I think that judgement is one of the most destructive forces we face in general and on the road to healing trauma, depression, anxiety and addiction in particular.  In this episode, I try to share some stories and strategies that have helped me profoundly and I hope that they will help you as well! The video version of this is on YouTube if you prefer to watch it. You can watch it here.  ============================================= Let's Connect!  Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/thejaywoodford TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@jaywoodford​ Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/thejaywoodford/​

Suicide is now the leading cause of death among men under the age of 50 because we don't give ourselves permission to heal.

This Is What Happens When We Suppress Our Suffering - Jay Woodford I shared this clip on TikTok recently and it spread like wildfire with hundreds and hundreds of comments from people saying that it was one of the biggest eye opening revelations they've ever had around suffering and trauma and how, if we try to suppress the pain, we open the door to never ending agitation and/or anxiety. Here is the video:  https://www.tiktok.com/@jaywoodford/video/6943857025138838789 The clip is from the full podcast epsiode:  27 Months Booze Free | Give Yourself Permission To Heal The full YouTube video can be seen here.

Can We Make Ourselves Happier? | By Jay Woodford I know for me the times I’ve set out to help others when I’m feeling out of sorts has, without exception, always made things brighter. Yet it’s fascinating to me how easily I forget that lesson and how, almost by default, I revert to individualistic and self centered methods of trying to feel better. For me, that was almost always work but like I said before, it unequivocally always served as just an escape and not a remedy. I’m convinced we need each other a hell of a lot more than we know. This journey toward wellness over the last two years has shown that to be true perhaps more than anything else. We like to think we can do it all on our own. We can’t. That just serves the egoic and self-aggrandizing side of ourselves which rarely, if ever, leads us in the right direction. If you feed the ego, you starve the soul as they say. Maybe that’s just platitudinous bullshit but it sure rings true. The people who study these things say that we’re one of the loneliest societies on earth. When surveyed, 39% of people said they had no one they could turn to and lean on during a time of crisis - a percentage that is woefully higher than ever before. That strikes me as a time bomb just waiting to explode. Or maybe it is exploding and the carnage that’s happening behind the scenes is the proof. The downstream effects, I can only imagine, will be nothing good until we hit rock bottom, humble ourselves and realize we desperately need each other whether we like it or not. Maybe at that point, we’ll soften our hearts towards each other and toward ourselves and find our way back to each other. Hopefully it doesn’t take us hitting rock bottom because I suspect there will only continue to be a catastrophic amount of devastation along the way. Brené Brown has famously stated from her research and that of others, that loneliness is the single biggest predictor of depression, anxiety, disease, addiction, violence and premature death. I have no idea whether or not that’s actually true but it sure seems like it is. I can not control how others live but I can do something about how I live and all I know is when I allow myself to descend into a judgemental and indifferent position towards people, it never ends well. It always, without question, makes things darker and to the contrary, when I’ve helped ease another’s burdens in whatever capacity that ends up being, sought to understand instead of judge, it always, without question makes things substantially brighter. How can that not be the way it is? I hope this comes to mind next time you’re feeling less than happy as it did for me. This practice works better than anything else without exception. I don’t think it’s any accident that tightly connected communities have far less anxiety and depression. Maybe therein lies the beauty of our suffering. It’s a pain that, like any pain, drives action toward a resolution and if that resolution is deeper connections, greater understanding and love, I can’t imagine that that wouldn’t make for a much better world for all of us... Click here for the rest of the article. (I'd post the whole thing here, but due to character limits, I can't :( )

27 Months Booze Free | Give Yourself Permission To Heal - Jay Woodford It's been 27 months since I quit drinking and it's been one hell of a rollercoaster ride I never expected.  I took the last year off of doing any content on YouTube or TikTok to focus on healing.  I didn't plan that but that was exactly what I needed.   It was the hardest year of my life and it has turned out to be the most fruitful.  I sat down a few days ago to talk about this extensively and this video is a clip from that video which I hope to put out in the next few days.   I've learned so much that I never thought I would learn and I am really excited to be able to share my experiences and learnings with you with the hope that it will help you too and make the journey easier for you than it was for me.   Come hang on TikTok.  I'm posting lots of content there again: https://www.tiktok.com/@jaywoodford

If I had relied on sheer will power to quit drinking, I wouldn't have lasted 3 weeks nevermind 300+ days. Will power is finite and when I hear people say they're just going to gut it out, I rarely feel confident that they will make it. I'm no expert on this subject and never want to pretend to be or try to project that.  All I can do is share my own experience. The things that helped me the most at the start and throughout were - Have a vision for something better - Be clear on where this ends up if I don't deal with it (as Jordan Peterson says "what sort of hell will you create for yourself" - A handful of people I knew I could count on no matter what (probably the most important) - Going to bed as early as possible.  Night time was when I wanted to drink. - Understanding and coming to terms with the reality that, as Dr. Gabor Mate says, " All addiction is rooted in trauma and unresolved pain."  I had to face what was eating me up from the inside out that I didn't even know was there. I hope you find this helpful. Please let me know if you did.  Your comments and feedback is my fuel and I wouldn't do this if it weren't for knowing that it was making a difference in the lives of others, so please let me know! Let's Connect: https://www.instagram/thejaywoodford https://www.facebook.com/thejaywoodford https://www.tiktok.com/@jaywoodford

This period of time has been richly enlightening and simulanteously painful.  It is through the pain that I am finding my greatest treasures and will to help impart a sense of helpfulness in you about the process of confronting deep rooted pain and trauma head on. Lets' Connect! Instagram/thejaywoodford Facebook.com/thejaywoodford https://www.tiktok.com/@jaywoodford YouTube.com/jaywoodford

Are you on TikTok?  Let's connect:  http://vm.tiktok.com/MhkVwa/ One of the hardest things over the last eight months of really diving in and dealing with mental health, addiction, trying to figure out why things became the way that they became was understanding that, in spite of the fact that I had a capacity to see life as an absolutely incredibly beautiful thing and having the capacity to experience unbelievable gratitude, joy and love, there's always this overhanging shadow in my life that life was fundamentally a futile, pointless fucking tragedy. And here's the thing about that.  I'm looking at that as recognizing, "that's not true" and that's not how I want to live my life, but that's not a belief that was just, I woke up one day and said, "hey, let's look at life in the most bleakest form that we possibly can. That sounds good." What I've come to learn through this process is that that happens through trauma, through unresolved things. A lot of it had to do with shit that happened when I was a kid, and this is the reason I'm saying this. A lot of this stuff happens to a lot of people. A lot of this stuff may have happened to you. It doesn't matter what it is. I don't compare traumas. My childhood was dark. It was dark for me, but it was a fucking cake walk compared to the shit that a lot of other people have gone through.  But nonetheless, for two, three, four, five, six year old Jay, it was fucking traumatic and that's what I have to deal. I'm saying this because I want to give people that space and talk about these things so that people can say, "wow, me too. I'm not the only one." I'm not saying this because I need you to come and console me. I'm not saying this because I need anybody to feel sorry for me. That's the last thing I need or want.  When my dad died and people tried to feel sorry for me and they pushed it too far, I fucking lit them up because I wanted no part of that and I let them know. "I'm not going to become a victim to this and I'm trying to do my best to get through this as strongly as I can. I don't need you making me feel sorry for myself. That's not helping the situation." So way aside from that, I know that people are going misunderstand and misrepresent me all the time. I'm putting my shit out anyways. Aside from your bullshit, instantaneous headline, reading assumptions about what my intent might be, I'm not here to get anybody feel sorry for me. I'm fine with being quiet and living my own life. But I know that there's a lot of people who don't have the ability to do this (speak out), who are sitting there suffering all alone and my message, whatever I'm going to say - might be the single thing that's going to stop them from taking their own life, might be the single thing that stops them from getting addicted to hard drugs and completely shipwrecking their life because they're dealing with internal fucking torment that nobody else is willing to sit down and understand. I get that. And this is something that's been coming to my mind lately a lot and that is unless you have been in that place where you have felt such darkness that you can understand that you can actually understand why it is that somebody would inject heroin into themselves or why somebody would take their own lives. You don't understand. So when it comes to matters of mental health and suicide and addiction, until you understand that, do everybody a favor who's suffering through that and keep your fucking mouth shut and keep your thoughts to yourself because you don't understand and that's on you. That's not on the people that are suffering with it. And for you to put forth your projections onto people of how life should be when you have no understanding of what their life is like is bullshit.

Hey guys, this one went deep and was very emotional and personal.  I don't have my stuff together.  I'm struggling in the same ways you are. Would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.  We need make it safe for people to deal with their process of discovering who they are.  You find yourself through this process of laying aside the addictive shackles which disconnect you from who you are. And through it all, you find yourself which is the greatest gift in life. We all need connection with good people.  Friendship is the richness of life. and without that it's next to impossible to heal and have peace of mind.  Please comment and tell me your thoughts and feedback and please share this with someone who would be helped by. Let's Connect TIKTOK:  https://www.tiktok.com/@jaywoodford INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thejaywoodford/ FACEBOOK:   https://www.facebook.com/thejaywoodford/ Link from the clips of Dr Gabor Mate Dr Gabor Mate on London Real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojq-U13726E Dr Gabor Mate on Tim Ferris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9B5mYfBPlY Link for Brene Brown's famous TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

I quit drinking on December 25, 2018 and as of filming this video, it's been 180 days booze free. [Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejaywoodford/] I’m booze free but I’m not sober. I’m still doing things to run from the past and stuff down the pain. It seems to me that until the things that are unresolved remain that way, addiction merely shifts and I’m just as susceptible to succumbing today as I’ve ever been.  I was warned that 5-6 months after quitting drinking many people hit a wall. When you quit relying on something so heavily and regularly to get you through and you actually have to start to process all the shit you’ve been through and get reacquainted with yourself, it can be really hard and really dark.  I’m seeing exactly that.  We have no idea what we’re actually all going through. The learning I’ve gone through about how childhood chaos and trauma - that we don’t even know is still there - how much it is impacting us at a subconscious level is staggering.  This has been a painful process but I have no choice. We have no choice. It’s either this or death - in one form or another.  If you’re struggling with booze and you’ve found any of my content helpful, I just sat down and did a video for my 180 days booze free. It’s on my YouTube (link in bio) As always, your comments and messages and feedback on how any of this is helping is my fuel so please don’t be shy. If it’s helped you or means something please say so 💜 Let's connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejaywoodford/ Here are some of the links I mentioned: Dr. Jordan Peterson & Theo Von on alcohol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cYuWLZI5kw Dr. Jordan Peterson's Self-Authoring Suite: https://www.selfauthoring.com/ Dr. Jordan Peterson's lecture on courage (incredibly insightful and impactful) https://rss.art19.com/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast