Season 2026 Episode 3. Lawrence Harris: Motivational Speaker tells us: Heal Yourself, Help Others

Lawrence C. Harris is a youth speaker who helps teens and young adults believe in themselves, think differently about their future, and make better choices.

Growing up, Lawrence faced serious challenges. Those experiences led him to start speaking so other young people would know they are not alone and that their past does not have to decide where their life goes.

He has spoken to thousands of students through school assemblies, workshops, books, podcasts, and online events. In his talks, Lawrence shares real stories from his life and simple ideas that students can use in their own lives.

Students connect with Lawrence because he is honest and easy to relate to. His goal is to help young people believe they are capable of more than they think and take responsibility for the direction their life is going.

Lawrence is an extraordinary young man. He suffered abuse at home and worked hard to help his younger siblings. Along the way, he worked on himself, learned to love himself, and ended up being a motivational speaker when he was still a teenager.

Lawrence explains the difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD and teaches us that if you start with the simple things (making your bed, brushing your teeth) and build slowly on those concrete things, real progress is possible.

Teens and others can learn so much from Lawrence's positive approach to healing yourself. 

• How to Build Self-Love in a World That Profits from Your Insecurities
• From Pain to Purpose: How to turn your struggles into success. 
• Keeping hope alive during hardships

Check out his website for more information:

https://www.lawrencecharris.com/

You can get his e-books there or on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Lawrence+C.+Harris&i=stripbooks&crid=14TQ77Q0DDH6N&sprefix=lawrence+c.+harris+%2Cstripbooks%2C122&ref=nb_sb_noss

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Original music  "Saturday Sway" by Brendan Talian (for  all interviews before 2025)

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:34  
hello and welcome to the storied human today I have Lawrence C Harris. He's a nationally recognized youth empowerment. Speaker, he helps teens and young adults break limiting beliefs, build unshakable self worth and rise above challenges, drawing from his own lived experience, overcoming childhood abuse, autism and see PTSD Lawrence shares powerful messages that resonate deeply with young people and the adults who support them. I know we're going to learn a lot of good things today, and I can't wait to hear Lawrence's story. Welcome Lawrence, thank you. It's great to be here.

Unknown Speaker  1:13  
Really wonderful reading about your work, especially with young people. They need you

Unknown Speaker  1:18  
just catch us up a little bit like I know that you've had a tough time in your young life. How did you get through that?

Unknown Speaker  1:26  
Well, for a little context for people who don't know who I am, obviously, my name is Lawrence, and when people first meet me, they see this who I am now, they see this guy just speaker, he's an author. He's helping people. But who I used to be, up until the age of 11, I didn't have friendly growing up because I was always too different. I wanted to go read books and play with animals, and everybody else wanted to play sports, so I didn't ever really fit in,

Unknown Speaker  2:01  
and that led me to feeling really isolated.

Unknown Speaker  2:04  
Then, at the age of 12, my dad became abusive to me and my younger siblings, which being the oldest, I naturally felt the role to protect them and to make sure they were okay.

Unknown Speaker  2:17  
And in the process of doing that, I kind of lost myself for a couple years, where you put other people's needs so far above yours, that when we did eventually get out of his house and now we live with my mom full time, I had to reflect. Well, who am I? What do I want to do? What are my needs. What makes me feel good? Because I forgot, I forgot what made me feel good because I was too busy worried about making sure that my siblings were okay.

Unknown Speaker  2:53  
Thankfully, though, through a lot of therapy, journaling, meditation, and all the stuff I teach other people, I was able to get better in that inspired my journey to writing books and coaching people and speaking and making YouTube videos and death a little recap of me

Unknown Speaker  3:17  
and I noticed you're smiling as you're describing those things, you really enjoy what you do. You really get a lot of satisfaction out of helping others, don't you? Yeah, I do. A few days ago, actually, I spoke for the National Association of mental illness in my city, which is Philadelphia, and it was my biggest speech ever. We had 398

Unknown Speaker  3:42  
people. And one of the most beautiful things about this work is you never really know what other people go through until you ask. And when I go up there and I share what I've been through, people come up and they tell me about how their life was, what they're going through. One guy came up and he, like, hugged me and started crying, and I was kind of shocked, because that's the first time that specifically happened. And he told me that he's a veteran, so the stuff that I share my 15 year old self, when I first started doing this, I would have, I would have never thought that so many people have so many diverse backgrounds, would see what I talk about and resonate and understand and be able To get something from it. So in a bit of a strange way,

Unknown Speaker  4:45  
there's so much pleasure in talking about it, because you never know who needs to hear it. That's what I always say about this podcast. You know, you never know who's going to be inspired by you.

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
YOUR Story, who's going to learn from it, or feel less alone. You never know who's going to hear you. I love that you point out that you you know the veteran totally related to your story. I mean, it's when your story touches on human suffering and overcoming that I think it's universal, and I think you're experiencing that, like everyone can relate in some way to what you're talking about.

Unknown Speaker  5:28  
And something big there too about people being able to relate is when we go through life and we just see, I live in Philadelphia, and we have 2 million people here. Wow, you could be on the train sitting next to somebody, and you never know their life story. You two might have went through the exact same thing growing up. You might know something that could change that person's life. They might know something that can change yours. But if you never open the door to a conversation, you'll never find out who's around you. And just like there's these universal things, like everyone understands shame, everyone understands fear and guilt and feeling insecure about something,

Unknown Speaker  6:20  
there's also a lot of universal joy, like overcoming what you've been through, realizing that whatever past situations happen, they had an effect, but they don't have to determine the rest of your life, and that even Though you may not have had the most ideal situation growing up within that problem, once you overcome it, now you know how, and you can go out there and, like you said, you never know who's listening, and that person might have needed the exact thing in that moment, or they've heard it before, but you explain it in a way where it finally clicks for them. Yeah, that's such a great point.

Unknown Speaker  7:11  
I'm just so struck by your

Unknown Speaker  7:14  
connection with human beings. So you just get it like we need to connect. We're not here alone. We feel alone sometimes, but we're really not alone, and that person next to us could, I mean, I'm always amazed. I work a lot of short term gigs as a tech writer, and I'm always amazed at what I have in common with people at different jobs, different ages, different backgrounds. They're from India, they're from China, you know, they're not from, you know, America even. But there's always something very similar about us, and it doesn't matter, as long as you're open right to being a human, just a human, not an older human, or a white human, or a woman human, just a human. When you go in like that with somebody, I mean, I just love that feeling of talking to someone and finding something that you didn't think you could relate to this person. But there is something. There's always something.

Unknown Speaker  8:11  
Yeah, it's like music is a good example of it, too. So I don't speak well. I'm not fluent in Vietnamese. I can speak a little bit of it. Wow, but yeah, the long story short, on that is my ex girlfriend. Her parents were from Vietnam, and her grandma makes really good sandwiches, and I wanted to figure out how to say thank you in Vietnamese, and that led me to learning a little bit of it, but that's something that people would only know if they asked or if I told them, yeah. And

Unknown Speaker  8:50  
in just being a human like you, said that connection to other people, I developed that through journaling, because when you spend years writing out your thoughts and reflecting on those and asking yourself, Well, why do I think of that? Eventually you get to this point where you realize that, wait, the reason why I keep reacting aggressively towards people I distance myself is because I went through this and I haven't healed from that. Well, now, you look at other people and when they get mad or when they get sad, or they did this themselves, you understand that, just like how I'm doing that because of what I went through, they're doing that because of what they went through, and I wouldn't want someone to get mad at me for this, so I'm not going to get mad at them for it. And in that way, it actually becomes really hard for me to get mad at people, because I can feel annoyed, I can feel stressed by what people do,

Unknown Speaker  9:58  
but never.

Unknown Speaker  10:01  
Or I don't punish people for what they don't know, because they're just healing well. They're just reacting and doing the best that they know with what they have, and just like how you wouldn't go to a baby and get mad at them for touching the stove because they don't know it's hot. You can't get mad at someone else for doing something if you don't know that they don't know I hope the way I word it, that makes sense. I love that. No, I hear you, and I hear that such growth happened for you, that you did the work and you grew as a person, and now you don't just automatically react, which is hard to do. It's hard to train our brains. I mean, I'm still working on it, because I said to somebody, I said, I'm really not very judgmental, but I know my work isn't done because I still judge people for being judgmental.

Unknown Speaker  11:03  
It's like persons being judgmental, yeah, so it's a constant. I think it's, you know, it never ends right? The work. But I hear in your stories that, yeah, you've grown as a person and you're and you're not as judgmental maybe, as a lot of us. And that is so healing to be that way around someone?

Unknown Speaker  11:23  
Well, a big part of it is that in order to stop being judged, because see, when I say the term not being judgmental, what I'm saying is not over, not like overly reactively judgmental, right? So naturally we are going to judge in the definition of the word, no matter what we're going to say, I like this, I don't like that. I like this person. I don't like that person. Yeah, that's judging. That's just a natural thing we're supposed to do. That is how we know good from bad,

Unknown Speaker  12:02  
but being overtly judgmental to say, I don't like this person because of this one single thing about them, or this one single thing that they did

Unknown Speaker  12:14  
that's being overly judgmental. Now, in order to stop doing that to other people, we also have to stop doing it to ourself, because a lot of the time the way we treat other people is the result of how we treat ourselves. Wow, when I used to distance myself from my family, when I'd feel upset, it would because I felt so distant from myself, and I felt like I was always the problem. So in a kind of backwards way, I was giving them a problem because I felt like a problem,

Unknown Speaker  12:51  
and once I stopped feeling like a problem, I was able to better articulate here's why, here's why I do this?

Unknown Speaker  13:01  
You know, yes, it's a reaction that I can't control is a problem in my life, but here's why. Now, you guys, know. And then once we started talking about that, and we worked through it, and I worked through it with my therapist, now I'm able to catch myself when that emotion or that reaction rises up and I just say, Okay, I'm aware of that this is happening, but I don't have to react off the past. And it's kind of like when you want to stop eating or drinking soda, you're going to feel the urge pop up and you just have to say to yourself, no, I'm going to do something else. Yeah. And eventually you just lose your appetite for it, and it becomes easier to stop doing it. And eventually you just stop doing it. You might have the thought like you feel judgmental about someone or something, but you stop being overly judgmental. I first recognizing that if you don't treat yourself good, you can't treat other people good.

Unknown Speaker  14:12  
There's a lot to unpack. And what you just said, it's wonderful, and what I what I'm reminded of, I talked to my friend about this a lot, is and I love that you said you're still going to have those thoughts, you're still going to have those urges, but you catch yourself sooner, and that's what I see as the progress in my own life, where I just catch myself if I have a thought that maybe is judgmental or not positive about someone, I just take I pause now I observe it. That's what I hear you saying. It's like you really pay attention. Now I'd like to shift a little bit to some specifics about your work with young people, because that intrigues me very much. How did you get started in that, and what do you tend to

Unknown Speaker  14:56  
to do with young people? I know. Do you do workshops and do.

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
Do you speak? So what got me into helping young people specifically was helping myself. So the idea was that I would go on YouTube and I see these speakers and these like motivational coaches and whatnot, and I was just trying to find anything that would help me feel better.

Unknown Speaker  15:21  
And over time, I tried everything under the sun, you know, meditation, breath work. What else was some of the stuff I did sun like sun exposure, because sunlight actually create these hormones in your brain that help you improve your mood, journaling, exercise, yoga, you name it, I've tried it, and then I realized, Okay, I'm getting all this information, but the people sharing it in these videos either it's hard for young people to relate to them, or they're talking in PhD terms that I Have to Google every five minutes to understand this video,

Unknown Speaker  16:04  
and then once I figured out, now I know enough that I can articulate it to other people, I started making YouTube videos and these short clips on Instagram where I would take a specific subject and just share it as easy as I could.

Unknown Speaker  16:23  
Then over time, it just I got better at that, and in doing so, I also was able to feel better about myself, because now I'm giving value to other people.

Unknown Speaker  16:37  
And once I realized, okay,

Unknown Speaker  16:41  
Tony Robbins and Lev Brown and all the people they get paid to do this stuff. I went on YouTube and I said, Okay, how to become a paid speaker. First thing, got enough. What are you going to talk about on the talk about mental well being, self love and confidence. All right, I got that. Who do I want to share this with?

Unknown Speaker  17:02  
Well, who is my best clientele? Who's putting my best case study other young people? So then laterally, because at the time of being 15, I couldn't really go into schools and do this. I wouldn't just keep making YouTube videos, and I would go to like, churches and YMCAs and just volunteer and say, Hey, here's what I talk about. Would you guys mind give me 30 minutes? And they say, Sure, go up there and you started at 15. That's amazing. Yeah, because I realized that, okay, because of getting paid as a speaker for you don't necessarily need to do this, but it's in your best interest. You need to have, like, a business you run it through, yeah, because if someone were to sue you, and you don't run your speaking through a business, they can take everything you own in a court case, but if you run into a business, and as long as you know you make sure to like, maintain certain laws, they can only take what's owned by the business. So you can't take my house or my car or my personal money. You can only take what's owned by the business.

Unknown Speaker  18:23  
So that's what got me into speaking, and from there, I also go to school now, and I give these workshops and these beaches, and I host my own events. And

Unknown Speaker  18:37  
it's a beautiful thing to do.

Unknown Speaker  18:42  
Great. It really does to see them like, actually feel better about themselves, and I feel good in the brothels. And I think it's so clever of you that you discovered a market, right that wasn't being served. And you said, I'm going to make this for you know, I'm going to make this more understandable and make it for people my age or younger, you know, like, Yeah, that. That was brilliant. Yeah, cuz there's a lot of people who like speak at high schools and youth organization. There's tons of people who do it. But what I noticed was that when it came to

Unknown Speaker  19:17  
let's go beyond motivation and let's get people actionable skills like actionable step by step, do this?

Unknown Speaker  19:27  
Yeah, there are people doing that, but when you combine, I'm going to share my story, how I got through it, shares what you can do. There's so few people that do that. Yeah, if you want somebody who's going to come in there and actually have people change their life, it's me, yeah, no, obviously I'm biased when I say that, but now I've got the testimonials of people who.

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
Even just for my YouTube videos, people have emailed me things like this video helped me to improve my self worth, and now I'm in a healthy relationship, and I broke up my Thompson ex boyfriend, and me and my family are doing better, and people's parents email me and say that their kid is opening up to them about their mental health

Unknown Speaker  20:22  
that's incredibly rewarding. Like, what you're doing is so important, and that must just feel wonderful to know that it's hitting you know that people are hearing you and making changes. I love your emphasis on actionable steps, because I think that is what's missing a lot of the time. You know it's like, you can be inspired and be motivated. But where do I start? Like, what's my roadmap? It sounds like you really do tell these younger people, here's how you do it. Yeah? Because if you you know it's a great thing to tell somebody, okay, believe in yourself, yeah. But how do I believe in myself before I believe in myself. Like, exactly, yeah, what do I do? Where do you start? Yeah, it's like, you can tell someone, all right, you know, go chase your dreams. But how do I chase my dreams? When I go home and everything just seems like a nightmare, like, where do I start? What do I do? How do I change? That's where I come in, and I'm like, okay, so what you want to do is you're going to make your bed. That's it. I'm going to make my bed. Well, what about like, I start a business, or I do this, or I do that? No, make your bed. Okay, then what? Brush your teeth. Why you tell me to do this? Because you need to first care enough about yourself to maintain your bed and your teeth, because if you spend eight hours sleeping, that's 1/3 of your life. We want to make sure that, at the bare minimum, your living space is clean. You don't have to be a neat freak, but it has to be presentable, because you live there. Okay, Lawrence, then what? What do I do? Well, would you like to do? Well, I don't know what I like to do. You know, I'm I'm really sad, and I don't know who to talk to, and me and my friends, they're just treating me bad and my family, okay, well, just try stuff. Well, what should I try? Try whatever you find, you know, safely, of course, like, maybe you decide, okay, I'm gonna go to a boxing gym, or I'm gonna try ballet, I'm gonna try yoga, I'm gonna go fishing, or I'm going to start painting. I'm going to get into skateboarding or make music. Yeah, just try anything. Find something you like to do. Because what this is doing is we're putting a foundation where you're able to actually think about your dreams and ideas.

Unknown Speaker  22:49  
I can't remember exactly what it's called, but they're this theory that, without a theory, it's something that's improving, where, if someone is under like chronic stress, the parts of that brain associated with critical thinking shut down, yes, because they're just operating off of fight or flight, life or death, they're worried about today. They're not worried about tomorrow or next week or next month. They're worried about today. So me telling people to make your bed and brush your teeth that's to take care of today, because once you are able to

Unknown Speaker  23:28  
level your thoughts and calm down a bit, now you can start chasing your dreams, because you're able to see a dream.

Unknown Speaker  23:38  
I love this. You start where they are that's so important. That's so important. You also have to be aware of that. A lot of the people I speak to

Unknown Speaker  23:50  
these are teenagers who are

Unknown Speaker  23:53  
growing up in a society where you have so much social media and television and muted, telling you that if you don't look a certain way, or you don't come from a certain background, or you can't because you're a man, or you can't because you're a woman, or you can't because you are short or too tall or too fat or too skinny, or too this, or too that, We have to

Unknown Speaker  24:19  
kind of block that out and then identify, Okay, well, who am I? What's what's my value? What do I bring?

Unknown Speaker  24:30  
And that's a years that's an ongoing journey where you are constantly figuring that out.

Unknown Speaker  24:37  
But once someone gets the base, like, once they have that foundation, and then they build on top of that. Now it's like the light bulb just goes off for them. That's so good. So you could tell me a little bit about your book. I was looking at your book on your website. Oh, yeah. So I wrote, I read,

Unknown Speaker  24:59  
okay.

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
So the two of my website, those are like my best ones, in my opinion, okay. First one that I wrote was called Power to the people. In that one, it's more of like a base level foundation of okay, by getting your health, your mental health and financial spending habits under control. My I write mainly for teenagers. So these are simple things, right? Well, they're complex subjects explained in very simple ways. They're important, yeah, I think they're important for everyone, but yeah, you explain them specifically for that audience. Yeah, because your mental health laid this foundation for how you see yourself, how you see life, how you see the world, your physical health, when you get that under control. When you're young, it's a lot easier to maintain it as you get older, because that part of the book came from. There's this guy in my gym who's 75

Unknown Speaker  25:58  
this man has muscles, he's able to talk, has all his teeth. He's 75 years old. And I asked him, How in the world do you look like that at 75 he said, Oh, when I was young, I took care of my health. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna put that in the book. There you go. That's so good. Then I also go into things such as how motivation is actually very moment to moment, whereas discipline, in this consistency of I'm going to do it even when I don't necessarily feel like it, right? That's a big part of the mental aspect of the book and financial habits is because

Unknown Speaker  26:39  
teenagers, by the very nature of our brains or impulsive.

Unknown Speaker  26:45  
See a shiny object, we want to buy it. See a new car, we want to get it.

Unknown Speaker  26:50  
But once you get those spending habits under control, and you are able to take a moment to

Unknown Speaker  26:56  
I actually put it like this, if you want to make a big purchase, and by big, purchase is relative to the amount of money you make.

Unknown Speaker  27:05  
Don't buy it for three days. And then at the end of those three days, ask yourself, Do I still want it? And if the answer is no, you don't really want it. You just thought it was cool in the moment. Yeah, that's so good. I mainly recommend that for people who are just trying to get that foundational level of like, okay. Lars, just give me the practices of what to do. Yeah. Now my other book made for more hope resilience and the strength within that is a book where I go into intense detail about my mental health journey, the most gut wrenching things I've been through, relationship issues, growing up, not having friends, getting diagnosed with autism like I go into insane detail in that book. Then from there, I break down each of the symptoms of CPTSD. I explain how to manage them, and then that also transfers into other things, such as, there is,

Unknown Speaker  28:12  
believe it, 70 pages of that book goes over relationships, not just in the romantic context, but the relationship with your family, the relationship with your friends, the one with yourself,

Unknown Speaker  28:29  
and each chapter applies to your entire life. So that book is

Unknown Speaker  28:36  
aimed at mental health recovery.

Unknown Speaker  28:40  
It's aimed at mental health awareness, and it also is meant to be,

Unknown Speaker  28:46  
I also wrote it with the intention of school counselors and people work in mental health fields reading that so that they can get a first person perspective of here is what it feels like, yes, like, I walk people through this feeling of every thought you have is like taking a shower made of molten lead, and it only burns more, but then it becomes numbingly cold, like you're in a bucket of ice. You feel nothing. It's not cold, yeah, it's not

Unknown Speaker  29:27  
chilly, it's complete nothingness, yeah? And it only is and

Unknown Speaker  29:34  
it's black and white, it's you're either burning or nothing,

Unknown Speaker  29:40  
and you want to feel something, so you kind of go to these things that are bad for you, just to feel something, something. And then from there, I go into here's how I got better. Here's how journaling was

Unknown Speaker  29:59  
able to help.

Unknown Speaker  30:00  
Here's how going to the gym helped me. Here's how meditation and breath work, and all these things helped.

Unknown Speaker  30:08  
And it's I put a lot of work into what I do.

Unknown Speaker  30:12  
It sounds like a great book. Can you just enlighten my listeners a little bit? I had never heard of CP, TSD. I actually was diagnosed with PTSD, but C stands for complex, right, complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because some of us may not be familiar with that. So the main difference is, PTSD most often happens from like they're just one big event like this one thing. Maybe it was a car crash, or it was a war, or it was an assault, or it was like they're just one big thing,

Unknown Speaker  30:53  
whereas complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a series of things happening all in rapid succession

Unknown Speaker  31:02  
or over a long span of time.

Unknown Speaker  31:07  
And the main difference is PTSD typically happens where it it heavily impacts your life when you have a flashback, right? Whereas CPTSD is more of a it impacts everything all the time, unless you get control of it. Wow, that's intense, yeah, yeah. That's why, like, the analogy of your being in a shower, what the best way I could put it? Yeah, because it's not one big bucket gets dumped on you, and then there's no more water. It's more like a constant shower, yeah, and you have to catch it before it starts raining down on you,

Unknown Speaker  31:57  
and the only way to really do that is by

Unknown Speaker  32:02  
there's a few things that can be done

Unknown Speaker  32:05  
now. You can get, like, medication for it, but I decided not to do that because, and obviously, you know, I'm not a medical professional, listen to your doctor, but there are a lot of potential side effects to it, and I just didn't want to take the risk of the medication.

Unknown Speaker  32:25  
The other option is cognitive behavioral therapy, where what it does, and this is why I'm so self aware. It teaches you how to identify a thought and an emotion right as it comes up,

Unknown Speaker  32:41  
understand it, not get attached to it, and simply let it pass. I love it, and you develop a lot of really healthy coping skills, but in the process, you have to dig deep into yourself and dig into all the mess.

Unknown Speaker  33:03  
So to do that, you also need to have a healthy support system. Yeah, because

Unknown Speaker  33:11  
when it's like when you're when you're

Unknown Speaker  33:16  
trying to find the best way to put this,

Unknown Speaker  33:20  
when your life gets really quiet, your thoughts get really loud, and because it's your own thoughts, you know things about yourself that nobody else knows, and when your brain starts playing tricks on you, it'll say things to you that actually makes sense,

Unknown Speaker  33:38  
and it's hard to Like reason with it, because, yeah, I did that, that that was my fault,

Unknown Speaker  33:46  
but just because I did that and that happened, I don't have to be a prisoner to it, right? And in writing, I also find it super calming and therapeutic to put everything I've been through and everything I've learned on a paper so that other people don't have to learn it the hard way. That's that's my, one of my mantras on this podcast, you don't have to learn it the hard way. You can learn from other people who've been through something. They can shorten it for you and make it easier for you, if you learn from their experience. Now, how did you get like this? What do you think made you able to weather What happened to you and then turn around and be able to help others like what is it about you? Does it come from your background? Does it come from being the older sibling? Is it something someone in your family affected you?

Unknown Speaker  34:40  
There were a lot of factors, but the biggest one was being the oldest sibling, because I would see my younger sibling, and I thought about how I want to be a good example for them, and I want to show them that it's.

Unknown Speaker  35:00  
Is possible that, yes, all of that happened. Yes, I haven't spoke to my dad since I was like, Well, I got kicked out of his house when I was 13, and the last time we ever spoke was him trying to randomly come back in my life and text me on my high school graduation.

Unknown Speaker  35:21  
So despite everything, despite having to cut off family members and not see any, not see anyone on his side of family anymore, despite having to

Unknown Speaker  35:36  
learn to manage my own life and my own mental health and learn how to trust myself again. Despite everything, I just wanted to show my siblings that it's possible and that life can get better.

Unknown Speaker  35:51  
Another thing that helped me to

Unknown Speaker  35:55  
keep moving forward, and also that got me out of that dark place in the first place, was I had to realize that I'm stuck with me. For better or worse, I'm stuck with me, so the sooner I have a good opinion of myself, the better.

Unknown Speaker  36:14  
So I got really honest. I got really honest about the fact that a lot of what kept me stuck for so long was this

Unknown Speaker  36:24  
odd comfort in it. Psyche hurting became so familiar that I was kind of scared to let go, because I don't know what's on the other side.

Unknown Speaker  36:37  
It's like the idea of the devil you know it better than when you don't. That's so true. You get so used to it, right? It's your normal. It's like, you know this is not normal, though. You know this is bad for you. You know that this is people are mistreating you and it hurts, and you don't like this, but

Unknown Speaker  36:58  
at least you know and you're familiar with, right? And

Unknown Speaker  37:05  
it's, it's one of those things where it's kind of similar to someone having an addiction, where they know that this addiction is bad for them, they know that they shouldn't be doing this, but it takes the pain away, yeah. And

Unknown Speaker  37:21  
you know, once you hear their why, like, once you hear why they do this, they're like that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, like, it makes a lot of sense why they're trying to numb their own thoughts and their own problems. But I would look at people like this, and I would look at where my the path my life was going on, and I said, Okay, if I don't get off this train, I'm going to crash. So I it became an actual matter of life and death for me to get better. Yeah, it was bad, yeah, because I've never dealt with like, any addictions or anything, but I did see how I was on the path to probably ending up with one. Like, that's so interesting that you could see that, yeah, with the combination of autism and CPTSD,

Unknown Speaker  38:17  
you're really impulsive unless you control it, right? Because, like, you pointed out, it's a coping mechanism, right? It's, it's one of the coping it's not a healthy one, but it works, yeah, and you have to basically

Unknown Speaker  38:34  
realize, like, all right, just statistically speaking, like, just off of the pure data, my chances of ending up an addict would have been 80%

Unknown Speaker  38:45  
Wow. Because

Unknown Speaker  38:48  
one, if you don't have good coping skills, you're looking for anything to calm you down, yeah. Two, you're impulsive. Three, when that thought Spiral Kicks in of this happened, and then the next moment, well, this happened too, and then that happened, and that happened, and it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Eventually you hit the rock bottom and you're like, it can't get any worse, but then it gets worse, and then it gets worse, and then it gets worse, and if you don't catch it, it would make sense why a lot of people who are like veterans end up alcoholics. Yes, because when, when they tell you what they've been through, you can't blame them, right? Because look at what they've been through, and it makes sense they just want to feel better, right? But obviously I didn't want to end up like that, so I had to figure out what works like. What are some healthy coping skills and for people who are currently asking themselves, well, large What did you do like when you were at your worst, when you're at rock bottom? What did you do to feel.

Unknown Speaker  40:00  
Better. Well, the unhealthy things I did was I pushed people away. I would argue, I would point the finger, I would blame everyone else. That was the unhealthy things I did,

Unknown Speaker  40:10  
but it made it feel better, even though it was bad for me at the time, that was all I knew how to do right now, the healthy thing, which I tell people to do, or journaling. Write it out. Write out how you feel. If you don't know how to explain it to other people, you can spend 20 minutes scribbling on a piece of paper gibberish, until you finally figure out the words, yeah, your notebook is going to judge you. It does not care if you cry. It doesn't care if you throw up. It does not care if you scream and burn it and tear it up. It does not care

Unknown Speaker  40:49  
go exercise. Maybe that's running, yoga, stretching, push ups, swimming. Just get that energy out of your body.

Unknown Speaker  40:58  
It allows you to also have this appreciation of your own physical well being. And when you're angry and you want to go hit something or punch something, go punch a weight bag, one of, like, sandbags at a boxing gym, that's great, yeah, that's great. Or get a stress ball, or one of those, like, just anything, because it's also going to help you with, like, preventing self harm, because now your hands are occupied, yeah, those are great tips. Take a walk outside, you know, because

Unknown Speaker  41:35  
when you're having all these thoughts and you're still, you feel like stuck, you feel squeezed in. It feels like I can't move. I can't do anything. The sooner you get up and start walking, the sooner it'll help clear your mind and get some fresh air.

Unknown Speaker  41:51  
And a lot of your tips, it reminds me that if I can just change one thing, right? It'll shake where I'm at. It'll shake the mood, or it'll just, I just have to try something I love that you emphasize that and a lot of your things are easy to do, right? Go outside, go for a walk, get some sun, some fresh air, because, you know, not everyone has the financial access, the physical access, the legal access or the ability to

Unknown Speaker  42:25  
go out and find a therapist. Not everyone has that, because therapy is expensive. I don't go anymore. Since I was since the age of 16, I haven't gone to therapy because I my therapist was,

Unknown Speaker  42:38  
she was so good at her job that she said, you're ready to go out there. Man, oh, that's a good thing. The goal of, yeah, the goal of therapy is for you to no longer necessarily need it. That's lovely. So tell me, have we missed anything? Have we is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to talk about?

Unknown Speaker  42:59  
Oh, one thing I do want to share is that

Unknown Speaker  43:06  
one of the things that holds people back, not only from their mental health, recovery, from business success, financial success, opportunities in life, is we doubt ourselves because we keep replaying the opinions of the people who heard us. Ooh, good one. Like when I was nine years old. I yeah, when I was nine years old, I had this memory of me coming home and show my dad that I was on the front page of the newspaper in my city because I had made a video game in one of my classes, wow. And the news found out about it. They said, We want to, like, do a little quick interview on this. You know, it will look good on the paper. Came home, and I showed it to him, and he kind of just brushed it off. Three days later, one of his friends finds out about it, and then tell them about, like, how great it is that your son on the newspaper, and then you come and congratulate me.

Unknown Speaker  44:04  
And

Unknown Speaker  44:06  
for a long time, I didn't realize it, but in the back of my head, I would doubt myself, and I would just ask myself a why, why? Why? And it came down to that moment where it's like you kind of feel like, no matter what you do, no matter how big it is, no matter how great it is, there no one's going to care until other people care.

Unknown Speaker  44:29  
And

Unknown Speaker  44:31  
what I realized is that if you don't care enough or believe enough in yourself,

Unknown Speaker  44:39  
you'll never take that first step.

Unknown Speaker  44:42  
And your first step doesn't have to be perfect. You just have to step yes, if you decide I want to become a speaker, you could be the worst on the planet. You could have you could stutter, you could sweat, you could be nervous. But if it's your first time and you let people.

Unknown Speaker  45:00  
Know, hey, this is my first time. Don't bear with me, because, yeah,

Unknown Speaker  45:04  
yeah. And then your second time, now you're not sweating as bad. You're still sweating, but it's not as bad. But then on your 20th time, now you're not sweating at all, you're still nervous, you're still shaking, you're still stuttering. Then on number 25 you stop stuttering, and then number 30, you're not nervous anymore. And then number 50, you're amazing. But it all started with I'm going to start where I'm at,

Unknown Speaker  45:34  
and with mental health recovery, it's not about okay, I'm going to do this stuff. And then tomorrow I'm going to wake up and everything's fine. Tomorrow, you'll wake up and it'll suck a little bit less in the next day, good one. It's a little bit less. It's a little bit less. And then in a month from now, you're like, you know what? I have all 10 fingers. That's pretty nice. Yeah, my life is so hard. You know, I'm having issues at home. My girlfriend broke up with me. My job fired me. Life is hard, but at least I have all 10 fingers. And then in two months from now, you'll go, You know what? The sun's shining. I'm glad to see the sunrise. And then a year from now, you'll wake up and be like, Wow, I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to have the opportunity to go out there and try, yeah, life can still be difficult, but I know that I can do something about this. I know that I'm not just put on this world to suffer, and my life is going to be terrible forever. No, it's it'll be hard. You're going to have breakup you're going to have divorces, you're going to have issues that happen. But

Unknown Speaker  46:49  
the goal isn't to feel good all the time. The goal is to be able to respond better when you don't feel good, right? That's so good, Lawrence, I could talk to you for hours. I love your information. It's so good. Could you remind us how to find you what your website is the URL? Yeah, so it's really easy for you to find this. My website, if you happen to be looking to purchase my book through there. Lawrence@larcyhari.com

Unknown Speaker  47:21  
my social media pages are all Lawrence at Lawrence. It's all Lawrence C empowers.com

Unknown Speaker  47:31  
Okay, great. And where can we get your book? I noticed we can get it as an ebook on your website. Is there anywhere else people can get your book Amazon. So my books are available on Amazon and my website. And the last thing I also want to mention is that if by some chance, you're listening to this and you're a podcast host or school principal or you run a youth focused organization, my email address is Lawrence at Mark C Harris, com, that's fantastic. I think you helped a bunch of people today. I've enjoyed speaking with you. I can't thank you enough for coming on and thank you for your time. Thank you. I'm enjoying it. You know, even if, even if just one person has helped, you never know what that one person was going through, and glad that I was able to help someone today, I think you were you

Unknown Speaker  49:00  
bye.

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