Change is a constant in life, and it can be both positive and negative. Embracing change and building resilience is essential to navigate through challenges and uncertainties. Jen Fredricks, a proactive resilience coach, supports patients and caregivers in managing chronic illness and adapting to change. Resilience can be developed through calming oneself, self-regulation practices, and seeking support. Resilience is a tool that helps us cope with ups and downs in life and should be cultivated. It is important to acknowledge and process emotions but also choose how long we want to stay in a victim mindset. Grieving and adapting to change is a natural process that requires different amounts of time for each individual.
Change isn't always negative, coming to the place of being able to be with yourself and connecting to yourself and to that deep knowing that you're enough, you know, exactly as you are in this world right now, and there's more available to you. And we all say it in different ways, because everyone needs to hear it in a different way. Everyone will resonate with something different. Welcome to Change, Community Helpers Affecting Growth and Education. Join us as experts and community helpers come together to share with you wisdom, tools, strategies, and ways that you can evolve into the best version of you.
I am your host, Rebecca O'Rourke, behavioral expert and master hypnotist. I look forward to guiding you through all of these tools and strategies that will assist you to becoming the best version of you. Welcome to Change, everybody. It is a good day for change. And we would like to welcome Jen Fredricks. So welcome, Jen. So can you please introduce yourself and tell us what you do? Sure. Again, my name is Jen Fredricks. I am a pro-resilience or proactive resilience coach and a personal resilience practitioner.
So my passion really is supporting patients and caregivers for the long road of change and uncertainty that chronic illness can provide us, and also sharing the idea of this proactive resilience piece as we come across change all the time in our life. It's the one constant, correct? So a lot of people embrace change. Some people have a little more difficulty and see it more as challenge or adversity. And so this pro-resilience framework is a way to feel some control and less uncertainty around those challenges, those changes that we choose for ourselves, or even adversity that come into our lives.
Amazing. And you know, that's what this podcast is all about, is change. Because like you said, it's the one common denominator. The one thing that's always guaranteed is that things are going to change. And you know, some people, they're not, let's say they don't have a lot of experience with change. So I find that it's one of those things that if you've experienced a lot of change in your life, you can, you know, very naturally be somewhat resilient.
And those that, you know, maybe haven't had a lot of change in their lives, and then all of a sudden a health issue or a divorce or any of these things that throw our life for a loop, you know, there could be some coaching and some feedback and that's what you do. So that's amazing. Thank you. Yeah. So can you tell us a little bit about the type of clientele that you serve? Oh, sure. So I'm really proud of the work that I do with caregivers.
I recently wrapped up a series of workshops for caregivers for children with pediatric brain tumor. And that's a passion of mine because I support my daughter who was diagnosed in 2015 with a low grade brain tumor. Oh my goodness. Yeah, she's 15 now and wrapping up her freshman year of high school. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a whole other thing, right? But it's really being able to allow people to realize that these challenges and adversity that we experience in life don't need to completely go away in order for us to live better.
And so that's one thing I share is that, you know, you don't have to wait until things are all better to live better. I'm also a chronic illness patient. I've been managing my chronic illness for 30 years. I'm a two-time kidney transplant recipient. And so in that, I decided that why am I working so hard to heal if I'm not going to enjoy life, worry less, manage and look at what's right in front of me rather than trying to project too far into the future, which can drive us into those anxious thoughts, et cetera.
And so I really love to help people with the four building blocks of resilience. It was actually a framework that was developed by Linda Hoops, an organizational and industrial psychologist. And when I read her book, I said, oh my goodness, this is what I've been doing for 15 years. She has put language and a framework around how I walk through life resilience. And now I'm so excited to be able to adapt that for the people that I truly want to serve and get the word out.
Amazing. So you and your daughter are like professionals at resilience. Yeah, we're professional at resiliencing, which I love that term. It's like talking about how we resilience every day because resilience isn't something that you either have or you don't have. As you had mentioned before, those who maybe face more change and challenge in their life might become naturally more resilient, but it's also something that all of us have inside of us and we can actually grow our resilience if we choose to do so.
Absolutely. So do you have any quick tips that you want to give us on how to grow our resilience? Sure, sure. I mean, well, like I said, the wonderful book Prosilience lays out the framework of I would say even bringing your bandwidth for resilience or your benchmark for resilience back up to a place that can really support you. And then looking forward to the future of how you can build that proactive resilience as more change and challenge might enter your life.
Because as you had mentioned, that's the one guarantee we have. So the first thing I like to ask people to do or invite people to do is participate in this first building block of resilience or prosilience, which is calming yourself. So when you see those change or challenge come your way, calm yourself. I'm not talking about just relaxation. I'm talking about self-regulation practices. I'm talking about deep belly breathing, being mindful in the moment, coming back to yourself and asking yourself powerful questions of how you want to experience that change or challenge.
And I do want to make one other comment. Change isn't always negative. Change can be something that we decide to do. It's looking at that next promotion. It's, you know, making a life changing decision, getting married or moving or making great changes in our health to support us. And so even if you're having some positive change or negative change, calming and self-regulation is one of the most important pieces to start bringing into your life. Absolutely. Yeah.
I don't know if you know much about what I do, but one of the things that I do to help people with that is I teach them self-hypnosis. Oh, very cool. I did take a hypnosis certification when I first started out in my coaching journey, and I found it super interesting and really helpful and even preparing guided imagery and meditation for people. So I love that you're teaching people how to have that tool for themselves and their kit.
Yeah. Well, the truth is, is all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. That is very true. Yes. Right. And so, you know, it's really just about teaching people how to get into that sort of really calm, relaxed state and how their subconscious is working for them and sometimes working against them. Yeah. Yeah. So I also, you know, somebody who's been through some chronic illnesses and a lot of change and, you know, I worked for the school board for many years and left the school board to go on my own health journey.
And, you know, through all of the modalities that I've learned, it's created a really great life for myself and, of course, more resilience. I have a mentor. Her name is Robbie Spear-Miller, and she is at Hypnosis Training Canada. And she actually just launched an online course because, you know, she also, as a master hypnotist, believes that resilience is really one of the number one tools that we need to have in our tool belt in order for us to just get through the ups and downs of life, whether it's our core job, like you said, whether it's a positive change or something that, you know, kind of throws us for a loop.
And having tools in our tool belt, I think, is kind of the most important thing for any job that needs to be done. I agree. And actually thinking over the last, let's say, four years, I tend to hear resilience getting a bad rap here and there, meaning that especially maybe those who are frontline health care workers, they were asked to be resilient in a very, very challenging time. And so they may not have felt the support that they needed or wanted during that time.
And so some people are like, I don't stop asking me to be resilient. I don't want to be resilient. And I understand that. I honor that. And then I also ask, yet, what do you have personal responsibility over? And so, yeah, how can you bring some resilience into your life while being supported by external factors as well? Yeah, you know, we all need somebody on the outside giving us feedback, of course. And so how do you how do you help people with that? Do you want to give us an example or do you have a specific client or patient that you're thinking of? Sure.
Well, I mean, I don't like to use the word, but a lot of times we fall into the victim mindset, especially when something outside of ourselves or even inside ourselves, if we're thinking about chronic illness. Oh, Roger Jones. Oh, I was thinking. OK. We all do that. We all ask, why me? We do. It's human nature. And I don't push people outside of that if it's serving them, because we do need time to kind of process and feel all of the feelings that we have in a safe space.
And then I ask, how long do you want to feel that way? Do you want to allow the suck and stay there or would you like to keep it? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And move forward. So and people need different times to grieve and they grieve in different ways, just sort of like when you lose somebody that you love and someone dies. It's obvious that we go through a grieving process and we give ourselves that natural time and space to do that.
However, we go through grieving processes whenever we lose anything that we feel we've lost something, I should say. Yeah, it's true. What I may have held as my future for myself before, when I was 15, when I had my first kidney transplant, I was like, just fix me. I'm immortal. I'm a teenager. Just fix me. And I didn't ask a lot of whiny questions because I was so focused on the, well, you can do something about it.
Let's do something about it. Now, the second kidney transplant, I was married with a beautiful four-year-old at the time who we'd adopted four years earlier. And I was a little bit more of the, why is this happening again? I knew it could happen because kidney transplant is a treatment. It's not a cure. Why is this happening? Why is it happening right now? What happens to my family if it doesn't work? Like, I allowed myself that time.
And then I realized, wait a minute, I have history showing that I have done this in the past. I have confidence in my team. I know that we can do this again. My husband said one thing too, when our daughter was diagnosed with her low-grade brain tumor, we live right near our children's hospital. We were driving by and we had that conversation sort of like when people are in victimhood and ask, why me? He said, well, why not me? Why not us? What makes us different than anyone else who's sitting inside that building right now looking for treatment and help and prayer for their child? And that just helps put it into perspective again for me of, yeah, you're right.
You know, it's not like if you do everything right, everything is going to turn out perfect for you. That's where these uncertain challenges pop up. That's where this adversity can happen. And the important part is how do you respond to it? And that's why I love those four building blocks of resilience that we started talking about. And when you can come back into that calm space with the self-regulation, you actually can bring your live mind back online and start to make decisions that support you during challenge.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, if it's okay with you, can I communicate this structure in a little bit of a different way than maybe the four building blocks? How I'm kind of looking at this is something that we call the bell curve of frustration. And, you know, the bell curve is like a bell curve, right? And on one side of it is the anger, denial, bargaining and sadness. And then on the other side of the bell curve is acceptance.
And so it's very, very often in life that whenever anything frustrates us, it pushes us over into this anger, denial, bargaining and sadness. And the truth is, that's just life. That's going to happen. We can't escape that. But like you said, it's really about how long do we want to stay there? And the truth is, is when we're over in anger, denial, bargaining and sadness, there is fight and flight and cortisol and stress hormone. And we really don't have all of our resources.
So making decisions from that place is the last thing that you want to do. Right, totally. Yeah, I love the way that you share that. And it leads into, you know, for those who maybe want more of a framework to follow kind of step by step, what proactive resilience and resilience is, you know, you do the building block of calming yourself, the self-regulation, being with your difficult emotions and being able to come to your wise mind.
And then you get to choose which strategy you want to use to address the challenge. And for me, a lot of times, exactly as you said, it was coming to that place of what is, this is what's happening. And now I can accept and adapt how I want to move forward. Can you mention the name of the book one more time for us? Of course, Prosilience, P-R-O-S-I-L-I-E-N-C-E by Linda Hoops, H-O-O-P-E-S. And yeah, it outlines the different, the building blocks.
I think it matches really well with the bell curve that you're talking about. And it gives you ideas of how to calm yourself, how to address challenges. Do you want to reframe the challenge? Do you want to change the challenger situation if you can? Now, with chronic illness, that's a little difficult. So that's where I fall into sort of the accept what is and adapt to my another normal, I guess I would say. And then you actually have seven resilience muscles with which you can use to solve the problems.
And that's one thing I really love to do is work with people on this personal resilience questionnaire where we take a look at your resilience muscles and the ease of access you have without using all of your energy to drain them. And how might you want to build the resilience muscles that you might not be able to access automatically when you're in challenge? I love that you call them muscles because muscles, you can build them stronger.
And when you don't use them, they get weaker, right? And they're always there. But, you know, there's that sort of you can work on them and make them stronger. Of course, because we're all we're all born with resilience. And these resilience muscles are characteristics. Some of them just come more easily to us, especially when we're in challenge. And one of my favorite things then, I mean, beyond the resilience muscles is really talking about managing our personal energy, because if we can't manage our personal energy effectively, we actually won't have energy to fuel resilience.
And so our managing energy comes in four different areas, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. And so when you were talking about the bell curve and being in the sort of anger, denial, frustration piece, I immediately started thinking about that emotional energy and being able to manage that and working with difficult feelings so that you aren't draining yourself with those difficult feelings and you're able to sort of transition that energy into something else that is of more service to you.
Yeah, for sure. Can I give you a funny analogy? Please. I love them. I like to tell my clients to look at their emotions like pee. We're talking P-E-E, right? Yeah. The reason that I say that is because, you know, we go pee as a natural human function. We don't really make a big deal out of it. We just accept that that's part of being human. And then we go find a private place and we let it out and we go move on with our day.
And we know that if we hold our pee in that it hurts. But there needs to be a release, right? So, you know, it's interesting or it's more useful. And I like to look at things as useful or not useful, not right or wrong. And so it's more useful to kind of look at that metaphor and go, oh, I'm angry. I need to release that anger or I need to release the sadness. Because just like pee, if we hold it and hold it and fold it, it will create a physical pain.
Yeah. Well, and I'd love to take that one step further as being someone who actually needed help to get my pee out of my body with my kidney transplant, right? So before I was on six months of dialysis before each of my transplants. And so exactly as you said, right, being able to go somewhere and release that is amazing. And some people might need additional support and resources to learn how to do that or to have support in doing that.
And so that is a brilliant analogy because even speaking for myself around my second transplant or my daughter's diagnosis, it came to a place of physical manifestation of anxiety. And I didn't know how to deal with that. And so I needed those additional resources and support to release that anger, that sadness, that denial. And it just, oh my gosh, I love that so much. Just as the dialysis helps me to really physically release it. Otherwise, it would, it slowly kills you, right? Yeah.
So you know this better than anyone. Being able to reach out to you or to me or to anyone else in the support space to learn how to do that. So it doesn't slowly just suffocate you and take you out of life is amazing. And, you know, one of the things that you probably found most challenging is that, you know, how we get out of those places is by moving our body. That's the first step, right? A changed mind frame.
You must change physiology first. So, you know, when you were in the hospital, it must have been very difficult for you, you know, calling that person or calling on that person for feedback. Or that was, I guess, your way of moving the mind because there needs to be movement. There does. And we all were stuck. And actually, I didn't call on movement. I didn't know that I needed it. I knew I needed it, but I didn't know how to get there.
The movement came through actually being very nicely asked to leave my current occupation during a layoff. So about a year after my daughter's diagnosis, I was laid off in my marketing career that lasted 16 years. And I flippantly thought and then said, well, maybe I'll try this life coaching thing that I've heard of. And I know a couple of my past colleagues have done. And I reached out. And within three months, I was in a life coaching certification program for my career.
But little did I know it was first to heal me and then to influence my family, you know, from a I don't like to say influence my family, but I do like you model new ways of dealing with things. And then it just continued to grow and help us from there. Amazing. So it's kind of a kick in the butt that got me moving. Well, you know, we all get those natural. Yep. But, you know, movement can be sometimes just as simple as getting up from where you are and just moving to the other side of the room.
And, you know, when you were in the hospital, it was really hard for you to just even be able to get up out of your bed. So, yeah, I actually. Can I share a story? Oh, please do. OK, so after my first transplant, when I was 15, I've always been spiritual, but didn't really come into religion until I was in my 20s. So when I was 15, I was about a month into a active kidney rejection and the doctors were trying all of the different medications to help turn that rejection, which meant that my body's immune system was actually attacking the new kidney and wanting it gone because it wasn't mine and my immune system recognized that.
So one evening after I had received a very, very high dose of a medication to try to change that rejection trajectory. I was never able to sleep at night at the hospital and I was always warm and uncomfortable, but I could always sleep during the day, which was interesting. But this one night I got up because my kidney was still functioning, so I had to go pee. So I got up and I did and I came back and I just all of a sudden knelt on my bed and said to whoever was listening, like I.
I think it's time to give me a sign if I receive a sign, then I will continue fighting for this kidney. If not, I think it's I think it's time to move on to the next treatment. Again, this was four weeks in. And as I did that, this room that felt very kind of like not comfortable, I wasn't able to sleep in at night turned to this comfort, warmth, comforting feeling. It reminded me of my grandma's house and I laid down and I slept the entire night.
And then about a week or so later, my kidney numbers started getting better and the rejection had changed. So I took that feeling, whatever that spiritual connection was that I had in that moment as a sign to keep moving forward on the path that we were on. And so. That's one. That's one place where I was able to find movement in my hospital room. Right. And it wasn't just physical movement. It was a movement of mindset and spirit and emotions and and resiliency and all of that.
And I think that's what I've learned from all of those things. Absolutely amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So, you know, we all have our own kind of ways of looking at the world and our own beliefs and our own ideas. But, you know, do you know what the opposite of fear is? Like what I believe the opposite of fear is? Can you guess? So I have a theory on this, but so I'm wondering if it's the same.
The opposite of fear. But I believe that fear is born of love. So that's my thought. What is what is yours? So just make a random guess. What do you think the opposite of fear is? Well, courage. All right. That's a good guess. Yeah. I believe it's faith. And I don't mean religion either, because there's a lot of rules and judgment in religion. But faith is the one thing that all religions have in common, right? It's this belief in something perhaps bigger than you or this belief that things are going to have a funny way of working out or happen for a reason or different people have different faiths.
But the only problem is just not having one, not having any, because when there's nothing there, there's fear. There's more fear and more fear and more fear. And in psychology, you know, they have something called a godlike complex. And, you know, it's not about religion. It's really this idea that, you know, our nervous system is not designed to sustain feeling like everything is our responsibility, that the weight of the world is on our shoulders. So, you know, the idea is that we need to be able to give up and seek some answers or some clarity or feel connected to something.
So in your story, I kind of got goosebumps a little bit because I was like, you know, feeling your feeling of connection and when you were connecting to something that kind of helped you feel safe and helped you shift that because obviously, you know, sleeping well and getting the right vitamins, minerals and nutrients and all of these things are very important for you, your body to heal and accept this. Yes, exactly. Over to accept him to the big thing for you.
Yeah, exactly what you pointed out. You know, I did. I had this connection with something outside of myself to help me keep going. And that's one thing I share with people I work with are the managing your personal energy is how you actually can fuel resilience. And so when you take a look at managing your physical energy, the things that you mentioned, the good nutrition, the sleep hygiene, the hydration, the movement. When you take a look at managing your mental energy, being able to get yourself to think and clearly and quickly and make decisions that serve you and then managing your emotional energy, like I mentioned before, being able to work with difficult feelings.
And then the last piece that I find really fuels my resilience is that spiritual energy, the connecting with something outside of myself, connecting with a sense of meaning and purpose besides what's happening in this moment right now are all of the things that can bring you to point out that you put that meaning and purpose is in the spiritual categories. Exactly. Because as you had mentioned, we all have our own beliefs. Right. And so it's not like spiritual religious, it's spiritual, something larger than ourselves.
And we all need to be chasing something in life. We all need to be passionate about a direction that we want to go. Because if we're not passionate about moving forward, we go backwards. Yes. And or stay stuck. And that's one thing that I've noticed and I've read somewhere as well. I don't remember where, but those who are experiencing a lot of depression and or anxiety, if they're able to find a way to give to others, volunteer and help, then they connect to a sense of purpose and meaning outside of maybe what they're struggling with right now.
And it might give them a little more energy to move forward with what they want to do outside of depression and or anxiety. Absolutely. You know, I'm not a doctor, so I don't actually have a great medical condition. But, you know, I have a lot of testimonials that will say things like, you know, their anxiety or their depression is different because of a stress management program we've done or a sleep improvement program that we've done. So it's all related, if you ask me.
I agree. And mind, body, spirit. That's right. And, you know, one of the reasons that I feel really passionate about doing this podcast is because, you know, a lot of us are talking about the same things, just using different language. Exactly. I love that. Yeah. All of the modalities that I'm interested in that pique my interest, that I start to, you know, study and try to incorporate into my life, they all come back to, I think, one thing.
I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but coming to the place of being able to be with yourself and connecting to yourself and to that deep knowing that you're enough, you know, exactly as you are in this world right now, and there's more available to you. And we all say it in different ways because everyone needs to hear it in a different way. Everyone will resonate with something different. Some people may not, like you said, resonate with the four building blocks of resilience, yet they might understand more the bell curve.
That might be their way forward. And so I think being able to just share all of the different ways and languages that we have to improve life is super important. One of the people that I admire and look up to is somebody called Dr. Virginia Satir. Have you ever heard of her? I haven't. No, she's a famous family therapist. She's passed away now, but people who are in helping professions, a lot of people have studied her work.
And I love Virginia Satir's work because it's very heart-centered. It's very much about self-acceptance and being willing to, you know, level and say what you got to say and do what you got to do. She teaches us about coping. She, you know, teaches us really this idea that, you know, she uses some great metaphors, but the idea that, you know, in the old days in the farms, they used to have like one pot and they would take the manure and they would spread the manure over the fields.
The manure would go in this pot and then they would grow all the vegetables throughout the season. And, you know, at the end of the season, when all the vegetables are grown, then they go to make the stew. And again, there's only the one pot, right? So the idea is that, you know, we really got to clean the shit out of the pot before we make the stew. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how many great ingredients you put in there.
It's still going to taste like shit. Yes. It's part of my language, if anyone's wondering. No. Yeah, I'm down with the language. I grew up on a farm. We had more than one pot, but I understand exactly what we're going through here. But, you know, there's this idea that healing is really about cleaning the shit out of the pot. I think that that is true. And also accepting first that there might be some shit in the pot and that that's OK.
And you don't have to keep tasting it. Yep. And I love another analogy that she gives is this idea that we should have open communication with people in a way that we can just say, you know, this is how I am today. And that's just the way it is. And it's fine, right? Yeah. She uses the analogy high pot and low pot. And again, I don't know why she likes her pots, but that's fine. But, you know, to be able to go and just say, you know what, I'm low pot today and not have to put a story to it, not have to, you know, explain yourself to people.
Because the truth is, is a lot of times when we have these emotions, when we have these feelings, we end up if we don't understand them. And nine times out of ten, we don't. Correct. We start to make stories to attach the stories to the feelings. And the stories are just made up. We're just making them up. Yeah. I mean, we create our stories. Yeah. And, you know, yeah. Assign them labels and meanings. And we're all full of crap.
I'm telling you. Yeah, we are. Totally. We totally are. I love I just completed a workshop, an in-person workshop talking about how to power up your personal energy with a lovely group of ladies. And I use a tool based on resilience. Go figure. But it's the energy map. And so there are four sections, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and you from zero to ten. OK, where are you right now? Let's look at that. Let's see. Where would you like to add some more levels to any of your energies? And I loved one woman was like she had a couple of teenage teenagers at home and she said, I'm I'm going to use this just so I know and so that they know where we're at so that when we come together, we understand a little bit more.
Oh, mom was a little more curt today because she has a headache. And so her physical energy is really low. Or, oh, she had a really draining or the kid. I had a really draining day at school because I had three tests. So I don't have much energy in this other area. So I just thought that was great. Awareness is key. That is great. But not everybody has the ability to articulate. Not everybody, especially the children, right, where they know that they're feeling off or they know that they're feeling drained.
They know that they've had three tests that day, but they might not know that it's correlated to feeling crappy. That is true. So that's the idea behind just keeping it so simple. It could just be like thumb up, thumb down without having to even put words to it. Right. And that's why I kind of like this energy map because you can just kind of color in. Oh, awesome. If you want and you don't have to say anything.
So our children's hospital is wonderful with their mental wellness and awareness for kids. And one time we got this magnet that could go on our fridge when my daughter was probably eight or nine. And it had today I feel like and then a little square magnet and it had a cutout and it had all of these different emotions with spaces that go along with it. So she could say, oh, today I feel happy. Today I feel angry.
And what I loved about that is it allowed me to have a space to start helping her develop her emotional vocabulary and her emotional intelligence at such a young age. And so I really loved that this mom was thinking like, oh, well, maybe I could start now helping my kids develop some of their, you know, more of their emotional vocabulary and understanding. Amazing. And not only does it help them develop the vocabulary, but it's also the beginning step of teaching empathy.
Right. Kids need to learn how to kind of label emotions or notice how they're feeling or how other people are feeling in order to even be able to step into empathy. So, you know, when I when I worked for the school board, one of my first jobs was in a kindergarten class. And oh, goodness, you have this big emotion. And my job was to teach these kindergartens empathy. So, you know, I put together this program and it had like a puppet, right? Because kids love puppets.
Oh, yeah. And there was cards around teaching them how to recognize emotion with the puppet and with their friends and with themselves, because, you know, if they can recognize how it makes them feel, then the next step is to recognize how other someone else must feel. Yeah. So it's all building blocks. Like you said, it's all, you know, one one thing kind of builds on the other and strengthens the other. And I love that, you know, these emotional sort of learnings weren't around.
And I don't want to age myself, but these teachings were not around 30, 40 years ago. We were just sort of left to our own devices. Totally. Maybe that's what built the resilience. I don't know. We survived. You know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Thank you, Kelly Clarkson. Yes. So, yes. And, you know, I really believe like even my kids, I remember one time my daughter and my kids are all grown up now.
But my daughter, you know, she was upset about something in her life and one of the big challenges that she has in her life. And I said to her one day when she was upset about it, I said, honey, you know, everybody has a shit bomb. Mm hmm. Everybody gets a shit bomb. I said, your shit bomb is designed to help you, you know, build character and help you learn and help you, you know, have resilience.
I might even have used that word back then. And I said to her, you know, I helped her kind of look at look at your friends, look at the people around you. They all have some kind of shit bomb. You know, she had a friend at that time. I think she was in grade seven and she had a friend who was dying of cancer. So, you know, really helped her kind of see, you know, we all have something and some are harder and some are easier, but nobody's really exempted from having a childhood shit bomb.
Right. Yeah, I say that a lot. You know, none of us were guaranteed an easy go at this life. And again, we choose to respond how we want to. And there isn't a right or wrong. It's what is going to serve you most. And I do believe that we are all here to learn and to bring our energy to the next level. And at the same time, I know that not everyone is ready for that, nor is anyone built for that right away.
And so sometimes when I say that, I'll have caregivers say, yeah, but what if what if I don't want to be or what if I can't be? You know, I don't like to use don't and can't and that type of language because it's limiting. But what if I'm not here to have post-traumatic growth? And I know I understand that perhaps minimizing harm is what you want to do. Perhaps getting back to your baseline or your stability is what you're wanting to do and that you have the energy to do.
And that also is OK. And like my daughter, it's really about shifting perspective. Right. And like you were saying earlier, we can be in this woe is me. Oh, this is happening to me. Why? So why isn't it different? Why don't I have what I should have? Right. And so that conversation for her was was a shift in perspective. So now she's kind of taking some gratitude for the hardship, for the challenge, for the thing that she should have but doesn't.
Right. Yeah. So really, I think that is probably the greatest gift that we can reach and achieve is gratitude for our challenge. And that's where we need the feedback. That's where we need the tools and the coaching. And it doesn't just happen. It's something that we need to do on purpose and we need to practice and we need to kind of get somebody, you know, on the outside giving us some feedback, seeing the things that we can't always see.
Like I have a mentor that does that for me and she has a mentor that does that for her. Yep. Right. So we all just need coaches. That's right. We all need someone helping us see the things that we can't see. So it's really about patterns and how I'm looking at it. And of course, you have we all have different ways that we're approaching it. But I think in a really big picture way, it's this idea of, you know, moving through challenge to new perspective that feels better in the mind, body and spirit and gets us a better result in our life.
That resonates. And so that's what I'm really trying to accomplish with this podcast is all kinds of different practitioners with different tools. And, you know, because you've taken all these years and you have all of this amazing wisdom that you can share. And and so my clients and my community are very grateful that you are here sharing it today. So thank you very much, Jen. It's my pleasure. And thank you so much for creating a space where people can come on and share their experiences to allow your clients and listeners to explore what what might work for them.
Yeah. You know, there's no such thing as a one size fits all approach. Oh, my goodness. No. And you know what? Something may work for a little while and then you may find that you want to take the other road. And that's great as well. And I find that what I do as a hypnotist, it's very complementary to a lot of the things that people are going through with the medical world. Or, you know, we work with people who are going through cancer to help them manage the stress and their habits around taking care of themselves.
But of course, they have a whole team on their side. Yeah. But what I really want to underline here is that while we have our Western medicine team helping us with the treatments and the protocols and all of those things like bringing in the other modalities such as, you know, being hypnotized to, you know, help your mind, body and spirit connect to support yourself from the inside out while they're working really from the outside in is super important.
And it's one thing that I'm very excited to see even more health systems being open to like my daughter's hospital actually has acupressure that's available for the kids. You know, I had a friend who recently went through breast cancer treatment and they even have someone on staff or bring someone in who does reiki sessions. And so just being able to encompass the whole person is, I think, making leaps and bounds as we move through the years.
And I'm very grateful for that. Absolutely. Me too. So I thank you very much. And I appreciate all of your wisdom and tools and your experiences and sharing them with everybody, because, you know, the oldest form of learning is storytelling. The ancient form of teaching is telling stories and it's never going to grow old. It's always going to have impact. It's always going to touch people in a way that, you know, just reading a book never really could.
Totally agree. And speaking of storytelling, I am going to take away Velker, Pee and Pop. Awesome. All right. So and, you know, if you ever want any, you know, just chat with me anytime, we can always meet up. Excellent. Yeah. So please tell my listeners where they can find you and anything else that you would like to add. Oh, great. Well, I would love to invite everyone to just remember that you don't have to wait for things to be better, to live better.
There are very, you know, so many modalities out there that can support you. There are so many people with a service heart that are wanting and willing to help you. And you can find me if Prozilliance is something that piqued your interest at prozilliancecoach.com. P-R-O-S-I-L-I-E-N-C-E, coach.com. I'm also on Facebook at Jen Frederick's Prozilliance Coach. I'm on Instagram at JFredWI because I'm in the great state of Wisconsin. And then also on LinkedIn at Jen Frederick's. And, you know, yeah, like you said, reach out.
Let's chat. Let's see what can support you. I just am here to serve and support. And I really, really just want people to be able to enjoy the life that they have. Awesome. Well, thank you for being such a blessing to our world. And I will look forward to chatting with you next time. Sounds good. Thank you. We are so grateful that you joined us today. Tune in again next week where we have another amazing professional giving you tools and strategies for change.
I am your host, Rebecca O'Rourke, and you can find me at Coorsahypnosis.com.
