Notes From a Madwoman: Transforming Survival Adaptations to Healthy Coping

Survival can make you brilliant at coping and it can also quietly steal your identity. We sit down with writer and trauma educator Lisa Lacy to talk about the gap between looking “high-functioning” and actually feeling well, especially for women conditioned to be good, productive, and pleasing even when they’re drowning inside. Lisa shares how repeated near-death medical crises and turning 50 forced a hard truth: you can’t keep going back to the old script and call it strength.

We get specific about what “high-functioning survival” looks like in real life: caretaking, overperforming, polishing the image, and numbing emotions while your nervous system stays on high alert. We dig into trauma recovery and why mental health labels can help and hurt, including how diagnosis language can become an identity that keeps us stuck in blame and resentment. From there, we move into the practical work: radical honesty, choosing safe people to open up to, self-forgiveness that isn’t forced, and boundaries that protect your peace without shutting the whole world out.

Lisa also breaks down identity masking, the way different versions of us show up at work, at home, and in relationships, and how healing can look like becoming congruent across every arena. Along the way, she shares grounded tools you can try today: replacing the inner critic with statements of fact, getting curious about “sticky” comments that rewound old childhood wounds, and processing emotions within 24 to 48 hours so pain doesn’t keep stacking.

If you’ve been performing wellness, people-pleasing through burnout, or wondering who you are without the coping strategies, this conversation gives language and a path forward. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick rating so more listeners can find No Shrinking Violets.

You can find Lisa HERE

https://www.lisalacy.com/about-1

Transcript

Why Violets Are Not Weak

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I believe that survival creates adaptations, brilliant biological adaptations. But what happens is those adaptations then become our identity. Instead of this is what I had to do, it becomes this is who I am.

Mary 0:20

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place. Hey Violets, welcome to the show. When I shifted the focus of my work from a college population to women specifically, I started to see a pattern. First, by midlife, we tend to have experienced layers of unexplored loss and traumatic events. Now, I'm not necessarily talking about PTSD level trauma, although it's not uncommon for people to have suffered through an event that could be classified as quote big T trauma, but more the difficult experiences that just define a life: rejection in friendships or romantic relationships, struggling to establish a career, actual death of loved ones, and often, most impactful, adverse childhood experiences known as aces, that informed our way of being in the world as adults, often because we have pushed them to the background instead of recognizing their impact on our functioning. The other issue I found to be quite common is the assumption that everyone else, i.e. other women, either haven't had the struggles we're having or they have effortlessly reached wellness. I've never met anyone who has had a linear path to fulfillment. It's more like the ups and downs and back and forth of a butterfly's flight, sometimes purposeful and successful and sometimes meandering, but all in the effort to find what we need from our environment. And so we tend to hide our struggles because the social narrative of women battling challenges is that she's crazy or hysterical if she expresses strong emotions, or she's too much, or even bitchy, if she learns to take up her space and communicate her needs. And historically, women were set up to be in competition with each other, at least since the age of print and social media. In ancient societies, we often supported each other in parenting and any other challenge that's part of living.

Meet Lisa Lacey And Her Work

Mary 2:41

My guest today is similar to so many of the women I've talked with on this show who experienced life crises that pushed them to finally break through shame and limiting narratives to tell their stories, and in the process have helped countless other women feel seen and understood. Lisa Lacey is a writer, trauma educator, and author of the upcoming memoir, Notes from a Certified Madwoman, and its companion field guide, The Psychology of Performance. After more than three decades in corporate education, healthcare consulting, performance, and storytelling, Lisa now speaks and writes about addiction, psychosis, trauma, nervous systems, identity masking, reinvention, and the hidden realities of high-functioning survival in women, most of which we're going to dive into today. Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Lisa.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Well, thank you, Mary. It's an honor to be here. I always love these long-form conversations where we can get in the nuances. And that was such a lovely intro. I appreciate it.

Mary 3:37

Oh, you're welcome. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this. So I always start by asking my guests to talk about flashbulb moments. And so it's those things where, you know, if you think about a flash going off, it illuminates a moment. And I think we all have these things that inform either what we believe to be true about ourselves or it sends us on a different path. And I know you have had a very significant one in a near-death experience.

Near-Death Wake-Up And Turning 50

Mary 4:03

So I would love you to talk about that. And if there's anything else that you really feel helped you end up where you are right now.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Well, I have a uh congenital blood disease that's uh high risk, life-threatening. I've struggled with many in and out of the hospital uh pulmonary embolisms, um very few DBTs. By the time they find them, I usually have massive embolisms in both lungs. And I'm a workaholic. It's a it's a skill, but also a coping mechanism. And in the past, when I've been hospitalized with these almost dying experiences, I did what I do. I got discharged on a Wednesday, I was back to work on Monday, and it was like nothing happened. Uh, this time though, something was a little bit different. Um, I got hospitalized for longer. There was a cluster of embolisms on one side. I got a new diagnosis of lupus pancreatitis, but what shifted was I turned to the big 5-0, 50, right after I got discharged this time. So we had uh, I mean, I had been planning for 50 all year. Um, so we had big, grandiose plans. It was gonna be a party, lots of people, and I told everybody, screw off. Uh, we're canceling everything. I'm taking a solo sojourn to the mountains with my 21-year-old Italian greyhound, miniature greyhound, who's been with me since he was three months old, and all the rest of you guys can f off see ya. So I uh got my mountain cabin, beautiful view. Um, just uh slightly an hour out of the way. We live in Georgia and there's just beautiful areas within 30, 45 minutes from us. And I got there on a Monday and I turned 50 on a Wednesday. And on Wednesday morning, I woke up and my little dog was laying on my lap, like he does. And I was watching this beautiful sun over the mountains and crying, Mary. I was just bawling. Um, because I knew I couldn't just move on from this one. The the mean age of existence with the condition I have is 54. So turning 50 was a big deal. And I I knew that the stories that I had, had, because now they're out. Um, what a catharsis that was, that were shrouded in the most guilt and shame for me, were the stories that I couldn't leave this earth and not tell. So that was the pivot. And I immediately pivoted and I was like, well, I'm a writer now, and always have been a writer because of my study and performance. And I was on the storytelling circuit in Georgia for a little while. So you, in order to craft a good story, you have to write it. Um, so and writing monologues. So writing has always been my jam. I just never considered, uh, other than the workbooks I have published, writing a memoir. Now I've got three right behind this one. But this one needed to come out first. But that was the pivot. It was having another experience that is statistically unheard of, surviving these. Uh, one event takes people out 30%, 30 to 50 percent of the time, one event. And usually when I get hospitalized, I have multiple events in both lungs. And uh so I I just knew if I felt that way, that these stories were covered in shame, I know at least one other human out there is struggling in silence.

Mary 7:54

Yeah, that's amazing. And you know, I think it's so often, and I kind of alluded to this in my intro, that we're taught that these normal struggles we go through. I mean, and I say normal for normal to me is a huge continuum because I'm a therapist. So there's people that go through things that other people can't fathom, and vice versa. And so I think many of the things that we go through, for some reason, women tend to find shame in struggle.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Indeed. I when I was in high-functioning survival, is what I call it, because I had it all. I had the six-figure income, I had the house, the cars, the toys, the blended family. I was doing my due diligence to post the polished veneer on all my socials so everything looked perfect. Um, but I was miserable behind the scenes. I was drowning my my running from my emotions in in a bottle. Um, and I wasn't telling anybody about what was happening behind the scenes because I felt like, well, if I tell people I'm struggling, they're gonna one know who really I really am and two be disappointed. We hate disappointing people. The the good girls hate disappointing people and think that all of this I have accomplished for some reason is gonna go away just because I'm struggling over here. And another thing I've realized we can be great in one arena and be struggling in another arena, and that's okay. But see, we feel like we've got to be perfect in all arenas and we don't.

Mary 9:35

Right. Yeah, and nobody is. I mean, I think that's really the story, again, from sitting where I sit in my own life. People know from my being my my having a podcast, they know that there are struggles that I have, and so even someone who helps other people, there's no perfect, you know, linear way to get to where you want. And then when you get there, then there's the next thing. Either you slide back, we all slide back, or you find there's a different direction you want

High-Functioning Versus High-Functioning Survival

Mary 10:06

to go. I want to talk about this idea of high functioning because you mentioned that, and I mentioned it in your intro also. And I think we strive for that. We think I, or that's a badge of honor. I'm a high achieving or a high functioning woman. Tell me what you think that means.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Well, high high functioning means you're doing all the caretaking, you're doing the nurturing, you're taking care of everybody, you're also doing the cooking and cleaning, you're doing the financially providing because I've I've usually been the primary financial provider from my for my family. I was very successful in corporate, starting in my early 20s. So high functioning survival is different than high functioning. High functioning is liking who you are, knowing who you are, being cool with that. That's really what high functioning is. But we have convinced ourselves that once I get this, I'm gonna be okay. And then you get that, and you're not okay. So then you don't even take time to celebrate this goal, right? And rest after reaching that goal, we feel guilty for resting, us high producers. Um, then it's a the the next mountain and then the next mountain and then the next mountain. And uh I think some of it is having language for it too, the the struggle. So high functioning can, if we're not performing wellness, really just mean I know who I am, I know how I took and click, I know where my wounds are, I know what's gonna rewound me, I know how to articulate that to the people who love, support, and care about me so they can show up in a better way. And I dig who I am as a human because I spent a couple hundred grand of my corporate money on CBT, DBT, neurofeedback, brain mapping, high uh therapy for highly sensitive people, psychotherapy. I mean, you name it, I did it. And I was still waking up feeling like I don't, I don't want, I don't know if I want to be here, honestly. That's how I was still waking up. And the answer for me was really getting to know who I am now, not who I'm becoming, not going back to who I was before, because that that chick messed up a lot of stuff. So I want to go back to her. Uh I want to know who am I today? What did survival make me? And I think you brought up a very valid point about trauma.

When Trauma Labels Become Identity

SPEAKER_00 12:38

It is my philosophy that we all have it. All of us. It is part of the human experience. Now, some of us more than others for obvious reasons, once we hear each other's stories, of course. Um, but we all have it. Men, women, males, females alike. We we are going to have some traumas from living this existence because it is part of it. And I think we've villainized trauma and then we've specialized trauma, like, oh, I have trauma. I have trauma. I have trauma. And then it becomes an identity. And I spent many years after getting out of my um uh second marriage. Um, I went into inpatient rehabilitation. That's what started my healing journey at 40. I'm now 50. Um, and I went in thinking I might have a slight drinking problem and maybe a bad marriage, and uh came out with a chart like this thick with language, with new diagnoses. But what I did was I became so identified with not only those labels, those mental health labels, diagnoses, but I stayed in victim mentality because I was in support groups that were the well, let's blame them, right? It's all their fault. And I think what that uh uh uh takes away from us is the opportunity to take accountability for our own part. Because what I discovered is because I was surrounded by so much toxicity, I was toxic as well in my untreated addiction and untreated mental illness. So if you're surrounded by toxicity, it may be worth taking that finger that's other focused, them, them, them, them, them. If they get better, and I used to say if everybody else would fix their stuff, I wouldn't have to go to therapy, right? That's what I thought. If they would fix their stuff, I'd be fine. Not the case because I was toxic too. So it it deprives us of the opportunity, the blame game, the victim mentality. While it is a stage, you must recognize, wow, I was a victim of this abuse. That's part of the healing process. But if you get stuck there, you're gonna waste years and a lot of resentment, a lot of anger, and a lot of the blame game. And I think uh I think we try to force forgiveness. I think forgiveness towards ourselves first helps us forgive others. We did the best that we could with the tools that we had at the time. Um, we're always trying our best, most of us. Um, and our best changes on any given day. Sometimes it's gonna be a 60% day, and sometimes like today, it's gonna be a hundred percent day. So it it all depends, but we have, we have um made it where when somebody says they struggle, um there's shame attached to that. And I think more so for the individual because of how we were conditioned and probably how we were conditioned in childhood. I I'm a Gen Xer, I was raised by boomers, toughen up, suck it up, be a man. I got told be a man, man up. Um, so it was shoved down, shoved down, shoved down. They have great work ethics. So it was work, work, work, work, work, and then die. That was it. That was the answer to it. So I think what it requires first is a radical honesty with ourselves after taking inventory and a willingness to do some excavation and recognize that we may be struggling first. So the conversation before you go to a safe person and please make sure it's a safe person. And what do I mean by that? They've proven it. They can show up to support you and inspire you and encourage you. Because here's what happens if you open up to somebody for the first time, maybe ever, and they're not a safe person, it could shut you down and you won't open up again. But step one is brutal honesty with yourself. Where are you really at? Take the inventory and be really willing to do external excavation on on uh you take inventory on your life.

Mary 17:04

Yeah. Wow, you brought up so many points in there. So the one thing I want to come back to is knowing ourselves. But first, I tend to say life happens through us, not to us. And so I think that's a really important thing that you pointed out is that everybody has their shit. Like there's always we can always focus on, oh man, I was born this way, or oh man, I had these parents, or oh, I have this blood disease or this blood, you know, we can always find a reason to say, oh, can't help it, can't help that I'm stuck here. But that isn't the way through it. Everybody has something.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think that forgiveness I was talking about, I'll give you an example. My uh second husband was a clinically diagnosed narcissist, somebody with NPD. And I'm not using, he wasn't just an asshole. So I think we overuse that word. Um, but he was clinically diagnosed with NPD. When I was able to recognize that it was his own traumas from his mother that nobody else knew about, she was a saint in the community, but I know what she did to him behind the scenes. Once I was able to see him as a human being that went through stuff too, forgiving myself first for, you know, and stopping the you're so stupid. I can't believe you put up with it. You stayed so long, you should have left sooner. All the loops we do. And the same with my most of my folks, with my parents. Um, you know, because for years I was like, it's your fault. You did this, you did this to me. Um, instead of, well, this imprinted me. And it helped me become the person I am today, and it helps inform the work I do today. But the minute I recognized everybody in my life as human beings and decided, okay, I need to meet them where they are. And sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, both are okay. Uh, for instance, with my mother, there are things we don't talk about that are off limits. We keep engagement short and um and in instead of going fully no contact, and if anything goes down, I set those boundaries. Well, you can't speak to me that way. I'm gonna go ahead and go now, and we'll talk when you've calmed down a bit. So I think recognizing other humans as human beings will help you get to that place of if not forgiveness, because I don't believe in forced forgiveness, but at least letting it go. So it's not informing your future.

Mary 19:43

Yeah. Yeah. And the word and there, I think is important. Two things can be true. You know, you can have a parent who didn't show up for you, and you need to now figure this out for yourself. I think both those things can be true. And so that brings me back to knowing

Rewriting The Inner Critic With Facts

Mary 19:59

yourself. So my thought when you said that is so many people think they know themselves and they are using words that you just alluded to a bit ago, is these things about I'm lazy or I'm selfish or I'm fill in the blank. And that's not actually knowing yourself. That's somebody else's opinion or perspective. So how do you, how did you for yourself, or if you help other people do this, how do you really help women tease apart what they think is true and what who is truly who they are?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

I love sticking, my brain loves statement of fact. And I'll give you, for instance, the the new default I have. Uh, I don't wake up anymore going, how am I gonna tackle this day? I wake up and go, what am I gonna tackle today? Um, I'm not doing cartwheels, I'm not a morning person out until I have my coffee, but it's a way different way to wake up. It started with one comment, and my inner critic was nasty. And she would be on a loop. You're so stupid, you're such an up up, you're never gonna have a relationship, you're never gonna have healthy relationships, it's all your fault. Some of that are other people's words that will seep in. They eventually do. And some of it was my own words, my own belief system about myself. And so what I had to start doing was sticking to statements of fact. And I wish I could tell people this was a fast process. It's not. It started with one thought, and that thought was, I am so stupid. So when that thought would come in and I'd catch myself standing in the kitchen randomly staring at a wall, telling myself I'm stupid in my head, I replaced it with the statement of fact, which is I'm actually a highly intelligent woman. I'm so stupid. Stop the thought. I'm actually a highly intelligent woman. I'm actually a highly intelligent woman. And now I see myself in the truth. Which is, I'm actually a highly intelligent woman. And as far as healthy relationships, the minute I started reframing that, I am capable of healthy relationships. As long as I'm doing my personal work, I'm capable of healthy relationships. And they started happening. It's the coolest thing when you start this journey because a lot of the trash will take itself out or you set boundaries around it. And new people that are supportive and encouraging and inspiring and at your vibration will start filling up your circle. But start with one thought at a time. And know you're saying it because so many of us are on autopilot. Right. And we don't know it. I didn't know. I didn't know I was beating myself up in my head on a daily basis. I didn't, it's self-abuse. I didn't know I was abusing myself in my emotionally abusing myself in my head on a daily basis. So pick one thought, replace it with a statement of fact, and ask yourself, is this true? Because what you're going to realize is, well, no, this is asinine. It's absolutely not true. It's not who I am. And so that's how I started coming into the place of, wow, I really know who I am. Another thing I did was really understand my wounds so that I know, and the word trigger, I think, is way overused too. So I say rewounding instead of trigger. So I know what's going to rewound me. I know where most of my wounds are. Sometimes I get surprised. I'll give you, for instance, I work on TikTok and there's some trolls on TikTok. It's a it's the Wild West on there. And uh some people say the nastiest stuff, and I just let it roll by and roll by and roll by. But one day this gentleman said, Your hair would look better longer. Now, to most people, they would think, out of all these comments, that's nothing. But here's what happened. It was still stuck with me. Like three days later, I was like, Well, that jerk telling my hair would and I and so I stopped and I went, wait a minute, this thought got sticky. Why did it get sticky? Why am I still thinking about it? And the reason is had nothing to do with his comment. It had to do with the fact that my hair was never good enough for my mother. It could be long, it could be short, it could be black, it could be blue, it could be purple, I could be bald, was that did that too in the 90s when Sinead was popular. I was like, yeah, I'm going for it. And uh uh, but it had nothing to do with his comment. It had to do with what mom said when I was 10. So recognizing that, uh, another skill I use that I think is really important to prevent from we've got all this childhood trauma that we're working through. And we're probably gonna be working through it this whole existence, and that's okay because it's layered. But what I try to do to prevent additional traumas from being piled onto those old traumas is process within 24 to 48 hours. And that may look like this. My husband and I are out and about, and we have an agreement. We don't call each other out, we don't argue in front of people, we don't do any of that. But say he says something off-putting and it hits me and it hits one of those old wounds. I make sure I circle back to that. If it's not the place to do it, I make sure I circle back to that first with me. So I set a timer, 15 minutes, an hour, I'll listen to sad songs, if grieving if I is what I need to do, I'll listen to angry songs, if anger is what I need to move, I'll journal. But I make sure I take time to process that within 24 to 48 hours so that I can move it up and out so it doesn't hit me a year later. Yeah. And then I have the conversation with him. Hey, can you not say that next time or you said this and it hurt my feelings? And let's have a talk about that.

Mary 25:58

So the what I'm pulling out of this is self-awareness and intentionality and active. And by active, so we think we need to go to the gym, we need to do all of these things to maintain us physically. But when we talk about this awareness, you're saying, like, what's with the hair thing? And taking the time to figure that out, and that goes back to those flashball moments. There was probably something that was said, it's stuck in there, and then all these years later, we still play that script. But I think that we sometimes think if I need to do deep emotional stuff, if I need to be really present with my reactions and you know, processing, or as you say, like making sure that clears your system in 24 to 48 hours, we I think sometimes believe, well, that means I'm really effed up. If I need to take that amount of intentionality to make sure emotionally I'm maintaining myself, but we don't think about that physically. And I think that's so interesting because we're whole one whole being. And to be able to do that, it that that's where we break free, I think, and can find those levels of fulfillment.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah.

Emotions, Mortality, And Better Relationships

SPEAKER_00 27:16

And I I think I think we're scared of our emotions. Uh, here's the thing I ran from them for 20 years, diving straight into a bottle to avoid them. And I promise you, my friends, when you turn and face them, you're gonna go, what was I running from? It ain't that bad. Actually, some of it can be a lot of fun if you make it a lot of fun. Because then you're like, oh, I am like that. And and knowing how your brain, your brain works, helps you get embodied and helps you articulate to the people that are, and when your relationships are healthy, you can focus at work. If your relationships are not healthy, when you're at work, you're gonna be thinking about that bad relationship. When your relationships are solid, when you're at work, you're gonna be focused on work. So I I think healthy relationships are are the pinnacle of really what we we truly want. Because I face my mortality in a way that I think not a lot of people have to. Um, and I know when the time comes, um, it's not gonna be the boat or the house or the car that I'm thinking about. It's not, it's gonna be two things. It's gonna be my memories and my regrets. And what I don't want is for some of those regrets to be memories that I missed out on. So I think getting this personal excavation done that can be fun to really discover who you became because of the survival. And I think it softens us just a little bit, which then helps more of those people on a higher vibe come into our realm.

Boundaries That Build Self-Respect

Mary 29:07

Yeah, and part of doing all of this, and you talked about this with the story with your mom, is setting boundaries. And I think we think boundaries are hard and limiting, and oh, we can't do that with a parent. But you the situation with your mom where you have to say to her, okay, that's enough for now, let's sort of, you know, talk later. I worked through that exact thing with a young college girl one time, and it was so hard for her, but once we do that, we're so much lighter. And it's, I forget what I heard somewhere. It's like you're not closing a door, you're showing somebody where the window is or something like that. It's more like it's it can be permeable unless it is someone that is so unhealthy that you choose not to continue that. But it is amazing how much what we then really want does come into our life when we're able to just let, you know, not be sort of this totally open garage door where everything's just flowing in and we have some discernment.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah, you can set boundaries in a in a loving but direct way. Loving because you love and care about them, but in a in a direct way, this is what I will tolerate, this is what I won't. And it becomes this is what I can tolerate, because if our if our traumas, if our unhealed wounds go unchecked, they can eventually cause physical uh symptoms, autoimmune disorders, fibromyalgia, all the neuropathies. Um, and another thing it does for us setting boundaries is build self-respect. And when we have self-respect, we get to know ourselves on a whole new level too.

Mary 30:57

Yeah. And I think when we can identify that inner critic you talked about, that also starts to then we're empowering ourselves to really know what our story is. And so I like that you brought that up because I think, first of all, it's very hard to for people to hear what they're thinking. So often I try to kind of pull that out with a client, and they're like, Well, you mean I'm not thinking anything. Well, you're totally thinking something.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

And I also don't have that problem. I'm always thinking something. Yeah.

Mary 31:30

And I think that high functioning women tend to have harsher inner critics. And that's why we say we're quote high functioning.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Well, and it for me, it was conditioning. I was a performer from the time I was five years old on stages as a competitive dancer, um, then moved into uh competition cheerleading and then became a martial artist for um 11 years. So there was always some form of performance. But in my childhood, I was a straight A student, I was captain of the cheerleading team, I was head of the leader. I thought if I do this, this will be enough. And it wasn't. But so let me do more and let me do more and let me do more and let me do more. Because if we're seeking that validation externally, now external validation in your healthy relationships is so beneficial. Um, however, sometimes even with the best inner circle, it's gonna be you and you, and this needs to be a safe place to be. It needs to feel safe in here when you're by yourself. Can you be by yourself? That's a question to ask too. Can you sit solo with yourself and actually enjoy your own company? So for some people, you're right. Their first practice may have to be I gotta figure out what I'm thinking about myself.

Mary 32:54

Yeah. Yeah. So there's two more things I want to touch

Identity Masking And Living Congruently

Mary 32:58

on. The first is um identity masking. Can you talk a little about what you mean by that? And it it plays a role in trauma and recovery, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So identity masking, I believe that survival creates adaptations, brilliant biological adaptations. But what happens is those adaptations then become our identity. Instead of this is what I had to do, it becomes this is who I am. And it's not really us, it's a it's a mask. And once we drop the roles, once we drop the identities, um, once we drop the masks, then we're stuck with who we really are. In my personal practice and my current practice with clients, what I'm trying to do is create congruence across all arenas. And what that looks like is am I the same person? Because corporate Lisa used to have her own voice, the way she walked, uh, the way she talked. Uh, mom Lisa, there was different Lisa. There was Mom Lisa and daughter Lisa and professional Lisa and acting Lisa. And so what I'm trying to do is ask the question: can I be congruent across all arenas? Am I the same person everywhere I go?

Mary 34:25

We have to respond when we are young. We have to survive. And really, it's so such a uh sign of strength. But what happens is when we're not in that environment anymore, it's not usually a healthy coping strategy. But in my office, I reframe that with people. It's like you're not failing. You did something that you got you through that environment, whether it was you turned into a hard ass or you were a people pleaser, whatever it was to get through that, it got you through it. But now that you don't have to deal with that every day. Now it just simply is something that's outdated, but we really beat ourselves up for not functioning like we want to.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah, we don't retire those adaptations, right? And the question to ask is okay, this was an adaptation, it became identity, and is it still serving me? And in some cases, it may still be serving you, so you keep it. But if it's not serving you any longer, that's when you look at how am I gonna replace this? What am I gonna replace this with? Yes, absolutely.

Why She Chose Certified Madwoman

Mary 35:33

Okay, so I'm curious about something, and then I want you to tell us um what give us more an idea of what you do and where people can find you. But first, what made you choose the word mad woman in your title of your book?

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Well, it's funny. Every time somebody says it, they kind of giggle. So that's cool. And also on paper, I am certifiably insane. So it is actually a statement of fact. So it seemed to be a very appropriate title for my memoir. And the reason why I wanted to release this one first is because it is an insider's look at the psychiatric arena as a psychiatric patient. And I do believe we could uh do for some reform around it because some of the things that happen in institutions, I've been institutionalized many times, is inhumane and certainly doesn't leave us with our dignity. And I'm hoping that people who struggle will see pieces of themselves as have early readers. And I'm hoping that clinicians uh will see that the people they work with are also humans in addition to struggling, which has happened for the early readers that are clinicians that have read it. And what ended up happening is people said, Well, I see pieces of myself in it and it's bringing up stuff. So that's what created the field guide companion, because it's got grounding exercises and reflection exercises attached to each chapter. So should you read a chapter, because it's raw and it was honest, because you have to be in a memoir, readers are gonna know you're holding back. Um, as it brings up stuff, you have the field guide companion to turn to, to take to your therapist, to work through stuff.

Mary 37:19

Yeah. And I will be the first to tell you as uh 35 years as a licensed therapist, our system is very broken. And there would be times where I knew someone needed inpatient and my heart would sink because the options are not great. So I'm glad that you have written this and thank you for

Where To Find Lisa And Closing

Mary 37:38

being here. Tell us a little about where people can find you. I will link it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Oh, it's easy peasy. It's Lisa Lacey.com, www.lisacy.com. You can go in there if you want to work with me. You can go in there and get on the pre-sale list. The book goes into pre-sale in October. We launched November 1 when the veil is still thin. I'm so excited. Um, but yeah, all everything I'm into is on the website, lisalacy.com. All my socials are there and my email is there. And I'd love to hear your stories as well.

Mary 38:09

Well, thank you, Lisa. This has been a great conversation, and I wish you many, many years of health.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Thank you. Right back at you.

Mary 38:17

Thank you. And I want to thank everyone for listening. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend and scroll down to the bottom of the show page to leave a quick rating. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.