Healthy Ways to Control and Conquer Stress

[00:00:00] Lori Esarey: Wellness is a practice, not just a word.

[00:00:10] Kelly Engelmann: Welcome to The Synergee Podcast where myself Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body.

[00:00:17] Lori Esarey: And most importantly, feed your soul.

[00:00:25] Welcome everybody. We are so excited to be here with one of our special guests, Dr. Isaac Deas. Thank you so much for joining us today. We’re we’re so grateful to have you here.

[00:00:34] Dr. Isaac Deas: Pleasure’s all mine, pleasure’s was all mine.

[00:00:36] Lori Esarey: Awesome. Well, you are here today with Kelly Engelman and myself, Lori Esarey the co-founders of Synergee and we’re just excited to be able to dig in today into real life. Real life topics, and our topic today is stress, stress management, and healthy ways to overcome it.

[00:00:56] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. And I’m so excited to finally get to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you from Lori over the course of the years. And I had the advantage of listening to your interview that you did with her last year.

[00:01:06] So I feel like I already know you. I know I’m a stranger to you, but I feel like I know you through Lori, so I’m honored to be here and I. Inspired by your story. So we probably will get into some questions about your story. I think that’s important when we’re talking to our listeners, that they understand where this perspective is even coming from. Right?.

[00:01:24] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:25] Dr. Isaac Deas: I just wanna thank Laurie and, uh, and yourself for allowing me to be a part of this. I’m, I’m totally humbled, honored to be in the presence of, uh, such worthy women. So, thank you for having me.

[00:01:38] Kelly Engelmann: I understand that you have a passion for helping women, right? And I share that passion. My career started in women’s health and I, I figured that if I could help a lady, then I’m helping the whole family.

[00:01:53] Dr. Isaac Deas: Right. Exactly. Right, exactly. Right. And you know, one of the things that I, I say unapologetically is I am a mama’s boy. my mama. My mama was my best friend. She’s passed, but she was my best friend. But, you know, I think it all started when I was maybe eight or nine years old. And my mom told me two things.

[00:02:14] She said, son always treat a woman. The way you, once your man treat me. And the second thing she told me, don’t depend on a woman to do something for you that you can do for yourself. So the cooking, the cleaning, all of that good stuff? That all came from mom. So kudos to my mom.

[00:02:33] Kelly Engelmann: That is, those are words of wisdom for sure. Music to every woman’s ears right now.

[00:02:39] Lori Esarey: Great advice. Great advice.

[00:02:41] Kelly Engelmann: Great advice. Glad you shared that to our male listeners that are raising young men now. Right? They need to hear that at a young age, from their dads as well as their mom. So I love that. I absolutely love that.

[00:02:53] Lori Esarey: So, I wanna dig in a little bit to that perspective piece that you brought up, Kelly, is you know, obviously there’s a perspective. Getting a feel for where your perspective comes from in reference to how you really number one, identify stress in your clients, but in how you relate to them as well. So a little bit more about your story that kind of would lead us into that conversation.

[00:03:17] Dr. Isaac Deas: Okay, fine. Uh, let me say my story starts sort of late. I, I had a very, very good stable upbringing. Uh, two parent families, no divorce, no separations, no domestic violence, nothing like that. But when I was in my late twenties, probably going into early thirties, for whatever reason, I was working on my doctorates at, uh, Columbia in New York city.

[00:03:45] And, uh, I just wanted to try a drug to see what it was like. And the drug I chose was, was crack. Back in the day, it was called freebasing. No stressors at that time. No stressors. I was just curious and we know the old saying curiosity kills the cat.

[00:04:05] Kelly Engelmann: Mm.

[00:04:05] Dr. Isaac Deas: Uh, I was curious. And, but I am an extremist. So when I do something, I’m gonna do it until, until I can’t do it anymore. Uh, there’s no gray area with me. So when I tried it, it was just an experiment, but it just, I got carried away with it. And then slowly I got addicted and that’s when the stress came in. I wasn’t paying bills. I had two children. I wasn’t going home at night. I wasn’t doing anything.

[00:04:33] I wasn’t being a good husband. I wasn’t being a good father and it, and distress just mounted the, the reputation I accumulated through the years, I lost that, which caused stress. It caused stress because I’m a family man. We always went to my mom’s house for Christmas, all the kids, all the grandkids. We always went to my mom’s house for Christmas.

[00:04:57] It was stressful that I wouldn’t go there because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed about how I looked. I was embarrassed that I lost everything. I was just embarrassed. That caused stress. There was financial stress. Because I owed outta my house. I owed bills. I owed credit cards and I had no way of paying ’em because eventually I lost my job.

[00:05:19] Stress. And with stress comes making unhealthy choices. And I think a lot of people, a lot of the clients I see now that are in that vein that I was in, they make unhealthy choices. Be it drugs, be it alcohol, be it sex, be it, whatever. Uh, but unhealthy choices and a lot of it’s predicated on stress. And that’s their coping mechanism is if I can feel good temporarily, not fix the problem, but just feel good temporarily then I’m okay.

[00:05:56] Problem: when you’re using a substance, however, is when the substance wears off, you start to feel again. And we don’t wanna feel, so we have to get high again, ergo, you become addicted to that drug because our mind tells us, “The only way I’m gonna feel good is if I take that drug or that alcohol or have sex or whatever it is”. And that’s when the unhealthy part comes in.

[00:06:21] Lori Esarey: You know? So we often talk about stress by definition is any demand for change. Right?

[00:06:27] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:06:27] Lori Esarey: Any demand for change. And so I just think it’s really interesting, you know, going back to your original curiosity, not stress that drove you to the drug. Right?

[00:06:37] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:06:38] Dr. Isaac Deas: Right.

[00:06:38] Lori Esarey: And then, in then being addicted, then that drove stress for you. So I think again, perspective really is stress isn’t always, if you will, the cause… the trigger. Right. It can feed into the triggers of further stress. So…

[00:06:56] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly.

[00:06:57] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’d have to say I struggle with curiosity myself. Almost to a fault. I think that’s what makes me a good clinician, because I’m super curious and I wanna see things for myself and I want to see change happen in the patient and in myself. But I think there is a point where curiosity can be pathological, right? Where it makes us make decisions to experience things that may get us into trouble.

[00:07:22] So, I think people resonate with that curiosity with, I see people trying things that I would never think they would try out of curiosity in and of itself. And that’s often times not talked about at all.

[00:07:33] Lori Esarey: No, not at all.

[00:07:34] Kelly Engelmann: Because a shame that comes with the experience that we’ve created for the sake of curiosity often times is a very shameful experience. So I appreciate you bringing that to light as part of the discussion too.

[00:07:47] Lori Esarey: Definitely.

[00:07:47] Dr. Isaac Deas: And there was one thing that Laurie just mentioned was triggers.

[00:07:51] Lori Esarey: Yeah.

[00:07:51] Dr. Isaac Deas: And one of the things I think we all have to do was help our clients to realize “What are your triggers? What are those things in your life that caused stress?”

[00:08:02] And, you know, just veering just for a moment. The pandemic brought on a lot of family stress as I see it. Uh, a lot of my clients that came in were husbands and wives who could not stand each other. They’d been married 15 years, they’d been married 20 years, but when they had to spend time together and not go to work, stress! It was just amazing how the pandemic brought couples together, which we would think, okay, well now I can have time with my family. Now we can do some bonding time, but it did the exact opposite in a lot of families. Stress!

[00:08:44] Kelly Engelmann: So what you’re saying is the patterns of behaviors that they had established with each other, they were ignoring, right?

[00:08:52] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:08:52] Kelly Engelmann: Prior to they didn’t have to deal with it because they were out and about, and they had very little time together.

[00:08:58] Lori Esarey: We call that comfortable distractions, right?

[00:09:00] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.

[00:09:01] Lori Esarey: Comfortable distractions.

[00:09:02] Kelly Engelmann: Keeping yourself distracted so that you don’t have to deal with the elephant in the room. Right?

[00:09:06] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right.

[00:09:07] Kelly Engelmann: And then once everyone’s in the same room for prolonged periods of time and that stress builds, those things surface. So I think I’m seeing the same thing, you know, with my clients and those discussions that we’ve had in the last two years, you know, the structure of that discussion’s changed quite a bit in that regard. Like how do we deal with that in a healthy way?

[00:09:25] Lori Esarey: Yeah.

[00:09:25] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right.

[00:09:26] Lori Esarey: And speaking specifically to triggers: I love that you brought that up and went back to it, because I think that’s really important to think about is I hear a lot. “Ah, but that, that’s work!” Like really trying to identify those triggers sometimes is stressful in and of itself. That creates self reflection, uncomfortableness, vulnerability, all of those things and time to do it.

[00:09:51] Kelly Engelmann: And time to do it. And a lot of times, as people we want to just blame the other person, you know? “It’s because they did this and they did that”. And when we really have to take ownership of what is triggering us, often times in a, an exaggerated way. So a slight annoyance may send us over the edge and you really think about the situation, the situation wasn’t that bad, but the response was really over the top.

[00:10:16] Then we know we’ve been triggered. That’s what I would call a trigger. Right? And…

[00:10:21] Dr. Isaac Deas: That’s exactly right.

[00:10:22] Kelly Engelmann: … dissecting that trigger and being able to understand what created that trigger. And then what is underneath the trigger.

[00:10:28] Dr. Isaac Deas: And one of the things as a male that I’ve noticed with a lot of males. We have, what’s called that male pride. We are not going to admit when we’re wrong. We are not going to admit that a substance, life has the best of us. It’s that male pride.

[00:10:46] Lori Esarey: (laughs) Yes.

[00:10:46] Dr. Isaac Deas: And cause the stress, because the longer you stay in denial, the more stringent that problem is going to become. And, and you’re exactly right. We have to face and take ownership of, of our shortcomings.

[00:10:58] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:59] Lori Esarey: Yep.

[00:10:59] Dr. Isaac Deas: And, and when we don’t, again, it’s added stress.

[00:11:02] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:11:03] Lori Esarey: Right. So, question for you in, how do you get a person to, like what tools or what tips do you give them to find their triggers? To explore their triggers? Is there an exercise, of sorts, that you tell them “Listen, this is how you do it”? Because some people have never done that before.

[00:11:25] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yeah. Well, one of the things I’m a very direct person and I ask people “Is what you’re doing right now working?” And if the answer is no, then what do… I put it on them first. What do you think you need to do? Now, if you don’t come up with anything? I never tell people what to do. I give suggestions. “Well, maybe we can try this, maybe we can try that”. But I ask them first, “What do you think works? What if, what you’re doing, isn’t working then what do you need to do differently?” And, um, I also have them do five likes and five dislikes. Tell me five things that you like about yourself and tell me five things that you think you need to do to make life better.

[00:12:09] And I take those dislikes and I try to turn ’em into likes. So, you know what’s wrong. You have, you have these five things that you know that you want to improve on. Let’s start working on those.

[00:12:20] Lori Esarey: That’s great advice.

[00:12:21] Dr. Isaac Deas: We know what the good things are. We know what the good things are. I don’t want, you know, I can give you the pats on the back behind the good things, but let’s address those dislikes because I want them to tell me. Because you know yourself better than I do.

[00:12:34] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:12:35] Dr. Isaac Deas: You tell me what you need to change. And then let’s us come together and try to find some solution.

[00:12:41] Kelly Engelmann: So you ask them basically to look in the mirror, and tell me what you see. Tell me the five things you like about yourself and tell me the five things that you’re not so happy about that we can then develop a plan for creating some meaningful change, because these are things they’ve identified themselves.

[00:12:58] This is not what you told them was wrong, but this is what they see. That they want to change. And I think that’s so powerful because people, if you give ’em an opportunity, they know intuitively. They know what needs to change, but having them say it out loud or having them write it down? That’s something that they won’t forget, right?

[00:13:18] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right. Exactly right.

[00:13:20] Lori Esarey: Do you think sometimes you almost have to… thinking about default patterns, you know, cause that’s where my head went with that is sometimes people come in in the pattern. In whatever pattern they’re stuck in when stress or something triggers them. Is there a time it’s ever appropriate to get them to work backwards from that trigger? Like you’ve landed here how many times?

[00:13:43] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:13:43] Lori Esarey: Right?

[00:13:44] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:13:44] Lori Esarey: What’s the common denominator here? Because sometimes… do you ever have clients that go, “I don’t know. Like I’ve landed here three, four times in my life. But I don’t know”. Like how, how do you break that down with them?

[00:13:57] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, you know, again, I’m a big one. I’m, I’m not a Freudian per se, but I think there’s a lot of merit to what Freud has to say. And when we take things back to childhood early years, it’s a pattern. I’ve seen my grandfather do this. I’ve seen my father do this. So I’m just patterning because I had no one else to pattern myself after. Uh, so I try to go back to the beginning.

[00:14:22] Let’s, let’s go back to the Genesis. When did this happen? Why does it happen? So, I find when I go back there to childhood and then try to work forward, uh, did you like what your father was doing? Did you like seeing him like that? Okay. Well, if you’re doing the same thing, what are we gonna do differently?

[00:14:41] And if you do have children, you’re passing it on to them, just like your father passed it on to you. When does a cage stop turning? When do we get off and say let’s go a different way? So Freud has a lot of good, uh, in what he says, so I try to go back to the Genesis of where it started and why it started.

[00:15:02] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. That’s, that’s good. I often times ask clients when they come into me to think back to a time when they felt well. Yes. When they felt physically well, spiritually well, you know, what did that look like? What did that feel like? And, you know, I’m always amazed that the people that they never have felt well. Right?

[00:15:22] It’s been since childhood, to your point, things that happened, traumas that happened. But having them understand that so that they understand the road to recovery and to wellness ultimately may take time. You know, it may take time. It may take time to unpack these things in a way that we really have understanding and that we can put the pieces back together.

[00:15:43] So being patient with that process and with the time that it takes to walk through that, because I don’t know about you but I often hear. “Well, that happened a long time ago. I’ve dealt with that”.

[00:15:54] Dr. Isaac Deas: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:54] Kelly Engelmann: Or “I did therapy for that”. And then, I go and I do their labs and I measure, and so does Lori, key regulatory hormones for the stress response. And I see on paper that their body doesn’t understand that that stressor was a long time ago. Their body is still living in the stress that they went through maybe, maybe decades ago.

[00:16:15] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes. And, and if, if you noticed, I don’t know if you y’all work with, if you folks work with teens or not, but I work with a lot of teens as well. This vaping, uh, that they’re doing now as a way of coping, the Dab Pens. They’re just putting all types of things in their body that, again, temporarily makes them feel good.

[00:16:42] And a lot of these young ladies I’m working with now… and I have to learn these new terms that they come out with. They’re pansexual, they’re bisexual, they’re this, they’re that, because they’re stressed from boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. “The boys use me. They take advantage of me. Well, I’ll just go be with a girl because the girls never hurt me.” Well, what, what happens when that girl hurts you? So let’s just deal with life, but they’re changing their patterns.

[00:17:12] Girls don’t wanna be girls, boys don’t wanna be boys. And a lot of it’s predicated on stress. They’ve been hurt by the opposite sex. They’ve been hurt because mom and dad aren’t paying attention. Mom might be on her second or third relationship. So, if she’s put more in that relationship, now they’ve just separation anxiety. “I don’t feel needed. I don’t feel wanted”. That causes stress. So, of course, the first person that comes along and says, well, I love you. I’ll take care of you.” There’s your heart. Now, they’re doing something unhealthy? You’re gonna do something unhealthy because you want to belong. You wanna be accepted. And so part of what the young people, I want them to feel good about who they are.

[00:17:54] And I’m a pastor as well. And one thing I’ve always said, you cannot please, everybody. You have to be happy with who you are and then that’s that. But getting them to that point, is, it’s some it’s, it’s difficult. It’s difficult.

[00:18:10] Lori Esarey: Absolutely. You brought up a really good point. I wanna circle back to, you know, you, Kelly had mentioned, we do a lot of biometric testing and often times, their testing doesn’t reflect necessarily… it doesn’t, it’s not congruent with what they’re expressing to us. And so when, you know, Dr. Deas just mentioned chemicals, chemical exposure. You know, those chemical exposures and those body toxins do create in essence, just a compounding effect…

[00:18:39] Kelly Engelmann: …of stress.

[00:18:39] Lori Esarey: Right. Of stress.

[00:18:40] Kelly Engelmann: So, Lori mentioned stress by definition is the demand for change. But I wanna take that one step further and say that your body can’t tell the difference necessarily in how it responds to stress. So for instance, if we have a, a chemical stressor, like vaping would be a chemical stressor. We have a physical stressor, like anemia, poor blood control, maybe dysbiosis. That would be a physical stressor and then emotional stressors, right? .

[00:19:08] So the body’s gonna produce the same types of hormones to deal with all of those stressors. And we may go into default patterns because of that stress response. And so I think that’s kind of what you’re saying. They get chemically overloaded with the vaping. It doesn’t necessarily solve their problem. It may temporarily calm them down, but then there’s a rebound effect. And then they’re just continuing to add to their toxic burden. Which, by the way, does change hormone production and utilization, which causes sexual confusion.

[00:19:40] Lori Esarey: Yes.

[00:19:40] Kelly Engelmann: It adds to that whole component of sexual confusion.

[00:19:43] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm, right.

[00:19:44] Kelly Engelmann: Um, because their hormones don’t work the way that their hormones should be working. And as a result of that, they may have feelings that they can’t really understand. And then they act out of those feelings.

[00:19:57] Lori Esarey: Or they have a reduction in, I mean, you think about teenage boys. Yeah. And testosterone levels are typically quite high.

[00:20:03] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:20:03] Lori Esarey: It suppresses a lot of those natural physiological hormone production, right. And utilization in the body.

[00:20:09] Kelly Engelmann: Well, it makes them estrogen dominant.

[00:20:11] Lori Esarey: Right!

[00:20:12] Kelly Engelmann: Right? So they may feel more feminine.

[00:20:14] Dr. Isaac Deas: I never knew that. So you’re teaching me something. Yeah, never. I never knew that.

[00:20:19] Lori Esarey: Well, this is the beauty of conversation, right? Because it’s know, it really helps people to be insightful to their, the way in which they’re expressing or, uh, defaulting or behaving as a result of their stress isn’t just because of these default patterns, if you will. But it’s neurochemical changes and hormonal changes that happen as a result too.

[00:20:38] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. So, I wanna give a tip while we’re talking about vaping and just smoking in general. You know, I’ve talked to many, many patients that have been successful in stopping to smoke, and I always asked them, “What was your strategy?”

[00:20:52] Because I think it’s important as clinicians that we can tap into what really has worked for patients real live, you know, point in time work. And every single one of them mentions deep breathing as a strategy. And you know, when you’re vaping and smoking, you’re deep breathing. And that desire for deep breathing is a stress reliever. And they’ve associated that stress relief with the vaping or with the smoking. And it may perhaps just be the breathing itself that’s helping them calm down?

[00:21:23] Lori Esarey: Yeah.

[00:21:23] Kelly Engelmann: So the tip is to develop some deep breathing techniques to offset the stress response. When we deep breath, we stimulate vagal tone. We stimulate a nerve that controls our brain and controls our gut and is very calming and, you know, that can be helpful for anyone going under, you know, going under stress is deep breathing, but especially for the ones that have developed habits of, uh, smoking or vaping, I think that’s a really good tool to encourage them to go ahead and start doing, even before they consider quitting.

[00:21:54] Lori Esarey: So maybe the relief that they’re getting through the vaping isn’t necessarily the vaping is what you’re saying. It could just be the physiological, deep breathing exercises that we typically recommend for any anxiety producing event. Right. Yeah.

[00:22:10] Dr. Isaac Deas: That’s pretty interesting. And, and, and what I find also is before they can get to this point of deep breathing and self-reflection, the… the smoking or, and/or drugs.

[00:22:22] Now the school grades are going down. That’s gonna become stressful. Now their parents are gonna be yelling because the grades are going down. That’s going to be stressful. So some of the side effects of stressing, it’s not just on the health, but it’s affecting grades. It’s affecting, uh, your, your relationship with your parents. And sometimes it even affects your peer group because you wanna be around people who are doing what you’re doing.

[00:22:49] Lori Esarey: So it’s that perfect storm. It sounds like. Right? So it’s a perfect storm.

[00:22:52] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right.

[00:22:53] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So how do you break the cycle? So let’s talk about some strategies that you recommend for people to impart, to do, to start taking advantage of like, what are some things that you would say, what are some next steps?

[00:23:09] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well a-again, one of the things is the five likes and five dislikes, which we’ve already discussed. That’s, that’s one of them. And two, I try to bring in, if it’s a couple, if it’s a couple, one is stressful and one is not, I try to bring in the other couple. And if you love this person telling you what you’re doing is stressing me out, how much do you really love this person? So, sometimes when someone you love who’s gonna be in your corner no matter what, but, but they’re telling you that your behavior is affecting them, can you look inside yourself and say, you know, I really would want to make you happy. Not so much make you happy, but make… if I do the right thing, it will make you happy.

[00:23:52] So, I’m big on confrontation. So, how is your family related to this? How are you hurting your family? I want them to look inside themselves and say, you know, my behavior is not only affecting me. But it’s affecting those around me. I don’t wanna put ’em on a guilt trip, but I’m a realistic person. I’m a bottom line person, your behavior.

[00:24:14] So, another tactic is listen to the people that you’re hurting and, and, and what are you willing to do about that? Do you need to go into a rehab program? Do you need to come in for counseling more than once a week? You know, what do you need to do? So, really I try to turn their life inside out and have them look at it and then point out to me what you need to change and then allow me to try to help you to change it.

[00:24:41] So, a lot of self-reflection, a lot of looking in the mirror as your co-host said looking in the mirror at yourself. And saying, I either like this person, or I don’t. If I don’t, what am I gonna do to change this?

[00:24:53] Lori Esarey: So you’re saying identification and awareness is first step in anything, right?

[00:24:58] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly. Admittance. Admit that there’s a problem.

[00:25:02] Lori Esarey: So identify, admit, and then take action and being willing to… and I’m sure it’s an assessment of what a person’s willing to do. Very similar to our experience. Yeah. With people wanting or needing to change their lifestyle to more of an optimal way of living. If a person’s not ready to do that, they’re not ready to do the work. They’re not ready. No one can do it for them.

[00:25:23] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:25:23] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yeah. And so, sometimes people just have to crash and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but sometimes they have to hit bottom. Lose some of your loved ones before you start to think “Okay. Yes. Maybe I really do need to or serious about what I’m doing.

[00:25:39] Lori Esarey: So, I wanna circle back to your story if that’s okay. Because you broke a pattern, you broke a cycle. And, I, I just think it’s so important to, I, I would like to hear a little bit more about that, cause you opened up with what you started to do and what you started to lose, but we haven’t talked yet about how you recovered from that. And now where you’re at as a result of that.

[00:26:01] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, as I say, I’m a New Yorker and one of the things I had to do is come away from that environment. I knew New York well. I knew New York well, I knew where to go. I knew where to go and do things. And what helped me were two things. Two things.

[00:26:19] My family believed in tough love. They said, son, we loved you. And when I lost my house, I was gonna go back and live with them. They said, son, I love you, but that’s not gonna happen. You’re not coming back here. And I bottomed out and my bottom was living on the streets. I never in my life thought I would live on this street. I never in my life thought I would be an addict.

[00:26:44] Lori Esarey: And you had multiple, you had multiple degrees let’s… I just wanna say that again, right? So yes, not uneducated.

[00:26:50] Dr. Isaac Deas: I have a bachelor’s, I have three masters, I have a doctorate, I have a law degree and I went, I went to seminary. But I was halfway through my doctorate at the time. But coming out of that environment… well, actually I have to hit bottom first.

[00:27:05] If I never hit bottom, I never would’ve made the change. If people would have enabled me, if my mother and father would’ve took me back home and said, oh, we love you son, come on back home. I’d probably still be doing it. But, uh, their tough love. I had to hit bottom. And then secondly, I had to get out of that environment to a safe environment and I went, inpatient down here to Wildwood, Wildwood, Florida.

[00:27:30] I went inpatient counseling and that’s what brought me to Florida. And I was in there 22 months.

[00:27:38] Lori Esarey: Wow.

[00:27:38] Dr. Isaac Deas: It was an 18 month program, but I stayed in another four months as staff. Uh, so I just had to get me. I had to get me back. I lost me. I know who me was: the addict. I knew who me was: the, the street hustler. I knew who that person was, but I forgot who Isaac was. And so when I was in Wildwood and rehab, I learned to find Isaac again. And I said, he’s not a bad guy. He’s not a bad,

[00:28:06] Lori Esarey: We think you’re an amazing guy, but yes.

[00:28:09] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, I praise the Lord that to God do the glory, but the thing that worked for me, and I know everyone’s not there, I had to give my life back to the Lord and that’s what really worked for me. And I know everyone’s not into the religious, spiritual part of it, but that worked for me. And I just said, “God, whatever, it’s gonna take. Whatever it’s gonna take, then I’m willing to do it”. It was hitting bottom. It was hitting bottom. I think that, and coming out of that environment into a stress free environment because New York is stressful. (laughs)

[00:28:47] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.

[00:28:47] Dr. Isaac Deas: Wildwood back in 1988 was stress-less. There was nothing there.

[00:28:47] Lori Esarey: Yeah.

[00:28:47] Kelly Engelmann: Right. I think that’s a beautiful thing. What you said and, you know, coming back to your identity and your identity in Christ, right?

[00:28:56] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:28:56] Kelly Engelmann: You know, if we can see ourselves in that mirror, what do we see? Right? It’s very different than what you saw on the street.

[00:29:03] Right. And being able to bring yourself back to the truth, really that’s the truth, um, is a beautiful thing. Um, I just, that’s amazing. I love it.

[00:29:13] Lori Esarey: And then embracing your story in such a way that has powerfully impacted the lives of others for years to come. So, this story wouldn’t be complete without hearing what you’re able to accomplish now and what you’re doing in your career.

[00:29:29] Dr. Isaac Deas: Now, well, God is good right now. I have my own counseling practice and it’s going very, very well. , I have a church here in Summerfield. We have probably about 120 members, uh, very integrated multicultural church, non-denominational, absolutely love it. I do a lot of workshops, a lot of team building exercises.

[00:29:51] Uh, I have a youth group, a women’s group, you know, my women’s conferences. So, just enjoying life now, God has… to God be the glory he has given me back everything I lost except for a wife. And I’m, I’m okay with being a bachelor. I don’t know if I wanna do this marriage thing again, (laughs) but now it’s just enjoying life. And my burden now is our, our next generation. Because when I see children going down where I’ve been. Good children come from good homes, but they’re taking the path that I took. That breaks my heart because I’ve been there. I know where you’re headed and that’s what makes me get up.

[00:30:36] I’ve been retired for the last four years, but evidently I don’t know what retirement is cause I’m still working, but I wanna see that next generation get healthy. And I wanna see women get healthy because I think, I think women forgot that they’re a gift. Women forgot that they’re gifts. They forgot that they’re Queens, they’ve allowed themselves to be treated unkindly, unhealthily, and they just accept it and no, no, no, no. That’s not gonna happen on my, not on my shift. (laughs) So, that’s my fight for the women.

[00:31:13] Kelly Engelmann: So women are so powerful in the home. You know, we often times set the tone for what we will and will not allow in the home.

[00:31:22] Dr. Isaac Deas: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:23] Kelly Engelmann: And often times to your point, women have been treated in a way that they don’t always walk in that power.

[00:31:29] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:31:29] Kelly Engelmann: And so I wanna speak to that a little bit today to our listeners, because we do have. You know, we do have a lot of responsibility in our home as the… the wife and the mom and the caretaker, often times to set that tone for peace and love and understanding and having things discussed in a healthy way, you know, we need to open up the conversation about stress.

[00:31:55] In the home and what it looks like and how you see those default patterns. I wanna go into some of those default patterns that we see and that do get established, you know, relatively early in life, through modeling what we see our parents do. And, um, and then ultimately what we see our peers do. You know, we’re gonna become the five people that we spend the most time with.

[00:32:18] So choose wisely. Right? I always wanna be around people that are smarter than me and, you know, have things a little bit more advanced than I do. I don’t wanna be the smartest person in the room for sure. Um, I need those people around me. So, let’s talk a little bit about how to model. You know, for our women, how women can model healthy behaviors and healthy defaults, um, and how we can speak about it to our family and our friends.

[00:32:47] Lori Esarey: Yeah. I think that whole modeling, as you were talking about that I think about where that comes from, as you said, and it’s such a product of what we’ve seen in our past and you know, Dr. Deas you, you mentioned that already. Um, oftentimes we are just. copying and mirroring that, which we. Seen right. And our responses and breaking that, you know, to your point of, of women feeling and, and being the Queens, right?

[00:33:17] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.

[00:33:18] Lori Esarey: I can tell you in my home, I mean, my mom was amazingly treated by my father. Um, there’s no doubt and that was modeled for me, but I still feel like sometimes there’s a guilt or a shame and, and maybe I’m wrong in that. I just feel like that sometimes we feel guilty for expecting or feel guilty for the time we take in self care or feel guilty for. And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t understand exactly where that comes from, but I know that that leads to a, um, decom, a, a decomposing or a, a decrease in our ability to respond in a favorable way. Right?

[00:33:53] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. I see that too. I see that often times in myself and I see that in the clients that I treat as well, where they do feel like self care is a luxury.

[00:34:02] Mm. And I think we need to talk about that because self care is like putting your oxygen mask on first, before you’re helping other people. And if you’re constantly running on empty, what’s gonna come out often times is not pretty. And it’s not your best response. It’s not what you need to be modeling to your family or especially to your children, right?

[00:34:22] Lori Esarey: And if we perceive it that way, then in fact we’re not gonna make it. Uh, it’s not gonna be a priority for us. Right?

[00:34:29] Kelly Engelmann: Right. Yeah. So what does self-care look like?

[00:34:32] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So what does self care look like?

[00:34:34] Kelly Engelmann: Because I think this is really important to map out when we’re helping people make change, you know, what does it need to look like? You know, where does it cross the line into overindulgence versus really healthy self-care?

[00:34:48] Dr. Isaac Deas: From a male point of view, uh, My family is much like yours, Lori. My, my dad absolutely adored my mother and that’s what I knew. And that was passed on to my sister, my sister, spoiled to this day. She won’t admit it, but she is, she has three brothers and dad.

[00:35:06] So, but, uh, I’ve always told women, you can give what you don’t have. You cannot give your daughter self respect and, and, and, and feeling like a gift. If you don’t feel like it, if you don’t have it, you can’t pass that on. Uh, but men, I think, have to see women, well a woman as their equal partner and treat her as that.

[00:35:32] So if she needs to go and get a massage or hair done, or just sit in her sun by the beach, let her do that because then she’s gonna be better for you. Mm-hmm . But if you keep her bound up and tied up and stressed out my, then you wonder why she’s snapping at you. Wake up, man, wake up! (laughter) But I’ve always told men that, you know, we always say we’re the head of the house. Well, we may be the head, but the wife is the neck. And the head is not going anywhere without the neck. Take care of your neck, fellas. And your head will do what it has to do, but take care of the neck.

[00:36:11] I used to date my daughter. I used to take her out on dates, open the door and this and that. And I told her, and my ex-wife used to date my son. So we taught them the finance, the finer, finer parts of life. And I told her this man, when you start dating, if this man is not treating you, like I’m treating you right now. You had the wrong guy, right?

[00:36:33] Lori Esarey: So, you mirrored that, I mean, that’s a really, really good piece of advice, is you mirrored what that date was to look like? Probably from start to finish. Exactly. Right, exactly. Opening up doors, getting her in there, driving her, right. Letting her pick, maybe her restaurant. We could go through all of the details, but I think that was a really good piece of advice, right?

[00:36:54] Kelly Engelmann: Right. Absolutely. Modeling that, what that, what a healthy relationship does look like, what boundaries look like

[00:37:00] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right. Exactly.

[00:37:01] Lori Esarey: You know, something else I heard you say is that, you know, just as you, you know, I grew up in a home in which it was, it was modeled, but at some point life threw a curve ball. Life, a stressor victimization, something occurred. That created a change. So regardless of what I had seen, I shifted. Right. So I think it’s important to understand it’s not always a product of how you were raised. It can be a product of what you have been exposed to.

[00:37:33] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely, absolutely. A trauma.

[00:37:35] Dr. Isaac Deas: When we look at some of these television programs and movies that are coming out now, they’re so misleading for women and for men and, and, and some of the music that are young people listen to it’s so unbecoming, how you would allow a man to call you these words and you’re dancing to this. It’s like, hello, something’s wrong with this picture.

[00:38:02] Lori Esarey: Yes!

[00:38:02] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yeah, you’re right. It’s what we expose our media, our media, our televisions. It’s it’s just, it’s going crazy.

[00:38:08] Lori Esarey: A degradation of normalcy, you know?

[00:38:11] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes. Very good word. Very good word.

[00:38:14] Kelly Engelmann: I would clearly say that. So the things that we grew up seeing and hearing are very different than the youth today and I do think we need to be sensitive to that. Especially as parents and grandparents, as we help them walk it out and help them stay anchored in who they are. Right?

[00:38:31] Dr. Isaac Deas: Corrrect. Correct.

[00:38:32] Kelly Engelmann: I think that’s super powerful.

[00:38:34] Lori Esarey: Yeah.

[00:38:34] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.

[00:38:34] Lori Esarey: So we talked today about stress and the definition of stress and default patterns where it comes from exposure history. We talked about that and we talked a bit about some advice in respect to how to not only identify, but how to make some changes.

[00:38:53] Um, and it’s been great. It’s been awesome. So, are there any like closing words of advice that you would share to our listeners about how to roll with, expect it, and cause stress isn’t expected. Right? The only, I, we say the only consistent thing in life has change and I think change is probably one of our right biggest stressors.

[00:39:19] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. So don’t be surprised is right.

[00:39:21] Lori Esarey: Exactly. Not to be surprised. But what kind of key advice would you give to our listeners to really deal with and, and manage stress in today’s economy, in today’s in this time period that we’re in right now.

[00:39:35] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, if I may, I would probably say very quickly, um, don’t take on more than you need to take on. Learn to say no, don’t put a lot on your plate. Rome wasn’t built in the day, just take on as much as you can do. And secondly, take time for yourself. That’s primary. Take time for yourself. Know when to take a break? No. When to go on a vacation, know when to say “No, not now”. Take care of you. And thirdly, don’t live up to other people’s expectations. Do what you need to do, what’s make you because no one’s walking in your shoes. You know what makes you feel good? You know when you run outta energy. No one needs to tell you. Follow your own heart.

[00:40:20] Lori Esarey: Mmm, that first piece of advice, I feel like you are looking or, or speaking straight to me through that microphone there. Dr. Deas cause you know, that’s not easy to do.

[00:40:30] Kelly Engelmann: Overscheduling I have been guilty of that for so long. And I tried to solve that problem by getting a calendar. So if I put everything on there, maybe I would make better decisions and it worked for a while or in April and Mar… january, February, March looked pretty reasonable and April just, Ugh, it blew up on me. So I’ve gotta get back to those words of wisdom, Dr. Deas that you just gave us and say, “Do not overcommit”. Pace yourself. I’m hearing you loud and clear and I plan to implement that right away.

[00:41:01] Lori Esarey: And I think I heard you also say, is setting your eyes on who you are, who, where your aim is, right? You know, again, the world’s expectations I think looking around sometimes is we feel like we’ve gotta keep up with the Joneses if you will. You know, and even if we would say “No, no, no, that is not me. Like, I don’t care what so, and so does”. The bottom line is if we’re constantly looking at social media and Facebook and Instagram at what everyone else is doing inherently, there becomes this natural chasing for those things subconsciously.

[00:41:37] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:38] Lori Esarey: So I heard that loud and clear through the advice that you just gave as well, to be careful, to know your aim and to not allow for those things to change or distract you from who you are and what you are trying to accomplish in your life.

[00:41:54] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Deez, it has been a pleasure to meet you and get to know you a little bit better. I cannot wait for our viewers to be able to listen to your wisdom today. So thank you so much for being here.

[00:42:08] Dr. Isaac Deas: And if I may very quickly, uh, Lori, several of the women from my church were at my conference. And they’re waiting for you to come to my church.

[00:42:17] Lori Esarey: I can’t wait! Yes. So we are gonna get right on that because we really enjoy one of the things that, you know, Kelly and I have long had a passion for is to help people reach, you know, reach things in their life that they never thought were possible for themselves.

[00:42:33] So getting this message out to an audience to really have, have an impact on their lives in a, in a positive way. So I just wanna say thank you to you as well. I just, you know, too often, we don’t have time to connect like this and get the message out. So, we just really appreciate you taking the time to do that as well.

[00:42:51] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. And I’m sitting here thinking what it would be really helpful for our listeners to understand how they possibly could read more about you or get in touch with you? Perhaps they’re needing some counseling and really wanna reach out. What is the best way? Do you have a website address that you could share with us? Or do you have a number that you wanna share with our viewers?

[00:43:11] Dr. Isaac Deas: I have both, uh, 352-406-1264. Again, 3 5 2 4 0 6 1 2 6 4. My website is Deas- D E A S consulting.com. deas.consulting.com. Either way, phone call is best.

[00:43:33] Kelly Engelmann: Awesome, thank you.

[00:43:34] Lori Esarey: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And haven’t you, do you have some, um, things that you’ve published as well? Some or some recommendations?

[00:43:41] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes. I have a coup… I have two books out. If you just go on my website and the books will be, the books will be there.

[00:43:47] Lori Esarey: Excellent! Thank you. See, I knew that. Awesome. Well, it was so great to connect with you today. Thank you so much. And we look forward to talking to you again in the near future.

[00:43:57] Dr. Isaac Deas: Alrighty. Thank you!

[00:43:57] Lori Esarey: We’ll see you.

[00:43:58] Dr. Isaac Deas: Bye- bye.

[00:44:01] Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life.com, that’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four, life.com.

[00:44:12] Kelly Engelmann: And then Synergee connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.