Ronda’s story is raw, heartbreaking, and deeply relatable for anyone carrying a mother wound. At 17, she was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend — and when she told her mother, she was dismissed, blamed, and called a liar. That betrayal shaped the next 30 years of her life, impacting her relationships, safety, trust, and even her physical health. In this episode, we unpack what survival mode looked like for Ronda: isolation, guarding her heart, struggling at school, and moving through life feeling like everyone eventually hurts you. She shares how her therapist challenged her to write — and how writing turned into publishing two books on Amazon as a way to finally release what she carried alone for decades. This conversation highlights the 3 phases of exiting survival mode:

• Self-awareness: naming the truth and recognizing the impact
• Reprogramming: choosing support (therapy + psychiatry) and rewriting the narrative
• Reinvention: turning pain into purpose and helping other women feel less alone

• Being sexually assaulted at 17 and not being believed by her mother
• How betrayal trauma becomes a lifelong “guarded heart”
• PTSD + depression and what it’s like to finally get diagnosed later in life
• Isolation as a trauma response: “I don’t go outside” + “I don’t trust anyone”
• The mother wound and what it does to friendships, identity, and belonging
• Trauma in the body: heart symptoms, stress responses, and stored pain
• How writing became Ronda’s release — and why she published her story
• The pain of repeated betrayal and the lack of accountability from others
• What healing looks like when you’re tired of crying and tired of carrying it

This episode speaks to the women who have survived trauma and then got punished for telling the truth. It’s for the ones who became hyper-independent, guarded, and isolated because trusting people kept hurting. Ronda’s story reminds us that silence isn’t strength — it’s often survival. And survival is not the final destination.

📚 Ronda’s books on Amazon:

• She Didn’t Ask for the Fire
• Letters From the Fire

In this raw and disruptive conversation, Tracy shares her story of growing up in severe dysfunction — from childhood abuse, neglect, and emotional isolation to being a “different” child who could see, hear, and feel what others couldn’t. She walks us through how survival mode became a learned pattern, not a personality trait, and how we often cling to our trauma stories because there’s a hidden payoff: attention, identity, and a sense of power in being “the one who suffered.” We dive into what it really means to guard your soul, why staying in victimhood quietly hands your power back to the people who hurt you, and how to choose a new narrative without denying what you lived through. This episode is a collision of spirituality, self-responsibility, and soul-level truth.

• Tracy’s upbringing in the 60s: abuse, neglect, late-night labor, and isolation
• Discovering her spiritual gifts as a child (psychic, medium, medical intuitive)
• How survival mode becomes a learned behavior, not our natural state
• The difference between protecting your soul and building walls around your life
• Why we cling to the “victim” label and the subconscious payoff behind it
• How replaying the story keeps us stuck in the same emotional loop
• The link between unprocessed pain and physical weight
• Tracy’s journey to releasing 400+ pounds, leaving an abusive husband, and cutting off family that didn’t serve her healing
• Seeing trauma as part of your story, not the definition of who you are
• God/Source, faith, and letting the universe handle those who hurt you
• Practical, spiritual ways to step into a new identity without bypassing your past

• 🌐 Website: tracy-turner.com
• 📱 Instagram (Live Readings Wednesdays @ 7pm EST): @tracyturnerpsychicmedium

In this gripping and deeply vulnerable conversation, Kelly shares her 61-year journey through survival mode — from childhood trauma to parentification, infertility, cancer, widowhood, raising a special-needs child alone, and ultimately surviving a rare autoimmune disease that nearly claimed her life. She opens up about her addiction to chaos, how trauma became her home base, how she built a $6M autism school from her basement, and the heartbreaking moment her body forced her to stop running by shutting down completely. This episode is a masterclass in self-awareness, reprogramming your trauma responses, and reinventing your identity after life strips everything away. You will walk away seeing survival mode in a completely different way — and with a renewed understanding of what healing truly looks like.

• Being “born into” survival mode
• Parentification at age 9 & growing up in chaos
• Living with an alcoholic mother and a raging father
• Infertility, date rape, ovarian cancer & grief
• Adopting a daughter with autism — then becoming a widow at 40
• Building a multimillion-dollar school… while drowning internally
• The body’s breaking point — and her near-death crisis in 2023
• Losing her entire identity: career, community, purpose & health
• Learning to regulate her nervous system without numbing
• The addiction to chaos that trauma survivors don’t recognize
• Rewiring survival mode: “Okay Chad, we don’t think like that anymore.”
• Reinvention after medical retirement & reclaiming purpose

• 🌐 Website: KellyWeaverConsulting.com
• 💌 Email: KellyWeaverConsulting@gmail.com
• 🧭 Coaching: Transformational support for women navigating identity loss, transitions, grief & reinvention

In this powerful, vulnerable episode, Colinda takes us through her story to and through survival mode—from being the youngest of six in a tiny northern Canadian town, to growing up in poverty, dealing with abandonment, family addiction, abuse, and unresolved grief. Every man in her life left. Her home was chaotic. Her body carried trauma long before she had the language for it. Survival mode turned her into the peacekeeper, the fixer, and the overachiever—pushing herself, people-pleasing, and constantly trying to be “better” so she could finally feel worthy of love. Decades later, after a near breakdown and a literal collision with a pole, she began the long, messy process of learning what self-love actually looks like in practice. We talk about self-awareness, reprogramming, and reinvention; how affirmations and afformations started rewiring her beliefs; and how a 31-day challenge of ten daily acts of love became the foundation of her methodology and her book Living in Love. This is not a fluffy, Pinterest self-love chat. This is self-love as rebellion for women whose nervous systems were built on “you are not enough.”

🧠 What We Talk About

• How survival mode showed up for Colinda:
• people-pleasing
• fixing everyone else
• overachieving
• never listening to her body
• The impact of:
• a father who left and never came back
• poverty and unsafe living conditions
• a sibling’s addiction, prison, and early death
• inappropriate touch and boundary violations inside the family
• Emotional neglect and being raised by a mother who gave everything to the community and almost nothing to herself or her kids
• How trauma translated into:
• dating narcissistic partners
• proving worth through doing
• constant burnout and nervous system overload
• The mirror moment: walking into a pole, seeing her own eyes, and realizing how deeply unhappy she truly was
• The beginning of healing: meditation, Louise Hay mirror work, tapping, and slowly changing her self-talk
• The role of forgiveness (especially of her sister) – not as excusing harm, but as releasing its power over her
• How grief during COVID and her sister’s passing cracked her open to the question:
• “What do I want to be?” → “I want to be love.”
• “What do I want this book to be?” → “I want this book to bring love.”
• The 31-day challenge: 10 acts of love a day and how it shifted her nervous system, her relationships, and her sense of worth
• The difference between affirmations and afformations, and how positive questions helped her brain find proof she was worthy of love
• How to begin building deservability and self-worth when you don’t believe you deserve anything good
• Why healing is ongoing: trauma like grief, integration instead of erasure, and giving yourself permission to release what no longer needs to lead

🗝️ Key Takeaways

🔗 Connect with Colinda

• 🌐 Website: ColindaLatour.com
• 📖 Book: Living in Love – available on Amazon and major online retailers
• 🎥 YouTube: Living in Love with Colinda
• 💌 Living in Love Movement (launching September): a free global...

In this raw and unfiltered conversation, Honey shares how she spent most of her life in chronic survival mode—anxious, exhausted, over-medicated, and completely disconnected from her own needs. From growing up in the 50s and 60s under a picture-perfect version of patriarchy, to battling menopause, chronic pain, brain fog, and a cabinet full of prescriptions, Honey’s story is a brutal mirror for what so many women silently live through. Everything shifts when, in her 60s, one introduction to cannabis becomes the catalyst for reclaiming her body, her clarity, and her life. We talk about trauma, nervous system overload, plant medicine, medical gaslighting, and the power of women healing together. This is not a “go smoke weed, it’ll fix you” conversation. This is about options, sovereignty, and refusing to let a broken system dictate the rest of your story.

🧠 What We Talk About

• What survival mode looked like for Honey: decades of anxiety she didn’t even know she had
• Growing up as a woman in the 50s–80s: pearls, patriarchy, and zero real education about women’s bodies
• The “doctor dance”: prescriptions on top of prescriptions, side effects, and feeling like a stranger in your own skin
• Menopause, chronic fatigue, neuropathy, brain fog and the perfect womanly storm
• The moment her body told her, “If you don’t change something, you’re going to die”
• How one experience with cannabis opened a door to relief, curiosity, and research
• The history, propaganda, and politics around cannabis and why women were never meant to win in that system
• Cannabis as a potential tool for nervous system support, pain relief, and mental quiet—not a cure, not a replacement for medical care
• The importance of women choosing mentors, communities, and inputs that regulate them instead of retraumatizing them
• Why Honey stopped consuming news and fear-based media and how that impacted her nervous system and mental health

🗝️ Key Takeaways

🔗 Connect with Honey

• 🌐 Website & Free PDF: Cannabis Recovery Kit – HealingBeyondHigh.com
• 📖 Book: Healing Beyond High: Cannabis Truth – available on Amazon
• 🎙️ Podcast: Cannabis Truth – conversations with doctors, scientists, and advocates in the cannabis space

In this deeply human episode of Survival Mode Disrupted, Leticia sits down with Gerald “RunRev” Collins, who takes us inside the darkest season of his life — the unexpected loss of his mother, the collapse into depression, and the spiral into survival mode that almost cost him his marriage, his fatherhood, and himself.

Gerald describes:

• The shocking 72-hour decline of his mother
• How grief stripped him of his identity, purpose, and joy
• The depression he hid for years as a Black man raised to “tough it out”
• The moment his wife told him she couldn’t stay unless something changed
• Why survival mode makes you more disconnected, irritable, and numb than you realize
• How one small choice — running one mile — became the key that rebuilt his life

This episode is a masterclass in honest grief, everyday survival, and the power of micro-habits to rewire your sense of self.

• How losing a parent can deton­­ate your emotional foundation
• The silent depression men often hide
• Why survival mode feels like “existing but not living”
• Emotional withdrawal, irritability, and the shame spiral
• The neuroscience of movement + why physical activity helps trauma & depression
• How community became Gerald’s lifeline
• The power of micro-commitments: 1 minute → 5 minutes → transformation
• The difference between motivation and discipline
• Purpose as medicine for grief

So many high-achieving women — and the men they love — are silently drowning under grief, pressure, and the weight of unprocessed emotion. Gerald’s story is a mirror for the people who seem “functional” but are barely holding on.

This episode teaches listeners:

• How to recognize survival mode
• How grief rewires your inner world
• How to rebuild your identity brick by brick
• Why tiny commitments can save your life

If you’ve been stuck, numb, or waiting for “motivation”…

This episode is the spark.

Website: runrevcoaching.com

Instagram: @runrev_coachgerald

Facebook: RunRev Coaching

Email: gerald@runrevcoaching.com

In this raw, deeply educational episode of Survival Mode Disrupted, Leticia sits down with somatic psychotherapist Suzy Butts to unpack the neuroscience of trauma, how stress gets stored in the body, and why so many of us are unknowingly living high up on a “stress cliff” that we think is normal

Suzy breaks down:

• How trauma has shaped human behavior for thousands of years
• Why we learned not to rock the boat, speak up, or express emotions
• How epigenetics passes trauma down 8 generations
• Why most adults don’t know what safety even feels like
• Why your nervous system pushes you into fight, flight, freeze or fawn before you can think

She shares her personal survival mode story — childhood emotional neglect, marrying an abusive partner, a life-changing car crash, high-achieving numbness, obesity tied to trauma, and how 9/11 cracked her emotional armor and pushed her into the world of psychotherapy.

This episode is a masterclass in understanding survival mode from a somatic and scientific perspective, offering real compassion and practical insight into how we get stuck… and how we get free.

• The “stress cliff” model — and how it explains overwhelm, burnout, shutdown, and poor coping habits
• Why humans have been conditioned for survival, not thriving
• How trauma lives in the body long after the mind forgets
• Emotional unavailability in parents & its generational impact
• Why your nervous system mistakes chaos for comfort
• Freeze mode vs laziness — the truth behind shutdown
• How trauma influences weight gain, overeating & self-neglect
• The danger of normalizing “I’m fine”
• Why healing must include body-based processes
• Post-traumatic growth, and why you can’t go back — only forward

Too many women think they’re failing when they’re actually in survival mode.

They think they’re lazy when they’re actually numb.

They think they’re dramatic when they’re actually overwhelmed.

This episode dismantles shame and replaces it with understanding — helping listeners recognize what their nervous system is trying to tell them and how they can gently start moving back toward safety, presence, and ease.

This is trauma education in its most accessible, compassionate form — and it’s a lifeline for anyone stuck on that cliff.

Website: fromsurvivingtothriving2.com.au

Program: From Stress to Bliss (10-module somatic trauma program + weekly group)

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In this episode of Survival Mode Disrupted, I’m joined by relationship coach & mentor, Terraine, a man who was raised by his grandmother, reunited with parents who didn’t know how to love him well, and found refuge in religion before finally confronting his own survival patterns. Together, we unpack what survival mode looks like when you’re functioning, high-achieving, and still completely disconnected from your own needs.

• How being raised without his mother and father put survival mode on default from childhood
• The role his grandmother played as his first model of love—and how losing her in December 2024 shattered and reshaped him
• The taboo of telling the truth about your parents in cultures where “that’s your mom/dad” trumps your pain
• How people end up seeking in partners what they never got at home—validation, words of affirmation, safety, attention
• Why so many of us confuse people pleasing with kindness, and how it becomes a survival identity
• How survival mode shows up in the body: racing thoughts, heavy chest, back pain, emotional numbness, autopilot routines
• The impact of growing up with emotional neglect or chaotic parenting on your adult relationships
• Why parents who never healed their own childhoods unintentionally recreate the same pain for their kids
• The difference between running a race (constantly competing) and running a marathon (focusing on your own pace and healing)
• The crab-in-a-barrel mentality: why some people will pull you back down the moment you start healing

• We unpack how love languages get twisted when you’re raised in chaos:
• If you were called “fat” and “stupid”? You’ll chase anyone who gives you compliments.
• If you were controlled or shamed? You’ll overwork, overgive, and overperform to prove you’re enough.
• We talk about how self-sabotage is often learned—especially if you were raised to make everyone else comfortable but never taught to honor yourself.
• We explore how survival mode keeps you seeking toxic familiarity instead of safe love, because your nervous system sees chaos as “home.”

• Website: behindtheshades.ca
• Facebook: Search Behind the Shades / Behind the Shades Interviews
• Special Offer: Mention Survival Mode Disrupted and receive a free 1-hour session with him.

• 💣 Download the Survival Mode Exit Blueprint
• 👉🏾 Join the Survival Mode Exodus Membership
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