Show Notes for the freedom Formula
[00:00:00] Charna Cassell: Welcome back to LaidOPEN Podcast. This is your host Charna Cassell and today's guest Alison Guilbault is such a fascinating human. , she's really had some rigorous training in unusual environments versus like a straightforward psychotherapeutic path.
[00:00:21] Charna Cassell: She was interested in forensic psychology and worked with the FBI and she worked in Rikers prison. In solitary confinement so she really has an unusual vantage point working with offenders, as well as victims. And we talk about her life and her relationship to making decisions and living a more aligned existence, and how that now informs the work she does in her private practice in Jersey.
[00:00:50] Charna Cassell: She really has a passion for working with people and helping them heal from trauma, but also living lives that are free of shame and, , building up their sense of confidence. So at this point, most of her, private practice is made up of women, men out there can also really, , receive some value from this conversation we're about to have.
[00:01:10] Charna Cassell: So I hope you enjoy.
[00:01:12]
[00:01:59] Charna Cassell: Welcome Allison. I'm so happy to have you here.
[00:02:02] Allison Guilbault: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:04] Charna Cassell: And I, I feel like this timing is exciting because I know that recently you've had some pretty awesome things happening in your life. And I would love, , if you would give us a little update about all these. Awesome interviews that you've been doing recently.
[00:02:20] Allison Guilbault: Yeah, so I am a therapist in New Jersey. I specialize in anxiety and trauma and sex and intimacy.
[00:02:28] Allison Guilbault: But of late, probably the last, I'd say year or so, I have been appearing on a lot of podcasts. I started my own podcast. I've been doing a lot of stuff. And, , it's been very exciting. I often talk to women, , you know, and feel free to listen, but usually, , my audience is women. And I've been doing a lot of talks on mindset change. Confidence building, , you know, I have a background in, in that mindset work and cognitive behavioral, , therapy. So I've just been trying to help people kind of let go of their shame and their guilt and their limiting beliefs, all that stuff that holds them back.
[00:03:03] Allison Guilbault: And connect
[00:03:04] Allison Guilbault: into, you know, more of their higher purpose.
[00:03:06] Charna Cassell: And you, recently, you were interviewed in Time magazine,
[00:03:10] Allison Guilbault: yeah, yeah, I did, um, an interview in Time magazine, I'm quoted, and it was a, it was a really interesting article, it was an, uh, an article on loneliness. So, they wanted to know, you know, how is loneliness showing up for people? What kind of recommendations did I have?
[00:03:25] Allison Guilbault: Um, and you know, it's, yeah. It's a, it's a funny topic because, you know, what I told them and now I'll tell you is I think a lot of people are suffering from loneliness and somehow there's some strange element of shame to it. Like people don't often show up to therapy and say like, I'm feeling lonely, right?
[00:03:42] Allison Guilbault: They'll say sort of something adjacent to that, like, Oh, you know, I don't really connect with my friends anymore. I'm feeling bored. , so yeah, we, we kind of like deep dove into. You know, if we're having this sort of universal experience, how to kind of move through it, what to do.
[00:03:56] Charna Cassell: Mm hmm. This real lingering loneliness post COVID and people moving from that space of isolation.
[00:04:05] Charna Cassell: And it seems like there's, it's a bit of a paradox because there's, there's the desire to connect, but then less capacity and energy to leave home and to less bandwidth to spend time with people. Right?
[00:04:18] Allison Guilbault: Exactly.
[00:04:19] Charna Cassell: It's really interesting. It's like, you know, if somebody has been bedridden and they've lost the physical muscle tissue, I mean, you know, muscle to, to do things and they've lost that strength.
[00:04:29] Charna Cassell: I feel like we've, that's what's happened. We've like atrophied emotionally.
[00:04:33] Allison Guilbault: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
[00:04:35] Charna Cassell: so I'm, this is something I'm really curious about. You, you have a remarkable background that has quite a range in terms of environments you've worked in and populations you've worked with.
[00:04:49] Charna Cassell: And then you had this wake up, right? You went from working in Rikers, like in a prison setting, right? Yeah. with offenders. You also worked with the FBI and you're doing research around, , the homicide of sex workers, right? So you have this, all this range there. And then one day you had this wake up where you're like, I don't want to do this anymore.
[00:05:13] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:14] Charna Cassell: And so my question for you, because I feel like it has to have given you some a skill set for the work that you're doing now, but what was the, what was the emotional and the sensational experience of that I am done?
[00:05:31] Allison Guilbault: Yeah, it even predated a little bit of the Rikers, so I started my career working in a hospital, I was doing trauma work, and I really loved it, um, I was the first person that came, if someone came into the emergency room, in the immediate aftermath of a sexual assault or domestic violence, , I would be the first person to see them, and I would help them get connected to services, make sure that they're emotionally okay, if they wanted to talk to a police officer, dot, dot, dot, and, um, And I loved that work.
[00:05:58] Allison Guilbault: But because I was working with the FBI, I suddenly birthed this career in private investigations. I was really good at research, right? The fact that I had worked with the FBI was impressive to a lot of people. I was being recruited. And so I had almost a tenure, almost a decade, of this This career that kind of took me off of the path.
[00:06:19] Allison Guilbault: It was, it was close proximity to what I had been doing, right. It was under forensics and things like that. And, you know, the story I sort of tell is one day I was sitting in this meeting and I was just, I joke now that like my hustle was aligned with pressure and not passion. I was working so hard. I was always the first person in the office.
[00:06:38] Allison Guilbault: It was always the last person to leave. I had terrible work life balance and I was climbing a corporate ladder. I was. objectively successful, and I was just I was kind of miserable and not so miserable that it was obvious in my face. It was almost like subtle misery. And I just sat in this office one day and I was like, what am I doing with my life?
[00:06:58] Allison Guilbault: Like, this is so, I'm so far from where I wanted to be. I wanted to help people. , and I'm not, you know, and I think that was like a huge like I burnt out and I left that meeting I immediately walked into my therapy office and my therapist and I was like how I'm so stuck in my life right I'm making poor decisions I'm misaligned I'm just I'm just not doing it right.
[00:07:26] Allison Guilbault: I'm not happy or fulfilled. And she helped me file like an immediate leave of absence. And I was just like, I need to go and I need to go now. And um, that's what ultimately kicked me into sort of the Rikers work. You know, so I give these speeches when I, when I do public speaking, right, and I'm like, listen, if you are stuck in your life, if you are not fulfilled in your life, you do have the power to make this huge change.
[00:07:50] Allison Guilbault: And I think people agree with me up to you can make the change, right? And so often when I tell my story, people will say things like, okay, but how easy for you, right? I have kids or I have a mortgage or I've already climbed the corporate ladder. So an important part of my story that I try to beat is I had nothing to fall back on.
[00:08:08] Allison Guilbault: I had an enormous debt because I had put myself through school. I had a big New York City rent. I had climbed this corporate ladder with no backup plan whatsoever. So when I quit, it was really like jumping into the universe with no plan whatsoever. And I remember thinking like, well, what am I going to do when I grow up?
[00:08:28] Allison Guilbault: And I was in my you know, mid thirties at this point. It's not like I was, you know, a spring chicken. And, uh, I thought, you know, I loved helping people. I loved doing trauma work. I loved being in fast paced environments. And so I actually had to go back to school in my mid thirties and, you know, I had to take an internship that was unpaid.
[00:08:46] Allison Guilbault: And I had no way to pay my bills. I was used to a corporate salary. So I actually begged a friend of mine to let me bartend at his bar. So making way less money. And that was really, all of it was really hard. But I think if I had continued on the path that I was on, that would have been arguably so much harder, right?
[00:09:06] Allison Guilbault: And, you know, now I'm at the other end of that where I have had this diverse career since making that decision. I worked at Rikers Island. I worked, did trauma work. I now own my own practice. I publicly speak all over the world. I travel the world, you know, and I sort of believe, like, I wasn't special. And if I could do this.
[00:09:24] Allison Guilbault: So can everybody, but, you know, often people's limitations are really just in their own mind, right? We've created all the stories of why we can't do something. , and when we just start to shift that mindset, it doesn't mean that you're not going to come with hardships or dreams aren't hard to be made, but it does mean that at least you're opening the doors to them, which I don't think I had an awareness that that was even possible until that aha moment.
[00:09:48] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Well, and there's also, there's the, in my experience, leaving situations that feel untenable. There's a, there's a hollowness, there's a, there's, you know, there's that done feeling and I'm thinking specifically relationships. And so, you know, it's like I guide my clients in that way. It's like, well, what's the physical experience internally?
[00:10:10] Charna Cassell: And if you feel like you've vacated the building, right? And your body is dialing it in, um, You know, there's also the, the question that comes up for me is who were the people? What were the resources? I love that you, you had this therapist that helped you file that and helped you kind of turn the ship around and, and what, what else built up your resilience enough to make that courageous choice?
[00:10:37] Allison Guilbault: You know, I wish I could say that it was, you know, maybe so much resilience. I think at some point it was really more powered by that burnout, right? So I was very fortunate to have a really good therapist. I am biased as hell, but I believe everybody should find a therapist. Therapists are worth their weight in gold.
[00:10:52] Allison Guilbault: , but you know, I do have good friends and I do have a supportive family. My mother was particularly terrified when I was like, Hey, I'm leaving my six figure salary and I'm going to bartend happy hour on the Upper East Side from three o'clock to five o'clock and I'm going to take out another loan. And even worse, when I got my, you know, job at Rikers Island, she was like, you left all of that for this.
[00:11:12] Allison Guilbault: Right. This is banana pancakes. Um, but you know, you find, I think the support that I found was really, you know, it sounds so cliche when I say this stuff, but it's like, it was self trust, right? Like suddenly turning my mantra into like, I can do hard things.
[00:11:31] Charna Cassell: Yeah,
[00:11:31] Allison Guilbault: right. How do I know? Because look, I'm doing this thing.
[00:11:33] Allison Guilbault: It's already hard, right? Mm hmm, and just like there has to be a better way. I haven't figured out what the better way it looks like yet , but I know that there is a better way. So just that little spark of Self awareness that I can do difficult like that. I guess that's where the world of resilience lies.
[00:11:50] Allison Guilbault: Um and self trust like just I have to start to listen to my intuition rather than all of these voices telling me what I'm supposed to be doing. You know, and it's funny that you mentioned relationships because yeah, I had the same sort of burnout. I don't, I don't actually know that I've ever equated it this way, so thank you.
[00:12:07] Allison Guilbault: , I called off my wedding six weeks to walking down the aisle, right? And that was particularly difficult in sort of the same way as my job, right? I wasn't inherently miserable. It was just, I wasn't aligned, right? Like, it was just the wrong guy. It was just the wrong person for me and, you know, too many people kind of shut down their intuition that's speaking to them, right?
[00:12:33] Allison Guilbault: Like, I like what you said, vacate the building. It's like, you know, if we drop into our bodies and we really, like, we have wisdom, right? There is an internal dialogue that is telling us what we need to hear. It's just like finding the space and the clarity to actually, you know, Receive those messages because we're very smart.
[00:12:50] Allison Guilbault: We know what we need. It's just overriding the anxiety or the doubt to like, start to listen to it,
[00:12:56] Charna Cassell: right? The dismissing and I, you know, I always make that distinction with folks, right? There's there's hearing the message. And then there's actually responding to it. And so being self responsive is this really key piece there, right?
[00:13:10] Charna Cassell: Because often you'll, you'll hear that intuitive voice and then people will argue with it. They'll justify, they'll, you know, it's like, Oh, but I can't afford, but I have this rent, but I want, I'm used to this quality of life, but I, you know, and so on. All of it. Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, I think it's an incredibly courageous thing when people will do that with a wedding, especially if they've been sold that as the path, like, okay, this is the move.
[00:13:35] Charna Cassell: I'm supposed to, you know, get married and have a kid by this age and do this thing. And, you know, uh, it's, it's amazing how many people do it. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and then 10 years later,
[00:13:50] Charna Cassell: they're like, yeah, I was actually never really in love with that person. It was just like what we were supposed to do.
[00:13:56] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. You know, and it's funny speaking to like the, you know, you listening to your intuition and yet dismissing it so much of myself talk at that time was like, well, this is just cold feet. And then even worse, you know, I was sort of like outwardly putting it out into the world and then other people responding that way.
[00:14:11] Allison Guilbault: And you know, it was a horrible decision at the time. I know. Bye. Bye. My, you know, I disappointed a lot of people. I was close to my would have been in laws. , but I actually ran into my ex, um, at a wedding, maybe like two years ago. And he came up and like bought me a drink and was like, Hey, to that bullet dodged, right?
[00:14:28] Allison Guilbault: Like, I did not know what you knew then, but now I'm actually happily married. I have beautiful children. Like what would our relationship have looked like? Right. And, you know, it's kind of, thank you for having the courage to sort of. Do the thing I didn't want to do because I felt like I was letting the world down, right?
[00:14:44] Allison Guilbault: It felt embarrassing to say like, hey, we're supposed to get married and we've changed our minds, right? Changing Your mind is not something that's often encouraged, right? And I always tell that to clients, like give yourself permission to change your mind.
[00:14:58] Charna Cassell: There's also this, this theme, if we can kind of spin back to, I call it spinning the lazy Susan.
[00:15:05] Charna Cassell: You know, the, the, the thing of like what we feel embarrassed, what we feel shame around. And there's this piece of, it's like, Oh God forbid, we're lonely.
[00:15:14] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. That
[00:15:14] Charna Cassell: we're supposed to have everything figured out. We're supposed to have a full social life. We're supposed to be, gosh, if I'm about to get married to this person, I'm supposed to be.
[00:15:24] Charna Cassell: So all of the supposed to's rather than what's actually occurring for me. Yeah. You know. Absolutely. And, and the powerlessness, because I often think of when there's shame, shame is a, an alternative because powerlessness is so intolerable, like even though shame feels terrible, we'd rather feel shame than powerless in a situation.
[00:15:46] Allison Guilbault: Sure.
[00:15:47] Charna Cassell: Right? Like, here I am, I'm powerless to make this the right person for me to marry.
[00:15:53] Allison Guilbault: Yeah.
[00:15:53] Charna Cassell: Right? I'm powerless to control everyone's judgment of me if I walk away.
[00:15:58] Allison Guilbault: Absolutely.
[00:16:00] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and, and I know shame is something that you, again, having worked with, uh, survivors as well as offenders, I often think from a somatic vantage point of the body of shame,
[00:16:16] Allison Guilbault: right?
[00:16:16] Charna Cassell: How shame lives in the body and how it shapes us. And you have a really special vantage point given the populations you've worked with. And so I'm curious if you could say more about that.
[00:16:27] Allison Guilbault: Yeah, you know, I, I say to clients, like, shame is one of the most immobilizing things because it's so big, like, it's such a big emotion that we almost don't get to the, the lower levels, right?
[00:16:39] Allison Guilbault: It's just like, you know, using loneliness as an example, if I feel shameful that I'm lonely because I've internalized it as like, well, I'm not good enough or no one else experiences this, we're not actually addressing the loneliness. Right? And, you know, I'm, I'm all about somatic psychology. I, I truly believe it's somewhat ridiculous that we have health and mental health, right?
[00:16:58] Allison Guilbault: Like, our mind body connection is really powerful. So, you know, I mean, it can, you know, figuratively immobilize you, right? But then it also can cause all sorts of body issues. issues, right? Like we can get headaches, we can get depressed, we can have trouble getting out of bed, we can have skin issues, right?
[00:17:14] Allison Guilbault: So it's like all of these big feelings have just such huge impact on our experience as an entire human being. When I was at Rikers, their, like, their philosophy of mental health treatment was very grounded in what's called dialectical behavioral therapy. I had a love hate relationship with DBT, but one of the, one of the foundations of DBT is mindfulness.
[00:17:41] Allison Guilbault: Up until that experience, even with all my degrees in mental health, I had really thought mindfulness meant like yoga, meditation, like I had a misconception of what that meant. And now what I better understand it to be is just noticing what's happening without judgment. Right? I am feeling lonely, and I'm feeling shameful that I feel lonely, right?
[00:18:03] Allison Guilbault: I want to have a fulfilling sex life, and yet it's difficult for me to keep the lights on, right? I want to have a good relationship with my food, but I still find myself drawn to diet culture, right? It's like, these things can coexist, and if we shame them or we judge them, We don't work through them, right?
[00:18:23] Allison Guilbault: And then it shows up in our relationships, it shows up in our decision making, it shows up in our body. All the things.
[00:18:28] Charna Cassell: Absolutely. It's, it's, you know, foot on gas, foot on brake is how I think of it, where I had a client that I worked with intermittently for over a decade. And there was the, I'm married to a man.
[00:18:42] Charna Cassell: And I don't want to have sex with him, right? Or I'm married to a man and I want to explore this, the, you know, being queer. I'm, you know, and, and those internal conflicts when we can't accept, it's basically just like keeping the brake on. Yeah. Can't accept ourself. Yeah.
[00:18:59] Allison Guilbault: And, and, you know, when we acknowledge, Whatever we're experiencing, it doesn't mean we immediately have a solution.
[00:19:07] Allison Guilbault: And actually I resonate to that story. I, this, I have the same story. I married to like a hetero guy and, you know, and I've been with him for a long time and I was like, I'm pretty positive that I'm bisexual and like, now I'm in this committed relationship and I struggled with that for so long because the fear and the shame kept me from like acknowledging it.
[00:19:29] Allison Guilbault: From fearing that I was gonna, he was gonna feel rejected, that he was gonna feel like something was wrong with him. And eventually we got to the point to just talking about it and like, giving it a voice. And, you know, we were able to work through it, right? And on it, for me, and this is certainly not everybody's experience, almost just owning it.
[00:19:46] Allison Guilbault: Actually, that was all I actually really needed, right? It was just like, Hey, hey, it is part of my existence is real. And I'm not going to like put that brake on it constantly. I'm going to give it a little bit of a little pedal on the gas, right? I feel like gas on the pedal. And. It, it just, there is levity now that I have spoken this truth, my truth into existence.
[00:20:08] Allison Guilbault: It is part of my story and, you know, you know, all of that, it's important, it's important to talk about this stuff.
[00:20:15] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Well, and you're also giving this person who loves you the opportunity to love all of you, including the part that may create some anxiety, right? Um, Okay. And then, and then you get to hold it together rather than feeling so alone because the more, if things feel so big inside you, right, when you don't give them voice or when you don't have permission to attend to them.
[00:20:40] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. I love that word permission. I'm always encouraging clients. I'm like, what do we need to give ourselves permission for? Maybe we need to give ourselves permission to take up more space or permission to let something go or permission to just feel a certain way. You know, and that's a lot of the language that I use.
[00:20:54] Allison Guilbault: I think it's super important.
[00:20:57] Charna Cassell: Absolutely. And in that conversation, Did you talk about the different possibilities of existing outside of monogamy and, you know, whether it's you bring in a third to be with the two of you.
[00:21:12] Allison Guilbault: I almost find that, and maybe this is just my experience as a therapist, but like a lot of the clients that I work with, I think maybe are in some part representative of either something that I've already explored and have lived experience with, or something that.
[00:21:26] Allison Guilbault: You know, not necessarily I'm interested in, but it's something I resonate with. And so, so much of my private practice career, right, post to the trauma work, I worked primarily with queer, the queer community. And I worked with a ton of people that, you know, in this day and age, we, you know, runs by a different few names, right?
[00:21:44] Allison Guilbault: We can call it poly, polyamorous, polygamous, , most commonly, I think they call it ethical non monogamy. So I had a huge baseline, like I'd read all the books because I had worked with these clients and I wanted to have the language. So when I sat down with my husband, I was like, hey, here's all the options on the table, right?
[00:22:02] Allison Guilbault: You know, it was a huge lesson for us. Ultimately, we did not open up our marriage. , and that was a, that was a decision that we mutually had to come through together. Right. And so, you know, again, I'm a big fan of therapy. We worked with a couple's therapist who specialized in that, and we kind of worked through all of the hurdles.
[00:22:21] Allison Guilbault: we went through all the options and then ultimately landed on the one that felt the most comfortable for both of us. And, I give mad props to all of the people who are in open relationships. I think they have to do so much more work, right? They have to work with like expectations, better communication.
[00:22:37] Allison Guilbault: They have to really look at their jealousy. Ultimately where my husband landed was just like, that was just not something that he. he could, you know, that he was open to. And then I had to kind of look at like sort of risk reward, right? Like, okay, so this is important to me, but so is my husband, right?
[00:22:56] Allison Guilbault: And you know, that is a difficult thing to navigate because the last thing you want to feel is resentful. Or so we almost, even though we were at a divide, we had to find a way to mutually agree. That this was going to be okay, you know, and we've kind of left the door open. And I think maybe that just alone was like sort of the softness that I needed.
[00:23:15] Allison Guilbault: It was like, okay, this isn't a permanent. This is a forever decision. This is just a right now decision. Exactly. And we can always come back to the table. Honestly, just that that speaking it into the universe that having the tough, difficult conversations, understanding that we have more work to do. I'm also very fortunate.
[00:23:32] Allison Guilbault: My partner, even currently now he's like reading the books and trying to understand more about it. So we can come from a more informed decision. So that's, you know, couples, couple partnerships are hard. Marriage is hard, right? And this is a lot of the work that it takes, like what happens as marriages evolve when two people start to divide.
[00:23:53] Allison Guilbault: And that's almost natural, right? We, we don't always grow in the same path. And so like, how do, how do we find our way back to each other? Right.
[00:24:00] Allison Guilbault: And that takes trust and communication and honesty.
[00:24:03] Charna Cassell: Right, right, right, right. And I think one of the things that you pointed out that, is really important is, you know, we can think of things like relationships or compromise.
[00:24:13] Charna Cassell: And one of my teachers, uh, Stan Tatkin talks about it a little bit differently, which I appreciate, which is talking about negotiation instead of compromise. Right. And so how can you, it's like, you want this and you want this two very different things, but how do you stay in the conversation long enough so that you can both come to an agreement where there's peace?
[00:24:35] Charna Cassell: And I think that that piece of like, This is where we are now. This is not a forever, so that it's not like five years from now if you need to bring this conversation up again. He's betrayed and he's like, You said you never wanted to open the marriage! Because that's, you know, it's, it's, it's not honest, but it's like creating enough security right now.
[00:24:57] Charna Cassell: And also letting off some of that, you know, perhaps the pressure if you hadn't given it voice at all, but to both not be in resentment so that you can keep growing in the same direction and know that you're being honest with one another versus like it comes out sideways.
[00:25:13] Allison Guilbault: Right, right. Exactly. That. Yeah.
[00:25:15] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Oh, I'm glad that you have a, a great willing partner. I mean, I think that's important. You're like, it's work. It's not just going to happen. That's true. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. And, and so in terms of, uh, you know, what you said is also, I, I see that being very true. Um, we attract clients and maybe it's not to the same degree, but I started noting that over the years, like 20, you know, pretty early on, I'd be like, wait, there's a theme here, right?
[00:25:46] Charna Cassell: Like they'd come in threes and they would, I know maybe they'd escalate just a little bit. Each person, like not happy in my relationship. The next person is actually cheating. The next person is having multiple affairs. The next per, you know, it's like, And so then you get a chance to reflect on your own inner landscape.
[00:26:05] Charna Cassell: And so along those lines, , are there certain themes that, that you're seeing in the work that you're doing with your clients currently?
[00:26:13] Allison Guilbault: Yeah, you know, so, because I did all the trauma work, and I do love trauma work, I just naturally gravitate towards it. I've always been like a fast paced person. , and so, you know, I just find that I have really good connections with my trauma clients.
[00:26:29] Allison Guilbault: And of late, I've really moved away from that. And I've been thinking like, You know, what's, what's that all about? And I've, the type of client that I'm now pulling in, probably most, I don't know, like most commonly, is this high functioning woman who's really successful who feels stuck in her life, right?
[00:26:50] Allison Guilbault: And I've been thinking a lot about how, you know, I think that has shifted my career has shifted in that direction because I shifted in that direction.
[00:26:59] Charna Cassell: Yeah.
[00:26:59] Allison Guilbault: Right. And I'm almost speaking to myself 10 years ago, right, where from the outside when I was back in that PI job, everyone, I think, You know, if I had collected the experiences of all the people around me, like, what do you think of Alison?
[00:27:13] Allison Guilbault: I think that they all would have marked me as high working, high achieving, right? A hustler, got it all together in a good relationship. And internally I was a hot mess, right? Like I was not believing in myself. I was, you know, feeling so much pressure. I was feeling so much shame. I was feeling so much guilt.
[00:27:31] Allison Guilbault: I was people pleasing. I had poor boundaries. And now that is the type of client I attract, right? And I just, Love working with them because if I could sit down and say like, okay, well, what did we just like I was saying to a client today, right? They were commenting on their relationship and they were just using all these words like I mean, I guess I'm kind of worth it.
[00:27:49] Allison Guilbault: I, I think, I think I may be lovable. Right? And I was like, do we, do we hear it? Right? Like, what if we just tweak all that sentence? Like, what would happen if you just showed up for yourself in this moment? Right? Just you and me. No one else is here. We can feel a little cheesy about it. And just say like, I am lovable, period.
[00:28:07] Allison Guilbault: I deserve a healthy relationship, full stop. Right? And I just love doing that work and I'm sure that it is very grounded in, you know, my lived experience.
[00:28:18] Charna Cassell: Mm hmm. And, you know, I, I did listen to some other podcasts you were interviewed on, um, but the fascination with forensics, homicide, all of that, do you have more awareness of what drew you to that?
[00:28:36] Charna Cassell: You know, that is just, yeah.
[00:28:38] Allison Guilbault: That is the golden question, right? So I, I developed this, like, morbid curiosity. From when I was like a kid. So, you know, and this was, I'm, I'm 42, right? So I'm like an 80s to 90s baby. And this was before the emergence of like the SVUs, the CSIs, like now if I say I'm into forensics, like everybody kind of has an archetype for that pretty much because of TV and media.
[00:29:04] Allison Guilbault: But this was before that, right? So I was like, yeah. And, you know, we're sitting around and like teachers like, you know, Jennifer, what do you want to become? I want to become a vet. You, what do you want to become? I want to become a nurse. And I was like, I want to work with serial killers. And my mom was just like, what is this about?
[00:29:20] Allison Guilbault: And truth be told, we've never figured out the answer. Um, I loved true crime before it was popular to do it. Um, you know, I, I have luckily never experienced it. Some big, you know, um, sort of frantically involved, um, anything, so it's, it doesn't, that part doesn't come from lived experience, um, and then I remember when SVU, the TV show came out, like, that was, I was like, this is my dream job, like, this is what I want to do, and when I went to college, Like, the programs didn't exist yet.
[00:29:50] Allison Guilbault: Now they do, but they didn't, right? So, um, there was maybe like one, I think, in Australia, and like one program in America that dealt with forensics. And so, you know, I went instead. For, um, psychology. And at the time it was called Women's Studies. Now, more appropriately, it's called, you know, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
[00:30:08] Allison Guilbault: So I double majored in that. And then very luckily, after I graduated, there was a school in New York, John Jay, um, that specializes, it's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. And they had just opened a big program in forensics, in forensic psychology. So that's where I did actually both of my masters.
[00:30:26] Charna Cassell: You know, I know that for me, I I wouldn't wish sexual trauma on anybody, but I know that Healing myself through certain experiences gives me the capacity to guide people in a very particular way from the inside out and, and to be like, I stand as an example. Right. And so it's really, it's always a fascinating thing for me that when people can actually help people heal through something that.
[00:30:51] Charna Cassell: Is, is not per, it's not a personal lived experience, right? At that, it's like these are built skill sets over time through study and through research and, yeah. Yeah,
[00:31:01] Allison Guilbault: exactly.
[00:31:02] Charna Cassell: When you were working in Rikers, did you experience vicarious trauma?
[00:31:08] Allison Guilbault: I mean, absolutely. So, you know, Rikers was honestly, single handedly, I think my favorite job. So when I say that, it almost sounds like it was a good experience. And to me, the reason that it was my favorite job is it was the most life defining and powerful job that I had. , Rikers is a terrible place, right?
[00:31:28] Allison Guilbault: I got the job there and I just knew I would do mental health work. And then they placed me, and they placed me in solitary confinement. Ugh. With all males who all had some sort of a diagnosis, right? So they all had like a mental, they call it SMIS and inside of, um, that kind of system, but it just meant they had a severe mental illness.
[00:31:47] Allison Guilbault: So they were anti personality disorder, borderline personality disorder. They were having antisocial personality disorder, all sorts of schizophrenia, right? Like these big, big ticket mental health issues. And, I had no idea what to expect. And the first day that I was there, it was like my training day.
[00:32:04] Allison Guilbault: It was, like a snowstorm, and Rikers is a strange place to just access, so you can't, like, drive up and get into the system. You, like, stop and take a city bus, and then There's like a whole intercity bus system inside. So it took me a long time from like the gate to get to where I had to go and it had been a big snowstorm and I had like high heels on because I was like, oh job interview, right?
[00:32:25] Allison Guilbault: Like I'm meeting my big boss. And I had luckily had like my Uggs in my backpack. , and I remember showing up and like sitting down and it was just sort of the interview training part. And she was like, Hey, I hope to hell that you don't have high heels because you need different shoes in case you need to run.
[00:32:41] Allison Guilbault: And I was like, in case I need to run, okay, so I swapped out my shoes, left my heels in her office, and then the next stage was like taking off all of my jewelry, um, you know, in case someone could grab you by the necklace or like pull an earring. And then they made me watch a video of the person I was replacing who had her jaw broken, and they had it on video, right?
[00:33:05] Allison Guilbault: So it was like, this was my, my, you know, introduction into this life. And, you know, it's like, hey. This is a place where danger and violence is very opportunistic. And so you have to almost become very hyper aware of your surroundings. , you know, you have to really practice, like, street smarts inside of here.
[00:33:28] Allison Guilbault: And, you know, solitary confinement, I think immediately when we think of that, we're like, what a horrible thing. And when I actually, and this is not to justify solitary confinement, but when I actually started working there, what I found is a lot of the people would do something, a lot of the inmates would fight a guard, right, to get placed there, because it was actually a safer space for them than in like, gen pop, right, with all the other, With all the other inmates and all of that, right, you know, was just an awakening to me and I remember sitting with like one particular, the guys loved coming to see me, not because they wanted mental health treatment, but because they got out of their cell, right?
[00:34:07] Allison Guilbault: So they would get to meet me. It was like I had a huge engagement rate. , we would do group therapy and they would get access to me twice a week individual. And I remember this guy telling me this story and thinking to myself, You know, would I behave any differently if I had endured all of the things that he endured, right, watching his mother get murdered, watching his father get murdered, watching his brother get murdered, right, having to initiate into a gang when he was eight years old, right, like, eight years old, right, I was playing with Barbies, and, you know, it was just an enormous awakening for me to just what trauma can do to someone.
[00:34:45] Allison Guilbault: And this certainly isn't to say that I'm like excusing criminal behavior, but it, it did lead me to have a better understanding that just, you know, how people, if we are going to function well as a society, people really do need access to services, right? We need fundamental healthcare. We need Good education, we need all of the things, because left to your own device, without all that stuff, it's very, very hard to lead a well adjusted life.
[00:35:11] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Well, and it, and it's, um, you know, I initially asked this question about vicarious trauma, right? And, and, cause there is this kind of burnout that people can experience sitting with people and their trauma. And then also you described the environment that you're in where there's a level of vigilance.
[00:35:31] Charna Cassell: I mean, when you describe that and you mentioned her jaw being broken, I don't know what you were feeling in your body when you said that, but I could suddenly feel this.
[00:35:40] Allison Guilbault: Yeah.
[00:35:40] Charna Cassell: Heat, and tension, and fear in my chest, like into my throat, you know? Yeah. And to be able to function just like you do when you're a doctor, you have to dis kind of dissociate and numb out and compartmentalize.
[00:35:56] Charna Cassell: And then if you're sitting in that, I don't know how many hours a day you did that, but then turning that off becomes really hard. Yeah. Going back to life and turning, you know, not being vigilant and not compartmentalizing, right? All right.
[00:36:10] Allison Guilbault: Absolutely. I had a whole, , like, self care system where every day, I was there three days a week, and, , every day there was like a cute little pizza bar type thing at , at the end of, you know, the bridge, and I would go there by myself and just sit at the bar and order a pizza, and I would sit there and try to actually eat it.
[00:36:33] Allison Guilbault: envision, like, leaving all of the things I picked up, like, at that bar. Like, when I, when I come in, I'm gonna drop it at the door, and when I go home, it's still here, I'll pick it up tomorrow, but, like, I can't carry all of this home with me. And I had a great therapist who kind of, like, guided me through that tool.
[00:36:50] Allison Guilbault: Um, and it, it fundamentally did help me. Also, I'm a very visual person, so it was nice to be, like, you know, Here, I'm putting all this weight that I've picked up. It is not, it cannot come home with me. And, you know, that's, that's not an easy skill to, I think anybody who does, you know, intensive work has to build some, whether we're compartmentalizing or just some resilience to it all.
[00:37:11] Allison Guilbault: That's difficult, right? Because I think anybody who's drawn to sort of mental health work, you're naturally empathetic, right? Like, you don't get into this field if you don't care about people. Right. So caring about people and not taking it home can be, that can be difficult.
[00:37:27] Charna Cassell: Right. Well, and I think that's super valuable.
[00:37:31] Charna Cassell: It's similar with hypnotherapy where, you know, energy follows intention. So you were very much intending. And you're visualizing and and putting things in a particular place to be held so that you didn't have to take it with you. So it's it's they've done studies and it's proven like it's it's valuable to visualize.
[00:37:50] Charna Cassell: Right? yeah. So that was another one of my questions was in terms of what was your what was your self care then? Yeah. How did you manage on a daily basis? And then there's also the piece that, you know, I feel like I just need to name, which is being a woman, mostly, you know, like working with, with male prisoners.
[00:38:09] Charna Cassell: You're probably just thrilled to get to be around you because you're a woman as well, right? Like out, out of their cell and in the presence of a woman, right?
[00:38:16] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. And I mean, and that's all real, you know, so it is part of the story, I heard all the things. I joke now that like there's nothing that you can say to me.
[00:38:23] Allison Guilbault: There's nothing vulgar I could hear at this stage that I haven't already heard before. There's like a famous scene in Silence of the Lambs where, you know, um, he's like masturbating in front of her and that is a real thing that happens. And all the education in the world like does not prepare you for that.
[00:38:40] Allison Guilbault: And. And I primarily worked with, actually, if I think about it, I worked with all women. , I was super fortunate. I had, like, the greatest supervisor in the world. , who really, you know, again, speaking this stuff into the truth, right? She held nothing back. I remember my first week of training, she was like, You are going to be called every name under the sun.
[00:39:01] Allison Guilbault: You are going to be hearing sexual slurs, right? You are going to witness sexual acts and we always debrief, right? So this, we have to leave shame at the door, we have to leave embarrassment at the door. If this happens to you, I need you to immediately come to me. And in my like, when I'm in my exit letter, when I wrote to her, like, please keep that as part of your training, because I actually think if you hadn't set that tone for me, I would have thought I was doing something wrong.
[00:39:31] Allison Guilbault: I would have been very embarrassed to tell my supervisor that like, I was called this or hurt my finger. I'm a human being, right? , And it did, we did regularly debrief of what it's like to do, you know, that work and it was powerful and enlightening and also, you know, at times terrifying and traumatic.
[00:39:51] Charna Cassell: Well, and, you know, I think about what it's like to sit in a room with someone who's borderline, who very, Typically, they can't tolerate their own emotional landscape, and so they're going to project it out, like any shame, any powerlessness, any, you know, they'll project it onto you. And so if you're in a situation where people, almost everybody has, you know, Some kind of rigid mental illness diagnoses, you have a shit storm, right, coming at you of all of these really hard emotions that people don't know how to hold.
[00:40:28] Charna Cassell: I, yeah, yeah, I used to call it early on because it seemed like I always had at least one client that took all of my energy and like all my supervision time, right? And I'd be like, I, I felt like I was the shit screen and I'd be like, I, and then at a certain point I was like, I'm not letting people take a shit on my face anymore.
[00:40:45] Charna Cassell: It just doesn't happen. I don't have those clothes.
[00:40:50] Allison Guilbault: You know, it's actually so true because I do so much mindset work both in my own, you know, in my own learning. And then also what I speak about, and we talk about self worth and a lot of the times when we're talking about self worth, it's, you know, in relation to the salary we make or a good relationship, But just sort of like, I'm not gonna let anybody shit in my face anymore, right?
[00:41:09] Allison Guilbault: Like that is immediately relevant to our self worth, right? It's just like, nope, not gonna stand for this anymore. At Rikers I had a, in, you know, in later After some of my tenure there, I had a, the person who hired me came to me and said, you know, the thing that spoke to me on your resume wasn't actually anything to do with mental health.
[00:41:29] Allison Guilbault: It was the fact that you had bartended for 20 years. And you know, I had off and on. Right. And she was just like, yeah, okay. You know how to deal with drunk people. So you know what, hopefully you're going to be able to learn to do with these guys. Right. You know how to deescalate stuff. So here we go. And, you know, so much of that is like, Showing up and, you know, again, taking up space, right?
[00:41:51] Allison Guilbault: If I remember where there was an intern that worked with me and she was almost always being manipulated by them because she'd let them, right. And it was like poor boundaries and, you know, again, feelings of shame. And inside of that kind of environment, you really have to, even if you're faking it, right, you really have to show up with like a poker face, , and just to be bold and, you know, like.
[00:42:14] Allison Guilbault: I am, I am, I'm not going to let anyone do this to me today. I'm always allowed to walk away. I can take a day off if I need to. I can terminate any session, you know, and again, those aren't always the things we're taught in grad school, right? It's like work through it. It's like, no,
[00:42:28] Charna Cassell: no, like, Oh, client centered.
[00:42:30] Charna Cassell: No. Well, and again, like, if you're working, depending on the population you're working with, if you're working with addicts, right? I can't help but think about, um, you know, I'm training, you know, a puppy that was found tied to a balcony for a week without food and water. Oh my god. And, and so of course she's leash reactive, right?
[00:42:53] Charna Cassell: Of course, because now every time I take her on a walk, she has to be in her trigger. Right? Yeah. And so, but just what it takes in me and I notice and it's so subtle and we're all these, these mammals that respond to people's energy. So if I go into fear embracing of like, Oh shit, there's somebody walking towards me with a dog.
[00:43:17] Allison Guilbault: Yeah.
[00:43:18] Charna Cassell: She is an extension of my arm on a leash. She can feel, she feels that. And she's already, you know, with her. Protective, vigilant, prey drive, and then me as an extension of her, she's gonna have a bigger reaction versus if I can maintain, as you said, like a poker face, like a poker body, just like grounded presence, and letting her know she's safe, that you're okay.
[00:43:44] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. It's funny. I have a, I have a dog as well. And, um, pretty much, you know, had a similar experience. I thought he was like dog averse for years. Right. So I like, wouldn't take him to the dog park. I'd cross the street when I'd see a dog coming. And then I had a pet sitter, like, I don't know, he was like probably six or seven.
[00:44:03] Allison Guilbault: She was like, Oh, we had the greatest day at the park. And I was like, what park? And she's like, we took him to the dog park. I'm like, you took my dog to the dog park. She's like, yeah, I take him every time I'm here. And I ended up getting a trainer in the, in, in response to that. And the trainer was like, it's you, like the dog is a hundred percent responding to your fear state, right?
[00:44:23] Allison Guilbault: You're walking into this and like being like, there's a dog and he's getting protective. Like, just chill out, like show up, be more confident, be the pack leader. Right. And yeah, that is sort of a tool that you carry into other spaces of your life.
[00:44:36] Charna Cassell: Absolutely. I can't remember the name of the book. There's a woman who, um, She's, she was a dominatrix and she was also training dogs, right?
[00:44:46] Charna Cassell: And she was reading a book on dog training and she was realizing, and I was like, Oh, absolutely. A lot of the, it was so funny. I use martial arts based practices to help rewire people's brains through their body, through, through physical exercises. And I was doing a boundary exercise with a client, actually a grab.
[00:45:03] Charna Cassell: So. You know, the idea of a literal grab being the metaphoric grab of like things are grabbing us all day, every day that surprise us that we have a nervous system response to and how do we reground observe that and then turn and face the thing that's grabbing us. And so. I was having her go through each step of this.
[00:45:25] Charna Cassell: And so, but she went really quickly from being grabbed to trying to turn and face. And because I'm training my dog, I said to her, stay. I'm sorry.
[00:45:36] Allison Guilbault: Nope. That sounds right.
[00:45:38] Charna Cassell: It was like my dog training and human training wires got crossed for a second. It was really funny. So you're, so then your dog. It shifted.
[00:45:50] Charna Cassell: So you got some training, you built your confidence and your, and your pup. Yeah. I love it. He's great now. Yeah. Oh, that's so helpful. How old was, how old was he when that, when that happened?
[00:46:03] Allison Guilbault: I mean, it was a while in, I think he was like several years. So you know, and you know, that's that whole, like, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
[00:46:10] Allison Guilbault: I do not subscribe to that. I don't care. Every being on this planet has the capacity to grow, evolve and change if there is a willingness to do so.
[00:46:19] Allison Guilbault: Well,
[00:46:20] Charna Cassell: and that's that key piece, right? I mean, and you worked with one of the hardest populations where it's like, you know, our capacity, the level of rigidity can prevent us from changing, but I absolutely, I don't think we could do the work that we do if we didn't believe that it was possible for people to change.
[00:46:37] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:41] Charna Cassell: And, and so, um, right now, are there any things that your programs or classes, things that you're offering that you'd like to share about?
[00:46:50] Allison Guilbault: Yeah, so, you know, I, I do sort of like a whole suite of services. I do therapy. , I do offer weekly therapy. That's usually few and far between.
[00:47:00] Allison Guilbault: , I've just started recently in the last few months doing what's called a therapy intensive, which is actually quite popular these days, where it's really designed for the person who, you know, either doesn't have limited availability, right? Wants to work with me, but can't get in on my weekly times. But honestly, more than that, beyond that, it's Someone who's looking to sort of like direct dive into a particular issue and we get to kind of I joke on like it's the Disney fast pass like we're fast passing healing and we're just kind of talking about the process rather than the details.
[00:47:30] Allison Guilbault: , I incorporate more things into that type of approach where I do things like EMDR. I do more sort of in session somatic processing. , so I do that for New Jersey residents. , and then I also offer coaching and my coaching is, um, You know, I, I always disclaimer this, that coaching and therapy are different, right?
[00:47:48] Allison Guilbault: I can use coaching inside of therapy. I do not use therapy inside of coaching. , coaching is most appropriate for people that are, like, at this point and are trying to move forward. But though we do talk about emotions and mindset work, it's, it's not related to sort of trauma healing. It's not related to sort of big, you know, patterns in life or histories.
[00:48:08] Allison Guilbault: , but I love doing that work too. , and then, you know, among my free services, right, those are my more premium services, getting to work with me one to one, , I am on the Instagram, as I think all of us are these days, I had a note from your therapist, and I offer there, I do free workshops, I do live events, , I just launched my own podcast called Becoming Unstoppable, So, you know, I get to interview, you know, experts in their field, And, you know, my hope is You know, while none of these things are, there's no substitute for mental health treatment, you know, sometimes we need to just have some of these messages, some of these tools reinforced.
[00:48:47] Allison Guilbault: And I just do want to at least make sort of the basics of, you know, mindset work, shifting our perspectives, believing in yourself, like all the things I, again, sounds cheesy, but I truly believe in. You know, I want to make that, I want to beat the hell out of that point to everybody who will listen. So I think when we all do better and we all believe in ourselves, the world is just going to be a better place.
[00:49:08] Allison Guilbault: So if I can touch as many human beings on the face of this planet, as I have access to inside of this lifetime, and they leave with even just like a nugget of feeling better about themselves, I will have considered it a win.
[00:49:20] Charna Cassell: Beautiful. Speaking of nuggets, do you have a five minute practice or exercise that you would like to guide our listeners through?
[00:49:30] Allison Guilbault: You know, yeah. So I have something simple and it's been a bit of a tough sell when I pitch this to clients, but I swear to God it works. Right. So I fundamentally am a brain science person. Nerd, I believe in the power of shifting our thoughts, and so, you know, sort of in spirituality and the Instagram, we call it mantras, or we call it affirmations, , I call them neuropathways, and all I ask my clients to do, we want to start at the most basic, simple thing, is I want them every single day to get for 45 days, right, of just saying three kind things to themselves, and they can be the cliche, like, You know, I am beautiful and I am worthy and that's just fine.
[00:50:13] Allison Guilbault: , they can be like, I think my nails are cool today, right? Like, I don't really care what the the sentiment is, it's just the practice of looking at yourself and saying something kind, because I truly believe that our self talk can be very poor and our self compassion needs, is actually a skill that many of us have missed the memo on.
[00:50:33] Allison Guilbault: So I asked them to do it for 45 days, three things, and I asked them to do it when they brush their teeth, because then at least we're pairing it with a habit. , if they only want to do it once throughout the day, that's fine. Preferably twice. , But I, when I say that to people, they often roll their eyes and, , the clients who have actually successfully done it have 100 percent unanimously all come back and been like, you know what, I actually, I do feel a little bit better.
[00:50:57] Allison Guilbault: I actually am starting to be kind to myself. I am noticing it a little more. So. You know, that's my little, my little nugget introduction.
[00:51:06] Charna Cassell: It's important because what you're also doing is you're training the person to think of something like observe, because we all know we have cognitive bias, right?
[00:51:17] Charna Cassell: We're always looking for what's wrong in our environment or the thing that we're afraid of in our environment, but you're re framing and shifting perspective to look for the thing that's beautiful, that's peaceful, that's pleasurable, that's, yeah.
[00:51:32] Allison Guilbault: Yeah. Beautiful. I love it. Peaceful. It's a great word.
[00:51:36] Charna Cassell: Let there be more of that.
[00:51:38] Charna Cassell: Oh my gosh. Globally. Internally. We all need that. That's definitely my word for the year. Yeah. It's a great word. Yeah. And, and anything else that you would like to share before we start to shift?
[00:51:52] Allison Guilbault: You know, just bottom line, I can't say this enough, you know, each one of us does deserve the right to live a life that we actually like, right?
[00:52:04] Allison Guilbault: So, really learning the skill set of dropping, I always say drop into your body, like just learning to become more self aware and gentle. Like, I can't possibly say that enough. It just pivots our entire life if we are coming from a place of clarity and kindness and self compassion and gentleness rather than that like, bullied, anxiety, doubt, shame.
[00:52:32] Allison Guilbault: And so just if you need a place to start, just, just like, You know, if you're thinking something, just pause and be like, how is this feeling? Right? And if we're feeling something in our shoulders, our shoulders are forward, or teeth are clenched, or we're sweating, that's like a good check engine light that whatever it is that you're doing, There's something to learn here, or if you're dropping in your body and it feels peaceful, right?
[00:52:57] Allison Guilbault: Like, that's more your intuition, that's not anxiety. And just starting to very slowly kind of pick up your own internal signals. I don't think we do that enough, and I don't think we teach people to do that enough.
[00:53:09] Charna Cassell: Absolutely. Yeah. So good to get to meet you and spend some time. I'm excited for you about your podcast.
[00:53:18] Charna Cassell: And yeah, hopefully we'll get to connect.
[00:53:22] Allison Guilbault: Absolutely.
[00:53:23] Charna Cassell: Another time.
[00:53:24] Charna Cassell: Thank you for joining us. If you appreciated this episode, please like, rate, review, and share it with your friends. I'd really appreciate that. And if you'd like to stay connected, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Laid Open Podcast. That's L A I D O P E N P O D C A S T. All one word, as well as if you go to charnacacell.
[00:53:47] Charna Cassell: com, you can join my newsletter where you can get information about upcoming courses, as well as discounts and resources that I share in my newsletter. And if you go to passionatelife. org, you can get more information about my private practice and the kind of work that I do. This has been Laid Open Podcast with your host, Charna Cassell.
[00:54:10] Charna Cassell: We all have different capacities, but I believe in our capacity to grow and change together. Until next time. What have you learned about the freedom forumula?
