Hi, I'm Quinn Carnegie. Welcome to Manifestation, Motivation and Passion. If you're looking to
transform by delving into brain science, sacred inner wisdom and want to heal and feel great
about your life and live in your powerful loving center, or springing affluence into your world,
then tune in and let's evolve together. Lisa is a rock star life and business analyst,
speaker and host of Epiphanish podcast and is also an established author, trainer and mental
health advocate. Thank you, Lisa, for joining us today. Thank you for having me, Quinn. Lovely to
be here. Thank you. Now, you've got quite a resume going on there. Can you tell us a little bit about
how you got into it? Yeah, I can. So I spent essentially from 2005 to 2015. So that
decade or so in the healthcare space as an ambulance paramedic. I was in healthcare prior
to that in different roles. So really, you know, around 20 years or so in the healthcare space,
I left ambulance with PTSD, anxiety and depression as per my psychiatric diagnosis, and
because shortly fell into a hole and spent 18 months getting myself out of said hole.
And, you know, I guess at that point of diagnosis, I was basically told by the medical fraternity,
which I considered myself part of, you know, I went to uni to be an ambulance paramedic,
I studied anatomy, like, you know, my background is quite, you know, I guess, like, the Western
world mainstream medical, I come from a medical family, I've got doctors in the family. So that
was my comfort space. And when I went to them for, okay, well, what do I do about this problem that
I currently have now, I essentially got, we will try and get your medication balance correct,
try and avoid your triggers, which was everything, life, the world, and, you know, cross your fingers
and hope for the best. And I was put on a disability pension at 34 years of age, I had a
two year old and a 12 and 14 year old step kids at that point. That's a lot. Yeah. So,
oh, sorry, I was just going to say, so did you think you had PTSD or what did that?
Before the diagnosis? Yeah. Yeah. No. I knew I was really angry, which was my primary symptom was
rage. I knew I was really angry. And as far as I was concerned, everyone in the world was an
asshole. That was my, that was my take on it. I've spoken about this before, it's a bit like being
Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, right? So when she's whizzing around in the house in a tornado and she,
and everyone goes, Oh no, there's a girl in a tornado. That's what it looks like from outside.
As far as Dorothy's concerned, she's like, Oh, it's windy today. Right? What a great example.
Like she's in it, right? When you're in it, your perception of what is happening is quite different.
You just, it's one foot in front of the other. I've got to go to work to make money to buy
groceries. So I'm going to put one foot in front of the other and I get up and I go to work and,
you know, and you just do the do. So when you're in the middle of the storm, it's, it's kind of
like, it's harder to recognize what's going on. And I, that's part of my issue with the reactive
mental health care system we have at the moment, which relies on the individual having the awareness
that they need to seek help. Like I was the last person to know that I was as unwell as I was.
And when I came out of the PTSD closet, as I call it, and I came out and I said, listen, you know,
I think, I think maybe I've got a problem. You know, I'm really, really, really, really,
really angry all the time. And, and, you know, I've got a short temper and everything's annoying and
I'm super irritable and you know, all the things, you know, I'm not sleeping and I'm having
flashbacks. And, and when I, when I said that to my husband, he said, yeah, no shit. You've been
awful to live with for two years. What do you mean? Right. Like I was the last one to my own PTSD
party. Uh, I didn't realize how bad the situation was, how unwell I was because I felt like I
didn't have a choice. Like I was just living day by day and you know, doing the things that had to
be done. For others out there that maybe in a similar situation to that, are you comfortable
and you don't have to go into this if you don't want to, but are you comfortable saying like,
what, what did that look like on a day to day basis? Oh God, it's, um, so this is sort of
2013, like 10 years ago now. So it's a little, it's a little cloudy, but, um, you know, at this
point now, 10 years in the future, 10 years down the line in terms of, you know, healed and all of
that, it's almost like thinking back is almost like it happened to somebody else. Like it's,
it's very, it's so weird to think that that was actually my experience. I can tell you that,
uh, I essentially had no, no patience, zero patience. Um, so I was very easily irritated
and, and set off and you know, it's been referred to by many as, as the family walking on eggshells
around you. That was absolutely the circumstance in, in our home is that everyone was very afraid
to make a noise or say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or, you know, whatever that was going
to set mom off. But it's, it's, it's next level tricky because they don't know what's going to set
me off. And I don't know what's going to see, you know, like we're all playing, we're playing a game
and nobody knows the rules, right? But we're trying to keep within the rules. So I was very quick to
anger. I was having what I called, uh, visitors. So for example, I was walking down the, you know,
supermarket aisle, the fridge with butter and cheese and all that stuff is in the fridge.
And I would get visions almost of, um, you know, like, you know, like, you know,
um, people that have passed in traumatic circumstances from, from my career. And I would,
I called them visitors and I would be like, not now. Now's not a good time. Like I'm just here to
buy cheese, right? Like I just, and I kind of, yeah, I mean, in terms of the DSM diagnosis,
they're flashbacks, right? Um, I had, I had those, I don't, I never remembered any nightmares.
I possibly did have them, but didn't recall them in the morning. I certainly had terrible sleep,
uh, broken sleep and, and, you know, couldn't fall asleep, couldn't stay asleep,
woke up tired every day. And I think what's important to also mention is that PTSD
doesn't, and, and mental health in general actually doesn't just live between your ears.
It is a full body, full human experience.
Oh, absolutely. Especially like when you've got, you know, like you're saying,
everyday triggers. Oh, well, you know, it made me laugh and they're like, avoid your triggers.
And I'm like, well, you know, when you've been to a car accident, driving on any road is a trigger.
When you go to, you know, a cardiac arrest at a shopping center, going and doing the groceries is
a trigger. Like, because we're not coming from a frontline perspective, right? We work in the
community. We work in, uh, you know, schools and shopping centers and on the side of the road and
like in the same place that we live as opposed to, for example, um, and I'm, and I'm not,
I'm not comparing it to minimize either of them. I just, um, I'm trying to demonstrate the
difference in triggers, so to speak. So for a soldier whose triggers are related to an overseas
deployment, the triggers are different. Now your nervous system doesn't know the difference. Like,
so, you know, you'd still absolutely be able to be triggered, but I know someone, uh, who's an
Afghanistan veteran and the mountains, any sort of mountainscape takes him right back to Afghanistan.
And his wife and him actually opened a yoga center and a healing center. And she had a picture on the
wall, a painting that had waves like ocean waves, but the shape of the waves were quite mountainous.
And he actually had to get her to change the photo on the wall, the picture, uh, because for him,
it just took him straight back to the mountains of Afghanistan. The triggers, the, or the, or the
things that I was attempting to avoid were Woolworths or the kids' school, or like the
road that I drove up and down, because when you live and work in the same community, you know,
I think these, you know, moments and places are essentially unavoidable, which is why I thought
it was so ridiculous to suggest like avoid your triggers. I was like, okay, well, I'll just
stay in my house. Like where, what, yeah. Okay. How do you, how do you do that and still
live a life and function as a, as a human being and parent and, and go and, you know, like it was
just, so that for me was not a viable option. I tried the couch for about three, three and a half
months. I sat on the couch and I watched everything that there was on Netflix, I think. And I thought,
okay, well, this is, this is not sustainable. I don't want to be, you know, like I said, I was 34
and the idea of getting to 68, you know, another 34 years, sitting on the couch, being this, you
know, shell of a human, taking my meds and trying to avoid my triggers and my kids kissing me on the
cheek to, you know, go to school and me really not being present and engaged in my life. That was
not an option. I was like, okay, we need a plan B. And the medical model didn't have a plan B. So I
had to look elsewhere. And so you found NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. Can you tell me a
little bit about what that is and when it should be used? I'll do my best. So NLP, as you said,
neuro-linguistic programming. So neuro being mind, linguistic being language and programming,
essentially being the structures and systems and rules that we have in our minds for our lives.
It's old. It's not as new as people think. It's been around, essentially was born out of the
positive psychology movement, roughly, you know, late sixties, seventies. So even though I don't
feel like that was long ago, that was really long ago, sort of 60, 70 years ago. So it's not a new
thing. My perspective is that NLP is a framework of philosophies and processes together that allow
for new ways of thinking. And, you know, we're all programmed to some extent where we're programmed
by our childhood experiences, the way that we were raised, the values instilled in us by our parents,
you know, all those influences in childhood and teenage years and our experiences as an adult and
so on and so forth. All of that is so-called, you know, inverted commas programming. So what we're
doing with NLP is being able to look at those things and the way we think and how we perceive
the world and what we believe and all that stuff and, and sort of take a step back from it rather
than just living it, take a step back and be objective about it and become the observer of
those things. And then from that point, you can pick and choose what is useful for you, what you'd
like to keep in terms of that programming. So like I said, you know, beliefs and experiences and
stories and values and all of that, what's useful, what's helping you, what's valuable,
what do you want to hold onto and keep and what in that mix of things is unhelpful or
unresourceful? What would you like to change? So for example, if you're running a business,
like myself, right? So you're running a small business and you want to be successful and we
want to make money and we want to pay the bills and all the things, right? But if I've got a belief
that says money is the root of all evil and all rich people are dickheads, I'm going to inherently
sabotage my own success and wealth creation because I don't want to be one of those rich people,
right? If that's what I think rich people are, then I'm going to quite subconsciously
obstruct my own success because I don't want to be that, right? So I will be on the face of it,
you know, working really hard, doing all the things, you know, all the stuff that's involved
in a business. And at the same time, you know, really working against myself in ways that I
probably don't even imagine. And I'm not consciously aware of because at a deep, deep level,
I think that people that are super wealthy are really selfish and I want to be selfish, right?
So when you have a belief or programming that's actually inhibiting you from reaching your goals
or making progress in any direction, you may not be aware of it. And NLP is a way to identify those
things and then reprogram them, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I feel like that kind of leads
on to what I was going to ask next, which was how can NLP be used to detect trauma through
text or speech? So when you're giving that example, how is it used to... In terms of trauma
specifically? Well, it doesn't have to be, but yeah, let's run with trauma. So because of the
the L in NLP, the linguistics, there's a lot of clues in language that a seasoned NLP practitioner
or master practitioner can, as you said, detect in language. So our way of communicating often
reveals what is going on at a subconscious level. For example, a non-trauma example,
there are people that frequently use the word sorry. You might know one of these sorry people.
Oh, yeah. No, sorry about that. Sorry for this. Sorry. Oh, they bump. Like if you bump into them,
they'll say sorry. They say, oh, sorry. And you're like, I hit you. It's my sorry. Like, you know,
like, and it's a bit of a default statement for them. Right. So they're sorry about everything.
They're sorry for everybody. There's a lot of sorry. You're going to notice this now after you
listen to this, you're going to be walking around going, that's one of those sorry people.
I am guilty of doing that on the odd occasion. Yeah. Oh, look. And if you're sorry because,
you know, you are apologizing for an action or a behavior or, you know, there's nothing wrong with
saying sorry when you're genuinely sorry, but there are people with certain patterns that
there's a distinct overuse. And what I, you know, as I said now with 10 years of experience,
what I understand that to be or can be, obviously everyone's different, but often is reflective of
self-worth issues. And they're actually sorry for existing. That's why they say sorry for everything,
because they have some deep stuff going on about their place in the world and being deserving of
their place in the world. And that can come from, you know, a whole bunch of reasons that people get
to that point. They may have been through a family violence situation. They may have had a, you know,
a childhood experience that was very minimizing and demeaning of their value. Right. So there's
lots of reasons that people can come to this. And I would never want to predict, you know, what causes
that. And part of what I do is work and investigate to find that root cause. But the language, coming
back to the point, is identifying or conveying information and clues. So sometimes I think of
myself as like a linguistic detective about what's really going on underneath. So in the context of
trauma, there are ways that people will speak about themselves, words that they may use. It's
generally rather than specific words. It's an overall way of communicating that can indicate to
me that they've been through something significant. And I say significant because trauma is,
it's a big bucket with lots of stuff in it. Right. If you're three years old and you drop your lollipop
in a puddle when you're three, that's trauma. Right. That's traumatic. You're like, I dropped my ice
cream. I dropped my lollipop. Like that's, you know, people ask me, well, what is trauma? I'm like,
basically, if, if it, if you think it was traumatic, it's trauma. Like that's, you know, there's no
competition in trauma. I do tend to see that in, in some spaces where people are, you know, there's a
bit of comparison artists and it can go both ways. Like, it doesn't need to be like that. No. And
it's, it's really, it's, nobody benefits from that. Like it's bad for everybody to either minimize
your own traumatic experience or, you know, experience of something, uh, because it wasn't as
bad as, you know, something catastrophic. It's not good for you, for you as a person to, to diminish
your own experience. That doesn't help you. It doesn't help you move on. It doesn't help you
acknowledge it. It doesn't help you heal. And conversely, to have someone say, Oh, well, you
know, what you went through, isn't that bad. At least you didn't have, you know, X and they sort
of name something dramatic. Like it doesn't help anybody to be in that comparison space. The fact
is if someone experienced something traumatic, whether it's dropping a lollipop in a puddle or
losing mates, uh, on a, on a, you know, uh, military exercise, you know, like a deployment,
it's all trauma. And the truth is that your body and your nervous system and your amygdala and
all of that really doesn't know the difference. It responds the same way. So, you know, our nervous
system doesn't know the difference between running from a saber tooth tiger to your boss yelling at
you because your thing that you needed to hand in is late. You know, your project isn't done.
Your nervous system doesn't know the difference. It responds the same way.
And so I guess from there, are there any sort of ethical considerations that need to be taken
into account when practicing NLP, like for someone that's looking for an NLP practitioner?
Yeah, lots. So I think I like an NLP or really any other modality, you know, whether it's hypnosis or
Reiki or whatever it is, it's, it's a tool in a toolkit, uh, in the same way a tradie has,
you know, a hammer and a spanner and you know, their tools. I can hand a hammer to one person
and they can build a house with it or use it to contribute to building a house. They probably
need more or I can hand a hammer to somebody else and they'll knock somebody else's block off.
So, but it's not the hammer's fault, right? So tools are tools that are used to build a
house. So tools are about how they utilized what intention you have when utilizing them.
NLP copped a bad rap, you know, in the eighties and nineties a little bit because people were
using it predominantly in sales. So, you know, car salesmen and real estate, you know, a lot of them
got, uh, you know, went and did a short course in, in NLP to utilize language with the intention
of manipulating people to make purchases, right? Again, it's not the hammer's fault, right?
Correct. Yeah.
So I would, I would implore any NLP practitioner at any level. So there's this practitioner level,
there's master practitioner, and then there's a trainer level, regardless of your, you know,
your level of training or your experience with NLP as a, as a practitioner, I would implore you to
always return to, uh, the intention and really stay conscious of what it is that you're trying
to achieve and, uh, do one of the things that we teach in NLP training is an ecology check.
So ecology check means, is it good for, is it good for you as in the client, is it good for those
around you and is it good for the greater good? And so keeping that in mind, uh, when utilizing
these tools and in terms of somebody who is seeking to work with, uh, and potentially looking
outside of that sort of psychology box for some support around trauma or mental health, and they're
considering working with someone who is trained in NLP. I would look at a few things, uh, where
did they do their training and is it a reputable, you know, training provider? Are they accredited
with any third party, um, go advisory bodies or governing bodies? So in Australia, we've got the
NLPAA, so the NLP Association of Australia. In the U S there's the ABNLP, the American board of NLP,
and there's, uh, so international, you know, bodies that provide ongoing trainings and upskilling.
And, you know, um, there's a level of, I think, integrity that has to be maintained to continue
to be registered with those bodies. So that's something to have a look at, uh, ask them some
questions like how long was their NLP training? They done a weekend? Have they done, you know,
a week? Have they done months? Have they, you know, and how long have they been utilizing it?
Like all the things that you would potentially ask, you know, a mechanic about your car, you know,
how long have you been a mechanic? Did you go to, you know, TAFE for that? Like, you know, how to,
oh, I just, my dad showed me a few things in the back shed. Um, okay. So if they're the NLP
equivalent of like, you know, oh, I read a book on it, so now I think I can do it.
Okay. I might go and talk to a couple of other NLP practitioners, do your due diligence and,
and ask for, uh, you know, testimonials or referrals or, you know, can I speak to someone
that you've already worked with that got a good result? Maybe if they don't have those freely
available and if it's, if you give it a go and they're not the right fit, uh, again, it's not
the hammer. It's feel free to go and seek out a second or third or fourth opinion. And the,
and I always give an example of lollies. There are, you know, sometimes you have to try several to
find one that you really like. Yeah. I usually talk about Brussels sprouts and mushrooms, right?
Sometimes you're not to realise that it's not for you, but you've, but you've got to try it,
right? You, as soon as you go, you give it a go and you go, Ooh, no, that's not for me.
That's not for me. You've got to taste it to find out. Right. Well, we're almost at the end of our
time. So do you have any social media links or websites that you'd like to tell us about any
packages that you run? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Quinn. Yeah. So look, the quickest way, easiest way to
find me is to either just, you know, Google Lisa Westgate, search me on Spotify and YouTube.
The Epiphanish podcast is on YouTube. If you're a visual person and you'd like to, uh, look at me,
uh, alternatively, you can listen to it, uh, audio only on all the usual podcast places, Spotify and
Apple podcasts and all that. The website is just Lisa Westgate.com. So, uh, and there's links to
website, uh, to the podcast and courses is a course at the moment about language, as you might have
guessed, I'm a bit of a language buff. So there's a course on, uh, mining your language and some
words that you may consider releasing from your vocabulary and some words you might want to adopt
instead. So the website is a good place to, uh, to check out Lisa Westgate.com, uh, and feel free
to stalk me on socials, uh, and send me a DM and connect. I do work with, with individuals. I, I,
I do sessions with people and I also have a business to business offering for people that are, um,
running a business and they're looking for some, some clarity and, uh, consistency in their
communications in their business as well, because I am a scatterbrained neurodivergent woman and I
like to keep busy. So I have a few hats on. Perfect. Oh, well, thank you so much for joining us.
If anyone wants to check out Lisa Westgate.com and, um, thank you again. It's been a real pleasure.
I'm Quinn Carnegie and I hope you enjoy this week's episode of Manifestation, Motivation and
Passion. I'm so thrilled you chose to spend time listening and would be even more grateful if you
left a positive review and if you found value, no doubt your family and friends will too. I'd love
it if you share it with them. Thanks again.