From Lockdown to Breakthrough: Trauma, Addiction & the Battle for Your Brain with Brett Judd

Ever wonder what happens when a corrections officer swaps a badge for a brain scan and starts unlocking actual freedom—from addiction, trauma, and the mental traps that hold us hostage?

Meet Brett Judd, a no-nonsense former probation and parole officer turned trauma recovery expert who knows both sides of the bars—and has helped people rebuild their lives from rock bottom to breakthrough. In this powerful episode, Brett pulls back the curtain on what really causes trauma, how it rewires your brain, and why recovery isn’t a lifelong sentence.

We unpack why he boldly says “I have recovered” (no 12-step halfway talk here), how understanding neuroplasticity is like getting the master key to your mind, and what preppers, parents, and people navigating crisis all need to know about mental preparedness.

You’ll learn:

• Why trauma responses hijack your nervous system—and how to take back control
• The link between addiction and unresolved trauma (hint: it’s not weakness)
• Simple mindset shifts that can literally rewire your brain
• How to become more mentally prepared without spiraling into doom mode

Whether you’re stacking supplies or just trying to stay sane in a chaotic world, this episode is your survival guide for the space between your ears. Brett’s wisdom hits hard, but lands soft—like truth wrapped in a flannel blanket. 🧠🔥

Join us at Preparedness Pro in our Facebook Group or on our blog where you'll find peaceful, practical preparedness advice every day of the week!

Transcript

From Lockdown to Breakthrough: Mental Strength, Trauma Recovery & the Power of Neuroplasticity

Kellene: [00:00:00] Welcome to Preparedness Pro, where being prepared isn't about fear, it's about freedom. I'm your host, Colleen, and every episode we explore the peaceful principles of preparedness and self-reliance. No gloom, no doom, just practical solutions for everyday living that help you become more independent and prepared for whatever life brings your way.

From kitchen skills to financial wisdom, emergency planning to sustainable living. We're building a community of capable, confident people who understand that preparedness isn't about preparing for the worst. It's about being free to live your best life regardless of what comes your way. So whether you're starting your preparedness journey or you're a seasoned pro, you're in the right place.

Welcome.

Hello, my self-reliance soulmates. I've got another great show for you today. I am just thrilled to, to introduce this person to you. I have known him since I was in eighth grade. We go way back and he has accomplished some amazing things. [00:01:00] Today's episode is gonna feel like a shot of espresso for your brain and a therapy session for your soul without that awkward couch or copay.

And I'm just thrilled to introduce a man who's walked the hard roads of incarceration and intervention and came out the other side armed, not just with. Theories, but results. Brett Judd is a former probation and parole officer. You thought I was bringing a felon, didn't you? , he's turned licensed clinical social worker, trauma expert and neuroplasticity nerd in the best possible way.

He's not your average. Talk it out therapist. Brett helped develop drug and alcohol recovery programs from inside the county jail, and now empowers people to not just manage trauma and addiction, but to overcome them entirely. In fact, his book is boldly titled, I have Recovered. I. Recovering not in progress, but recovered.

And trust me, that's not just semantics. It's a [00:02:00] philosophy that just might flip your view of healing on its head. So whether you're walking through your own storm or trying to support someone else through theirs, or you just want to be mentally tougher than a squirrel with a bug out bag. This conversation's packed with science and soul and strategies you can use today.

So let's discover this intriguing world as Brett unpacks how trauma actually rewires your brain and how to rewire it back, and why mental preparedness is just as crucial as stacking food and ammo. You're not just gonna hear his story, you're gonna walk away with a blueprint for resilience. So Brett, thank you so much for being with us today.

Brett: Absolutely. It's, it's an incredible pleasure to be here and to chat with you again. It's been quite a while, so 

Kellene: yeah, it has been a while. We gotta fix that today. That would be great. So , my first question is your journey. Yeah. Your journey from a corrections officer to a mental health specialist is fascinating.

What experiences during your time as a probation and parole [00:03:00] officer shaped your approach to addiction and trauma recovery? 

Brett (2): That started early as a probation and parole officer. Really quick, it was evident that of all of my clients that I was working with and that I'd have in my book at a regular basis, uh, 85 to 90% of them are what I would say are not criminal, but did a criminal act.

Because that's what, as society, we've deemed it. So let me unpack that a minute. These are individuals who, because drug use is illegal. We're using drugs. They were caught with drug many times, and this is some, anyway, there was a rabbit hole. A lot of times it was residue. If you could take the tip of a knife, scrape it out of a burnt pipe, and it tested positive, therefore you were in possession of a a substance.

Mm-hmm. Right or wrong. That's how it [00:04:00] works. And I began to notice that a lot of these individuals, their behaviors were a direct result from their experience, from their life. Lessons that they did or did not receive, the traumas that they'd experienced in life that then led them into behaviors that ultimately broke the law and had them on my.

You know, , on my supervision roster, there were very few individuals in that period of time, the 10 years that I was there, that I would say were actually criminal minded. Most of them I was doing drug and alcohol rehab with. I was trying to help them overcome. Issues in their life that had led them into a chemical dependence, in order to escape a lot of things.

And as a result of that, I began to feel that I was inept in what I was doing. It was time to go get my next degree and start doing actual direct client therapy. I [00:05:00] had at that time, as you alluded. Helped create a program in our county jail that is still going on today. Mainly outta desperation because we as probation officers, if somebody was on our caseload and they used a drug, we had no option but to take them back to the court, send them to the judge, and then the judge had to determine do I put 'em back on probation with extra stipulations, or do I send them to prison?

So out of necessity, we created, me and my partner at the time we were both on intensive supervision. She's the one who actually, got the grant and got things started. I went and got the training in the behavioral model and we implemented it and began teaching it. I began to see rapid change in these individuals because I could take the discretionary jail time that the judge had given me, and instead of sending them back to court and then onto prison, where their [00:06:00] lives were dramatically changed, I could put 'em in the county jail for 30 to 45 days.

They were getting in that period of time, they were drying out, cleaning out, and getting information and education. And then when I got them back out onto the caseload, they were a different person ready for that change that needed to happen it. It just was a beautiful model and so that's where my desire to really impact change at a deeper level came.

I saw what could happen when you. Stopped criminalizing these individuals and you began working with them as individuals who have history, who were trying to deal with that history and the way that they were dealing with it just led them into roads that ended up getting them into the criminal system.

 I still have a lot of feelings about that. It's a very broken system and one that could be done a whole lot better. But that's for another conversation. I think. [00:07:00] 

Kellene (3): So trauma. , you had to associate yourself closely with the trauma of these people. How much is trauma responsible for our addictions and the way that we live our life?

Brett (2): The vast majority of it, almost all of it. The easiest way for me. So first, , let's scoot back a couple things. There are a couple things that I wanna cover. The first thing we need to talk about is what is trauma, because it's a word that we hear a lot and everybody throws it around. It is essentially when all coping mechanisms are exhausted and you do not have a mental framework for how you're going to survive, you are in absolute fear that you personally or someone directly close to you.

Is in peril of significant bodily harm or death, or you're in a situation and you have no capacity to figure out how to get through it [00:08:00] or out of it, and as a result of that. You emotionally and mentally collapse you. You break into the autonomic nervous system, which essentially is what oftentimes people call the lizard brain.

You are either gonna roll over, play dead, hibernate, and hope that the bear leaves you alone because it thinks that you're log or you're dead or you're gonna snap into fight or flight. Adrenaline's gonna pump and you're gonna go to work. You're gonna run like mad, you're gonna fight like crazy and. In day to day life, if you're stuck in that space and there's nothing to run from or there's nothing to fight, it begins to manifest as anxiety.

It begins to manifest as overactive fear and worry, and. If it's unchecked, if it's not managed, if it isn't dealt with, that then can lead to all kinds of self-regulation. [00:09:00] And ultimately those things can become addictions. And so when we start talking about trauma, we have to look at what it really is and who's experienced it.

Every one of us to some degree or another have gone through trauma, and here's an individual that I was supervising in my last little bit at at probation and parole. He was a Marine. He got sent over to Iraq. This was in, late nineties, he was a gunnery sergeant and is in charge of several armored vehicles.

And one of the things that he said, he had significant PTSD, and this is something when you talk about mental framework and preparation beyond just how many stores do you have in your basement. He said, they taught us how to fight uniform to uniform, soldier to soldier. They did not prepare me to fight the way they fought over there.

Street clothes, kids, the things that he had to do to somebody who was a non-combatant [00:10:00] looking individual that he wasn't ready for. He said, soldier to soldier, no big deal. They prepped us for that. I understood that this other, he had no mental framework for that. And so it broke because the co coping capacity wasn't there.

Kellene (2): Mm-hmm. 

Brett (2): And that is how easy it is for somebody, somebody to walk into trauma. And that is also a great example of why one person can experience trauma, somebody else can go through the very same experience and it not become traumatic. Do you have a framework at all, a coping mechanism? Have you done the what if scenarios in your mind to where you've.

Built some resilience to it. And if not, and if there's nothing that you can hang onto external and everything internal is now spent, then there's nothing left. And now you're left being incredibly vulnerable. And so that's where, you know, trauma begins to play. So [00:11:00] trauma to, you know, addiction or self addiction is.

So addiction. My definition, and this goes beautifully with Gabor Mate, and if anybody really wants to dive into this, Dr. Mate's work is amazing. But the academic look at addiction, and I believe this is a much broader and better look at it, is any compulsive behavior with immediate reward and long-term destruction.

Now, what does that mean then? Anything that I don't have to think about that I instinctively automatically do that gives me some kind of immediate pleasure, even though over time is going to break things down, destroy things. Video, gaming, social media, scrolling your favorite Diet Coke, that you have to have at eight o'clock in the morning, at noon, and a couple more in the afternoon.

We're starting to bridge into addiction. Could you go without it for a few days without thinking about [00:12:00] it, without Jones for it, without shaking? Uh, and could you put it down and walk away? Because those are the same questions that people ask the drug addict. 

Kellene (2): Hmm. 

Brett (2): But yet your book zone people can't put down their socially accepted addictions.

Kellene (3): Right. And I think that's, an interesting distinguishing factor. Your, your book I have recovered uses definitive language. Yeah. Not recovering, but recovered. Yeah. Can you explain the philosophy behind this distinction? Why it matters?

Brett (2): Because if I. Any mindset that I'm going to be in per in perpetual and forever recovery, that I'm never going to get better.

That this thing is , a beast that's gonna be on my back for the rest of my life. It changes the attitude and the way that I go after my life and

 It takes away the motivation. And I guess it's from a [00:13:00] philosophical perspective, , my own research in it, my own experience with individuals that I've worked with, and from the perspective of the therapist looking at the brain, looking at the way the brain works, looking at how neuroplasticity impacts.

There are very few things that we get ourself into that we cannot get ourself out of. One of the things when we talk about addiction and we start looking at the, it, it's a perpetual, lifelong disease. Many times they come back and they say, just like diabetes. This one I love because in the last 10, 15 years, there is so much research in the metabolic sciences that is showing that even things like type two diabetes that forever had been touted as an incurable lifelong disease.

And [00:14:00] that's why the, the disease model of addiction and the lifetime. Issue with it uses that correlation. People like Jason Fung and his book Diabetes Code, , Ben Bickman and his metabolic research lab down in BYU and Provo. These guys are showing that when you implement the correct procedures and the right

curative process. Even things like type two diabetes are recoverable. And so if that is true, why can't we do the same thing with addiction? And I believe that you can, and it is my firm absolute belief and conviction that we can. One of the things with the once, an addict, always an addict mentality and the disease model, which the history there is, is pretty incredible, but 

it builds on the notion that because the reward center of the brain is [00:15:00] hijacked and you no longer find pleasure from the normal processes of life, that that is now a brain disease. There's a change that's happened. Well, what they're talking about is neuroplasticity, and neuroplasticity is something that we go through and that we experience every day of our life.

If I go through an experience and it is different or challenges the experience that I had yesterday or even earlier today, my brain has to adjust and contemplate, is that a new reality? Is that something that I have to do? And so we know from neuroplastic science, , that once the brain gets into a pattern.

It has the ability to get out of that pattern and new patterns could be created. This is how therapy works. This is how processes like, EMDR or hypnotherapy, both that I [00:16:00] do , and several other treatment modalities are actually changing people and their life experience because we're activating neuroplasticity.

The same process that can get us into that altered state that causes chaos. That process can also be used to get us out if it's leveraged, right? But we have to believe that we can move out just as easy as we moved in. 

Kellene (3): Brett, I wanna explore trauma a little bit more because, , like you said, most people have endured some type of trauma.

Right. , so , from that standpoint of our listeners, because, you know, we've, we've all been thrown life's curve balls, but also I wanna talk about that mental resilience to prepare ourselves for what might otherwise be traumatic events. Right. To 'cause one of my big things that, you know, the second [00:17:00] principle of preparedness is mental preparedness and that mental toughness, for lack of a better word, I think resilience is probably a better word for it.

 What's the biggest misconception about trauma?

Brett (2): One of the biggest misconceptions that a lot of people delude themself with is that it only involves some sort of physical or sexual assault, a bomb or combat, or some major catastrophic event, and that's just not true. A really, a great example of this. I worked several years ago with a little 10-year-old boy, incredible kid.

But his life experience was horrific. Home was abusive. Home was not safe for him. , he would get to school as early as he possibly could, and he would stay as late as the janitor would allow him to help clean the school. Or until somebody was saying, you need to go home, we're locking up, and then he would get to bed as quick as he could.

He absolutely loved [00:18:00] his teacher, and the school year was going along. Everything was great. Yes, he had anxieties. Yes, he was dealing with a lot of stress and pressure, but as long as he could go spend those eight, nine hours at school every day. That seemed to give him the resilience he needed to get through the evening until he could get back to school, and this teacher was just an absolute gem in his life.

Well, she got sick and had to take a medical leave towards the end of the year, and immediately her leaving. Absolutely collapsed him, and he just emotionally melted like jello on a hot sun. And everybody's like, oh my word, what just happened? He seemed so resilient. He seemed to be able to doing okay.

His one lifeline was his teacher, and when she wasn't there, everything fell apart. So that is a, for me, a great example of [00:19:00] how. Minor events. Day in, day out, day in, day out. Over time, grinding away, wearing away ultimately breaks us. And we get so thin that it isn't some major catastrophic event. Somebody breaking through your door, you get hit in an intersection and now , you're in an accident, but you get up one day and you just can't go on anymore.

And that's. Cumulative compounding of stress that then led to a traumatic break. And now has left you vulnerable. And that's, something we have to look at. So on this idea of resilience, how do we build resilience and what do we do? And mental preparation is incredible. . One of the things that I used to do, and this was during my time as a felon probation officer, I was, for seven years, I was our tactical firearms instructor and our officer safety trainer, and.

I loved [00:20:00] playing the What If game. And if we weren't on the range and I wasn't de developing scenarios for, the officers to go through, I would just pop into their office and say, Hey, what if you're out tonight doing your home visits and such and such happens, what are you gonna do? And it was to put them into mental scenarios where they had to.

Think about how am I gonna get out of this? Because the more times we do that, and the odd, the more broad and, crazy scenario you can think of, not outside of reality, but the brain is so resilient then, and it takes it in and like, oh, this was that. We talked about this. I'm good with this. And then we have to contemplate what would I do in this situation?

If we walk into something and it's new and it's novel and I don't have any pre-developed mindset for it, [00:21:00] or my brain can't put it into the camp of something that I've already experienced or contemplated, that is when things become overwhelming and we don't have anything to be resilient with. And so we can do a lot of this just with the, the mental games that we play with ourself and the what if type of scenarios that, well, what if this happens?

What will I do in that scenario so that I know and can play with it? And if we'll play that, not in a paranoid sort of way, but in a preparatory way, there's an amazing amount of resilience that we can build. And then the other thing that I, I think is critical when, and, and this is something, your listeners here, , I'm sure have children.

One of the things that you can do to create mental resilience in your kids as they're growing up, and it's something that I firmly believe in. You have to let them fail [00:22:00] without judgment, without shame, without ridicule. But from a learning position, allow them to go into a situation, allow them to stretch and to try their abilities.

And when it doesn't work out, because it isn't gonna work out, you don't. Belittle them. You don't shame them. You don't talk down to them, but you say, what didn't work? What can you do next time? What were you trying and where did it not come together? And as you think about this for the next time, what can you do?

Because that model right there is exactly resilience. What were you trying was that stretch and that pull and that, effort. Then you rebound back just like a rubber band when it's been stretched, and you're thinking about, what can I do next time so that when I get stretched, I have a better idea of what to do.

If you will [00:23:00] allow yourself, your kids, your others, or around you to fail, and then take that failure as a learning experience, assess what went wrong or what didn't work. What did you try? What worked, what didn't? And it's just information. There's no judgment. And then you move forward into what can you do next time?

You've immediately stepped into mental resilience and you're going to have the capacity to do an amazing amount of things the next time you step into it. Just practicing that type of reflection and it's, it's unfortunate how many times that is not done. 

Kellene (3): Well, as I shared, as you well know, many of our listeners are interested in preparedness.

So my question with regard to trauma responses, how does understanding trauma responses help people prepare to navigate crisis situations? Would you say it's that what if [00:24:00] mentality to build that resilience? 

Brett (2): Yeah, I think ahead of time that's exactly what it is. But then after the fact. Recognizing it for what it truly is.

It's not weakness. It isn't that they're broken. It isn't that they failed in their preparation, but maybe they had a blind spot to what, you know, they hadn't worked through that scenario or it went differently than they thought. Or in that moment they thought that everything was about to fall apart and that becomes traumatic.

 One of the worst things that people say is, aren't you over with that yet? How haven't you worked through that yet? 

Kellene (2): Mm-hmm 

Brett (2): And in all of my research and all of my years doing this work, I've yet to find a book or a study that tells me what that calendar or time clock is.

It takes what it takes. And once somebody has gone through that experience, we have to help them for as long as it's going to [00:25:00] take them to build that neuroplasticity, to reshape their new mental scape that they're in and the worst thing it can do. And it destroys their belief in self. And as soon as that is gone.

Their sense that I can do anything goes and now they're stuck. And so if you are observing someone and they've gone through something, don't be the one that says, aren't you over that yet? Haven't you worked through that yet? Wow. It's been, you know, however long it's been, you're still worried about that.

What is it about that that still bothers you? What are the things that come up for you? How are you working to try to move through this and how can I help you? I mean, that is such a dramatic shift in the way that we talk to somebody and would make a dramatic difference in their ability to [00:26:00] cope and come forward onto the other side of that.

, and then recognizing that we all go through this, so. Uniquely different that we have to allow for that individuality of their own healing as well. Which, you know, , this idea of I have recovered, it's not just about addiction. The one of the main things that I have dealt with for years with people and what we're recovering from is trauma.

You know, our beha addiction is nothing more than a behavior. It is the behavior that I'm using to deal with the trauma that I've experienced, the emotional pain that I'm going through, the mental chaos that's happening. And so this behavior has immediate reward and numbing or pacifying. I love the word pacify because it's something that we do all the time.

Just like when, , an infant is crying, we give them a pacifier to calm them down. It mimics nursing. [00:27:00] They're getting nothing from it. Well, we never outgrow the pacifier. We just have cooler things that we use to pacify with as we get older. And 

Kellene (3): bigger screen TVs, different ch kinds of ice cream. Yeah, we have kind 

Brett (2): of ice cream, a bigger garden, a better gun.

You know how much time we're spending on our devices or you know, how many liters of soda have I chugged today? Because that caffeine feels good. That sugar feels good. I. That it's all ification of some kind of inner chaos that we need to overcome. 

Kellene (3): Well, let me ask you this. How do people do a, a gut check, if you will, on their level of mental resilience?

, how can I know? Okay, Kellene, and you're gonna be okay if this happens. You've got the mental resilience for it. How can I know that? 

Brett (2): I think one of the first things [00:28:00] that we can do is sit down and be really honest with ourself. What do I worry about? What are the things that creep up in my mind that keep me up in the middle of the night that outta nowhere when I wasn't even thinking about it?

Just show up into the mental conversation that I'm having because that's an indicator that the subconscious mind is actively engaged in pondering it. And maybe it doesn't have enough tools and resources yet to navigate it, and that's why it's stuck on it. And so one of the things that I tell all the time to my clients and individuals is that that little voice in the back of your mind, that other self, the subconscious that is constantly chattering.

It has a lot that it wants to say to you, and if we will engage it and just ask, why are you worried about that? Why does that bother me so much? What is it about [00:29:00] this that causes that reaction? Our subconscious mind can't help but expose and reveal what it's locked onto and what it believes and what it's stressing about, and those are some of the very first things.

That I think need to be addressed as far as resiliency. What can I do to strengthen that? What can I do to amend this worry that I have to calm it to, to show Yes, I'm solid there. I'm good there. Or I would think 

Kellene (3): that, I would think that going through, , the what if scenarios that , , the less tense you get be from the what if scenario.

That that would be good. Absolutely. I would think that practice, like, you know, actually practicing with your solar oven for example, or with your generator, or with your firearm or what have you, I would think that those help with mental resilience too. Would they not? They 

Brett (2): absolutely do. , I'll share an experience with you so, [00:30:00] this was not long before I left that former life and, and work as a probation officer.

, we had just spent three days at an incredible range, , in, used to be in Utah. I loved , we had spent three days going through every possible scenario that our instructors could put us through. And it was me and two other officers that we were always doing things together.

We were going out on a, a search or an arrest. Hey, you go with me. We had spent the weekend just. Practicing and learning, , and doing all kinds of stuff. They had , an indoor shoot house where we were able to do live fire in a, house, was absolutely amazing while other people were shooting on another side of a ballistic wall.

So it was very real in what was going on. We got home. Two days later, I had put together a search, , a possible meth lab. This was back in, the [00:31:00] early two thousands and, meth labs were all the rage and everybody was doing them here. Um, I missed out on that. I was on the other side of it. But, 

we did a search seven 30 in the morning. I anticipated that my probationer would be in bed in his bedroom in the back end of the apartment. And so I knocked on the door pretty hard. The door was not latched and it swung open and there were seven people sitting in the living room. And there we were.

Our surprise was blown. We were there, the event was on, and my individual jumped up and ran back of the house that back of the apartment we went in, me and one other officer went down the hall. , and as I get to the. Bathroom door going into the master or into the bath, into the bedroom. My guy is grabbing something out of the closet and hiding his hands and turning towards me and starts walking right to [00:32:00] me.

I had just spent three days practicing these scenarios, going over it. I had been drilling the other officers on what ifs, and I honestly don't know. What I would've done had I not gone through myriad different scenarios because in this situation, everything that I've been taught, everything legally, I could have pulled my trigger , and, and it would've been ruled a legitimate, righteous shooting.

But because I was able to stay calm in the situation, even though I had one officer behind us and we were trapped, the only exit from this was back through the six people that were in the living room, and one individual was trying to contain them. We were stuck between them and couldn't reach the door.

I was able to stay totally mentally focused and in the moment to what needed to [00:33:00] be done, even to the point at one point, lowering my gun, calling him by his first name, changing my tone. Saying it's Brett, I need you to show me your hands. Please stop. And at that point, I had to make a decision I was gonna shoot or not, or what we were gonna do had I not done the mental training so that I could stay focused, I could stay in it, I could stay very clear.

Not get upset, not act out of, oh my gosh, we're within 21 feet. I don't know what's going on. He may have a knife. He's walking towards me. I better shoot because there's that side of training. I was able to stay calm. I was able to stay clear. I was able to talk to him as an individual who I knew, knew me, and break through his mental freeze that we was [00:34:00] in.

His eyes opened. He went to his knees, he opened his hands, and in one hand was a lighter, just your basic disposable bick lighter. And in the other hand that had been hidden behind his back was a crumpled up pack of cigarettes. We searched the closet. There was nothing there. There was no firearm. He hadn't hidden drugs.

I don't know what he was doing in there. Had I acted rashly or had I acted solely on the, in this situation, you are allowed and entitled to do this, I would've made a grave mistake that day. Mental resilience preparation puts you in a state of mind to where you can see the alternate opportunity and option.

Kellene (3): You've studied the subconscious mind extensively. How can people harness their subconscious to become more mentally prepared? 

Brett (2): That's a good question and a [00:35:00] big one. I think that the first thing that has to be done is we have to recognize that we are not in charge as much as we think we are. Some studies and research and.

Individuals will tell you that 95% of everything that we do comes out of the subconscious and only 5% of it is in our conscious mind. In fact, there's a really wonderful quote that came outta the seventies. Earl Nightingale said, we move towards that which we think about most. Well, we're not thinking about it in our conscious mind.

It's the things that we are thinking about in the background that are constantly just churning away so that when we go into a scenario, boom. Things open up, beliefs, immediate habits, instant reactions, , because the subconscious mind was already locked into it. And so something that we have to do is get [00:36:00] to know what's going on.

My favorite, exercise there, and it's something that I've taught for a long time. I call it the Four Ws. It's. When something interests me, when something I find curious, when it struggles me in any way, when I have an emotional reaction, or it just kind of breaks through my awareness, if we will ask the why questions.

Why did that just happen? Why did that bother me? And the what, what was it about that that caused that reaction? If we'll start there. Then we'll sit and listen and even write it down. The brain starts to have these, well, because of this and because of this, and we can stay in that space for a long time.

Like, wow, if I believe that, what else do I believe? Why do I believe that? And we can stay in that line of self reflection and assessment for a long [00:37:00] time and expose. The inner belief patterns and the things that we've locked onto, the stuff that Nightingale is saying, you know, we move towards that which we think about most.

Well, I need to find out what book I'm personally reading out of, and the way that we do that is through that. Why did I do that? Why did I think that? Why does that bother me? The next thing that we have to ask is who said that's true? Where did that come from? Because there's a lot of things that we've locked onto as a rigid hard truth that may not be true at all, or somebody gave it to us as a truth, and maybe it was true in their life, their situation, their experience, but it doesn't fit.

Today, and most of your folks have probably, , know this or have heard this, but for me, [00:38:00] the, the motivational speaker story that's used all the time about cutting the ends off the ham is perfect because grandma cut the ends off the ham and baked it. Her daughter did the same thing, guy's, wife does the same thing.

And it says, why do you do that? Well, it makes it taste better. Who told you it makes it taste better to cut the ends off the ham? Well, my mom, she does that, calls his mother-in-law. She says, my mother did that. It makes the ham taste better, so you cut the ends off the ham, gets a hold of grandma. She said That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

My oven and my roasting pan were small. If I didn't cut the ends off the ham, I couldn't bake it. And a baked ham tastes a whole lot better. Right. What have I locked onto that is a truth and is it even true? Who told me that? We've gotta validate it. We've got to look at it and be willing to [00:39:00] challenge the thing that I'm telling myself that could be causing me a lot of distress.

And if I'm not willing to do that immediately. I have no resilience because that rigidity to any other possible option is what will break us. 

Kellene (3): That's interesting. Yeah. Well, we've had a feast on mental preparedness here today, and we've barely even scraped the surface of everything that you could teach us, uh, strongly encourage people to read his book.

, Brett, tell people where they can find your book please.  

Brett (2): Access@ihaverecovered.com or just brett m judd.com. Both of those will have links and information there about what I do, how to do it, and what you can do. 

Kellene (3): Wonderful. Well, Brett, thank you so much. I know it was quite a scurry for you to make this [00:40:00] happen with all , your clients and everything, and I really, really appreciate you for being here , and for helping us do hardcore thinking about mental preparedness instead of the fluffy stuff.

So I really appreciate you. 

Brett (2): Absolutely. It's, always wonderful to talk to you about this stuff. 

Kellene (3): Alright, you take care. 

Kellene: Thanks for joining us today on Preparedness Pro. I hope you enjoyed yourself and learned something new. Want more preparedness? Inspiration? Join our live shows every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern on YouTube or Facebook at Preparedness Pro, where we can answer your questions Live looking for a community of like-minded people who understand that preparedness is about freedom.

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