performed being sighted as she progressively lost her vision, and eventually performed the role of rescuer, believing she could carry systems and other people on her back. We explore why those protections were once brilliant, why they eventually become heavy, and what happens when we stop building our lives from fear and begin creating from love.

In this episode:

• Complex trauma and the protective patterns underneath behavior
• Why Ashley chose to leave the traditional therapy model
• Disability advocacy and the experience of performing being sighted
• Mental health diagnoses, labels and the limitations of treating personality as fixed
• Why “just do it” can completely miss the context of trauma
• The difference between an explanation and an excuse
• Recovery as an ongoing process rather than a finish line
• Psychedelic preparation and integration, and why Ashley does not view psychedelics as a magic fix
• The “nice girl,” the rescuer and other identities we perform to belong
• Self-trust, play, the inner child and why healing does not always have to hurt
• What becomes possible when we stop fighting everything and start creating from love

Connect with Ashley:

http://www.findingyourphoenixcoaching.com/

Connect with Lisa:

www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

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What do we reach for when the thing that gave us purpose, identity, adrenaline, and belonging is suddenly gone?

Sean Carberry is an award-winning journalist and former NPR Kabul correspondent whose experience raises a difficult question: what happens when you come home from years of danger, but your mind and body are still wired to look for it?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Sean and Lisa Lacy talk about what happened after Afghanistan, when Sean returned to civilian life carrying undiagnosed PTSD, without the structure, intensity, or sense of purpose that had defined his years overseas. He describes walking into a Maryland casino about six weeks after coming home, initially gambling a few hundred dollars, and how the risk, rewards, recognition, casino perks, and escalating bets gradually began filling something that was missing outside those walls.

The conversation goes far beyond gambling. Sean talks candidly about identity loss, loneliness, relationships, the psychological impact of years spent witnessing human suffering, and eventually recognizing patterns he could not see while he was living inside them. He also discusses how writing became part of processing his experiences and why we need to take much more seriously what happens when veterans, journalists, humanitarian workers, and others who have spent years operating in dangerous environments are expected to simply come home and resume ordinary life.

In this episode:

• PTSD after war and conflict reporting

• Gambling addiction and compulsive gambling

• Adrenaline seeking, risk, and the nervous system

• Identity loss after leaving high-intensity environments

• Returning home and adjusting to civilian life

• Why danger can begin to feel familiar

• Casino rewards, validation, and escalating gambling behavior

• Loneliness, relationships, and destructive coping patterns

• Mental health among journalists and war correspondents

• Supporting veterans, reporters, humanitarian workers, and civilians after high-risk assignments

• Why being functional does not necessarily mean someone is okay

• Writing, memoir, and processing trauma

• Learning to recognize patterns before they become destructive

• Why coming home deserves as much attention as going into danger

Sean’s work and books:

passport-stamps.com

Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:

lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the behavior you’re trying hardest to get rid of was once the very thing that helped you survive?

Carol Look is a psychotherapist and founding EFT Master who has spent decades helping people understand the emotional patterns underneath self-sabotage, and why lasting change often begins with asking what the behavior is protecting us from.

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Carol and Lisa Lacy explore the idea that the problem was once the solution. Addiction, procrastination, people pleasing, overworking, staying invisible, and even creating chaos can serve a purpose when the nervous system believes they are keeping us safe.

Carol explains why we are wired for safety before success, and why someone can consciously want more visibility, healthier relationships, greater success, or a completely different life while unconsciously pulling themselves backward when the next level doesn’t feel safe.

Lisa shares her own experience of appearing highly successful while privately unraveling, using alcohol to avoid painful emotions, and later discovering how uncomfortable peace and stillness could feel after years of chaos. They also talk about functional freeze, grief, hypervigilance, the importance of mentorship, learning to regulate reactivity, and what becomes possible when we stop asking, “What is wrong with me?” and start asking, “Why am I doing this, and what is it protecting me from?”

Carol also shares how growing up in an alcoholic family shaped her tendency to take care of everyone around her, how that survival skill eventually became an asset in her work, and why learning to extend that same care toward herself changed everything.

In this episode:

• Why self-sabotage may actually be a protective response
• Nervous system regulation and why safety comes before success
• Fear of success, visibility, and “up-leveling”
• Why procrastination can have an emotional payoff
• Addiction as a way of anesthetizing difficult emotions
• EFT tapping and Emotional Freedom Techniques
• Trauma responses, hypervigilance, and emotional patterns
• Why peace and stillness can initially feel uncomfortable
• Functional freeze and appearing capable while internally checked out
• Grief, emotional avoidance, and learning to feel again
• People pleasing and taking care of others as survival strategies
• Why changing your own reactivity can change your relationships
• Gratitude, emotional well-being, and Carol’s Yes work
• The value of mentorship and support in personal growth
• Why healing doesn’t mean life stops being difficult
• The power of stillness, space, and finally hearing yourself

Learn more about Carol Look and her work:

www.carollook.com

Learn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:

www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How much longer are you willing to wait for someone else to validate what you already know happened?

Lisa Lacy is a trauma educator and relationship advisor exploring one powerful idea: sometimes closure is not something another person gives you, it is something you create by trusting your own experience.

In this short solo episode, Lisa shares what she learned from waiting for accountability, explanations, and validation that never came, and why healing began when she stopped requiring someone else’s version of the story to confirm her own.

In this episode:

• Closure after betrayal
• Rebuilding self-trust
• Letting go of the need for an apology
• Boundaries without agreement
• Why unanswered questions keep us attached
• Moving forward without validation

Connect with Lisa:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive? 

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when everyone needs you to be okay, but you’re barely surviving yourself?

Hollywood screenwriter and producer Lee Ehlers spent years learning how to survive rejection, but nothing prepared him for the loss of his wife, Erin, or for discovering that sometimes the strongest thing you can do is stop pretending you’re okay.

Lee’s professional breakthrough and personal devastation collided when his feature film EXES was finally being made as his high school sweetheart and wife of twenty years was dying from breast cancer. Suddenly widowed with children who were just 10, 7, and 5, Lee found himself trying to grieve while becoming the person they still needed every day. We talk about the private cost of performing the “strong dad,” the period when alcohol became the only way he could sleep through overwhelming grief, and the moment he

finally admitted, “I’m not okay. I’m struggling.”

In this episode:

• Grief after the death of a spouse
• Widowed fatherhood and raising children through loss
• Performing strength when you’re falling apart
• Depression, isolation, and asking for help
• Self-medication and coping with acute grief
• Why grief doesn’t follow a predictable process
• Supporting someone who is grieving without prescribing how they should heal
• The strange collision of happy memories and devastating loss
• Starting over after losing the person you built your life with
• Identity after loss
• Persistence through rejection and uncertainty
• Nearly two decades of pursuing a Hollywood career
• Screenwriting, creativity, and finding your own writing process
• What repeated rejection can teach us about survival
• The making of EXES
• Why saying “I’m not okay” can be the beginning of getting help

Watch Lee Ehlers’ film EXES on Amazon:

EXES on Amazon

⁠

Lisa Lacy | Notes From the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if real masculine strength has less to do with pushing harder and more to do with learning how to regulate yourself, feel deeply, and stay present under pressure?

Michael Ostrolenk, licensed marriage and family therapist and master coach, joins Lisa Lacy to explore one central idea: mature masculinity is not domination, suppression, or performance. It is self-governance.

Michael introduces his concept of “Negative 20X,” challenging high performers to consider whether slowing down may require more courage than pushing harder. Lisa and Michael also unpack his Sovereign Gentleman framework, including how unconscious conditioning shapes identity, why men need spaces to experience and express emotion, and what disciplined presence actually looks like inside a relationship.

In this episode:

• Healthy masculinity and masculine maturity
• Nervous system regulation under pressure
• The Sovereign Gentleman and psychological sovereignty
• Male loneliness, mentorship, friendship, and the need for tribe
• Why high performers struggle with rest and recovery
• “Negative 20X” and the drive to constantly prove yourself
• Emotional intelligence, anger, sadness, shame, and healthy expression
• Masculinity versus domination
• Disciplined presence during relationship conflict
• How childhood and cultural conditioning shape adult identity
• Martial arts, self-defense, capability, and personal responsibility 
• Why kindness can be an expression of strength

Connect with Michael Ostrolenk:

Website: www.michaeldostrolenk.com

Substack: Michael D. Ostrolenk / @michaeldostrolenk

LinkedIn: Michael Ostrolenk, MA, MFT

YouTube: @michaeldostrolenk

Podcast: Resilience Redefined with Michael D. Ostrolenk

Team Fudoshin: teamfudoshin.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

What did you perform in order to survive? 

Welcome to the Edge.

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What happens when you stop the addiction, but the pain underneath it is still running your life?

Dr. Dean Sunseri, licensed professional counselor, and HollyKem Sunseri, certified life coach with more than four decades in recovery, explore the work they call emotional sobriety: healing the emotional wounds and protective patterns that can remain long after the substance or destructive behavior is gone.

In this conversation, we go beyond abstinence and into what Dean and HollyKem call Stage Two recovery. We talk about why unresolved pain can “seep out” through substitute addictions, anger, isolation, control, relationship conflict, or other coping behaviors, and why simply stopping a behavior doesn’t necessarily heal what created it. They walk us through their framework of the Protector, Wounded Child, and True Self, including how learning to recognize which part of us is speaking can restore choice instead of leaving us controlled by old survival responses. We also explore relationships, why one person changing can change the entire “dance,” and why reconnecting may need to happen before a couple can actually solve the problem they’re fighting about.

In this episode:

• Emotional sobriety and Stage Two addiction recovery
• Why abstinence may be only the beginning of healing
• Substance addiction, behavioral addiction, and substitute addictions
• The emotional pain underneath compulsive and self-destructive behavior
• The Protector, Wounded Child, and True Self
• Trauma, triggers, and protective survival responses
• Why healing doesn’t mean never being triggered again
• Learning to love the parts of yourself you once tried to escape
• Self-compassion versus shame in addiction recovery
• Moving from survival mode into choice, purpose, and emotional freedom
• Relationships, resentment, defensiveness, and emotional disconnection
• Why one partner’s growth can change the relationship dynamic
• Reconnecting before trying to resolve conflict
• Boundaries, responsibility, forgiveness, and healthy communication
• Finding purpose after addiction and survival

Dr. Dean & HollyKem Sunseri:

1. Take the free Emotional Sobriety Assessment: https://dean-jsegmrly.scoreapp.com

2. Get the Book A Roadmap to the Soul Today! https://amzn.to/478rNG8

3. Learn more about Dean & HollyKem Sunseri: https://www.ihaveavoice.com

4. Watch Free Videos on Emotional Sobriety: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsbxvHYHG8El81rdV6eQ7gM7S55jXPm49&si=FOa14n7V-5OLJOQJ

Lisa Lacy | Notes From the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Who told you that you were too sensitive, too difficult, selfish, dramatic, unstable, or simply too much? And when did someone else’s opinion become part of your identity?

In this solo episode of Notes From the Edge, trauma educator Lisa Lacy explores how labels, family roles, survival adaptations, and other people’s perceptions can quietly become the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and what can happen when we finally question who handed us those stories in the first place.

Lisa examines the difference between personality and adaptation, why competence can become armor, and how a label can stop an investigation before it ever begins. She also shares how this question has surfaced while writing Notes From a Certified Madwoman, now autofiction, and why sometimes finding yourself is less about becoming someone new and more about subtracting everybody else.

In this episode:

• How childhood and relationship labels can become identity
• “Too sensitive,” “difficult,” “selfish,” and the power of labeling
• Competence as strength versus competence as survival armor
• Why boundaries can feel threatening to people who benefited from your compliance
• Family roles, scapegoating, and resistance when one person changes
• The difference between accountability and self-erasure
• Survival adaptations that become adult personality traits
• Why proving a label wrong can still allow it to control your life
• What happens when you enter an environment where you are no longer “too much”
• The question that can interrupt an old identity: Who told you that?

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when men are taught that vulnerability is weakness, but connection is exactly what they need most?

Jason Lange is a men’s embodiment coach and group facilitator who believes men don’t need to become tougher. They need the language, relationships, and spaces that allow them to become more fully human.

In this conversation, Jason shares how growing up without emotional or physical connection left him unable to understand what was happening inside his own body, eventually leading to shame, isolation, and unhealthy ways of coping. He takes us inside the somatic breakthrough that changed everything and explains why men’s groups became one of the most powerful forces in his own healing, relationships, and life.

In this episode:

• Men’s mental health and the male loneliness epidemic
• Healthy masculinity and breaking out of the “man box”
• Why vulnerability can feel dangerous for men
• Emotional neglect, shame, and disconnection
• Somatic therapy and nervous system healing
• Men’s groups, brotherhood, and co-regulation
• Porn, alcohol, overworking, and other forms of emotional numbing
• Building emotional intimacy in relationships
• Learning to identify wants, needs, feelings, and boundaries
• Moving beyond the isolated “lone wolf” model of masculinity
• Authenticity instead of performing that everything is fine

Connect with Jason Lange:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlange/

Evolutionary Men: https://evolutionary.men

Evolutionary Edge Quiz: https://evolutionary.men/quiz

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when you spend decades believing you’re lazy, too much, unreliable or simply doing life wrong, only to discover your brain has been working differently all along?

Ellie AuDHD Capstick is an AuDHD educator and podcast host whose late diagnosis gave her something she had spent a lifetime searching for: language for experiences she once understood as personal failures.

In this conversation, Ellie gets candid about the collision of ADHD and autism, years of masking and pushing herself into burnout, and why she doesn’t automatically call neurodivergence a “superpower.” She also shares what she wishes she had understood while raising her older neurodivergent children and how diagnosis helped her move from shame toward self-advocacy.

In this episode:

• AuDHD and living with both ADHD and autism
• Late diagnosis, identity and self-understanding
• Neurodivergent masking and autistic/ADHD burnout
• Executive dysfunction versus “laziness”
• Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD)
• Trauma, vulnerability and neurodivergence
• Parenting neurodivergent children with confidence
• Self-advocacy, relationships and dropping the mask

Connect with Ellie AuDHD Capstick

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Ls1EfoRam/?mibextid=wwXIfr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellie-audhd-capstick-b8a971415

Connect with Lisa Lacy

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the secret to a healthier, happier, more sustainable life is hiding in a bin of worms, a jar of sprouts and one really good belly laugh?

Cathy Nesbitt is an award-winning entrepreneur and laughter yoga teacher who has spent more than two decades showing people how worms, sprouts, and laughter can create a healthier, more sustainable life.

In this episode, Cathy and Lisa go from the surprising story behind Cathy’s “worm empire” to why she believes laughter is an essential tool for navigating stress. They talk about turning food waste into “black gold,” growing your own nutrition through sprouts, learning to move toward the weirdness, and what happened when Cathy stopped being a lifelong people pleaser and started giving herself permission to say no.

In this episode:

• Vermicomposting and turning household waste into healthy soil
• Why Cathy believes worms matter for sustainability and food security
• Growing fresh sprouts at home
• Laughter yoga and nervous-system regulation
• Why adults need more play and laughter
• Stress, isolation, and protecting your mental health
• Recovering from people pleasing
• Saying no without overexplaining or apologizing
• Why shame loses power when we stop keeping it silent
• Choosing simple tools for a healthier, more sustainable life

Cathy Nesbitt: www.kathysclub.com

Lisa Lacy: www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.