That's where I was and I did go see a psychologist. I did try various alternative means and things helped me for a little bit. It even helped for a month or two, but then back down to being depressed and each time I came around, It seemed to go further down, I am thinking again that there is no hope. This is just gonna be my life. Maybe those moments of coping and then into this deep hole where everything just felt so heavy on me and I felt so incapable and this 100% affected my kids and as parents sometimes we know, but we don't want to look at that.

Our struggles really, truly affect our kids. And we always know and some of us might cycle through. And we'll have those spiral thoughts around the guilds, around all of those things. Around how we're affecting our mental health is how it affects our kids or we might just be avoiding it.

I did a little bit of both. I definitely was, I just gotta keep going. And you know, somebody's got to pay the bill, somebody's got to make sure there's food. Somebody's and I would just kind of like keep going through. And so for me I was not emotionally available for my kids as I wanted to be.

Sometimes it was almost like plowing over my kids a little bit in this. I've just gotta keep going with the attitude that I had but I know even in my own family, among my siblings and things, there was the well, Just going to go to bed and the world will just have to deal with that We present or deal with our mental health in different ways, such as a shutdown, a plow-through, or a combination. but it really does affect our kids and from someone who thought there was no hope because I've tried so many things. And I will honestly say I did not ever go the drug route and my family, just genetically, they have tests nowadays for many of these things.

Genetically we're predisposed to have negative side effects for many of the drugs, so I always felt that, that would be worse than the way I was going about it But I know many people who have taken those drugs to suppress neurochemicals or to increase them and they do really well for a time, but then they need to change the dose or there's the side effects that begin to negatively impact their life. And for those who are in this struggle, the struggle that I was in there, really, truly. Is hope for overcoming for, for a completely overcoming, getting out of that stuck phase.

And it's not like I never have a thought or a moment of depression or anxiety anymore, but where I was stuck before. And I was hopeless before I learned and I now teach this model that is a self diagnostic tool that allows you to just go in and say what's going on? And it works with your brain.

I mean this isn't like I have depression or I have anxiety in much of the world. Society, that's kind of the general feeling. And somebody was talking to me the other day and said, "You just don't get it."

You can't say that to people who have mental health issues. You can't say that there is a way out because this is just the way it is and you don't understand. I just had Christopher Columbus come to my head, went into my mind while she was talking and I was thinking. The people used to believe the world was flat, like that was the belief and People who were trying to sell around the world, they were like, you are going to kill my child, you are going to kill my husband. You know you are crazy and you're hurtful. You are dangerous to people I care about. You're dangerous to myself. I'm not gonna get on a ship with you.

Just consider that there may be more to understand. How many times has science gotten? Only part of the picture. Right. Is it a wave? Is it a ray? They used to believe it was only one way and then they said, wait, light is different. It's both a wave and a ray. Like it fits both.

And we didn't know that was a possibility. Science is always creating a deeper understanding when we understand our brain and why it is choosing, and we're not choosing it. Our brain is subconsciously choosing depression or anxiety or OCD for us. But here's the thing, when we learn about our mind, then we are better able to to control it or to use our mind to help us. And that was the part that was missing for me when I would go to all the psychologists or I do the different therapies. That understanding totally gave me power to take back what I had given away as a child, even perhaps as an infant.

We are unaware that we developed these programs, that our subconscious brain runs, understanding of how our brain works, notice it. And that's what the model does. It helps us to notice where we've given that away, and then it takes us through a process to take it back for ourselves. So for all of the parents struggling out there. They're trying to hold it together.

Whether they've experienced trauma, whether they are experiencing depression or anxiety or any of those other mental health struggles out there, there is hope. There is a way to do more than cope. There is a way to thrive. And to have that out of your life is not to have that power over you.

Remember, children are great by their very natures. We are still children too, and we have that responsibility to raise them.