Speaking and Communicating Podcast

What do you say to yourself?

What do you believe about yourself based on what's happened to you?

And your experience is unique to my experience, unique to someone else's experience, but we all have stuff happen to us that colors how we see ourselves.

Me personally, I had to work a lot on feeling less than.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Dr.

Bonnie Wims, joining us from Manhattan, New York.

She is a counseling psychologist who helps us deconstruct the myths and inaccurate beliefs about therapy.

And we'll also be sharing today how we, despite all the knowledge that we have, can really change our behaviors for the better.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Dr.

Bonnie.

Hi, Roberta.

Thank you so much.

I am so excited to talk to you.

As we all divulge, we were talking right before this and I just ran right into it.

So I'm raring to go.

I'm so glad you are.

We are excited to have you here.

But first of all, please introduce yourself to our listeners, and then we're going to get into our exciting conversation.

Sure.

Sure.

So as you said, I'm a counseling psychologist and also a mental health coach, and I have a private practice, and I work virtually, and I have been before COVID.

I was ahead of my time, and I work remotely mostly because I feel through the coaching, I can reach anyone, anywhere.

And also I think I find that it's more convenient for people, they don't have to schlep across town, and also they are sitting on their own sofa.

You know, they are sitting in their own home much of the time, and I just feel like people are more comfortable and able to be a little more relaxed in the sessions.

I got my doctorate in psychology when I was 50 years old.

So talk about having to really think about the way you think about yourself.

I was very terrified of going back to school at that age.

So I speak to this from some own personal knowledge that there's a lot of negativity that runs around in our minds that stops us from going for the things we want or really changing behavior that we don't want.

And you have to actively challenge that.

And I did that and I got my degree at the age of 50.

And now that I'm 62, I feel a constant pressure to want to help people because I feel like I got a late start, you know?

So I love my work and I love talking about it.

Well, first of all, congratulations.

Like you said, it's never too late.

I think that's one of the stories or the myths that we live by, which are not necessarily true.

And we're going to get into mental health as well, since that's where your work lies.

Because I find that I'm almost 50.

And obviously we didn't grow up with technology, but I find that this generation has so much to deal with.

And that's why we have so many of these conditions.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing about technology is the way in which we compare each other.

Because all you got to do is pick up your phone now and you see these perfect lives that everyone else is leading.

Because nobody posts negative, sad stuff that they're doing.

I'm sitting on the sofa on a Friday night.

Everybody posts when they look their best, when they're doing the exciting things.

And I think there's a lot of comparison that goes on.

It always does.

We always do that.

But social media and the phones and the power of communication is wonderful on one hand.

I'm not anti-technology.

Obviously, I have a virtual practice.

But we have to be aware of what it does to us.

We have to be conscious of the fact that it does impact how we see ourselves, what we think about ourselves, and then, therefore, how we behave.

And what got you started in this career?

Out of all the things you could have chosen, why decide to be a psychologist?

I know I was always interested in how the mind worked.

And I think that actually came from my childhood.

I was raised in an abusive, alcoholic home.

My father was definitely a very traumatized individual.

And so my childhood was quite traumatizing.

And I think for some reason, I always tried to step out of it and try to imagine, why is this happening?

What is going on right here?

Because I knew I had friends where that didn't happen.

I think at a very young age, I was interested in trying to understand how his mind worked and how my mother's mind worked, how we stayed locked in this kind of violent home.

So I took a high school psychology class and was blown away because I was like, oh my God, there's already people studying this.

This is amazing.

And I knew, I think I knew then.

You graduate high school, I left home obviously as soon as I could.

And next thing you know, I'm working, I'm end up married with kids, you know, you just can't get back to school.

Now you're just working and you're living.

So it took me all the time to finally get back to it and be able to dedicate myself to the schooling required because several years to get your doctorate.

It's not too quick.

So yeah, my interest was always, I think, in the why, you know, why do we behave the way we do?

It's funny, you say that you knew that your friends had different home lives because you know how sometimes when kids, when their parents get divorced, then they start telling themselves those horror stories, they don't love us and this and this and that.

I remember asking one of my previous guests, I said she had an issue with her mother as well.

All those mother and daughter squabbles, I don't know if you've had clients with similar issues.

And I said to her, did you ever talk to some of your friends in school and see that not all mothers do that to their daughters?

If that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because my brothers, I have older brothers, I have seven siblings.

My older brothers told me, one time we were talking about something, they said they never knew that different houses were different.

Wow.

They thought it was normal.

And I said, like, how did you, didn't you go over to people's houses?

And they just were very aware and very careful, and they assumed the violence happened there, but it just didn't happen to happen that time that they were there.

Like they really thought every house was like our house.

Which I think if you believe that, that really limits you, right?

Because then you're not thinking that this is something that can change because everybody's like this.

Or that I'm capable of creating a new environment.

Because if you think that's normal, you're just going to repeat that cycle.

Yep.

Yep.

100 percent.

And so I think their poor wives, I think kind of had to really, I think there's a lot of adjustments and understanding that they had to go through to realize.

None of them have turned out to be like my father, which is wonderful.

But I think there was some learning that had to go on there to realize that the dynamics of a relationship were not what they had viewed growing up, that that was not normal and that was not right and that was horrible, actually.

So yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

I mean, I went over to girlfriend's houses and I saw loving, kind parents and I noticed it.

Like I was always super aware kid.

I was always aware.

Like I was noticing.

I think that comes from trauma.

You watch because you don't feel safe.

So you always are careful in watching how people are behaving.

And I think I watched these parents, especially the fathers.

And then I saw that they weren't scary and they didn't scare their kids.

And my friends weren't scared of their fathers.

So I began to think, what is this?

Like, why is it different here?

Why are people reacting differently to things?

You know, we talk about this in leadership.

There's stress for everybody.

It's not like my father was the only one stressed about feeding eight kids.

Eight kids was a lot, but not that he was the only one stressed about working, making enough money to raise the kids, my, any other stressors he had in his life.

They weren't extra.

They were normal, everyday stressors that middle class people have.

So his behavior was something that came out of something else.

We can all manage stress.

We can manage our lives.

We can even really, really manage hard things.

If we're very conscious of the choices we make and how we manage it and how we behave as a result.

But it takes a conscious effort to really notice that.

It's funny how, and I'm glad that your brothers were able to overcome that.

And we say this, we can grow up in the same environment, have a similar experience, but come out with different perspectives based on the story we tell ourselves about the experience.

Yes.

Yes.

We just met.

I feel like I've just known you forever.

You're saying some of the most wonderful things.

The story we tell ourselves, right?

And then you know what?

Every time we tell ourselves that story, we're telling ourselves from the most recent telling.

So the story morphs and changes through our lives.

Because when I think back on my childhood now at 62, and I tell myself the story of that childhood, it's been revised a million times from every time I think about it.

It changes.

And it changes relative to how I'm feeling, what I want to know, what I want to say, how I want to be perceived.

I could be perceived as a victim, I could be perceived as a strong person who overcame.

Like we tell ourselves a story, but it really does get revised, which is why I'm completely against eyewitnesses, because we see what we want to see.

You know, we tell ourselves a story we want to see.

And if it's a story of being defeated or not being able to change or not being able to grow, there's a reason for that.

There's something going on.

We're talking to ourselves in a way that keeps creating that same story, and we have to figure that out.

And now let's talk about the myths when it comes to therapy.

I'm hoping that now in 2025, everybody knows, I mean, most of us in therapy for whatever reason.

Sometimes you go for a specific thing.

Sometimes it's a lot prolonged if you're dealing with something.

It varies.

However, we still have those one or two close to us who would say, I don't need therapy, I'm fine.

I actually met someone after I came to the States who said, Oh yeah, my father was horrible to us.

He used to call me stupid.

I remember when I was five, those kinds of traumas.

So what are you doing about it?

Because I can see those feelings sometimes come up in you 60 now.

And he said, Oh, well, I had one session of EMDR and they did the I thing and I'm fine now.

Yeah, I'm fine now.

I'm healed like checkbox.

You know, I'm dead.

They're fine now, but for some reason it came up.

Yeah, it's like, Oh, okay.

That's still very much at the front of your mind.

Yeah, there's a lot of myths about therapy.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of myths about therapy.

And I think that then perpetuates itself into the stigma, the way people can feel as if a well-known person comes out that they're in therapy.

There's still an idea.

It's better, but there's still a sense of weakness, what's wrong with them, or why can't you just buck up like the rest of us.

There is still that real sense of weakness and sort of defeated feeling around if you're asking for help with your mental health.

I started a podcast called Therapy Deconstructed because I realized as a therapist, that I think it's partly my job to get out there and preach about what therapy really is.

Because therapists, not all, but a lot of therapists can kind of be happy being kind of shrouded in that secrecy.

We don't talk about what goes on in the therapy room.

You don't meet a lot of therapists out and about who say they're therapists.

It's all kind of like this shrouded in secrecy thing.

And I think that we perpetuate some of these myths because we don't talk about it.

So when I started the podcast, I said, I just want to throw open the doors.

I want you to see what goes on because it isn't a secret.

It isn't some magical thing.

It's two people having a conversation about very real things and trying to get to the root of some really painful issues that are causing behavior you don't want.

Why not talk about that in an open way?

So that's why I started the podcast.

And so I think the number one misconception is that it's weak to ask for therapeutic help, that somehow you're not figuring it out the right way, which is by yourself and I'm fine, right?

There's another one, this one's perpetuated by my brother, that somehow we have some powers, we can read your mind and so you're going to come in here and I'm going to be able to see what you're thinking and it's going to be really scary and I'm going to tell you what to do.

I heard somebody say, why would I come into a room and let a stranger tell me what to do?

So we don't tell you what to do and we certainly don't read minds.

I don't tell people what to do and I don't give advice.

I ask you questions.

I hope you figure out what do you want to do.

It has to come from you because at the end of the day, we're not going to know each other forever and you've got to be able to then take that and figure it out in your life every day on your own.

So, we don't give advice.

We help you figure out what you want and how you want to do it.

We highlight things.

We highlight misconceptions and contradictions in your head because until you start noticing those things, your behavior is just going to continue in a way that's not helpful to you.

I think that it's not kind of fun.

It can be fun.

I mean, I know it sounds stupid, but it's fun because when a person has that light bulb moment and they go, oh my god, I just figured this out.

I tell you, I feel like I could go run a marathon.

I'm so motivated and excited for them because that's what I'm trying to do.

That's what I'm trying to help with.

And so it can be fun.

It can be enlightening.

It can be life changing.

It's not sad and dreary all the time.

I don't always blame the mom and make you cry.

It's not like that.

Yeah, those kind of things.

But in my podcast, I talk to people, different people, some people who have had therapies, some people that are therapists, just to talk about specific types of things that people are challenged with.

My most recent podcast was with a guy who is a health coach, and he himself has lost over 100 pounds.

And he talks about the way that your mind tries to sabotage you with habitual ways of behaving and how he had to really tackle what he thought about his body, his relationship with his body, based on how he was raised and all of those things.

Fascinating things, right?

Like, it's really amazing what we can do when we start paying attention to our mind.

The awareness.

Back to that, yep.

Mm-hmm.

And so when you ask those questions and people become aware of why they keep behaving a certain way, that's typically, hopefully, what therapy comes with.

But then, have you ever had a client who you just felt, no matter what questions I ask, this person is, I don't know if I should say, are they avoiding to get to that point?

Maybe it's too painful, no matter how much you try to dig with questions.

Does that happen?

Sure.

I'll give you kind of an analogy.

I recently tore my rotator cuff, and so I had to have surgery.

And I don't know if you know that recovery, but it's kind of long and can be kind of painful.

And then the rehab, the physical therapy is very long because your arm has basically haven't moved it for like a month, and then you start moving it stiff and weak and all that.

So I was with my physical therapist a couple days ago, and I asked her, I said, do you have people that don't do their physical therapy at home?

Because you have home exercises, and then you come to physical therapy two times a week.

And she said, oh, all the time.

I said, can you tell the difference?

Can you tell the people who don't do it at home?

She said, yeah, their recovery is so much slower.

I said, how frustrating must that be for you, that they're not doing the homework, but they're coming in and saying, it's not working, it's not getting better.

So the therapy is exactly the same thing.

I see people one hour a week.

There's a whole lot of other hours in the week that they have to really actively be practicing the skills that we talk about, the paying attention to their mind, paying attention to what they say to themselves when they are encountering those things that challenge them.

Like say, you know, they want to be more productive at work, but they find themselves tired and leaving early a lot.

They want to be more productive, but their behavior does not match.

So what is happening when that behavior is happening?

What are you saying to yourself?

How do you convince yourself to go home early when you just said you wanted to get ahead and work harder?

There's a contradiction there.

And so we have to start paying attention to that.

And it's not enough just one hour a week.

It has to be in your life.

This is like, you know, an active participant in the process of noticing what are you thinking?

How are you feeling?

And then coming back to therapy with the actual goods of what went on for you this week and being a really active participant in trying to figure out where is the block?

And if you do that, we get there, 100% will get there.

But if you don't, people come back and say things like, I forgot what we talked about last week.

I haven't even thought about it.

You know, those kind of things.

They're very passive in the therapy.

Don't they feel like it's wasting their time and money?

Well, yeah, I would suppose so.

But sometimes they blame the therapist because they'll say, this isn't working.

And you say, well, it's not enough.

I always say this the very first time.

It's just not going to be a one hour a week process.

Like you want to change your life.

You got to do it in your life.

But you're right.

You said it earlier.

Maybe they aren't ready.

Because sometimes we have to uncover some stuff.

You know, we got to figure out for me, how I did therapy and recovering, how I talked to myself as a result of the abuse.

That was tough.

You know, that was tough.

It was really kind of dark.

So that took some time and it took some bravery.

And I don't know that I was always ready to do that.

And I'm a work in progress.

I'm always working on something for myself.

Always, all of us, yeah.

Yeah.

But no shade to people who can't at this moment.

If you feel like too much, be kind to yourself because it is a lot.

For some people, depending on what's happened to them in their lives, we're a result of what has happened to us.

And those of us who have had some things that are hard, or just some things that have really kind of messed with our confidence, or our sense of self, or our self-esteem, it takes some bravery to step into that and try to figure that out.

So I'm never mad at people.

I always say, you know where I am, I would love to try to help you again when you're ready, and when you feel like this is something you can do.

But lots of people, lots of people step back, because it just does feel overwhelming a little bit at first.

At first.

Yes, when you're ready, because no matter how much you would want something for the person, but they are still the driver of this journey.

So you cannot take over the wheel.

Yeah.

No.

And if they're not ready, you can't force that.

You try to, it's never going to work.

It's never going to work.

Like I have lots of people who will call and say, I've got a friend, I think it could use some therapy.

And I'm like, have the friend call.

You telling your friend that you think they need therapy is not going to make that friend want to do therapy.

No.

They have to feel it.

And it might even go to them being offended.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's hard.

So it has to be something that comes from them.

It has to be a real desire.

There's something they want to work on.

It has to be that.

Because when you are maybe at times talking about hard stuff, or trying to really understand how you think, there has to be a goal that keeps you motivated.

This is hard, but I know if I do this, perhaps I'll feel more confident to go for that promotion, or feel more in my body and able to challenge a difficult boss.

Or speak to my husband about our relationship problems that I'm right now too scared to talk to him about.

You know, those things start to shift as they grow in confidence and grow in its sense of self.

That is so true regarding confidence, because I even have had those leadership coaches who do work on self-awareness and confidence.

I wonder if you've noticed this with your clients as well.

One thing that has usually come up is women tend to be less confident in asking for bonus promotion versus men.

Quick example I always use.

So I have a cousin, we were in school together, same grade.

He applied for a job that wrote masters on the job description.

He only has a bachelor's, but he got the job.

He's in Netherlands now and they love him.

If you're a woman and the job says we need a master's, you think if I don't have a PhD, I'm not applying.

Why do women not have that level of confidence that men usually display?

Yeah, there's lots of good research around that where men will always, they feel confident.

I think there's some percentage, they feel confident if they meet a certain percentage of the criteria.

And women feel like they ought to have more than the criteria to even apply.

Like you said, I think there's a lot going on there.

If you think about us being a product of our environment, right?

So me, product of growing up in an abusive home, that's one part of it.

That's my personal experience.

But then we also grow up in the world, right?

How does the world see us?

I'm a female.

Sometimes I see things on the news and I'm 62.

So like to talk about the news and what was going on in the 70s with the Equal Rights Amendment, and women trying to fight for equal rights.

I was 10, 12 at that time.

I wasn't conscious of that struggle going on.

You know, as a kid, I was going to school, I was doing my thing.

But that struggle was going on in America.

That was a real struggle and it was a challenge.

And there were lots of things going on where women were disregarded, women were second class, women weren't given the opportunities of men.

Still goes on, by the way.

I know you know this.

Then think about color of skin.

Where do you come from?

Your accent.

Think about what part of the country you grow up in, part of, you know, just the people that you encounter.

You were also part of that.

So I'm 10 years old growing up in a time where women were being disregarded just for the fact that they were women.

That gets in.

That sinks in to us, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Little subtle ways we're treated at school maybe, or little subtle ways that we're treated by males in our lives, whether or not it's family or friends or your first job.

How are you treated?

And this subtle sort of messaging just settles in to us.

And women become, I think, desensitized to that sometimes.

Like we just expect it.

It's going to happen.

It's okay.

I'll deal with it.

And we don't realize that as years and years and years go on, that we consciously don't feel like we're less, but we behave in a way, right?

The not applying unless I have a Ph.D.

of when they won a master's.

That's saying, I don't think I'm enough unless I have extra education for this job.

So we've internalized that sense of less.

So I think that's where you got to really do a lot of work around, what do you say to yourself?

What do you believe about yourself based on what's happened to you?

And your experience is unique to my experience, unique to someone else's experience.

But we all have stuff happened to us that colors how we see ourselves.

Me personally, I had to work a lot on feeling less than, you know, just this idea that somehow when things go wrong, I'm at fault because that's how I was raised.

So that's my thing.

I really have to work on that.

But layered in there is I'm a female.

So imagine when those two things pair up, when I have a boss that's kind of abusive toward me because he's a male and he feels dominant and I've got my abusive past pairing up, talk about alarm bells, I'm being triggered all over the place and I'm having a really hard time feeling confident enough to assert myself because my trauma is showing up along with this environmental kind of thing about this boss that thinks he's great or whatever.

So I think women really do struggle with that and I think that is a hard thing.

We have to be honest about it and speak about it and we have to call it out when we see it.

It's just like sexism, racism, any of the isms.

We see them, we're experiencing them, we have to call them out because that is part of the mechanism to keep us feeling less than.

That's how we are kept feeling like we're not as good.

So I can't do this until I get extra education because I am less than.

You got to recognize you're saying that to yourself because you're going to behave accordingly.

Does writing down those beliefs help you read them back on your notebook and go, this sounds ridiculous because if somebody said that to you, you know how when a friend goes through something, you say the kindest, most compassionate, supportive statements.

But if you drop a glass and you break it, you say horrendous stuff about yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

I ask clients to make notes so that when they come back to talk to me, because nobody really thinks they talk to themselves that bad.

They all say to me, oh, maybe a little bit here and there.

I don't think so.

And then inevitably, it might not be week one, but it comes and they're like, Bonnie, I called myself blah, blah, blah.

Like, oh my God, I am so, so negative about myself.

Because first the mind is negatively biased.

That's an evolutionary thing.

We have to look around and make sure we're safe, and we look for things to be problems, because the wildebeest is going to eat my head if I'm not aware that it's around the corner.

So that's part of that negative bias.

We're looking for problems.

But we also, we double down on ourselves.

You know, we call ourselves nasty, nasty things.

Especially if we've gone through things where primary caregivers or people in positions of authority over us were also projecting negativity on us, we definitely fall into that trap.

So I ask people to pay attention, write it down, come back, let's talk about it.

So once they get over the stun, that they really do say these nasty things to themselves, calling themselves stupid, an idiot, all kinds of things, then we start noticing, when does that happen?

Does that happen when, you know, whatever?

And so they start noticing how it lines up.

How does it show up in their lives?

Then we start matching emotion to that.

What were you feeling right before that happened?

How did that pair up with how you were feeling?

Negative language, what was the happenstance and what are you feeling?

Then we challenge it.

Then we get the conscious you and I sitting here, neither one of us would say, hi, I'm, you know, Bonnie, I'm very stupid.

Like we wouldn't say that.

Then you get your conscious mind to say, what do you want to say about yourself?

Well, I want to say that I'm intelligent and empathetic and a good psychologist.

So you write down those things.

And then when the negative thing says, oh, you're so stupid, then you counteract it.

Kind of act as if, even if you don't feel it, say, nope, this is what I'm saying now.

I'm smart.

I made a mistake.

Everyone makes mistakes.

I'll learn from it and grow.

Like you have to consciously change it.

And we know now that's how you build the new synapse in your brain.

The elasticity of the brain allows us to build a new pathway.

And the less you think about being stupid, the less that pathway gets used, eventually you stop going there.

You just stop.

But not overnight.

Consistent and persistent is what I always tell people.

Be consistent and persistent.

Yes, because then you build this new, unintelligent, new pathway very much so.

When it comes to parents, just one last point.

When we are kids, we look at our parents as, you owe me a house and food and family and all that.

When we grow up, we see them as these are also grownups who deserve happiness, who made a mistake, who didn't have a manual on how to raise kids.

Because some parents, even when they do their best, there's some trauma involved.

They're not perfect.

Do your clients come to a point where they see their parents that way, and then it leads to forgiveness and healing?

I love that you asked about forgiveness.

It's a little bit of a controversial topic for me.

I don't think forgiveness is essential.

But what I do think is essential is seeing them as human beings that have their own trauma, their own challenges, their own life experiences, and make their own mistakes.

Because when you do that, you can separate it from being about you.

Because as a child, you take this all on.

This is a message about me.

My father is being mean to me because somehow, I am not good enough to have a good father.

This is how our brain makes sense of it.

So the real healing comes from me being able to see him as his own person, his own flawed person, who made mistakes, lots of mistakes, and did the very best he could.

That was the best he had.

And there was lots of things that I wish he wouldn't have done, and lots of things I wished he would have been aware of.

But that was his story.

That was his journey.

That was unfortunately his way because of how he was raised and the belief he had about himself.

And for me, it took a long time because there was a lot of trauma.

The day he died, he died of cancer many, many years ago now.

But I remember going to see him in the hospital and he withered away from being this big, strong, scary, powerful, 6 foot 3 man to very, very thin, you know, he was just wasting away with the cancer.

And I remember one day going into his room and he was on major medication for the pain and he was hallucinating.

He saw like butterflies floating around in front of him and he was talking to the butterflies.

And I'll never forget that moment because I walked in there and I didn't see my scary dad anymore.

It was gone.

It was just poof.

And I just felt my heart like just go, it's okay.

It's okay.

This monster doesn't exist anymore.

And I don't think I forgave, but I think I just didn't feel the pain of it anymore.

I just saw a poor man who was dying, who had a hard life and it was disconnected from me.

I didn't feel the responsibility for that anymore.

So like I said, forgiveness is a funny thing.

You probably ask that of people and they'll tell you different thoughts.

It's a whole other discussion, I know.

Also, my mother is religious and sometimes I say to her, no, ma, she said this about me or she did this to me.

I don't like your friend.

And she's like, you have to forget.

I'm like, no, ma, I'm not.

No.

It's a whole other discussion.

It is.

We could do another episode on it.

I would love to have an episode with you about it.

Because a lot of especially women struggle with that as well, because they are guilted into forgive, forgive, forgive, and forget and all that.

And the religion aspect is brought in if family is religious.

It's a lot going on there.

So, yes, I'd love to do another one with you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We were raised Catholics.

There's a lot of that in there too.

And I think if you forgive, all the more power to you.

Fantastic.

I would never say try not to.

But just the real core thing here is to make sure you're not hanging on to any sense of responsibility about this so that it still impacts you.

Right.

So whether that's through forgiveness or like for me, I need just a distancing myself from that pain.

Whatever it is, that's the point, right?

We don't want to be holding what's happened to us in some way responsible and impacting our sense of self.

So however you do it, if it happens to forgiveness.

But I would never say to somebody, until you forgive, you won't be through this.

Because I don't think that's essential.

I've heard those discourses and they can be quite dangerous for sure.

I agree.

Deconstructed podcast hosted by Dr.

Bonnie Wims, the counseling psychologist and mental health professional.

I've enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

I loved it.

I'm so glad you did because I did as well.

Before you go, would you like our listeners to reach out to you and where?

Oh, yes.

That would be great.

I have a website.

It's just Bonnie Wims and I am on all the socials, Bonnie Wims.

I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook.

My email is bonnie at wimsandassociates.com.

So if you go on my website, I have a little freebie that you can get if you click on that.

And you can register for my newsletter that comes out every other week.

And you can also through my website, book a consultation.

So I do a free 30-minute consultation with people just so they can kind of test drive what I'm all about and see if it's something that works for them.

bonniewims.com.

Thank you for the freebie.

We love freebies.

Of course.

For a 30-minute, free 30-minute consultation.

Thank you, Dr.

Bonnie.

You're welcome.

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