The Power of Making Impactful Decisions | Denise G Lee

Denise Lee is a healing and leadership coach and a survivor herself

>> Tiffanie: Hello and welcome, or welcome back. This is true crime connections. I am Tiffanie, your host. This week, we are learning how to overcome our setbacks, gaining clarity and making impactful decisions. Helping us with that today is Denise Lee. She is a healing and leadership coach and a survivor herself. I want to thank you so much for being here.

>> Denise Lee: Thank you, Tiffanie, so much for having me here.

>> Tiffanie: Absolutely. I love what your mission is. You want to help people identify the red flags, understand where we get caught up at. And that's so important because how many times are we at the end and we're like, how in the h*** did I get here?

>> Denise Lee: The road to h*** always started with good intentions.

>> Tiffanie: Ooh, I like that.

>> Denise Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

>> Tiffanie: So what led you on this journey? Yourself?

>> Denise Lee: So there. So for everybody who's listening, I just want to apologize in advance if I sound like an old New Jersey crime boss. I'm, recovering from, an asthma situation earlier, so I just want to apologize. Why does she sound so horse? It's because of crime show. She wants to sound dramatic. No, no. So I just want to just let everybody know that. So there's two answers, Tiffanie. Like, the pr. The shiny, beautiful image of why I do the work that I do is because it is a noble act, right? We're helping humanity step forward, away from the chaos and into sanity. But the fact of the matter is, I needed this work so I could stay sane and understand my own past. And the more I understand myself and my story, I can help others through what I learned. So it's really selfish if I had to be completely honest with you, Tiffanie, as, I understand. Like, that's why in the world will we talk about crime and abuse for kicks. It's not exactly stuff that you want to talk about. Cuddling up with your civic and loved one by candlelight. Let's talk about rape, right?

>> Tiffanie: It's dark, but I would not, call you selfish. You know why? Because you want to use what you found and help other people. There is nothing selfish about that.

>> Denise Lee: I appreciate that because. So for those of you guys who don't know me, I always start off and I say, I'm a NSA survivor. I'm a sexual assault assault survivor. I'm a recovering alcoholic, sex addict, a whole bunch of stuff. And if you listen to that, right, you think, oh, wow, that's a lot of. A lot of stuff, right? But it didn't really start out that way. I think everybody starts off this world innocent, naive, and just wanting love. And every step that got me through my experiences was guided through a very desperate need for love.

>> Tiffanie: I get that. I totally get that. I think that's where a lot of us get in trouble, because you just. You, you need that. Everybody needs to feel loved. And sometimes we just chase it in the wrong, wrong areas.

>> Denise Lee: Well, you know, Tiffanie, I always think about when people say the wrong areas. Right? Like looking for love in all the wrong places. Oh, honey, you could do better than that. You hear of all these things. But when you were raised with emotionally dysregulated people. And when I say dysregulated, I'm talking about the inability to fulfill their own wants and needs in appropriate manners. So, for example, if a mother is feeling, very anxious that her husband's gone all the time for work or whatever, she may lean on her son as the man of the house to take care of her needs. And in some cases, those needs are extremely inappropriate for a child to even understand, let alone try to fulfill. And so if you're raised in an environment doing things that are completely inappropriate, unrealistic, downright dangerous, you think that need is normal. And so you just attract situations and scenarios that validate it again and again and again, and it's normalized.

>> Tiffanie: I can agree with that. you know, growing up, I heard a lot of negativity, and I found myself dating people who gave me a lot of negativity. And you just, you don't know anything different.

>> Denise Lee: I don't think it's negative. I think, Tiffanie, honestly, like, when I think about it now, I think it's validating in a sick kind of way, you know? So, like, for example, I remember when I was growing up and I would be around my mother and she would just say how my dad was a, no good, philandering son of a b****. He's always out there. He doesn't know what to do with a good woman. He can't take care of himself. And I thought, no, that's not my dad. No, that's not my dad. And then when I was finally living with him, when my mother tried to kill me and I was thrusted into his custody, I'm sitting with his new girlfriend, who's saying, my father's a no good son of a b****. He's out there philandering. And fast forward 15 years later. I'm sitting there telling my husband casually, oh, you know, men, sometimes they just philander. And he's looking at me like, what are you talking about? But. And for me, that's what was instilled over and over and over. And over. And it was never challenged. M.

>> Tiffanie: Yes, I can see that. Right. So, I mean, those, those were your ways of speaking. That's how you knew how to describe it.


For a lot of survivors, we're told indirectly through the

>> Denise Lee: And I think there's a lot of people who may be listening and going like, well, you know, Denise, you don't know me. You don't know my situation. You know what? I don't know your situation. And I'm not trying to give these, even these little tidbits of my life to say, well, just change your language and you'll be okay. Like, it's not that simple. Because for a lot of survivors, we're told indirectly through the side eyes or the rolling glances of, we tell our never ending quote unquote, drama that we should know better, we should do better. We've been there before. And I'm like, but we didn't understand our power because all we knew was abuse. And so I want to say to everybody who's listening, like, it's okay if you're like, man, I've been in this situation, like, 1020 times. And I don't know what. Why I'm listening to this. I'm reading books. I'm doing all this. I don't get it. And I'm like, look, I'm 42 years old. It took me the better part of almost 25 years to get it myself. It's a process.

>> Tiffanie: Yeah, it is. Lifelong. I love that face. Got that right.

>> Denise Lee: I think a lot of people think that, well, it's something that other people deal with, right? Is an other people issue. And that's ridiculous, right? Because when you think about it. So there's lots of psychology, and I'm not going to get into all the garbage about all of it, but suffice to say, there's, like three, four main types of people, right? There's people who are stable, right? They basically understanding themselves, understand the world around them. They're not easily rattled. But then when you get into the other factor, that's like 25, 35% of them lucky souls of us, there, it falls on the bun. But other people fall into, anxious, nervous, constantly waiting for the ball to drop on us because the ball did drop on us. Or maybe we're the other part, we're avoidant, where we just don't even want to bother with people. You know, I think about when I was growing up as a kid, listening to the song I'm an island by Simon and Garfunkel. I am a rock. I am the. I'm, sorry, I shouldn't sing. I have a terrible singing voice, but it's a song about I don't. I don't trust people. Books are my friends. And that was me. I was just avoiding. And then there's another type, which is disorganized, which is a friendly, mix between anxious and avoidant, where, like, come a little close, but not too close. Come a little further. No, no, no, that's not far. And we, and most of us aren't in that privilege of being stable because everyone around us is in that steady state of, fear and worry and anxiety. So it's not modeled. Being at ease. It's not modeled. I remember when I was, growing up, when I was, living with my dad and his girlfriend, ex girlfriend Sandra, and his, Sandra's, daughter at the time was recovering survivor as well, alcoholic, all this other stuff. And she gave me the serenity prayer. And I remember looking at it as a cool keychain, you know, God helped me to accept the things I cannot change, accept the wisdom, like, understand the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. I remember looking at it thinking it was like some kind of code, like, little code, like, what does this mean? And for a lot of us who are survivors, we are just on this quest to try to control everyone in ourselves and feeling distraught and afraid and alone all at the same time. And nobody gets it, but other people who are survivors, too.

>> Tiffanie: It's exhausting, the stuff that we put ourselves through. It really is because we're either in, like, 10,000 places at once in our mind. Our body is disregulated. It's a exhausting.

>> Denise Lee: It is.


Tiffany: Why did it take her so long to come forward

You know, Tiffanie, like, I was hearing about, the, Sean p. Diddy combs, and, he's in jail, thankfully. And early earlier this year, I, think march of 2024, his ex girlfriend, Cassie Ventura filed a suit, and everybody was saying at the time, the gossip rags. Well, why did it take her? She was with him for almost ten years, and now she's reporting about this. Now, she could have blown the whistle and explained everything, what was happening. I'm like, when you are in an abusive situation, you're being gaslighted and you're gaslighting yourself. And despite the fact that she was married, had kids with another man, she was still working through that to get even comfortable with the idea of what happened really happened. So I want to give everybody, like, some permission to say, like, even if you're in the. Even if you're even five years from, from that situation, it doesn't matter if your body is still there.

>> Tiffanie: Oh, for sure. She definitely had to process that, and then she had to have the courage to come forward. I mean, think about it. It's hard for Susie down the street to come forward, never mind a big star like her, and you're. You're fighting against him, who's like, a billionaire. So you know that the cards she probably felt were stacked against her. But other survivors saw it, and they. They could see the signs and stood by her.

>> Denise Lee: So early this year, not everybody. Not everybody. Early this year, Jennifer Lopez came. I'm waiting for her to come up with her survivor story. I'm waiting. I'm, like, waiting for her to talk about her survivor story, because I remember she, released this video and then a video movie about her biography about her movie. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is during her documentary about her movie and everything that she said, I was in situations where I was abused, there was physical violence. And, like, if I knew she was hooked up with Sean combs for a year, don't tell me for a second that he didn't slap her around. Don't tell me he didn't slap that woman around.

>> Tiffanie: Right?

>> Denise Lee: Survivors go on one or two, they either bury it down or they flame out and explode and try to, like, catch everyone in fire that's next to them. It's kind of funny.

>> Tiffanie: So how do you recognize these signs? How do you know this is going down the wrong path? I'm going to end up where I don't want to be.

>> Denise Lee: That's a really hard question, Tiffanie, because, like, everybody has different bottoms, right? Where they. They don't. They think, okay, this is bad, right? I'll never forget, this was like, what, 2017? No, no, no, I take that back because I've been married to my husband since 2012, so I have to rewind four years, okay? 2008, 2009. And so I'm dating the property manager of the prop of, the apartment complex I'm living in. I'm living back in the east coast, and he's driving us in a rainstorm after he drank no less than twelve beers in a rainstorm from Baltimore to Laurel, Maryland. So everyone, like, if you're not familiar with that, that's about a 20 miles difference. And I got in the car and I let him drive me there back from the concert that we were going after seeing. Strip club. Going to a strip club. because that's what normal relationships do, right? They take your girl to the strip club, right? Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, as I referred on, that I'm like, I could have been wrapped around a tree. I could have. He could have killed me. He could have, like, anything could have happened, but that wasn't my bottom. I had another situation when some. A, guy I told stranger, I invited my home, stole my iPhone four. At the time. That could have been a bottom. That wasn't a bottom for me. I had situations where I was. I was raped. I was raped by, a man. I almost. And I wanted him to marry me. That could have been a bottom there. That wasn't my bottom. So when everybody says, like, okay, well, what's the sign? And I'm like, my real question is, what's your tolerance for pain? What's your tolerance?

>> Tiffanie: I like that response. I've never heard that response, and you are absolutely right. bottom is as far as you're going to let it go, how long are you in it for? It's never going to get better.

>> Denise Lee: I was blessed by God. I didn't see it at the time, Tiffanie, but I was blessed by God to have every single one of my abusers get dragged away by a court system. I was fired. Some type of intervention happened where I was physically removed from the situation. So for me, the signs never happened because I was extricated from the situation. But for some people, it could be you've cried too much. Maybe you're listening to way too many Tony Braston songs. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe the court has gotten involved. I don't know. Maybe you've gotten too many black eyes. I think about, a client of mine, his ex girlfriend, the guy she was seeing bit him so much, hospitalized her, broke a couple of ribs. Like, everybody's different. But if you wake up and you're like, d***, this is too much. That's your sign. I'm done telling people. Okay. Gaslighting, signs of manipulations. Isolate. I can go over the formulas of what a predator does. That's not. That's because it doesn't work. If you're not in the state of readiness to flee. I'm sorry to say that, but that's just a fact.


Mamas who came from abuse situations can create abusers in the process

I've been doing this for almost 15 years. My own healing work and talking to other people. It don't work until you're ready to leave. And you know what that looks like? It could be you seeing your mom getting smacked upside ahead. You can see the fact that you open your bank account. You're like, wait a minute, I thought there was x amount. Now it's negative. What happened. Like, everybody's situation's different.

>> Tiffanie: Oh, for sure. I, mean, abuse comes in so many different ways. So many different ways. And sometimes people don't even realize that's what they're in because you're like, oh, well, that's normal. That's normal. Like, you know, you can't hang out with this person. I don't want you wearing that. I'm gonna order your food for you. All that is controlling issues. And nobody needs to control you. Nobody. You control yourself and your kids when they're young, when they get older.

>> Denise Lee: But, yeah, we're both mothers. We're both mothers. And every day, I have to ask myself, am, I setting my son up to be an abuser? And let me explain how. Let me explain how if I try to deprive him of the right to make independent choices, if I disrespect and ignore his real and valid feelings, if I try to isolate him from his friends as a form of punishment without cause, if I don't work out, waste and mediate problems, if I let emotional problems fester, I'm setting my son up to be an abuser. If I'm not aware of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I came from that background where that behavior was normalized. And if I want to create generational trauma, I could lean on him emotionally and tell him stuff that's not appropriate. Right? Like, mamas who came from abuse situations, unfortunately, can create abusers in the process. Unless they get healed.

>> Tiffanie: Yes. A lot of. A lot of them become abusers themselves, especially people who are molested at a very young age. You don't know that. That's not normal. And if nobody ever talks to you about it, if the whole family wants to shove it under a rug, how are you supposed to know that this isn't right, other than maybe what society says? But when you've been raised that way, what the h*** do they know? They're not my house.

>> Denise Lee: They.

>> Tiffanie: They didn't live what I lived. And so it's a lot of pressure nowadays. Cause me, too. I decided I am. I am breaking the generational trauma cycle in my family. Enough is enough.

>> Denise Lee: Amen to that. You know, I think about. I mean, my mother sexually molested me, right? There's no way in h*** that she was sexually molested. There's no way in h***. And then whoever molested her wasn't molested. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.

>> Tiffanie: Right? So how do you help people get out of this ruthenous?

>> Denise Lee: It goes back to a couple of things, and I hate to, I hate to put it back on the onus on you, right? Because I think we live in a society, Tiffanie, that says with, this right pill, you click this right button, you add to cart, you show up in this one, you get these twelve steps. Then you're, then your officer races and you're healed and you're wonderful and sexy and beautiful, right?

>> Tiffanie: Oh, yeah. Those pills, they do it all now.

>> Denise Lee: Tiffanie, they're coming up with research that's showing that people who are antidepressant have a hard time long term with their memory. So even those pills ain't working all the way. But I digress. You have to have a few things if you want to get well, right? And none of them really has anything to do with me, is going to take some h two o.


Are you honest about what's really happening in your abusive relationship

Let me explain what that is. Now I'm talking, I'm not talking about water. I'm talking about, first of all, your humility. Are you willing to say, you know what? I know? I try so hard to control my abuser, to control the situation, to put on enough makeup to cover the black eyes, right? To come up excuses for why stuff was torn up in your house, why you had to move four times in the last year, right? Are you willing to fess up and let people know, like, it ain't together and it hasn't been for a long, long, long time? That's number one, right? Number two is, are you honest about what's really happening? You know, everybody says the abusers are the mask manipulators. I would say the victims are the mask manipulators as well. Because in order to stay in a situation that's just bat s*** crazy, you're going to have to spend some awesome lies.

>> Tiffanie: You are not lying there like you're living a whole different life in your mind.

>> Denise Lee: They have the Joker movie coming out, right? I'm like, you're playing the ultimate Joker movie in your head about how wonderful he is and how bad is he or she is or is not that bad or could have been worse, all that stuff, right? So are you honest enough to be like, he stole from me, he's costing me. Fine. He or she has costed me. And this is specifically how I enabled them. And this is how I've recognized he's a danger to m, not just me, to my babies, he or she. This is. How are you honest enough to specifically say out, wow, like, if I was a prosecutor against this relationship. Forget about labeling, all right? I don't want anybody because I know survivors are the ultimate self flagellation victims. Like. Like, piling on, like, how miserable I am to rationalize getting more piles of abuse on you. So I don't want to get into this. I want to say, from a general saying, like, if I was prosecuting the case of your relationship, would I define it as guilty as cray cray? Can we? Can we. And, the verdict is cray cray. So, are you honest?

>> Tiffanie: That quant room. I've been in that room a few times.

>> Denise Lee: But. Your honor. No, no. So, on. Humility, honesty, and the last thing is. Oh, openness to learn. For a lot of us, the reason why we stayed in an abusive situation is because we believe that we knew all the answers. We believe that we could figure it out on our own terms, our own way. We double down on the denial and the pessimism and suppress the signs to ourselves and other people that something was off. Are we open enough to learn that maybe we don't have it all figured out, that, maybe we weren't in control of the situation as much as we try to believe? So I can't help anybody unless they have their h two o. And then once we have that in place, you'll get the tools to understand the language you use that enablated, facilitated and debilitated you and attracted people who harmed you. But I can't do that until you got your h two o.

>> Tiffanie: Might as well talk into a wall.

>> Denise Lee: And I've done that many times, and I'm tired of that. Look, look, Tiffanie. 2024 has been lit for me in terms of chat chi pt. I'm like, you're telling me that if I could put some prompts into that thing, it will start pumping out fact. And I realized something, Tiffanie. The more I got real about what I didn't know, the better the answers got. Yo, I don't know how to look. I was just telling Chad, just, I don't know how to cook eggplant and my traeger smoker, tell me how to do this. And, like, here's a recipe, here's the cooking temperature, here's the process. I'm like, yes, yes. I'm not even trying to fight it. I'm not trying to spin my own little. You add barbecue. No, no, no barbecue sauce. Just do what the d*** thing told me to do. I'm like, I've been seeing results. Now, if you can let some d*** robot tell you that, why can't you let a human being that wants to connect with you?

>> Tiffanie: I feel like people are they feel more comfortable with the d*** robot.

>> Denise Lee: It's not gonna judge me. It's not going to talk smack about me on socials.

>> Tiffanie: Give it time.

>> Denise Lee: You know what's crazy, Tiffani? We will tell all of our business to people who don't know us, have no commitment to us, have no sense of responsibility. But the person that's right next to us, that actually cares, that actually has. Shows empathy, concern, demonstrates trust. We want to push them off to the side, because you know what? True intimacy is scary for people who are survivors of abuse.

>> Tiffanie: Yeah, I'm one of them. A good guy comes around and I want to push you away because it scares me. It's scary.

>> Denise Lee: Yeah, it's. It. I mean, I've been married to my husband for twelve years. Twelve years. I. Yeah, 20. 12. 20. It's 20. It's 2024. Right. I can. For real? For real. You think it's the dues that get these dates mixed? up, I'd be like, okay, let's carry the two over the three. Okay.


Tiffany: M. says he made a chance on the relationship

I, mean, the p*** up wanted me is that I married someone who was willing to love me even when I wasn't ready to love myself. Now, it reveals some of his own enmeshment, enabling issues, codependency issues. But that's beside the point. The point was that I was willing to believe strongly in the idea of a healthy relationship, even when I didn't understand what it really looked like. I made a chance on the relationship. I didn't say the person, because I think too many people get tripped up on trying to find validation in a person. I didn't say that. A relationship. And, what does a relationship look like? Well, it has shared visions. Where are we going? It has shared values. This is what I believe in. It has shared virtues. This is what I hold dear to me. Right. And I understood that, and I held tight to that.

>> Tiffanie: You definitely have to want the same things. People are always like. Oh, it doesn't matter. M. No, it does. Because if you want to keep reaching for the stars and this person is fine down below, you don't want to be stuck where they are, and you will be stuck where they are. You need to keep reaching for the stars. Don't take undercover I girl.

>> Denise Lee: I remember listening to one, mentor saying, why are you talking about sewing with the eagles when you're hanging around with the turkeys on the ground? And that hit hard. That hit hard. But you know what? Here's the thing. I kept talking the talk about 1015 years ago. I want better from me. Right? But then I was listening to sad log songs. I was watching all these dramas, online. Crime stuff. no, no, this is joke. I mean, I was watching stuff that was facilitating the continuation of the self pity, right? So how in the world can I dream bigger while I didn't, my lifestyle was undermining it. So part of that h two o is, are you really honest about what you really want? Are you giving a lip service? And the fact of the matter is, the reason why I didn't get better was because I wasn't doing better.

>> Tiffanie: I can. I feel that. I feel that you have to make changes. And your mind is going to tell you every reason why not to make these changes or why to skip this day. We can do it again tomorrow. And then the next day you have a new excuse. It's so easy to get tripped up, but you have. You have to meet yourself where you want to be. You can't stay where you are.

>> Denise Lee: This year, Tiffanie, is my first active year of actually being a guest on a podcast. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I'm a podcast guest virgin. My, Cherry's been popped. I'm okay. Sorry, that was a bad analogy.

>> Tiffanie: No, I love popping cherries.

>> Denise Lee: Well, not. You're not the first. You're not the very, very first, but you've been. You've been you part of the initiation process.


Tiffany: Get out of abusive situations ASAP. Seriously. You are enabling something that's causing health problems

The point I'm trying to make is that I think for a lot of, like, I was telling myself, Tiffanie, that I needed to have a certain number of criteria under my belt. I needed to have a book, I needed to be on Forbes, blah, blah. I need to have all these credentials. I need to be on Ted. I need whatever I was setting myself to block happiness for my life. I think a lot of survivors do that. They think that as part of the imaginary thinking, you have to have certain things in place. And that s*** doesn't work that way. It doesn't work. If you're waiting to feel that you need to leave, you will end up 6ft deep. You will only go down like, that's it. And when I mean down, I mean like death or in hospice or hospital, wherever you get taken down, either. Because if you don't, he's not beating your a**. You are enabling something that's causing health problems. I'm just being frank. I'm, being frank here.

>> Tiffanie: Yeah. Your nervous system takes a hit.

>> Denise Lee: And so I needed to follow with the facts and not my feelings, because my feelings, all they were, was fine tuned to keeping myself small, diminishing myself, coming up with excuses. Yo, your feelings are. Were a great evolutionary design. Right? When we were, like, running in caves, it had, like. Like, clubs in our hands and saber toothed tigers. That had a great evolutionary purpose. But it's not working now, boo boo. It ain't.

>> Tiffanie: Yeah, I'm not dragging no, like, mammoth by the hair.

>> Denise Lee: But we. It's wired in us. It's wired in us to just do the status quo, repeat what we see. Like, we have. We have so many different types of cells in our bodies, Tiffanie. Like, one of them we have is called mirror neurons in our brain. And, it's literally what it is, a mirror. It matches and mimics what it sees. And the more you become exposed and conditioned to hostile, traumatic, abusive situations, your mirror neurons say, hey, this is normal, and he's smacking me around. I saw it. It's just normalized. So we are biologically wired to follow our feelings match and mirror what we see. And then we're wondering why we're not going nowhere.

>> Tiffanie: Yeah, I mean, you gotta have a clear head and a clear path to go where you want to be.

>> Denise Lee: Even before that, Tiffanie, get the h*** out where you're at. Get the h*** out where you're at. I was telling my husband this. I said, you know, the only way that I got healed was the fact by pure providence that I was extricated from those situations. I needed my nervous system to calm down. And so even before you do CBT, cognitive behavior therapy, even before you do any of that mess, girl, guy, who have you get out of, quit that job. And people are like, oh, quit that job. I need that job, baby, that job is killing you. You don't need the health insurance. It's killing you. Quit that job. Move. Don't tell nobody. Like, I don't be like people. I'm not no punk. Be a punk. Run. Seriously. Like, forward, first up. Run forwards. Run. Like, run. Trust me, when you run and you get out of this situation, you will start getting clarity. But you can't get well in the place that you're getting sick.

>> Tiffanie: Oh, God, I love that. Absolutely. And you're not a punk. If anything, you're punking yourself because you're staying in a bad situation. You're going to be looking for Ashton Kutcher's a**, and he's not going to be there, but you're doing it to yourself. I don't.

>> Denise Lee: That's the thing. I. Look, I had that fantasy, too, right? That somehow prince Charming is going to gallop on this white horse and swoop me up from my gutter and take me to his mansion on the top of the hill and introduce me to all these people. But I never asked myself, does Prince Charmin, once a self loathing alcoholic that has poor impulse control? That's hard to admit. And that's hard to say, because, again, one of the things that survivors grapple with, just like their abusers, is reality.

>> Tiffanie: Reality hurts when you literally have to be honest with yourself. You might not like what you see, but it's the truth. It's the honest truth. You have to look at it if you want to move past it, you got to know what you're moving on from. You know what you want to be better from.

>> Denise Lee: I remember 20. It was it 2016. And I'm like, I might.


A lot of survivors are guilty of trying to spin alternate facts, Tiffany says

I might mention this, Tiffanie, to get into the politics, because I hate this call. It's all garbage. But I remember they came up, I forgot, Conrad. I forgot her name, said, alternate reality. Alternate facts. Alternate facts. And I thought to myself, that is the craziest thing I have ever heard. Alternate facts. So wait a minute. There's, like, a. Like, there's a version of facts that's completely parallel from what's actually happening. And I think a lot of survivors are guilty of trying to spin alternate facts. Well, you see how this was happening, and blah, blah, blah, he came from a bad blah, blah, blah, blah. If I didn't blah, blah, I'm like, no, you're not a pundit, okay? You don't need to spin scenarios. I need you to be honest about the who, the what, the when, the how, like. And stop editorializing. What's happening, right?

>> Tiffanie: It's all the excuses that we make. Enough. No more excuses.

>> Denise Lee: For a lot of us who are survived. There's a wonderful book. There's a wonderful book. I got a lot of books I could recommend. But anyway, I'm thinking about this one particular book. Maria Marco's a taste for paint is out of. Out of print. You got to go on a books.com if you want to find it. All the good stuff is out of print because it's too painful to read. Anyway, one of the things that, she talks about is the fact that for survivors of pain, have been conditioned to enjoy stress hormones. And when. I mean stress hormones, everybody talks about, like, cortisol, right? Like, the cortisol, right? Everybody talks about cortisol, but there's a lot of other hormones. There's norepinephrine, there's adrenaline. Okay? And what those hormones do give you a false high, the same, you know, you've heard of a runner's high. There's also a drama high from being smacked around, not knowing who, what's going to happen next. And you get a rush from those feelings. And so if you've been addicted to those chemicals from an, early age, you want to, want to replicate it again and again, paying the rent check a little too late, making sure that you yell in front of your boss right before the review period. Like all sorts of stuff that seems crazy on the surface, but really what it is is chasing those desires of those hormones that give you high. The same kind of high that people who have gamblers, who gamblers and all sorts, it's the same type of high.

>> Tiffanie: You're chasing it. You're chasing that next high. I love, absolutely love what you're doing. I do want, so your website is info dot denise gle.com connect. I just want. I'm also going to put it in the show notes, but anyone who does want to get a hold of you, because I absolutely love, love what you're doing and it's so needed. Do you do this in person? Are you only online? Is it both?

>> Denise Lee: Yeah. Yeah. So that info that Denise lee, that connect, is that if you're interested in, signing up on my mailing list, I always tell people, if you don't know anything, just look at my name, Denise G. Lee, and pop it in google and something will show up and you just click and go wherever you need to go. But, I try to make life easier because if we try to heal, we don't need anything more complicated than that. Anywho, to answer your question, I do my thing online because I know that, a, you're busy and b, I don't want to go nowhere. Easy peasy.

>> Tiffanie: You know what I love about you? You are straightforward. You're my kind of people. And I just. I love it. I love it. I mean, that way you can even see, like, more people. You know, if you stay local, you're only. You got a small circle. Yeah, yeah.

>> Denise Lee: I've talked to people in Australia. I mean, it's all around the world, like, so that's awesome. And here's the thing that I think people need to understand. It doesn't matter if you have a different culture than me. The through line of abuse and recovery runs parallel. It does. It really does. Because I can relate to you because I understand what it looks like to survive. And I want to show you what thriving looks like.

>> Tiffanie: I love that. Do you see a lot of, like, domestic violence people comment? Like, I'm sure you see all kinds of stuff. People who have worked.

>> Denise Lee: Oh, yeah, yeah, girl, keep living. You're gonna see all sorts of stuff. And you know what? I stopped telling myself, I've. I've seen it all. I think three years ago, I stopped that narration in my mind. I've seen it all. No, no. And I don't even want to put lids on, like, okay, this is what this. This is what the typical cases, because then I'm bleeding back into my own dysfunction of trying, to contain everything into one outfits in one box situation. And I think for our culture, when I say our culture, I'm talking about western culture, is very guilty of being emotionally immature in the sense of only thinking. That's a one size fits all solution as well as problem.

>> Tiffanie: Ain't nothing in this world. 1 second.


Tiffany says PTSD therapists often administer cognitive and behavioral therapy first

It's all.

>> Denise Lee: But we try to do that because we try to monetize and distribute and scale. That's where, that's a whole different tangent. There's reasons why a lot of people are saying, like, man, this therapist was garbage. I'm like, yeah, your therapist was garbage because they were taught one slice tabs all and think that that's the solution for everybody. No, it's not. No, it's not. Like, I remember I was reading the study, Tiffanie, and they were talking about they brought in Iraq, war veterans, and they try to administer immediately cognitive and behavioral therapy. basically, cognitive is your thoughts, right? Talk therapy, where you try to replace one negative thing from the other. And would you believe, like, what was the dropout rate for people, these, these Iraq, fresh off threshold of duty, fresh out tour coming out. What was it? What do you think the drop off rate was? They couldn't complete the program, say 60%? Yeah, it was actually a little lower, about 80%, because when you're fresh off the heels of trauma, you ain't talking. I don't want anybody who's immediately out of a trauma situation to come and talk to me, girl, do some. Do some yoga, all right? Go chant. Go do some aqua therapy. Whatever you need to do. Calm your nervous system down, because when you're recovering from a traumatic situation, your body needs to calm down before your head can react to what's happening around you. So it's a process. And sometimes you may have. You may be calmed down, then you might have an episode trigger, then have to go back to somatic body work exercise, and you flip flop. It's a zigzag. Everybody's different. So I don't want anybody who's listening to think, oh, well, my therapist said I wasn't working because I didn't do this way. And it worked for all her thousands of us. Like, d*** about her other thousand. Like, your situation is unique, right?

>> Tiffanie: Not all therapists are actually even trained for trauma, which is crazy to me, but they're not. That's not what they're there for, so they have no idea how to help you.

>> Denise Lee: I remember I was diagnosed, one therapist, Tiffanie, she said I had PTSD, right? Post traumatic stress disorder. I didn't even really know what that was. And then I remember one session, a few sessions, you, know when you get clarity, when you. When you. When you. When you're in a calm state, you're like, wait a minute, that was messed up. So I had one of those this was messed up moments, Tiffanie, where I remember I was telling my therapist about my mother contacting me, and I was just nervous and just on edge. And my therapist said, like, she's not here. I'm, Like, don't you know when a PTSD survivor reacts to someone who's their victim? Like, the. The victimizer, like, but I didn't get it, how woefully inadequate she was, because I just wanted to be loved and I didn't care who was going to be my mommy substitute.

>> Tiffanie: You just knew you needed another one. Well, I think you have come a long way. Not that, you know, I knew you back there, but I think you are doing wonderful things, and I think you're carrying yourself perfectly fine. And I love that you're able to laugh and, you know, because we can't always be so serious. And, like, once you get to a certain point, you can kind of, like, look back and be like, what the f***? Like, hello, you know, like, it feels great once you get there.

>> Denise Lee: It does. And I. And I want everybody. Thank you, Tiffanie. And I wouldn't even sit here and say, I'm arrived, right. I think I'm going to be spending the rest of my life decoding and understanding what really happened. Because when we're. We're healing, we made a lot of excuses. Not just for our victimizer, the person that victimized us. Right. We made excuses for ourselves. I had a little tongue, twiggle. We just did such an awesome job trying to make right was what was wrong around us. That's going to take some time to figure out what really happened. I was learning, from my mentor, the day that. It's not that the trauma impacted us the most, it's the conclusions that we made of ourselves as a result of the trauma. That's what we need the healing from.

>> Tiffanie: That's the.

>> Denise Lee: Yeah, yeah. And so I think that's a lifelong process, Tiffanie. And anybody who says add to cart, join this seminar. Go, go chant on this mountaintop. Like, that's. Take this ayahuasca, some magic mushrooms, and that's all you gonna need. Like, gar, take some hypnotherapy. Like, look, I'm not saying that there's certain elements of healing that doesn't exist. Like, I'm not saying that, but if you have spent 18 years in a bat crazy environment, whatever it was, in your most prime formative years, there's a lot of unlearning that has to occur on top of going forward. What happened to you in your twenties, your thirties, whatever. I've had people talk to me, Tiffanie, who have repressed stuff. like, they're in his fifties, right? Repressed stuff that happened 30 years ago because it was that for real?

>> Tiffanie: Well, and also, I mean, we block a lot of that's to protect ourselves. So you have to kind of unpack it all because you don't even have the full puzzle yet.

>> Denise Lee: And even if you think you got it, there's going to be another layer in effect. Tiffanie. It took me so many years to go. My goodness, how lonely and deprived my mother was to find satisfaction in having me finger her. I think it was a joke. How deprived was she for comfort and for stroking that. She thought that was okay thing to do. And it took me so not with a vein of anger, not with self pity on myself, but just like, wow. Wow.

>> Tiffanie: It's got to be a low place. For sure it's a low place.


Denise says learning to forgive yourself is a lifelong process

>> Denise Lee: I've talked to so many people on my socials, then they would say, Denise, you don't know me. How dare you? For trying to say he knew what he, meaning my father knew what he was doing to me and my mother. I remember I said, honey, baby, he was sick. And you're getting yourself sicker because he didn't understand how to love you the way you deserve to be loved. And all you're doing is causing yourself to be flooded with stress hormones which will mutate your cells and will cause cancer and inflammation throughout your body. Once I understood the biology behind why we need to drop the resentments neurobiologically, I'm like, oh, snap. If I'm a real survivor, I have to stop myself from being inflamed, not just mentally, but physically.

>> Tiffanie: I found forgiveness that I needed to do that for all of. All of it. I'm, guessing you also found forgiveness.

>> Denise Lee: It's a layering effect. It's a layering. And, like, if I'm to be really real with Tiff, with you, Tiffanie, everybody who's listening, for a lot of us, we don't. We always talk about forgiving the abuser, right? But we don't talk about forgiving ourselves and we don't forgive God. Higher power, whatever, for putting us in the situation to begin with because, And let me explain why. Because if we think we are in control of the situation, we could have manifested certain things, right? Then we don't feel a sense of worth and value. And that's why a lot of survivors struggle with suicidal ideation. I don't have value in this world because I've been thrown in these situations. Therefore, I need to punish myself through risky, dangerous, and suspect situations on people. If there's anything I want people listening to. Understand is learning to forgive yourself is a lifelong process. Even if you were a kid.

>> Tiffanie: Absolutely. I actually just got a tattoo, and it said to. And it's in my handwriting, and it said to the girl I was before, I forgive you because I do. I have to forgive myself for allowing so much crap to happen. And we're moving forward. Moving forward.

>> Denise Lee: I like that. I like that. Onwards and upwards. Because I don't want to be where I was anymore.

>> Tiffanie: I refuse. Nope.


Tiffany: For everybody listening, I want you understand forgiveness and self compassion

Is there anything else that you wanted to share before we close?

>> Denise Lee: Oh, gosh. I just wanted to. Anything more? Okay. For everybody who's listening, I want you understand that forgiveness and self compassion is a layering. There's going to be days they're going to be more awesome than others. But just know the fact that if you keep believing in better, it will come to you. Just keep doing the work and remember your h two o humility, honesty, and openness to learn.

>> Tiffanie: Love that. Absolutely. I want to thank you so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think a lot of people can get something out of it. And if you know somebody that this could actually benefit, please share it with them. The more we can all heal, the better this world can be. We all got to do our part, though.

>> Denise Lee: Thank you so much for having me, tiffany.