Order, Energy, and Enough: Making Space for What Matters

A grounded talk with certified organizer Miriam Ortiz y Pino on creating systems that actually fit your life, not Pinterest. We walk through her five-step framework, the home-work-spirit Venn, and why routines protect your energy. Then we shift to recognizing and managing emotional triggers with honest, practical tools that build safety and self-trust. Listen for habits that hold you, not control you.

 

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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hello, my name is Miriam Ortiz Pinot. I'm a certified professional organizer and founder of More Than Organized. 

Speaker 2: Being organized on the computer is something that I do very well. All my stuff is where it should be. I have everything separated. It's wonderful. Yeah. You can't see that side of my room where it's not organized, so basically not so much. 

Speaker: It's interesting how people think it's different. I have a lot of people the other way around.

Their physical space is very organized and their computer life is very disorganized. And I'm always like, but it's the same concept. How is it that it doesn't match up? So yeah. It's interesting. People think the digital world is different somehow. 

Speaker 2: For me it's being physically able to lift and have the energy to do [00:01:00] all the things.

Whereas on the computer, I'm sitting here and I have to keep it organized because I work with 10 different people. 10 different, ways to do things. So if I don't have their stuff in their folders, I'm not gonna be able to find it the next time I go looking for it a deal. 

Speaker: Yeah.

It's all about knowing where you keep things. Even if it's a little disorganized within that container or area, it'll be there. You can at least trust that much of it. Yeah. I think that might be one of the problems people take that leap from, I just need to put it and have a designated spot all the way to, it needs to be perfectly labeled and lined up with a T square and everything needs to be perfect instead of just, no, you need to know the general vicinity to start with and then only organize further if necessary.

Speaker 2: I guess then there is there's order in the chaos because I know where all my stuff is. It's [00:02:00] just not exactly put away. 

Speaker: That's what they all say.

Speaker 2: I have a laundry tote over there from three days ago that I have not hung up. 

Speaker: But it is laundry. Okay. Yeah we're good. That's good. 

Speaker 2: So how do you help people get organized? What is your system? Yeah. I actually 

Speaker: look at the whole process as five steps. You have to know where you're going.

So we have to start with dream, so you know, when you get there. And then we actually declutter 'cause why would you wanna organize stuff you don't want anyway? And that's more about eliminating everything. But it's about curating. What do you want your life to be and what's gonna support you in that life?

And then we design the systems that allow you to use the things you're keeping to do the things you want to do. And then we develop habits, which is how you u how you [00:03:00] reset your spaces between your work. That's what the tidying piece of it is. It's how do you get in the habit of putting things away or in the right place or where you will be able to find them again.

And that it applies to everything between the physical things, the digital things, the people in your life, the money in your life, the things on your calendar and your schedule. It's all the different things. It's just a way of looking at it that you wanna save as much energy as possible by getting in as many routines and habits as possible so that you don't have to spend all your precious creative energy.

Thinking through the steps of how you're gonna do something or where something is all that time. You know how frustrating it is when you're looking for something and it just escalates so quickly oh my God, where is it? Ah, it's because our brains are using a bunch of energy that we don't really have in that moment to figure that out.

Whereas if you knew where you kept it, chances are [00:04:00] 99% it would be there, 

Speaker 2: except for those people who end up with their keys in the fridge, which I've never understood. 

Speaker: That's a pretty weird one. But if they were in the habit of always hanging up their keys or putting it back in the lock or the little tray by the door or whatever, the chances of it ending them ending up in the fridge are greatly reduced.

Speaker 2: I can say that my key chain is pretty big uhhuh and if I put it in the fridge, it would make enough noise that I would know that I was being an idiot. Yeah. I tend to grab key. I tend to grab key change from every state that I've been to. Which and that's just recently, which has been a lot because I went from in 2020 we moved to Texas from Maryland.

Uhhuh, like the day a the day lockdown started, we left the state of Maryland Oh. To drive across country. 

Speaker: Right. 

Speaker 2: Traffic was awesome. [00:05:00] Yeah, there was like five people on the road. 

Speaker: Two states though.

Speaker 2: But like we went to Texas and then we went to California because that's where her husband was. And then we went back.

So like we did a whole bunch of states. So I have a key chain. That is not small. And like literally, if I put that down, 'cause some of them are metal, right? So if I put that down, they would make the noise of a thousand hooves and I would know

Speaker: my question is not that you have a bunch of key chains, but do you need to carry them with you every day?

Speaker 2: I only keep half of them with me every time I do anything. Half of them.

Key chain, then keys, you might wanna double check 

there are only two keys on that key chain. Okay. One for the house, one for the mailbox. That's all 

know. I know. I, and I still manage to have fun with, I sometimes can't find my key 

Speaker: there's so many key [00:06:00] chains. I'm laughing because my best friend in high school had 15 key chains on her key chain.

And I always had one ring, like no adornment on it. Just a ring with my key. And it was so funny, whenever we'd go anywhere, people were always like, what? What? How are you guys friends?

Yeah. It's important to be yourself. 

Speaker 2: I don't know. It's for me it's just one of those things that they're little reminders that I have been to other places. 

Speaker 3: I have 

Speaker 2: been to or lived in every state in the US except for Alaska and Hawaii oh, nice. I could have a lot more key chains. If I ever figure out how to go to both of those places without having to get on a plane, that would be wonderful.

Speaker: You can drive to Canada, to Alaska through Canada. Yeah. I don't know. You could take a boat to Hawaii. Yeah, you [00:07:00] can. Yeah, you can get hop on a cruise ship and go to Hawaii. 

Speaker 2: I think you can do the same for Alaska. Alaska too. So maybe I'm young still. Someday. Someday when I'm 60 and I'm falling asleep on everybody.

Speaker: Oh, don't say that. I've only got a couple years. I'm too young to fall asleep all the time. 

Speaker 2: I've seen pictures of it's mostly for those credit cards and stuff where they're like, traveling is priceless, but maybe don't wait till you're too old to do it. Oh, yeah. And they've got the people on the pan, the in Venice, Italy, right on those boats.

And it's the old people all sleeping and the guy's just like taking them down the right street. So true. It's better to do it younger.

So what is that Venn [00:08:00] diagram behind you? 

Speaker: Oh, that's actually my philosophy of how to think about living an organized life. So I think of it as. Your home, your work and your spirit, and if all of those intersect, you end up with lots of joy, possibility, and oh my God, I can't even remember my own diagram.

I can't see my diagram.

Oh, and love, for some reason I was thinking love was in the middle, but okay, so the three intersect is joy, love, and possibility, and then you are the center. So often we take ourselves outta the equation and go, oh, I don't like work. Work has, work or work is separate from home. And, oh, I wish I had more time to meditate and contemplate or whatever.

Or really enrich myself through [00:09:00] creativity or what, or something like that. Instead of saying, I'm the center, what if I bring creativity to my work and my home? And what if I bring joy and love to all of it as well? And so it's just a way of flipping it on its head for my clients to say, no, we start with you.

Who do you wanna be in your interaction with these other aspects of life? And then you're gonna have a much more enjoyable life because you are taking care of what nurtures you instead of these weird expectations that come from outside of us. So that's my Venn diagram. I'm glad 

Speaker 2: I noticed it. I am too.

Can you speak more about how you get started? What is the process like? Yeah 

Speaker: The dream part can be a little tricky because there are certain people, the way they think, the way their brain actually processes information. There's kind of three standard ways we all process information, and one of [00:10:00] them is really good at looking at the future.

The other two have a much harder time imagining a future. And that was really interesting for me to decide because I grew up always dreaming, daydreaming about what I wanted my life to be like. Turns out most people don't. So I have to sneak up on the dream. Sometimes I have a couple of assessment tools that get the conversation moving.

I ask a lot of questions in a lot of different ways what do you want this room to be? What did you think would happen when you had a child and didn't make a nursery? What did you think would happen when your kids went away to school? Is it gonna be a shrine or are you gonna create a yoga studio, or whatever?

So there was a lot of that, figuring out how to draw those ideas out of my clients. But it's working pretty good now. So we dream, even if we have to start with a partial dream. Maybe we start with a, just something you don't want in your life anymore. Then when we're decluttering, we have something to [00:11:00] weigh your decisions against.

If you don't wanna paint anymore, maybe we could get rid of all the paints and make room for your loom. Whatever your craft thing is. If you are now running a business and no longer working in a corporation, maybe we need to create an office environment in your house. Those kinds of things. And it's always interesting.

People forget that they have hobbies and so at the end they'll be like, okay, what else do you do? I've had a client that ran an archery school and I had another one that altitude trains equestrian athletes, and I have another one. There's all these things that didn't come up in those initial conversations, and I'm like that seems like a fairly niche thing.

You must be pretty interested in that topic or that activity. We should make more room for it instead of stuffed in the corner of a garage or. All the stuff piled in, a tough shed in the backyard, whatever it is. So we sneak up on it through the decluttering process. [00:12:00] Also, I found when we excavate people's stuff, the stuff they own often gives clues into what they aspire to do or be.

And so we can uncover it, I think of it as suburban or urban archeology where you're looking at their stuff being like, okay, who are you? This is what you're telling the world you are. Does that match up with who you actually wanna be? So it, it's a nice process that works from both ends.

The systems totally depend on the individual as well. So do you need a system to go to work or do you just need a system that gets you into the other room of your house? Do you need to back out that amount of time for your commute or not? See everything starts in forming how the structure of everything else and.

Again, when you create more routines and habits, you don't have to spend all your precious energy trying to find your socks. They're in the laundry hamper if they're not in your drawer. Two places is easier to look than 87. So it all starts [00:13:00] coming together. When you think about it from that perspective, like your home should nurture and support you and your work should make you feel happy and fulfilled because you're using your gifts in the world.

Whether it's being an actuary at an insurance agency or creating something fabulous in your basement. All these things count.

Speaker 2: I am one of those people who I look forward and go, yeah, maybe I could do that, or maybe I won't be here. But I don't know how to connect that to the now. Sometimes I have goals, I have set goals for the next five years or so. Maybe I'll up to the next five years beyond that I don't even know about.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm not, I'm really good at imagining a future. I'm not really great at determining when it will be. I'm way more interested [00:14:00] in get the journey of getting there in a lot of ways, like I'm just a curious person by nature. So I am always like how can I be better today? Or how can I get one step closer?

When I started my business 25 years ago, I literally took a year. I was still working a full-time job. There was enough flexibility that I could work four days a week and still get 40 hours in. Plus I had banked all this vacation time and stuff so I could still get paid for full-time work, but do it in four days.

And then I had one day off that I could take that would free up an extra day that I could take to do all the things on the small business administration checklist for how to start a business. And so at the end of the year, I had done all the steps and I could start my business and it wasn't as scary as if I totally jumped.

Having said that, one, I quit my job. I moved across the country and then started the business. So it was a jump. I just had a few things in place that like [00:15:00] savings and some time ramp. I didn't have a backup plan if it didn't work. 

Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that can save us though sometimes if you have a backup plan.

You're not fighting as hard to keep going. I know. I don't have one, because if I had a backup plan that I was completely willing to do then why am I fighting so hard for what I'm doing? 

Speaker: Yeah. I have a little bit of that in me as well. Most people don't have that. They're just like, oh, I need to have, six months of income in the bank or a year, or a husband that makes enough money for us to buy food or, there's just a lot more backup planning than I gave myself.

Yeah, I think I had a three month ramp in six weeks before I felt like I would be feeling the pressure of, I gotta start, I gotta actually have a [00:16:00] client within six weeks. But, I dunno it all, it always just seems to work out if I work towards my goal, not necessarily I must accomplish these milestones by these dates.

Feel weird pressure when that happens. It doesn't allow for new things or new possibilities to come in. If you're so rigid that it has to go this way, you aren't always open to the easier way. It's often a lot of hard work and busy work that just suck up a lot of time and energy, not the easy and flow way of doing it.

So 

Speaker 2: are you on a lineup? 

Speaker: I am. I find it weird, but I'm,

I feel like I add one new aspect of, oh, I understand how that works now about every six months. Like I go in there and I look and I can't figure it out and then all of a sudden. It's oh, there's the thing that allows you to connect with those people. Or, I don't know, just this week I [00:17:00] was nominated for a small business person of the year or something, and I'm like I don't even know how that happens or how I find the details to share that with other people so that I can actually have that in my wheelhouse.

It's just a thing that happened in the background somewhere and I don't know who sees it or how to see it or how to share it,

Speaker 2: so I won small business person of the year for my area last year. Was it with one boat? No. Oh, it was not with one boat. That's good. There's a bunch of people who had one vote, but I had way more than that.

Speaker: I actually do better on LinkedIn, but I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and so the entrepreneur space is a little different than the general business space, I find, although it is now also getting inundated with all the ai, chat bot, automatic reply things, whatever that's called.

Speaker 2: Automated replies. Yeah. So I have had a lot of luck on alignable. I think [00:18:00] four or five of the people that I am working with or have worked with have come from them.

Speaker: Yeah. I'm trying to, do a little better with it this year as I'm moving into being more. Open to local one-on-one clients again, after the pandemic, so 

Speaker 2: yeah.

Yeah, that's the other thing. Alignable has local in-person meetings where a lot of other places like LinkedIn don't. 

Speaker: Yeah. We've got several, I missed one last week that I registered for because at the last minute I ended up with a client and it was like, oh, make money, go to meet new people for future money.

This month it was about making the money.

Speaker 2: So say the thing you want to say about your business.

Speaker: Makes sense. Yeah. So I'm a certified professional organizer. I think of myself more as a simplicity expert though. It's like that Venn diagram. I like to [00:19:00] make the connections for people, so I connect organization productivity and money mindset.

So that you can create nurturing spaces to do your best work and live a fuller life, whatever that looks like. Usually it is around the home, centered around the home and the clutter and lack of systems in a home. So we get the foundation set up so that you can do your thing. If you also happen to run a business, which many of my clients are actual small business owners.

We can take it to your office environment as well and create the structures around how you structure your days and what five essential business systems you need to have in place to run a successful business no matter what it is or what size it is. And then, because a lot of my clients are in the late Boomer Gen X arena, there are a lot of us that are dealing with aging parents.

And so I [00:20:00] also do estate things, so I help people declutter and create safe spaces for aging in place and or downsizing to age in a simpler way. So those three, it's all the same skillset, it's all the same framework. It's just applied to those three different aspects of life these days. 

Speaker 2: Do you work with hoarders at all?

Speaker: I have in the past. I'm not the biggest fan. Hoarding disorders are actually mental issues challenges that require professional counseling, often medication, and a longer timeframe. Then I find most of them are actually willing to work. It's not a quick fix. The TV shows, while I have participated in a couple episodes of hoarders, if you notice at the end of each episode, the number of the people that appear on the show that actually take them up on the follow-up [00:21:00] care for the next six months, that would probably make a bigger difference, is like 3%.

They rarely want more help than that, and they do it. On the one hand it's interesting to see. The process involved and just how bad it can be for the individuals undergoing that transformation. It can be very traumatic. And the families are always in on it. Whether they want the quick help so they don't have to do all the work themselves, or if they're actually really worried about their family member and not understanding the disconnect between the actual visual of it and the experience the hoarder has with their stuff.

Most of them don't think they have a problem, so it's very hard to help them because they, it's a perception problem and a control problem much more than the actual physical stuff in the way. They just don't see it the same way. So it's very [00:22:00] frustrating and I didn't find it fulfilling. So I don't that is not to say I don't work in really badly cluttered spaces because often life events come up that cause a little bit of extra piling an extra period of time where we're not putting things away or avoiding things or just away from the scene for a while.

And so it falls apart like illness in the family or accident or traumatic situation that just causes things to get away from us. And once it's reset, they're back to being able to maintain fairly easily that's called circumstantial or situational clutter. And it can be pretty bad, but it's, that's way more fixable than an actual hoarding situation.

Speaker 4: Hey everyone. Thanks for sticking with us. Before we dive into our next topic, I just wanna take a quick moment to remind you two who like this video, subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell. That [00:23:00] way you'll always be the first to know when a new episode drops and we want to hear from you.

What topics are you most excited about? Drop your thoughts in. The comments below. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. We've got some exciting stuff coming your way, so don't miss out. Now let's switch gears and jump into our next discussion. I.

Speaker 2: my topic today is how to recognize and manage emotional triggers. Okay. This is a big one, and again, in case you didn't know this, I am not a therapist. I have two of them because, I have P-T-S-D-C, PTSD, bipolar, BPD, massive anxiety disorder, all the fun stuff that you get from a life of trauma.

And so I have dealt with these things. I have triggers that I have had to manage. 

I was molested when I was 12 by a [00:24:00] 72-year-old man. Which automatically makes me not trust anybody with gray hair, any man with gray hair. Anyway, so I have had to learn to manage my reaction because right after it happened, old people are everywhere.

I don't know if you realize this, because most people don't look around and see them, but like I see them coming outta the wood work and I don't really like it.

Speaker: And right now they're the two largest generations. Yep. I'm sorry, the next 20 years will be difficult. 

Speaker 2: Yes, actually, because I'm up there, so it's fun.

But so I have had to, measure my response because like at first I would cry 

if any old guy came anywhere within two feet of me. I was like bawling because it was very stressful for me to be around somebody of that age. And but that's not realistic. You can't keep that reaction and wonder why everybody's looking at you.

[00:25:00] Weird. That's true. And so I got counseling, which isn't fully the help I needed, when you yell at your mom that you hate her, she tends to put you in therapy. Yeah. Just a thing. But she would take you out as soon as the therapist was like, you might be part of the problem.

Don't let the therapist tell your mother that she's part of the problem, or she will take you out of therapy. Leave me. It's how it works. Yeah. But they would say that she was doing some things wrong and then all of a sudden I wouldn't be going to counseling anymore.

Speaker: Yeah, people have a very hard time looking at themselves.

Speaker 2: But with those counselors, and there were lots of different ones, and I appreciate all the help that they did give me, except for the one lady who told me to punch a bear instead of the wall. What did the stuffed bear have anything to do with it? Their look is so innocent that you just feel bad.

Yeah. She could have said pillow. It's an inanimate [00:26:00] object. No guilt there. Yeah. No she told me a bear and I felt so guilty that I went right back to punching the wall. No, thank you. I'm sorry that 

Speaker: happened. 

Speaker 2: I had to learn to manage that reaction because it's not something you can realistically keep doing.

You can't realistically start bawling your eyeballs out every time you see an old guy, because guess what? There's like a bajillion of them on the planet, right? Yeah. And they are all around you. Not to sound like. Paranoid or anything, but they are there and you'll see them walk into a church. You'll see them like you're going to find them.

In doing and being able to, manage my reaction, I have been able to go in public without embarrassing myself because, you can't embarrass yourself. Why not? Training

Speaker: yeah, I had that high school friend group [00:27:00] that we would try to out embarrass each other. So we're always like one-upping. And now none of us are very embarrassed about anything. So there may be some cognitive behavioral thing there.

Speaker 2: So that work that you have to do. It's not gonna take five minutes.

It's not gonna take five days. It's probably gonna take longer than five months.

But, you have to keep working on it. Even if you're not with a therapist anymore or a counselor, you still have to keep working on it. Yeah.

Because I know that if I let loose on those reins that like that I have to control that response. I could very easily just start bawling because there's a dude, there's an old dude near me. Which is not exactly the response you're gonna get looked at. Weird. Yeah. You're going to get those looks like what the heck is wrong with [00:28:00] you?

And it's warranted because what is wrong with you? Stop it. So for me, learning like now I don't react to old people. I don't, I am on my guard. Let's not be stupid. I'm not gonna be like, oh yeah, there's a whole bunch of old men here. I'm chill. No, I am on my guard because let's be honest, I still don't trust the mini, I still don't want them to, I'm paying attention to what they're doing.

I know where they are. I know if they're coming near me, I know these things to keep me safe because that is a response that I have. And that's a reasonable response. Crying every time, or shaking every time you see somebody who's old. If you have the same trigger as me, that's not exactly coping.

Speaker 3: No, 

Speaker 2: it's not. Exactly, letting you live your life. [00:29:00] Because at the end of the day, I wanna live my life the way I wanna live it. And embarrassing myself in public by crying just because there's an old dude near me is not gonna get me anywhere, but stuck in my own head for a couple days. And that is not where you want to be.

My head is not whoville. Okay.

So first piece of advice, figure out if you don't know what your trigger is. So let's say you've been through more than one traumatic event like I have. Sometimes picking out those triggers are very hard. It took me a long time to figure out that one of my triggers is people looking at me like I'm stupid.

Or saying something along the lines of, oh, why didn't you understand that? Where they're implying that they're smarter than me. That it's a huge trigger for me [00:30:00] because. I've had enough of it. I spent the first, what, eight years of school in special ed. Not first eight, second through eighth grade.

I was in special ed. I got outta special ed in eighth grade. When after they tested me in sixth grade and I was at a first grade reading level. They tested me in eighth grade. I was college level reading and comprehension. Because I had started reading because, look, whether you admit to doing it or not, somebody has in the past either thought or said something to a special needs person who only has a learning disability and is only there and they're conscious of being there.

They know why they're there. They obviously feel something about it, right? And people will say, oh, you're a window liquor, or whatever. So it just makes things work. I haven't heard that in 20 years.

So there's that kind of bullying [00:31:00] and stuff. So for me and some of it's sly because somebody can just make a small comment that you don't register consciously. But in the back of your head, that antenna shot up and was like, oh dude, he just called this stupid.

And now you feel horrible for the rest of the day and you feel small and it's just I don't even know what the heck just happened, but I feel like Lego ized. And so it took me a bit to figure out that my subconscious was pointing out the fact that person thought I was stupid. 

And now because I've done the work, which again took years, not months, and. Now, unless it comes from somebody personal to me. If somebody who I don't know says, oh, you should have known that you don't know me. You have no idea what I should or shouldn't know so I can let it go. Right now if somebody close to me, like my best friend or my sister, we're like, really?[00:32:00] 

You don't know how to do that? Why not? And I would just be like I don't know. I went to 20 different elementary schools and was in special ed. Like y'all tell me when I was supposed to learn that. 

Speaker: That's interesting. Sometimes. Yeah. It goes back and forth for me when. People are close to me and say something if it's more cutting or not.

So that, that's a really interesting point. Like you don't always know, like it might be comfortable at 90% of the time, it's not a trigger when they say something like that. And then the one time you're a little depleted or tired about something else. And it's like worse than a stranger doing it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And then immediately you're like, dude, I'm stressed out and tired. What are you talking about? What did I just miss? Yeah. And, but you got that two in your voice and they're going, are you mad at? And I'm like, no, explain these. They're like, do what? I [00:33:00] say maybe

we'll figure it out in a minute. What did you just say? 

Speaker: Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. I hadn't thought about that really before in that way. 

Speaker 2: That's a criticism. Passive aggression being ignored. Oh, being ignored. Holy cow.

Speaker 3: I will lose 

Speaker 2: my crap. I have not gotten in enough work on that one, but I will tell you now, my mom used to do the silent treatment.

Speaker: It sounds like she really didn't believe you a lot of the time. So that tracks. 

Speaker 2: My mom was a narcissist who was medically neglectful. Yeah, I had an emergency room doctor yell at her one time, which was super fun. Cool. I woke up in the middle of the night crying 'cause my ears hurt both of them.

And like it was agony. I could [00:34:00] like, barely talk. My stepdad fought with my mom and got her to bring me to the emergency room. On the way there, I'm still crying because the pain didn't magically stop because we got in a car on the way and she's kept going, we're going to the emergency room just like you wanted.

I don't know why you're still crying, you need to stop, but get to the emergency room. They get me in there pretty quick 'cause of how much pain I was in. And the doctor comes in to look at my ears and the whole time my mom's could you just tell her she's faking it and let us go back home like I'm done with this.

And the doctor looked in both of my ears and then went, are you stupid? And yelled at her for not believing me because I had both an inner and an outer ear infection and this was absolute agony. I have had an inner infect ear infection alone, and that was enough to put me on my knees. She has both. She [00:35:00] has every right to be crying. She has every right to be in saying she's in agony because she fricking is. Yeah. And I can't believe that you didn't believe her. Even while watching her be in I was obviously not acting like this was a trip to the park. And so he went off on her and I was just get 

Speaker: That's good to feel validated like that.

Speaker 2: And then my mom drug me into submission for the next week. And I don't remember much. But yeah, she was mad at me afterwards, after I got better because, I let the doctor yell at her. I let the doctor yell at her

Speaker: were the kid and it's your responsibility to take care of the adult's feeling.

Speaker 2: Yeah, my mom was fun to live with. Okay. Sounds awful.

She is no longer allowing a living. And if my sister ever sees this, I will still [00:36:00] talk about my mother even if she is dead, because just like Hitler, people need to know that there are evil people in the world. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: I'm on board with that. My sister doesn't, my sister disowned me after my mom died because her and one of my other sisters got in an argument under a post on my Facebook that had nothing to do with our mom.

It was just, what did you do after school? They got in an argument. I wouldn't delete the argument. And so she was like, you can't talk bad about mom. She's not here to defend herself. And I went, oh, somebody better tell somebody. We can't talk about Hitler no more. That's interesting. Particularly like that comment.

And so she disowned me for a year six months or a year, I can't remember. Then she started trying to message my friend to get my friend to just get me to say sorry, and everything would be fine. [00:37:00] And I'm like, I don't have anything to be sorry about. What did I do? No, I'm good. Then she unblocked me on Facebook and I blocked her because No, you disowned me.

You get to live with that choice now. Yeah, family's hard.

Walking away sometimes is the best answer to something though. 

Speaker: Yeah, 

Speaker 2: it definitely is. Because if you're only going to be disrespected and made to feel small, her relationship with my mom was completely different than anybody else's relationship with my mom.

Speaker: When I was getting my coach training, one of the coaches that was a mentor of mine said the phrase, what other people think of you is none of your business.

Yep. And it changed my life. Like all of a sudden it was like, great freedom of speech, good on you. I do not need to take it on. It is not about me, [00:38:00] it's about you. And there's, protection around me to keep me from doing that. Of course, there are times when it still penetrates, but it changed. That constant feeling of worrying about what other people thought about me.

Yeah. And what I could do to make it better for them.

Cause it's not about them at that point. 

Speaker 2: You wanna identify your trigger because if you don't know what your trigger is, obviously you can't work on it. 

Speaker: You'll be a little bit of a mess bumbling through life, crying at odd times, or screaming at odd times.

Want to curl up your little ball. Yeah. 

Speaker 2: You want to label your emotions. So how does X make you feel? So how does being told you're stupid make you feel? How does you know being medically ignored make you feel, that kind of thing. 

Speaker: Yeah. What are your thoughts about the discernment of that?

Those levels of feelings and that concept of everything [00:39:00] triggers down to. Love and anger and fear or love and fear and whatever. They're usually, 

I feel like there's more discernment than that personally, but 

Speaker 2: there, there really is like, how does it make you feel? Like obviously you are angry that whatever happened.

I know that's me in a lot of situations. But beneath that, you could be missing the love you deserved. You could be thinking, 'cause look, I will flat out say that my mom didn't love me, did not at all love me. And then I have people who respond every single time, whether they knew her or not.

She probably loved you in her own way. 

Speaker: Her own way was crap people. Exactly. So I don't even know your mom and I know that. But yeah,

yeah. The amount of people that take it upon themselves to assume what other people felt [00:40:00] about you without knowing either of you, it's weird, isn't 

Speaker 2: it? It's wild. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: Very wild. I dunno that 

Speaker: I was just working with a client the other day that I, she's dealing with a family estate situation and she's always assuming she knows the intentions of her sisters and it's very triggering for her to not be the good girl and to be accused of doing things wrong.

And it's always so interesting to just be like. What if that wasn't their intention? What if they legitimately just wanted an answer to the question? It's via text. There's very few cues about tonality. 

Speaker 2: Are you sure? I saw a video one. You know those short videos? This guy was talking in it and he said that, golden child situation.

So [00:41:00] obviously my mom knew how to love, I have a golden child sister. She wrote the stars in the sky somehow. I don't freaking know, but she farted clouds of happiness for my mom. 

And you know how people will say but they did their best when it comes to parenting. They didn't really know what they were doing, but they did their best.

If you have a Golden Child, sibling you have a visual of what their best is, 

Speaker: right? And it doesn't compare. 

Speaker 2: So if they could do their best for your golden child sibling, if they can do their best to support and love their parents and people in the community and things like that but then they're not treating you the same.

That's your answer. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: That is a whole answer. And that may be upsetting for somebody to hear, and [00:42:00] I am sorry if that upsets you, but it is absolutely 100% the truth because you know that they can act differently if they can love somebody else. If you can actively see it, that gives you the answer. If they're not treating you the same or similar.

Because maybe it's not the same, but it's similar, then they don't love you. 

Speaker: I pause it that I'm not a parent, so I don't actually know, but I feel like there's no way to love everybody equally. You can love everybody in their own way, and you can totally, you can love someone just because you're related.

So the expanse and the vastness and the array of emotions we have for each other, no matter how we're related 

or not related can't really be put in these weird little boxes that they like to try to put on everybody.

Speaker 2: So if you have more than one [00:43:00] kid and you're a normal person, you love each of them similarly, right?

Four 90% of your attention into one and 2% of it into the other. Because that's not how things work. Now, if you have a disabled child and a normal child, there may be a little bit of an imbalance. 

But you still need to make sure that your normal child feels loved, wanted and all that.

Even if you have to give more attention to the disabled child because of their disabilities. 

There should never be a golden child in any family. There should not be a child in the family that no matter what they say, they're believed no matter what they do, it's the right thing. Even if it's illegal.

Speaker: Yeah. That's definitely. Especially if 

Speaker 2: usually on the other side, they're always spouting [00:44:00] at the other one. You have to be the responsible one.

You have to have a job and you have to do this, and you have to do that. Yeah. But the other are all 

Speaker: let off the hook because 

Speaker 2: they're special. They just, they're trying so hard. 

Speaker: It goes both ways. I have a brother that is more of a hopeless case in our family. Like he gets more attention because he just needs more help all the time.

Or is he just a 

Speaker 2: criminal? I don't know. Or is he not getting to see the consequences of his actions because everybody keeps covering for him. That 

too. 

Yeah. So it's complicated. That's what I mean there. Yes. Very complicated stuff. It cannot be answered alone on my podcast. It cannot be answered anything, in a public forum.

This is something that each person of the family has to realize for themselves. Where do I stand in this family? Do I feel just as loved as I feel my brothers and sisters are being loved? Or am I the golden child? [00:45:00] Am I the one that my parents spend all their time and attention on? If I have an event and my other sibling has an event, do both parents come to mind or is one going to the other one?

That kind of thing. And so you wanna try to, as a parent, you want to try to be, it's not equal because there's no such thing. But it's equitable. So you put the time in where it's needed, but at the same time. You don't go covering somebody's butt just to be covering somebody's butt.

Oh, but I love them. No, people have to get the consequences of your actions. FAFO. Okay. Yeah. F around find out. Because consequences. 

Speaker: Yeah. But this equity and inclusion piece of it, you're sounding very woke. 

Speaker 2: Oh, that's not what I mean at all. 

Speaker: I know that. Not that softball. [00:46:00] I had to no. But yeah.

So I have a question about Okay. Triggers. Have you found that in identifying various triggers that one recognition unlocked two or three others that were also hiding? Was it some sort of threshold triggers that once you identified, you noticed that, oh, and this causes that reaction and this causes that reaction and they're all connected.

And once you identified that main trigger, it alleviated all of those other sub ones. 

Speaker 2: I have a very big startle reflex 

of somebody comes up behind me and taps me on the shoulder. It's a lucky day if they don't get hit.

Speaker 3: Type of deal. Not because I want to swing back and hit anybody, but because that is my startle response and it happens.

Yeah. And so I have found that I have that because of the events [00:47:00] that happened in my childhood. Because

the person was behind me. So now anybody behind me is not to be, if I can't see who it is, obviously I need to react in a way to protect myself. Subconsciously, like I said, I do not go, oh, somebody just tapped me on the shoulder. Woo. Doesn't know how it works. They deserve to be punched in the face.

Put it down. 

Speaker: Yeah. Our unconscious brains don't work that way. 

Speaker 2: That's not how it works. But I do that and I have slapped people, so

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: I mean I miss slapping somebody 'cause they were tiny. They were like three inches below where my hand went.

Yeah. And that is a response that I don't know that I'll ever be able to curb because it is deeply rooted. As a protection. It is not something Yeah. Even identifying it and knowing why I [00:48:00] do it. It doesn't seem to stop it. Although I can sometimes, if I'm not caught completely off guard, I can lock my muscles in and not have my response happen. But if I'm completely taken off guard, which usually what happens if somebody's tapping me on my back. Yeah. I do have that auto responsive swinging. 

Speaker: Yeah. But did it lead you to notice that you also startle when, say someone across a crowded room clanks a glass, or, 

Speaker 3: Noises like that?

Usually, usually a crowd and 

Speaker: someone accidentally touches you on just the wrong part of your body. What, as they're walking by. Do you notice a startle there too that doesn't involve punching them in the face? 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: So somebody making noises. So I, okay. So I don't like fireworks. I don't like thunder and lightning.

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: Both of those do the same thing for me as if somebody was walking up behind me. Okay. So in [00:49:00] this case, but it's to do a sound so loud, unexpected noises like that where I can't predict when the sound is coming. Completely scares the bejesus outta me. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: So 4th of July thunderstorms, I have headphones on.

Speaker: Yeah. That's, see that's a great coping situation. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. I've gone to see fireworks with friends. I just make sure I have my, sound canceling headphones on because I know me and I don't need to be, absolutely terrified. To see the pretty lights. I do like fireworks. They have pretty cool lights, they do pretty cool stuff, but the sounds I can't deal.

So yeah, I do the headphones and I have my own music on up and loud and. My music is the only music I can, only thing I can listen to at a high volume. 

Speaker: Good. I'm glad you've identified some coping situations. 

Speaker 2: And that's the thing, being able to figure out, oh, if I don't [00:50:00] make unexpected noises, then I should probably invest in headphones that are soundproof.

Yeah. The easy solution.

Speaker: Instead of making everyone else around you accommodate, you can accommodate yourself, you can make yourself more nurtured and supported. And taking that control probably helps a little bit too, huh? 

Speaker 2: Yeah. I have three sets of Bose headsets that do that cut out sound.

I wear them to church and I wear them anywhere else. I expect noisy atmosphere to be, because I don't handle loud noises very well. Oh, that's an interesting one. Church, 

Speaker: Are you Catholic or no? I. One of the loudest noises I ever hear in my life is the kneeling benches getting flipped back up behind the pews.

Oh, yeah, 

Speaker 2: I've heard that 

Speaker: in a Catholic church and it's like very loud.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't like Sunday morning calisthenics, so I'm not a Catholic anymore. 

Speaker: But you know the sound. 

Speaker 2: [00:51:00] Yes. Yeah. Stand up, sit down. Kneel knee, kneel. Got it. 

Speaker: Just that clank. Ugh. Okay. Sorry. Didn't mean to conjure it up. Somebody, 

Speaker 2: somebody's been triggered by that sound.

One of the ways to help chill yourself out from a trigger, which usually works better if it is that unexpected noise, obviously. Figure out a way to protect yourself if you're not wearing a Bose headset. And no, I am not sponsored by Bose and they might be upset that I've put them in this episode, so sorry, whatever.

Their sound canceling headphones are top tier and their sound quality is really good. Put those bad boys on and listen to something that you can listen to at a high volume to make sure that all of that noise that is bothering you stops if it's a sound response. And then gradually get to [00:52:00] try to, deal with it.

Me at church, there's a lot of different noises. You've got the organ, you've got kids. 

It's too loud, too much. There's too much going on. I get it's bad. So I wear headphones to make sure that I can stay. And even with having my headphones on and listening to music, I can still hear the person up at the pew.

There is no canceling that out, right? I am just trying to cut out some of the back background noise so that I could pay attention to that person. I can, I never cannot hear that person unless they're one of those mousy people who get up there and they're just like,

and then you 

Speaker: wonder why they got picked. 

Speaker 2: Exactly. Did 

Speaker: they get vetted?

Speaker 2: If you ha if you can use a coping mechanism. Earplugs. I have some earplugs that I like that are really cool that I can't remember the [00:53:00] name of right now, but they can't, they drop the sound noise down without muffling it in your own head. So that it sounds weird, which I really like. Again, I can't remember the name of them.

Are those my purse 

Speaker: colorful ones? Uhhuh. I've seen those too. What are they called? Yep. I don't remember. Anyway. I know the ones you mean. They're good for rock and roll shows too. 'cause they don't muffle, they just block the decibel. 

Speaker 2: Then, okay, so what if it's something you can see? What if you're outside during the day, it's too bright and it ends up giving you a migraine?

Or if you go into Walmart and it's too bright, the lights are too bright and it gives you a migraine, there are these nifty things called sunglasses. Yeah. Maybe use them to help accommodate your need to not have everything as bright as it is. 

Speaker: You can even get ones that wrap [00:54:00] around a little bit. 

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Look like the Star Trek, dude. Star Wars. Dude, I don't, star Trek me look like Gordy for me. If it's touch, like if it's a certain fabric, don't wear it. And if you see that somebody else's, maybe don't give them a hug that day.

Because touch is one of those things where you decide who you touch or what you touch. Maybe you should decide to be nice to yourself and not wear that material anymore if it's gonna bug you. And that's not, and everybody's oh, that's limiting beliefs and whatever. No, that is not putting yourself in sensory overload by wearing Carnegies or what are those?

Those pants that are ribbed corduroy. Yeah. Why would you wanna I can't wear those. I can't. Those just trying to put them on would knock me into sensory overload [00:55:00] and I'd be ready to punch a wall. Not a good idea. So don't wear them. Yeah. That's not limiting anything except for the choice not to wear something that is absolutely ugly, in my opinion.

I don't know too many people who wear them anymore anyway. 

Speaker: They come and go. 

Speaker 2: If your response is something that is emotional, so anger, fear, those kind of things you have to work on microdosing yourself. So I'm gonna go to this place that I know has one or two old people in it so that I can, get used to going around them and not crying my eyes out.

And being able to leave when I feel it's time for me to leave and not when somebody else feels it's time to leave type deal. Because you have to regulate that. You have to decide when your dosage is done for the day or done for the, and done until you can calm back down again.

Speaker: That seems to be an interesting point as well, just that [00:56:00] microdosing and taking control of your own levels, being your own guy at the board with the levels on that.

Audio board. I think that's really important. And you have to it because you can't avoid it forever. You might as well figure it out. 

Even if it takes a little while. So given yourself an out and realizing you are in control of the dials, and if you need to step away, that's not embarrassing.

That is taking care of yourself. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you have to start to reframe your thoughts around it. So for me it was, old men are scary because old men hurt me. It wasn't all old men. We keep hearing this argument. Where it's not all, it's not all men, it's not all women. It's not all old people.

That's true in a sense. It is. It is not all old people. It is not all old women. It is not all women, it's not all men. There are abusers of every. [00:57:00] Age, sex, gender, whatever. It doesn't matter, right? 

They're gonna be there, somebody's going to do it because it's illegal. And why wouldn't they want to?

I don't know. People are stupid beings in the long run, but you can't blame everybody for the mistakes of one or the mistakes of a few, right? I cannot put the blame on every old man for what happened to me because they didn't do it. 

Speaker: Yeah. But so understanding that line too, that you intellectually know that, but it's still triggering.

'Cause your unconscious has burnt that pattern into your brain already, so you have to practice to get over. Yeah. That's 

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where that microdosing comes in, where you go in and, going in that this is what's going to happen. You're gonna get upset. You know that there's going to be this old dude there.

So what you have to do is go in , this person never hurt me. 

You know what really helped me? [00:58:00] I had somebody who was old help me in a way that was meaningful for me. Oh yeah. They did something that they didn't have to do. And that helped me with oh, okay, they can be nice too.

That kind of helped my brain see it more than just me saying, this one isn't gonna hurt you. Okay. 

Speaker: Yeah. I'm wondering too, if it's helpful. And I, just so you know, I've had some things happen to me. I've never had anything that's super triggering. So I haven't had the experience, but I can imagine and from understanding more and more how the brain works, something like listening to a podcast with someone you know is older.

And getting to trust them just through their voice and then that might help. Or through a movie or, watching actors. So there's that bit of [00:59:00] distance and it's a character, not an individual. Might be that bit of separation that might help as well. I don't know. What do you think? 

Speaker 2: So one, I had somebody who I knew was old, help me.

The other thing is I started gaming. And I know there's that whole controversy around gaming, but for me it's a realization. No, it's a way of 

Speaker: workout scenarios. 

Speaker 2: I play World Warcraft and I am in a guild, which is a group of people who play the game that will help each other and do stuff together.

And the first, while nobody told me their ages or anything, we were just all talking. Nobody sounded old, right? Somehow, some people just sounded like they're about to kick the bucket. Yeah. None of these people sounded like that. They sounded just like me. They sounded normal and it was fine.

And then one day somebody was like I'm the youngest person here and their birthday was in [01:00:00] 81. And I went, which is my birth year? And I went, what month? And he is January. And I went, ha, I'm now younger. I'm younger than you. 'cause I didn't turn, you know my age until the 1st of April of 81.

And he went, that's not fair,

Speaker: but it's true. 

Speaker 2: And a couple of, the couple of the guys that I had been gaming with were in their sixties. And that kind of threw me for a loop 'cause I was just like, I've been playing with opioid and yeah. And it was okay. And my best friend Kim and her husband, who I stay with, they're both in their sixties now.

I don't know how old, I'm not getting into the math, but neither one of them having gray hair like, blew my mind. And they've always been super nice to me. Obviously they have me living in their house. [01:01:00] But so the kind of those interactions and, getting to know people and gaming with people that, at first I didn't know their ages and I just thought it was fine.

And then finding out they were that and being like, okay, yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Helped with that mentality with me being more comfortable with it. Yeah. 

Speaker: It was just, it suddenly occurred to me that what if you didn't know? Is there a way to get that separation you didn't know, or someone was, or to stretch those preconceived notions that just because someone's in their seventies and has gray hair, like your unconscious brain is doing that.

But if you start mixing that up so does Anderson Cooper, and he's, he was only in his thirties when his hair turned gray, or, Ted Danon had gray hair a really long time, but he's pretty funny. I don't know.

Speaker 2: So for me it was, it still is like I see somebody with gray hair and I'm automatically, I don't trust them.

I don't care how old they are. Yeah, but it, because it's just something that my body is like, [01:02:00] of course, no, we don't trust that. So I can have conversations with people. I've gotten to know people. I don't act on the outside, like anything is wrong anymore. 

Speaker: But it's still giving you class, 

Speaker 2: Which is where you should be, because if you're outwardly reacting, then everybody's reacting to you because why are you doing that kind of a deal?

Speaker: And I think that's just smart. And maybe it's 'cause we're women, but you don't trust everybody automatically. You Yeah. No you can react and have chitchat, but that doesn't mean you trust them. Yeah. That's earned, that comes from interactions over time, not instantly. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. In that way.

I have people that I do talk to that I trust, but there are still a lot of people out there that I don't trust, but I can have a conversation with them without, on the [01:03:00] outside turning into a shaking leaf or crying. My business wouldn't stand. One of the guys I'm working with is in his eighties. Lucky for me somehow. He doesn't have very much gray hair. Is it Grecian formula? I have any idea. But so there's always that thing that like, I don't know how to say this obviously, if you're looking at somebody with gray hair and they're in their thirties, you're like, huh. Which box do I put you in?

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: But when you're looking at somebody and you know they're 80, you do the exact same thing when they just don't seem to fit the mold that you have for that age group. And so we unconsciously do that anyway, but somebody who has dealt with trauma will put them in the big red box that says Alert [01:04:00] alert.

Yeah, that makes 

Speaker 3: sense. 

Speaker 2: Calming that alert box down so that it is just internal, whereas okay, I can talk to this person. I'm not crying, I'm not shaking, but I am watching myself. I'm not trusting that he's going, it's, I'll believe it when I see it. Type attitude ends up coming out because yes, they'll say whatever, but I need you to actually do it, for me to believe it at that point.

Because I don't trust you from Adam. 

And that kind of, it works for me, and I'm still working on it. Yeah. I haven't given up on anything. I'm not like trying to say that this is a perfect place to be, but it is a place to be on the, on the way to where I need to be. Yeah. I'm not perfect because nobody's perfect.

If you think you're perfect, [01:05:00] please go to a doctor. You are delusional. You may or may not be narcissistic. The just plain, you need a padded room, but either way. 

Speaker: Yeah. No, but it go, it, that goes back to the be better mindset, right? Just try to be a little bit better every day. Take one little chunk out of the.

Project that is you. 

Better understand ourselves, better understand our space and where we fit into this wild and wacky world. 

Speaker 2: And I know that we went all over the place with this video today. But I do hope that it helps somebody. I will be adding a trigger warning to the beginning because we did mention some stuff we did, but other than that, I think that we just had a really good conversation on both topics today

so do you have a website to plug? 

Speaker: Yeah. People can find out more about me [01:06:00] and access all my free and paid resources@morethanorganized.net. It's my website. It has all the links to my socials and all the various resources that are available. 

Speaker 2: I'll also have those links in the description below.

Perfect. So I thank you for being on my podcast. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed both conversations as well. So our personalities are a little bit too much alike. Maybe not.