From Survival to Self-Discovery: Embracing Joy | with Megan Margherio

Michael Unbroken:
Part of the healing journey also includes the what's next. It's like you walk down this path, you do all this work, you go to the therapy and the podcasts and the coaching and the seminars and the groups and you read the books and you do all the things and then you're in your life on the other side of it like, well, what's next? And I don't know about you, but I've certainly been here and been there. That's why I'm very excited for today's conversation with my great friend Megan, who's going to break down those steps in the journey and the process of what it means to actually be on the backside of a healing journey. Megan, my friend, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Megan Margherio:
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and a privilege to be here.

Michael Unbroken:
I'm very much looking forward to this. This is a topic I don't know that we've really dove into at the depth that I think we're going to today. But before we do that, tell folks who are listening why they should listen to today's conversation with us.

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, so for me, I think this is a conversation I wish I would have heard probably years ago because it is that conversation about what comes after. Too often we hear about the stories of survival of people who have gone through things and then the fact that they survived is kind of where the story ends. But there's a whole secondary story that I think is really important. Some of that is about how to let good come back into your life after you've spent so long bracing for all the ways in which the shit can hit the fan. And so for me, that's really what I think I would want people to know, that this conversation is about when good can come back into the life after having survived the worst of the worst and seen the awfulness that life can offer. How do you learn to accept the softness and the goodness that life can also offer as well?

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, which I think is one of the most difficult things that we do. And I think that that happens because you get trapped into this idealistic version of your life based on your experiences. And then if you've never, for me, had the experience of there's more, the more can feel like a lie, right? I'm sure we'll talk about self-sabotaging behaviors and things of that nature, but there is a point in time where you no longer have to be in survival mode.

So I guess first, how do you get there? What was your journey? What did it look like for you? What were your experiences? What was the process to get to surviving? And then what was the process, obviously loaded question, but on the backside, high level, because we're going to get into a little bit more, but what has the process been and look like for you on the backside of that to go from here's my experience and here's my life to these are some of the things I noticed?

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, so speaking about it from a high level, I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner violence that led to a long time of self-loathing and just really not having any sense of self-worth. My worth was dependent on what everybody else wanted from me. So I was a high achiever. I was a high functioner. No one knew to even look at me and think that there was something wrong, to even ask if something was wrong. And I thought that that meant I was doing everything right. I was surviving the way that you're supposed to survive because no one was asking me questions. No red flags were going up.

But what ended up happening is I hit tremendous burnout and as you do, eventually you hit a wall where you can't carry the shit anymore and you have to figure out how to handle it. So then I went down that road of healing and going to talk therapy and doing all sorts of other types of therapy. Once you go down the path, you try numerous, at least my experience has been you try every possible kind of option available to you just to see what's gonna make me feel better because the idea is that it had to feel better than it did right now. And I didn't know what better was, but I knew that where I was wasn't sustainable and I knew that better had to exist.

And then what ends up happening, at least again for me, is that you have to rebuild self-worth, self-trust, all from the basement up. And so it was a lot of trying different things, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't. I didn't even know who I was, so my sense of identity was lost because it was wrapped up in what other people thought of me and never in knowing myself. And so all of these things compounded and it was just this endless array of trying and failing or trying and something working for a second and then not working and trying to figure out what, basically throwing stuff up against the wall just to see what would stick.

And out of that became something, right? So I get to this place of no longer numb but neutral. And I think that there's that big distinction between numb and neutral. And when you get to neutral, you start to realize, wait, I've lived numb for most of my life, which meant that I lived expecting pain and never letting good in. So I was really only half alive. And there was a whole other half of aliveness that I wanted to explore that scared the ever living hell out of me.

And all of that is the goodness, right? It's the things that you stop allowing to come in because you are protecting yourself. And now suddenly rest, ease, peace, comfort, support, all of these things that you've been avoiding your whole life are now open and available to you, but you don't know how to let them in and receive them. And so that becomes a whole different kind of ball game.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah. I mean I resonate with all of that, especially having childhood sexual abuse myself. Your identity, I've thought this many times over the years, you can't have an identity if you've never even had the basis to build who you are. And I think for myself and obviously for a lot of people who listen to this show, that's where we start. We had abusive parents. We had abusive siblings. We had abusive teachers and community and some of us really violent experiences and very sexually abusive experiences. And then of course that tends to play out in adulthood because we don't understand that those things that at one time were not right become our kind of nomenclature for navigating the world.

And one of the things that you said that really hit home for me, you didn't use this word particularly, but allow. I was like, I'm allowed to have success. I'm allowed to have happiness. I'm allowed to have joy. I'm allowed to have all these things. And that at times has been even to this day vastly more difficult than sitting in a room and talking about bad shit that happened. And there's also, post-survivor's guilt that pops up, right? In my neighborhood, a lot of the kids didn't make it out. My family, for a long time, they weren't going in a direction like I was going. And there’s something crazy about living the life that I've had and then pausing and going, wait a second. Maybe it's okay that you have this. And that rebuilding of self, living numb, my God, I relate to that so much. And that's not even necessarily just numbing. That's just not feeling.

So when you talked about all the things that you tried, for me, same. The myriad, you name it, I tried it on the backside of it. I tend to stick with what I felt worked. I didn't want to force anything. I don't want to make anything stick. If it stuck, great. If not, fine. But the hardest thing for me was, and this is a huge thing that you talk about, it was getting to calm, getting to safety, allowing good things to happen, being in this space of, I don't know how you can call it other than activating happiness and joy and getting away from this fear of failure and this fear of trauma and that the next shoe was going to drop.

What does that look like? Because in the window, here's how I see it. You're standing in front of a door and on the other side of the door, that's this life that you have started to envision, but you're still in the house. And the idea of walking outside is awfully terrifying. So how do you step into that life? What is that process looking like?

Megan Margherio:
Yes, so it's so hard. I don't want to sugarcoat it because it is so hard. Because everything in you wants to not trust it, to not believe that it can be real. It feels like it could be too good to be true, so it immediately feels suspicious. But then also, it's this idea of what's the catch? What is this going to cost me?

So there's this kind of logic that we use when we've survived grief, loss, trauma, those kinds of things, where it's like there's a pendulum to the universe, right? And so however far it swings into the light, it's gonna swing that far back into the shadow. And when you've spent so long protecting yourself from the shadow, you don't wanna go that far into the light because the light feels dangerous because the backswing is coming for you and you know that.

And so it's like, well, how long is this gonna stick around? Because at some point something awful is gonna happen and then I'm gonna have to deal with that. And if I put my defenses down to let the good things in, how am I gonna scoop them back up to protect me before I get hurt again? And so it's a really hard kind of process.

I think about it a little bit like Plato's allegory of the cave, right? Looking at the flames on the cave wall and thinking that that's life and that's good enough. And you're watching the shapes take place and you think that that's all life is. And then turning around to see that the entrance to the cave is open. You can walk outside, but you're afraid that the sun is gonna burn your skin because you've never stepped foot into the light.

And so it's about finding, at least for me, these small kind of micro moments. If I go for big joy, as I call it, the big things, that's too much too fast and I'm going to immediately shut down and the internal defenses will not let that come in. But if it's something small and the impact of it or the loss of it isn't that significant, so it's just like standing in nature and looking at a beautiful tree and breathing in for a moment and just letting that moment of presence, of just being in stillness with yourself, with nature, letting that land and stacking moments like that up and allowing yourself to see that, wait a minute, this has been available to me the whole time.

All of these little micro moments of joy and goodness have been here. I just haven't been present with them. I haven't been letting them in. So for me, mindfulness, meditation, breath work, yoga, all have been really helpful in allowing me to stay embodied in myself without immediately retreating to my brain and trying to think my way out of something or think about how it can all go wrong. I can just stay present for a couple of breaths and allow whatever's there to just be. And then the next few moments, or whenever I can do it again, do it again and again and again. And then that just builds capacity without having to worry about that pendulum swinging backwards.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, letting it land. That's real. I think about that a lot because I've had these moments over the years where I just disappear and get caught up in all the things and never have a moment to be like, I'm actually on a walk. One of the things that I do, I will literally look at my fucking hand. I'll look at the palm of my hand and be like, I am inside of this vessel right now, right? My organism is present. This is where I am.

And I'll do a body scan. And I think that has been incredibly beneficial for me in my journey because there's something about getting to being present, which my therapist has said this to me so many times in my tenure with him over a decade where he is just like, this is the moment. The past only exists in the present and you can only exist in the present if you're pulling it in.

And we get in this space of rumination. We get in the space of constantly battling ourselves. We get in the space of beating ourselves up and we forget, just be fucking human. It's fine. And also I think about this. You can't change it. It's done. And I say this a lot, but there's always that voice, right?

And so I wrote this note as you're talking because I'm curious, even with all of this and you're starting the backside, you've done the work, you're trying to navigate it, you're sitting in this moment. What's the conversation you're having with yourself? Because I know that people are listening and they're like, I hear this, but they're like, that's not for me. I hear this, but you don't know what happened to me. I hear this, but my circumstance, but this, but that. And I think a huge part of this is how you talk to yourself.

So I'm curious, what has the internal dialogue been like for you as you've navigated the post-traumatic growth, the healing elements of this?

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, so my meditation teacher several years ago made a statement, be where your feet are. And I've loved that. And so I come back to it. It's kind of a mantra of mine, be where my feet are. And it's the idea that your feet, your body obviously, is in the present moment.

And so the conversation that I have with myself starts with that, right? It's a recognition and awareness that, wait a minute, I just left my body. I went backward or I went forward in time, but time is here. As you said, the only time that truly exists is the present. And so it's always this idea of constantly bringing myself back to the present moment where I recognize that the world isn't crashing down. Things aren't falling down on me right now. I'm envisioning a million worst-case scenarios or I'm playing back a million regrets. But in this moment, those things aren't real.

And I have spent a lot of time resisting the resistance. And I know that that may not make sense. So let me explain. We oftentimes resist what's happening in the present moment. Like it shouldn't be like this. It would be easier if it was like this. Why is it? I wish it could be like this. If it was like this, it would be easier. I could manage it. Whatever.

And so we spend a lot of time trying to change what already is. And there came a point where I recognized that I was doing that. I was just cycling and spinning and spinning inside my head about, I'm trying to constantly change the present moment to manipulate it into a way that it makes me feel the safest I can be. And that's obviously a strategy that someone who spent their life trying to be safe would utilize. It totally makes sense. I'm not going to shame myself for that.

But what I am going to recognize is that resisting what's already here does not change the fact that it's already here. All it does is just create more suffering for me in the moment because nothing about what is here is going to change because I'm wishing or willing or trying to change it. And so when I can resist my initial inclination to resist what's here and I can hold firm and just be like, this is what's here. Do I want to add additional suffering to that? Do I want to make this moment harder on myself?

And when I ask myself that, the answer is obviously, well, no. Who would want to make a moment harder for themselves? Even if you don't think that you deserve the moment that's sitting in front of you, you don't want to make it harder on yourself because you have to pull so much more energy and effort to exist in a space where that resistance is present.

And so for me, it's about laying down that resistance and saying, okay, what about this moment is okay? Even though there are things that I sure want to change or that I would like to be different, what about this, name one thing, find one thing in this moment that's okay, focus on that instead. Focus on the okayness, not on what I wanna change. And that keeps me present in the moment.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, that's so powerful because you actually only have a limited amount of control in the day to day. And what I'm always trying to navigate is how do I control the variables at my access, right?

The news, for instance, this morning at the gym, every screen that had the news on was the most negative thing happening in the world at the moment. And as communal species, we've only ever really been able to hold and understand enough knowledge and data for a tribe, right? 75 to 100 people, not things that are happening 100,000 miles away with a small village in a town we've never heard of where an accident happened.

Of course there's worldwide news. We hear about those things. But in the day to day, in the micro, it's so incredibly negative to just walk into the world, especially if you're in the western states or the west, and more so is pull up your phone. What does your algorithm look like when people say my algorithm is so negative? I'm like, that's a you thing. The algorithm doesn't feed you information. It only shows you what you're into, which I think is so fascinating because people don't understand that these social media platforms, they want your attention.

I don't know about what yours looks like, but mine's fitness, entrepreneurship, podcast, really dirty joke cartoons that I share with my girlfriend. And that's about it. Because I started getting into the news cycle. I was like, man, this political thing and that turmoil thing over here and that. And then I reset my whole algorithm.

And that's how I start to look at life. I'm like, okay, what can I reset? When I'm looking at the world that is at my fingertips, my real reality, not the fiction reality that I want to pretend that I live in, but in this real reality, what can I control? I can control my efforts, my energy, my action, my time, the food I eat, what I listen to, what I watch, the people I talk to. I can control that, but that's it. I can control my reactions. I can control my intention.

But there's also the side of it where you're like, cool, I get all that, I understand. I have way more control in my life than most people probably realize. And yet we're playing this game or even this thing about feeling can feel threatening where you're like, man, but you're telling me I can control everything. But why when I feel joy do I feel scared? You're telling me I can change my algorithm, but why is it that when I see people who are happy or ease or receiving or love or success, even after all this work, I still feel like it's not for me?

So let's dive into that and the logic behind the nervous system, because I know that there is a parlay somewhere in here that people are missing, right? Between the brain and the body connection. So let's break that down so we can get them into joy. We can get them into ease and into receiving and into love.

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, so if you grew up in a situation where goodness was associated with vulnerability or exposure, maybe when you were younger and you were seen in your delight and your joy and your awe, excitement, whatever, people shunned you. They shut it down, like calm down, stop that, too much. And so you got these implicit messages as a child that you were too much or not enough. And for a lot of people, myself included, you felt both messages, I'm too much and not enough at the exact same time.

And so what ends up happening is that you start going, okay, well, my belonging, my sense of existing in this family, in this community, in this friend group, whatever the case might be, my belonging is contingent on me shrinking my joy, my goodness. And maybe it was that people in your world didn't know how to hold the delight and goodness and joy of others. Maybe it was that they didn't know how to hold their own, so they definitely didn't know how to make space for yours. But the message was still the same, that your delight and goodness is not welcome here. So shrink it down, make it smaller, make everybody else around you more comfortable.

And so those messages over and over and over again are what the nervous system took in. And that's how it started to go, okay, well, to be safe here, I have to shrink down. I have to be less. I have to be smaller in this space. I have to be quieter here. I can't be excited.

And so all of those messages just repeatedly, year after year after year, coming through reinforced a story that was not real. And yes, it was real in the time in which you were there, but it was not real for actual human life. And so you learned how to survive in spaces where your joy wasn't maybe as welcome. And then you go out into the world and you assume all spaces are like the one that you were in. And maybe you tried to be more joyful in other spaces and the same thing happened and it just keeps shrinking you down because people couldn't handle it or whatever the case might be.

And so then it just becomes, well, goodness equals I'm gonna be ostracized. I'm not gonna be welcome. I'm not gonna belong. And so I'm gonna get isolated if I'm authentic and I show up authentically in my goodness. And so then when you try to do that on the other end of healing and you're like, well, no, I want to welcome these things back into my life. I want to be good. I want all of that. It is terrifying because it isn't just about your nervous system being like, oh, okay, we're safe now. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Every other time it hasn't been safe.

And so you have to show your nervous system that you are not who you were then, that you can hold it a little bit more. You have to show your nervous system that this part of your life is not like that part of your life. And so that's oftentimes, for me, I actually talk to my nervous system. So when I feel myself getting activated and kind of panicky about being seen in my goodness, I remind myself very easily, this isn't that. What I'm experiencing now is not what I experienced before.

And as you talk to your nervous system and repeatedly show it through these micro moments of joy, through these conversations that you have with yourself, you show your nervous system, hey, we can do it a different way and be okay. And then your nervous system will lay down arms, not fully, but slowly and steadily. And as you continue to build that safety within yourself, your nervous system will settle and allow more and more of that to come in because your capacity is there to hold it and the world isn't crashing down and your belonging is no longer in question.

And so safety is built. So micro moments of joy build our capacity for safety and then our nervous system through self-trust will start to slowly settle down and start to recognize that it can allow these things to come in without immediately raising all the alarms.

Michael Unbroken:
Self-trust is where people get stuck though. And I think that's the one area where most people will start doing this work and then they're on the path, they're on the journey, maybe they're deep into it, and then boom, identity crisis. This is how I look at it, right? You're like, wow, I'm having a high identity crisis. I have no idea who I am because all I know and all I've ever experienced for the last 10, 15, 20, 30 years is pain and loss and suffering and hurt and shame and all of the most negative experiences that a human could have. And yet on the other side of this journey, I'm healing, but I am having an identity crisis because I actually don't trust myself.

I'm doing the things you're telling me to do. And I'm with you. I think that little wins start to build the capacity to have confidence because the game that I think that we're ultimately playing is getting to the point that you're confident enough to be you. That's how I figured this. This has been my journey. This is what I've guided thousands of people through in coaching and millions in the podcast. It's like, do whatever is required to get to the point that you believe in yourself.

But there's something, and I have to talk about this a lot, that people don't understand, and that's that even though you're walking this path, there is this reality of ownership that is required in order for you to actually become you, to build confidence, to build self-trust. And in that process, you are still going to make mistakes. You are still going to screw up. And it's like, can you get to the place of cultivating responsibility for your experience without shame, without blame, without internalizing this thing about the mistakes that you made?

Because it's really interesting. We will forgive people who get sentenced to death row for killing somebody in a crime of passion and they did their 30 years and they come out, they say they're reformed and they get pardoned by the state and they go out into the world, maybe they start a business, maybe they start a podcast, maybe they do whatever the thing is that they do, and we go, wow, what a story of comeback. And you spilled the milk yesterday and you're still beating yourself up.

And so I'm like, how do you do that? How do we take responsibility and leave the blame and shame to the side, but not be placating or culpable in our own shit? Because that's what I see. And that's the thing where what I love to do as a coach is get to sit in that moment with people and say, you know what you're doing here is you're actually beating yourself up. You're not taking responsibility. You're just saying, well, this is how I am.

So how do we give them more permission to sit in the ownership and let the other pieces that don't serve them wash away so that they can move into self-trust?

Megan Margherio:
It's a really hard kind of space to navigate, right? Because you are kind of building the plane as you're flying it, so to speak, when it comes to identity. And I think that we all have a misconception about our identity. We think that we're supposed to have something fully formed about, I'm supposed to know who I am. No. Your whole life is an exploration into who you are. You are an evolving human and we forget that we're humans. Our humanity is in the fact that we grow and we learn and we change and we are presented with new information or new beliefs or a new way of doing things. And then eventually maybe those become our beliefs and new ways of doing things. We adopt it. And then suddenly you wake up and you're like, my God, 10 years ago, I was a totally different person. It doesn't happen overnight.

And I think that when people, especially when you are going through trauma, you think that in your healing process, that's when you're supposed to find out who you are. And it's like, no, no, no, that's when you find out who exists underneath all of the stuff that people put on top of you and all of the stuff you put on top of yourself as protection. And so the healing journey itself is just peeling back those layers and seeing what still stays. And what stays are your values, your morals, your inherent beliefs that when we walk through the world, like I'm going to be a good person or I don't think it's right to steal or whatever the things might be.

But that's not our full identity. Our identity is something that continues to grow and evolve over time. And so I think that we get lost a lot of times trying to think that there's supposed to be some fully formed answer that we are already supposed to know and that we're supposed to just live that. And that's not really it. It is about, we are constantly learning and expressing ourselves. And sometimes we try on something and we go, whew, I thought that was gonna be me, but that is not me. And then you try on something else and you keep going. And it's okay to stumble.

And I think that that's the other part of it, that people think that as we're learning that every single thing we try is something that we're supposed to be like, yep, I nailed that. Even if it's not something that you'd want to carry forward, you're supposed to nail that aspect of living your life, right? So maybe that's being seen and allowing yourself out into the world and maybe it's just taking up a little bit more space without apologizing. And not immediately, like I used to do, rushing in and immediately wanting to apologize for the fact that I took up a little bit of verbal space or I don't know if this is the right answer. But it's like, no, stand behind that, right? But that's hard to do.

And so I think that what people wrap their head around is that before I can try something, I have to know I'm good at it. And there's no way you're gonna know you're good at it until you try. And life is just about trying on different aspects of things and saying, maybe this is part of who I am. And then recognizing, no, it's not. And then I'm going to try this and see if it's me. And maybe it is. And maybe that's something that you're like, yeah, okay, I'm going to keep this for a while. And then at some point maybe you shed it down the line and it becomes something that was part of you and isn't anymore.

And that is life. It's about letting experiences flow through you and letting yourself kind of respond to them in whatever way and whatever capacity that you have. And so in some ways saying, well, this is just how I am is saying I'm closed off to letting life flow through me. And that's where we run into problems. It's not that who you are now is the problem. It's that you're thinking that who you are now is who you will always be.

Michael Unbroken:
I've said for the better part of a decade, the statement, this is just who I am, is the most dangerous statement in the human lexicon because that leaves you zero room for anything. And I look at it and go, well, I was a child who was brutally abused, ACE score of 10, learning disability, no high school diploma, been in over 100 fights, been in just all of the worst things that could happen, death and murder and pain and suffering. And that was the leverage for me for a long time in relationships and friendships with family, pretty much all of my teens and most of my twenties was, this is who I am.

And that's so dangerous, right? Because that leaves you nothing to bend. And without flexibility in this journey, you're not going to be able to move into the other parts of this, which is really about the embodiment and the integration. Because if you have no frame to move anything, to hold something new, the second you try to bring it in, again, we're going to be right back into that thing about having an identity crisis. There's no way around it because the second you're like, oh yeah, I decided I'm going to be healthy and do all these things, blah, blah. You're going to fall off really, really fast.

And I think that in my journey, I don't know if this is true for you, but when I started on the other side of this, there was a part of me that every single day I was like, I'm going to go figure this shit out. I don't care. I will do whatever I have to do. And I literally did. I mean, I moved across the country with $500 in my pocket and not a place to live, no vehicle, don't know a soul because I was like, I'm going to do whatever it takes. And then in that process, I started to be able to have awareness about who I was and the choices that I have and the embodiment started to happen and the integration started to take place. And then something would happen and I feel like I had recycled the whole fucking process again and then something happened and I recycled the whole process. And that was it. That was the ebb and flow of it for a really long time until two things happened that radically transformed my experience.

One is I actually started to understand from a scientific standpoint the impact of trauma, actually understand what it is. And that's how, it's the Bessel van der Kolk books and the Pete Walker books and the Gabor Maté books and all these guys and then all of the amazing women of the industry, the Maria Bouquets, the Caroline Leafs, this podcast, interviewing the greatest minds in the world for almost a decade now. And it's still a process. It's so fucking crazy that it is still a process.

And so the reason I was bringing this up, I'm just curious for you, is it still a process? Because this is what I sit in constantly. I try to explain this to people. When you walk into this, whether you're doing coaching with me or you're listening to the podcast or you're reading the book or you're working with Megan or whatever it is, it's like, yo, this shit don't end. For a lot of people who maybe they didn't really have a bad fucked-up childhood and they got therapy four or five times, they're good. I'm unraveling fucking darkness constantly. So I'm just curious for you if that's what that experience is like.

Megan Margherio:
A million percent, absolutely. I had it described to me once, and I thought that this was a beautiful way to kind of describe it, that healing is a spiral, right? So you're coming back around to all of the things that have happened to you, the ways in which you've reoriented your life as a result of what's happened to you, all in an effort to keep yourself safe. And so you keep coming back to the same things and you're looking at it every time from a slightly higher vantage point. You're going up the spiral. So you keep circling back around and looking back at it, but you're looking at it with a little bit more height, a little bit fresher eyes, a little bit fresher hands.

And so you can see things as that perspective continues to grow and grow and grow. And then as a true spiral does, it widens as you go higher. And so maybe you get a little bit longer before it comes back around again. But it's always gonna come back around because it's just the idea that we have to look at these things and see them because there's still things to learn. There's things to learn about ourselves. There's things to learn about the people who hurt us. There's things to learn about what it means to be a human living in this world.

And as you get higher and higher, you can do things like maybe look at yourself with more compassion. Maybe you can look at the people who hurt you a little bit differently. I always say there are things that happen in our lives that are unforgivable, but they can be understandable. Both things can be true at the exact same time.

And so I can look at the things that I went through and the ways in which I had to handle all of that as a child on my own because no one wanted to support me. And I can say that's unforgivable to put on the back of a child and that that had changed everything about the direction in which I live my life. But I can also look at people and I can say I can understand a little bit about how they got where they got to, but it's not for me to understand it. It's for me to understand how I am where I am.

And so I keep myself centered on my spiral, so to speak. But as we get higher and higher, we can have that different perspective. And that perspective can teach us more about who we are underneath it all, who we want to be, and how we want to be better.

So I know that for me, I am the person now that I needed when I was 11 years old and I didn't have that person. And so it took me, I'm 44 now, so it took me 33 years to become her, but I am the person that I needed when I was little and now I can be that person walking into the world and I get to be that person for that 11-year-old me for the rest of my life.

But that 11-year-old that's inside me that does not understand what happened to them and why it happened and is trying to still make sense of the senseless, I can now hold her and be like, hey, it was awful. It was completely fucked up what you went through. And the thing is, you're not gonna go through it alone. I am here now. I am gonna be the person that is going to tell you that none of it was your fault because there was no one back then to tell you that.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, we have to be that for ourselves. And there is an immense reality of vulnerability in that experience. I think the most uncomfortable I've ever been, ever, of anything I've ever done, I mean ever, my entire existence, was sitting in this moment and realizing what you just said for myself.

Because as a kid for me, it felt twofold. Between the physical and sexual abuse, all the things that I went through, there was a side of it where it was, I feel weak. And then you tack on, I'm a man and all these things. And then there's the other side of it where you go, well, I couldn't do anything about it, because the people that did, they were so much bigger than me, and they were the adults. And then you're kind of in this weird tango with yourself about getting to this place of grace for you in your own journey.

And then in that space additionally being like, I know that that happened. We can't change it. It's the worst fucking thing imaginable and it's awful and it shouldn't have happened. And I can't change that, but I can definitely change how I allow that to affect me today. That was the thing that changed my life, was being able to sit in that and go, wow, I'm actually in control. I have agency in this moment. I didn't then. And that is the biggest crime that I think gets committed against children, is their agency is stripped from them. And then worse, you talk about it and people don't believe you or whatever the thing is, which we don't need to go down that path right now.

But that's what I always think about. You come out the other side of that, you're 24, 37, 48, 60 years old. If you cannot get to the fucking place in your life where you can say I am going to hold space to treat the inner child version of me like they are loved and cared for and respected, and additionally have boundaries, because let me tell you what, I didn't have that for a long time, and get to that, that will change your life forever.

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, for me, it was the moment. I spent so long of my life, decades, hating myself because I would think back to those moments and I would think, I should have done more. I should have fought. I should have ran. I should have done something. And I didn't. And instead, I froze.

And the thing is, I know all about nervous system responses, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. They all make sense to me. I know we all do all of them at different times. I know that in those moments when I was experiencing the worst of the worst, I froze and I blamed myself for that. As so many people who experience awfulness do, they blame themselves and be like, I should have done more.

But the thing is, what got me to the place that I could hold that 11-year-old me a little differently and not blame her, which is what I was doing as an adult, was blaming a child for what they endured, was that I recognized that that little 11-year-old made the most intelligent choice she could make in the moment. She was too small to fight back. And she was incapable of running. It was literally blocked away from me. So the only choice she had in that moment was to endure.

And that is incredible, that an 11-year-old had to make that choice in that moment, to endure the worst things that were happening to her, to do that because all the other options weren't available.

And when I could see myself that way and go, my God, she had to just literally lay there and take it, like holy shit, the gravity of that. How could you blame somebody in that moment when you think about it that way?

I saw myself so differently because all she was trying to do was just get through the moment when the scary thing was gonna end and all the other options were not available. And so that changed everything about how I look at her and how I look back at the ways in which I navigated as an 11-year-old, the awfulness.

And that was why my nervous system's preferred method for everything was to just freeze, was to just endure, to just take it and then go, well, it's gonna end eventually. And as an adult, I still to this day will do that. And I can see and feel what it feels like now as an adult to have to just be frozen, want to go and do something and my entire body just not cooperate, not let me move. And it's because that was a system that worked, that kept 11-year-old me safe and has been going on forever.

And I can look at myself with so much more compassion because of it. And that inner healing work with that little version of me, that has just accelerated getting me to this point in my healing journey where I can now talk about it without collapsing. I can breathe as I talk about it, which before I would never have been able to do. I can understand myself so much more and have so much respect and reverence for a tiny human who was left alone to navigate something that was so scary that she didn't know what to do.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, I mean that's so powerful. I resonate with all of that. And the respect piece is such a big part of it. And I don't know about you, but because of the things I went through in my late teens and twenties, if you were alive and breathing, I'm like, let's have sex. Let's build a connection. Let me feel love from you for a micro moment until orgasm. And then on the backside of it, I'm sitting there like I can't believe I've done this again.

So much of the work has been moving towards respect, for myself. Because if you don't respect yourself, you will not respect other people. And I think people always have that backwards where they're like respect is given. I'm like no, no, no. Respect is earned. I'm sorry. I had to break it to you. You got to earn your own respect. Now people by nature may allot you respect because that's how we are as humans. But what happens the first time that you break that? It's gone, right?

And for you, if you're always earning your respect, I mean it's dumb shit too. It's like did I brush my teeth today? Did I write the blog post I said I was gonna write? Did I go to the gym when I said I was going to go to the gym? Did I show up to therapy? Did I do the things I said I was going to do?

Because I can tell you, and I've shared this publicly on this show over the years, nothing on planet Earth brings me more joy than ordering pizza, playing video games, eating gummy bears, watching porn, hooking up with some stranger, getting shit-faced drunk, hanging out with people that bring no value to my life, driving too fast on the highway, and rinsing and repeating it again every single day. Why? Because just like everyone who has experienced trauma, there's something great about numbing reality.

But when you sit in that, you show me that, I'll show you the outcome of your life. And that is an experience that you're going to die with regret. And I just think if you can step into respect, whatever that means for you, because it's going to be different. We all have a different journey. Respect for you might be like taking a day off. Respect for you might be a myriad of things. I have no idea. But I do know it's like moving to that place in your adulthood where these things don't serve me.

That is, for me, eight-year-old me. That was eight-year-old me needing to numb the deepest sense of suffering imaginable. Being homeless at eight, dealing with the things I did within strangers' houses, all the things that happened, watching friends die, all that shit, we gotta numb it. But numbing doesn't serve you. It does not change your life. It does not make your life better. Only respect does, and only respect for yourself.

So I'm curious for you, I'll add this one last piece before I ask the question because I think context matters. I didn't know how to respect myself in the beginning. I needed to hire people to teach me because I didn't have parents who respected themselves. I didn't have a community that respected themselves. I had no one around me. And so this journey of getting to that was sitting in spaces with coaches, with therapists, with groups, with men's groups, with you name it, I did it, just so I could get an ideal understanding about what it means to give a shit about yourself.

And so I'm curious for you, what did that look like for you? Because I think before you can even get to all the things we just talked about, you gotta get here first.

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, I think so I tried to build my sense of self and self-respect through achievement, through output. So my philosophy was, you're not gonna know I exist unless I'm achieving. And then other than that, I'm gonna disappear. I'm gonna fade into the wallpaper, so to speak.

And so I was constantly looking for different things that I could do. You name the certifications, I probably got them because it was just constantly, because it was a distraction for my mind. It was a way to focus all of this anxious energy that was existing in me into something that had clear walls, clear parameters. So allow me to overachieve. If you give me the rules for how to get an A, I'm gonna get an A. And you want it on Tuesday, I'm gonna have it to you the Friday before kind of situation.

I was always, everything was urgent. Everything was, if it wasn't an emergency, urgency kind of situation happening inside me, it didn't get done. And so I just disappeared into achievement. And achievement became the shield that kept people from asking, hey, are you okay? Because no one's going to ask that to the person who's always getting gold stars and doing the shit that she needed to be doing, right?

And so the highest achievement I could get, I did. So I was the first person in my family to go to college and get a degree. But I didn't stop there. I went ahead and I got two undergraduate degrees, a master's degree. I went on toward my doctorate, did everything except the dissertation because by that point, I'd started to burn myself out. And then I added in all of these certifications and everything that you could imagine. And it was just like keep busy, keep busy, because idle hands are the devil's playground, so to speak. And so I never wanted to take an opportunity to look inward. And so as long as I kept looking outward and as long as I kept getting rewarded for that, I never had to do the internal work until it all came crashing down on me.

And then when it crashed down on me and I had to go inward, the first thing that I realized is that I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to constantly be pushing myself to always be more, to always be better, because yes, it is good to have goals, but I along the way never learned how to rest. I never learned how to breathe. I never learned how to be with myself.

And so I had to learn how to do that. I had to learn how to just sit with myself, which meant meditation, for example, was an absolute fucking nightmare. I hated meditation. I hated it because my mind would just spin and I would think, my God, I'm supposed to be doing this a certain way. I'm not doing it right. What am I supposed to do? Oh my God. And then the 30 minutes or the 15 minutes or whatever would be up and I would be like, well, I don't feel any better. I don't understand what's going on here.

And I just had people, like you said, being in spaces saying, no, no, that's normal. That is normal. Keep going, keep going. And when someone normalizes that, your experience of whatever it is, like that energy, that chaos that's happening in you, when someone normalizes that for you for the first time ever, it is the most incredible breath of relief to be like, my God, I'm not broken. I'm not so fucked up that I am too far gone and that this is as good as it's gonna get.

And people would tell me their stories. And so listening to the stories of people who had done the work, who had gone on ahead and said, no, all of this is normal. What you're going through, I've been there or I resonate with that or that feels familiar. You see the through line and then you suddenly start to go, I'm not an anomaly. I'm not nature's mistake. I am just like every other human that's gone through all of this.

And that means that if all of these other people who have gone before me and have done this work are now showing that they can get to the other side, so can I. And that was the most unbelievably relieving feeling. And so just like you said, being in those spaces and being surrounded by people who have done this work and can tell you how normal it is, is just so, so relieving.

Michael Unbroken:
I'm so curious. This is kind of a very me kind of question because as the prototypical overachiever, being on billboards in Times Square, writing four books, this podcast, coaching thousands of people, all the things, finding that space for rest was always my Achilles heel. Like I burned myself out three times, put myself in the hospital twice in the last 12-ish years, right? It was just like, I've got to go next stage, next city, next thing.

And as many people know, if you've listened to this show, we sparingly released for the last 18 months because I was like, yo, I got to reset. This is bad. So I went and did my thing. And now that I'm back, I have implemented systems into my life that force the break. Because I have to. Because I'm gonna fucking die if I keep doing what I was doing, literally.

And I realized that there was a sense of shame and guilt about taking time off because in the home that I grew up in, rest is not allowed. You're not allowed. That is not a thing. And so I realized the simple things that bring me joy, I had to go and find them and allow them to exist and not make them something that rose parallel to success because my brain is like, I'm gonna go pick up this hobby, then I'm gonna be the best in the world, right? And I'm like, that doesn't fucking serve you.

So I'm curious, what did you personally replace accomplishment with?

Megan Margherio:
So for me, it's still an ongoing thing. I'm not gonna lie because I very much have that same idea of if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna fucking go all in and now I'm gonna be the best there is at it. And that's just how it's gonna be. And in some ways, I love that about myself, right? I don't wanna lose that. I don't wanna lose that drive to be the best, but it's about orienting yourself and realizing you can't be the best at everything. You just can't, right? We can all talk about that and that sounds great and all of that, but we can't be. It's just not physically sustainable. Like you said, you're going to burn yourself out if you do.

And I grew up in a place where rest was associated with lazy. If you were just chilling out, you were lazy. What the fuck are you doing? Get to work. There's something that you need to go do to make yourself better. And I think that healing can also fall into that trap too, right? Where we're constantly trying to heal ourselves, make ourselves better, always, always, always, always, that we don't actually just stop and breathe.

And this is where mindfulness for me has really been the key, right? Is that present moment. And I resisted the present moment with everything in me because it was like, well, what am I supposed to be doing in this moment? Don't I need to be doing something? And it's like, no, you already are. You exist. You're breathing.

And in mindfulness, when you are being mindful, you can work and be mindful. You can have conversations and be mindful. You can take a walk and be mindful. You can eat and be mindful. All of the things, right? We can exist in our life. And that's what I realized achievement was doing, was taking me out of my life because I was constantly focused on this end goal. What does it take to get the A? What does it take to be the best at something? So I was always looking at the finish line and never looking at where my feet were to actually enjoy the ride, so to speak.

And so stepping back and sitting in that stillness, as hard as that was, was the absolute best thing I could have done for myself because I learned how to rest. I learned that rest isn't just a reward that we get when we get to the end of the race. Rest is what makes the race manageable because our nervous system needs to come down from continuous states of activation in order to be able to find that activation again.

So after experiencing my own level of burnout where I was crashing and everything felt like it was falling apart and I didn't know who I was when I wasn't achieving, I had to ask myself, well, who do I want to be if I'm not achieving? And that question changed things for me because when I stopped saying, well, I'm the achiever, and I started to say, well, who am I if I'm not that? I started to make room for possibility and that allowed other options that maybe I never would have seen because I was so focused on achievement. It allowed me to see all the other possibilities that exist.

And that I can be someone who can just sit on the floor and play with their dog and that's okay. That's not wrong.

And I guess I always come back to achievement is beautiful until it is everything that you are hinging your entire life on. And when you are saying I am nothing if I don't achieve, you've missed the boat somewhere, right? And so that's the point in which you step back and you look at it and you go, wait a minute, can I still achieve and rest? Can I still achieve and be kind to myself and be gentle with myself and be present in the moment and exist where my life is happening and be where my feet are and achievement still happen? And what's one thing in this present moment I can do to move me forward without that sense of urgency behind it?

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, and guess what? You can't take your achievements with you to the grave. And this is not a me-ism. I heard Alex from Ozy say this. I'm sure he's not the first person ever to say it, but he was like, name your great-great-grandfather. I was like, you can't. Almost anyone I ever ask that question to, they cannot.

And so you think about it. I mean you have your outlier, sure, people remember the Rockefellers. They'll remember Elon Musk. Great. Those are once-in-a-lifetime people. And it's not that you can't be that, you probably ain't going to. And that's fine. I know I'm certainly not. I have no inclination or mental fortitude to do whatever it is that those people have done. And that's cool.

And so it's like, I'm gonna work really hard now and do the best that I can. But this idea of just always trying to accomplish the next thing, I feel so much freer letting that go. It doesn't mean I'm not driven. It doesn't mean we're not gonna go do amazing world-changing things because we are. It just means that in between that, like you said, can you play with the dog? Can you go out on a date? Can you have dinner with friends? Can you, whatever that thing is that you used to say no to all the time, be a human.

Megan, this has been just a wonderful conversation. I think that people, I know I certainly have gotten a lot out of this. But before I ask you the last question, I want to dive in and talk about the new book you've written. I want to talk about the experience in writing that, why you've brought this out, and most importantly, who it's for.

Megan Margherio:
Well, so my book is called Ever Woven, A Memoir and a Reckoning. It was originally, I'll be honest, it was for me, right? So I sat down and I wrote this book because it is a conversation between present me and the past versions of me who lived through the shit show that was my life for the first 28 years. And I wanted them to be able to have the opportunity to say their story in their words.

And so I really wanted to have that dialogue with myself where I could offer the patience and the compassion with myself that I had never been able to offer before. But really also, I wanted to channel those versions of me to say, this is your chance to say what you never said before because you didn't think somebody would listen to you, because you didn't think it would matter, because whatever. And so to honor them as a way of saying, okay, I've got you, I'm gonna set you down.

But I had to face myself. And so so much of the book is the questions that that 11-year-old version of me wants to ask me, right? Like why the fuck didn't you believe me? Why the fuck did you blame me when all of this was going on? Or yeah, I have holes in my memory. That doesn't mean that something's wrong with me, right? And those kinds of questions that sit inside your head and just stew.

So I put them all on paper initially just for me. And then I thought about it and I thought this is a story that is not so much about what I went through, but about what life is like after you go through it. And so it's about that picking up the pieces, right? So it's not the survival story, it's what comes after and about picking up the pieces of a life that you don't really fully understand, that somebody doesn't even necessarily always feel like it's yours because it's been defined by the external validation and opinions and actions of others.

And so this was also in essence a way to reclaim my own life, my own stories, my own memories and say this is the truth as I know it and to put it out there in the world. Because what we so often see in books about survival is that people go through bad shit and then they get through it, they made it, the end. And that's not the end. For most people, going through the bad thing is the beginning.

And everything that comes after it and the ways in which we reorient our lives around what happened to us and the stories that we tell ourselves and how those become limiting beliefs and defining characteristics of who we think we are, all of that gets left out of a traditional trauma story. And I think that at least for me, I needed that book in the world. I needed a book that said, hey, here's all of the things that as someone who's going through survival mode, this is what I'm experiencing. And you can see the chaos and the ways in which I kind of wrestle with myself back and forth.

And I wanted that story when I was going through it and it didn't exist. And so I was like, well, I'm not the only person who wants this story. So this is for anyone who wants to know that what they're going through and the ways in which they are feeling this internal battle and tension within themselves, that that's normal.

And so it's about creating that space where someone normalizes what we all kind of go through but we don't ever really seem to talk about that much or that we talk about it too high of a level that we don't get to hear it in a way that feels personal and real. And so for me, that's really kind of what the book is about and why I wrote it.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, amazing. And it's one of those things that as I was skimming through it, and I unfortunately did not have time to read the entire book, but there were bits and pieces I'd read and it would just make me think about when I wrote Think Unbroken, when I wrote my first book now seven, eight years ago, I don't know whenever it was, a long time ago. And it was like, I wrote this because I had this feeling of like, I don't have this book in the world. It's not accessible to me. I'm going to go and do it.

And I actually did get that vibe reading because I never thought about that, but constantly I'd be having these conversations with myself. And I think it's just so potent and I hope that people will go out and get it.

And just quickly, if you can tell everyone where they can meet up with you, connect with you, get the book, tell everybody where you're at.

Megan Margherio:
Yeah, so the book is available on Amazon. It's called Ever Woven. And then it's also available on IndieBound, so if you like to buy from a local independent bookstore, you can get it through IndieBound and then pick it up at your bookstore. It's also available at Barnes & Noble. So kind of all the big major retailers here in the US, you can find it and get it ordered. And then there's an audiobook and Kindle version as well.

And then to find me, my website is meganmargherio.com. You can find me on Instagram and on TikTok as well. I do a lot of conversations about little nuggets, about letting joy in and the ways in which we can just soften ourselves a little bit to allow more good to come in and why letting that come in, even in moments when it feels like the entire world is crashing down, why letting joy in is an act of resistance and an act of self-love.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, love it. And guys, remember if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, there will be that and more in the show notes for you.

My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Megan Margherio:
It's possibility. I think is the single most important way to think about it, that you have an endless array of options available to you. When you are unbroken, you are not, to use an image, like the phoenix, right? Rising out of the ashes. You have the ability to control your life. Unbroken means sovereign. And it's a recognition within you that wholeness is inherent, but also just a belief that where you go and who you are and who you become, all of it is exactly perfect and wonderful and needed in this world.

Michael Unbroken:
I love that. Thank you so much for being here.

Unbroken Nation, my friends, thank you guys so much for listening. If today's episode brought any value or hope or joy into your life and the post-traumatic healing growth journey that you're on, share this with someone. I guarantee you someone in your circle, someone in your life, in your community, maybe in your group, they could use today's conversation. And so you're making a huge impact in their lives as well when you do that.

And we appreciate you listening. So until next time, my friends, take care of yourself, take care of each other, and be unbroken. I'll see ya.