Shownotes
Life keeps shifting, and certainty can feel out of reach. On Mind Over Matter, filmmaker Laurence Walsh explores what resilience really looks like when you’re struggling, and why it has little to do with powering through.
Drawing on her own journey through depression, Laurence shares how feeling your feelings, healing old core wounds, calming overwhelm and reaching out for support help you build steadiness, one obstacle at a time.
About the Guest:
Laurence Walsh is a Los Angeles writer, director and producer. She made the film Ballroom, which channels 20 years of her own healing, and runs Acer Entertainment, a nonprofit focused on diverse, inclusive, uplifting content.
Key Takeaways:
- Resilience is built obstacle by obstacle, not by powering through.
- Feel your feelings and own them, rather than placing blame.
- In overwhelm, calm your body first; deal with the issue later.
- Repeating patterns often point back to an unhealed early wound.
- Tell someone; healing isn’t meant to be done alone.
- Start small: three pages of morning journaling.
Connect With Laurence Walsh:
Website: https://www.laurencewalsh.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acer.entertainment/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acerentertainment
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-walsh-b480a53/
Watch Ballroom: https://www.amazon.com/Ballroom-Laurence-Walsh/dp/B0HFF24Q5M
Episode Chapters (approx.):
[00:00] Welcome to Mind Over Matter: staying grounded when life won’t stay still
[01:30] Resilience Isn’t Powering Through: listening to your body and feeling your feelings
[04:00] Core Wounds and Triggers: why responsibility is the heart of resilience
[07:00] Out of Overwhelm: breath, movement and getting out of survival mode
[10:00] Patterns That Repeat: childhood wounds and loving your inner child
[13:00] You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: family, friends and asking for help
[17:00] Small First Steps and Ballroom: journaling, rest and Laurence’s healing film
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Transcripts
00:00:06 Niharika: We're going to talk about resilience through uncertainty. That's our topic for today. Hey, listeners, we live in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet. Where certainty feels like a luxury and stability like a distant memory. Yet some people seem to navigate chaos with a kind of inner steadiness. And the rest of us wonder about late at night. What makes the difference? Is it something you're born with or something you build brick by brick or through the storms you have already survived?
00:00:50 Niharika: Welcome to Mind Over Matter listeners. I'm Niharika and this is where we explore the hidden architecture of resilience, the science of emotional strength, and the real stories behind how we cope, adapt and grow when life refuses to stay still. Today I'm joined by Lawrence Walsh and we are talking about something we are all navigating right now. How to stay grounded when everything around us is uncertain. Welcome, Lawrence. I'm so glad you're here with us today.
00:01:29 Laurence Walsh: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
00:01:33 Niharika: Yeah. To start with, when people hear the word resilience, they often picture someone who just powers through, never breaks down, keeps it together no matter what. So what's the biggest misconception you've encountered about what resilience actually means?
00:01:56 Laurence Walsh: Thank you. Um, yeah, I definitely don't recommend powering through. I definitely recommend listening to your body and reacting and paying attention to what your soul is telling you. Um Uh, personally, I think of resilience, as you mentioned in your introduction as, um, as something you build over time. Um, uh, every time you hit an obstacle, you overcome it and you don't give in to it. And you, um, you, you love yourself through it basically. So, um, every time I hit an obstacle, uh, I, I, yes, I do get that, that sadness, that depression, you know, but then I, I usually use EFT and I tap through it. Have you ever heard of EFT? Emotional? Yeah. Emotional. Um, therapy technique. Um, uh, so yeah, so I use EFT to clear to clear energy. Um, but I, I, I'm not sure where my personal resilience came came from, but I, I know that I. What's important to me is feeling my feelings and releasing. Releasing my anger, releasing my sadness, releasing the negativity, putting it either into the ground, into Mother Earth or to, um, or into, I like to picture like an orange flame. And then I, um, and then I get back up again and I try to align myself, you know, once I feel better, um, I keep going to, to what my goal is. So it's really important to have a goal and then to follow that goal once you feel your feelings.
00:03:49 Niharika: Yeah. So if resilience isn't about being unbreakable, what does it actually look like in the moment when someone is struggling?
00:04:06 Laurence Walsh: Um, so when someone's struggling, I think that they are, um, they are being triggered by one of their core wounds. So your core wounds are things that happen with your family, things that happened with your friends early on. Um, it could be abandonment, it could be neglect, it could be anger, violence that you, that you experienced. And, um, resilience is, um, so what it looks like in the moment is when you get triggered, you, you should, you should feel your feelings like we can't always like cry at a meeting or, you know, or when we're, you know, in the middle of the day or with other people that don't know us, but you should take time. Um, you could write about what happened, right? You know, write longhand. It could express your feelings. Um, what you want to do is, is get back to that core wound and you want to, you want to try to heal it. So whenever we hit a core wound, we have all these misbeliefs around it, and those create our personal flaws. So for us, to us to be resilient, we have to look at our flaws and we have to look at our misbeliefs and we have to look at our core wounds. We have to take responsibility. That's the main thing about resilience. You have to take responsibility for how you feel. If you blame other people, you can't feel your feelings. You just put the blame and the anger out there. You don't experience your own feelings. And then, um, and then you can't heal it. You just stay stuck where you are because you stay stuck with your core wound.
00:05:51 Niharika: MM. Very true. I think that reframe matters so much because we spend so much energy trying to not to feel the hard stuff, thinking that's what strength looks like when, as you said, maybe the real work is letting ourselves be humans first.
00:06:13 Laurence Walsh: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, giving love to your inner child, giving love, connecting to your higher self and letting your higher self nurture you that can feel so much in your heart.
00:06:28 Niharika: Yeah. So what do you think are the deeper patterns or root causes that determine whether someone builds resilience or gets stuck in cycles or overwhelmed?
00:06:42 Laurence Walsh: Yeah, overwhelm is hard because you really can't function. Your brain is like, it's got so much going on, you cannot process. You're actually going into your lizard brain. Your lizard brain has no logic. It's just reactionary. So you're in fear flight or freeze. So basically when you're in overwhelm, you should just try to be quiet and, and protect yourself. You know you should, uh, if you can do breathing, there's like alternate nostril breathing from Kundalini. There's, um, just sitting quietly. You could stare at a flower. You could look at any, anything beautiful, just breathing and trying to, um, there's actually eye movement too that can move you from, from your, um, freeze to your relaxation eye eye movement like this left, right, left, right. So when you're in overwhelm, just, just try to be, um, kind to yourself once you get out of overwhelm and it's, and it doesn't feel like high anxiety, high stress, then you can start to deal with the actual underlying issues. You can journal, um, you can, um, sit quietly, meditate, bring in, call in your, um, guides and teachers calling your higher self. Um, and, and then you can actually, uh, you can actually look at the issues because like once you're in overwhelm, forget about it, you know, you just need to either exercise, exercise is great for overwhelm because then you can get, you can sweat out the issues. Um, and you can get a, some dopamine, there's exercises, um, to help overwhelm, to move you from your lizard brain up into your prefrontal executive function cortex. Um, yeah.
00:08:47 Niharika: So when you say patterns, are we talking about things learned in childhood? Or is this something that develops across a whole lifetime?
00:09:00 Laurence Walsh: When I say which word. Patterns, patterns. Oh the patterns. Um, So yeah, I think most of our patterns are from childhood, but we do have a lot of wounding that happens like in college, you know, um, rejection from friendships, rejection from relationships, not doing well in a class. All of those can be wounding. So those patterns can develop later in life. But I think most of them actually originate from childhood and just repeat and repeat until you heal them. So, um, you know, it's really fascinating. Like if you have a core wound where someone rejected you, then you'll see yourself be rejected over and over and over until you love yourself and heal the little one that got the rejection. So that's the pattern is like, we, we do this cycle because our life wants us to heal. It wants us to get over the misbelief and the pain. Um, so it keeps giving us the pain until we actually can feel it and go through it and love our little one through it. And that's pretty much the only way to stop a pattern.
00:10:21 Niharika: Yeah. I would say it's interesting how much of resilience is relational, not just an individual power, because the stories we were told about ourselves early on, the presence or absence of safe people, those invisible foundations that we don't even realize we are standing on until something shakes, right? So true.
00:10:49 Laurence Walsh: Yeah. I mean, um, I always rely on my ancestors and my, you know, my parents, my parents, their parents, you know, going back and back hundreds and hundreds of years, um, for resilience. Um, I also call on angels personally. Um, and I, and it's nice. Also if you have a good community, you know, if you have friends, I do have a friend, um, Alicia Dattner who I call whenever I need some outside influence and I need her to give me perspective and maybe, um, she does also a clearing method that helps me a lot. So relying on family, relying on friends, you know, telling people what's going on with you. That's so, so critical. When I was growing up, I never talked about my depression to anyone. I was so ashamed and embarrassed. And now if I'm upset, I tell people, I tell my husband, I tell my friends, I, you know, I, um, tell my healers, I call my healers. Um, because it's not something you should do alone. We need that. We need that support. You know, we can't, we can't do everything by ourselves. Because because of what I was saying, getting into that lizard head lizard mind.
00:12:16 Niharika: And how does this actually show up in everyday life? Like not the dramatic big crisis, but the smaller, quieter moments where resilience either holds or fractures.
00:12:37 Laurence Walsh: Quiet moments show up in life. Um. I think being present in your body is very important so that you are aware of when you are getting triggered. Um, and if you're present in your body, sometimes you can, you can just stay present in the moment. So you you don't have to sort of draw on your resilience. You can just be present and be aware. Oh, that would have triggered me in the past or that that I can, I can feel that, that, that comment that that person made bothered me. So in those small moments, you can either say something like, please don't call me that. Or, you know, in those small moments, you can be aware of how you're feeling and sort of like, breathe in and breathe out and let it go.
00:13:40 Niharika: So what would you, what would you say to someone who feels like they are doing all the right things on paper, but still feels like they're barely holding on?
00:13:54 Laurence Walsh: Oh, yeah. I would say, um, give yourself a hug. Look in the mirror. Tell yourself that you're valuable. That you're lovable. that. You're a gift from God. I would say get some help. Um. Reach out. Um, some therapists are very effective. eMDR, um, I like to do breathwork if I'm. When I was barely holding on in my late twenties, um, breathwork really helped me. Um, we did a lot of screaming, we did a lot of releasing. Um, right now, as I mentioned, I use EFT just to clean up the, the anxiety, the daily anxiety from this, um, collective consciousness. But, um, when I was younger breathwork. So if you're just holding on, I would find like David Elliott or a practitioner of breathwork. Naea. Um, yeah.
00:14:56 Niharika: Great. And if someone listening to this and recognize themselves in what we are talking about, what's one practice or reflective approach you would recommend they start with?
00:15:13 Laurence Walsh: Um. Journaling every day. What Julia Cameron calls morning pages, writing three pages of exactly how you're feeling. It really acknowledges it gets all the negativity out of your body, puts it on paper. You can burn it afterwards. Uh, I think that's the one thing I would recommend. It's the easiest first step. Is journaling.
00:15:43 Niharika: And how do you help someone who feels like, uh, they don't even have the bandwidth to start something new, even something small.
00:15:57 Laurence Walsh: Wow. Well, I'm sending love to those people. Um, that is, that is a challenge. Yes, I do, I do know people who don't have the bandwidth. Um, Brad. Brad Gates has free, um, tapping on Google. You can just, you can tap for anything like not having the bandwidth to start something small. Um, maybe you need a rest, maybe you need more glucose in your, across your blood brain barrier to, um, actually function. You know, a lot of times we're not getting the food we need to our brain to actually function. So I personally take, um, dextrose every day to help, um, to help my brain function. And that's an easy step, right? You're just scooping, you're scooping dextrose into a cup, mixing it. I mix it with hot cocoa and then you're drinking it. So that's a very easy first step if you're feeling overwhelmed and, um, not able to take that step. The first step, like you don't even want to. Right.
00:17:12 Niharika: Yeah. That that's such an important distinction because not adding more to the list, but noticing what's already there, right?
00:17:22 Laurence Walsh: Yes. Yes.
00:17:23 Niharika: Feel less another obligation and more like coming home to yourself.
00:17:28 Laurence Walsh: Yes. Yogi. Yogi Bhajan says he, he is the creator of Kundalini yoga. And he says, if you don't know what to do, don't do anything. So it's like, sit and wait. Wait for the guidance, wait for the message. You know, we do the I mean, I don't know about your culture, but my culture is so overworked. And they, I mean, I know personally for me to learn how to take breaks really, really important. You know, so people need to take breaks. They need to lay down. They need to be with themselves in nature, learn about themselves, you know?
00:18:10 Niharika: Yeah. And Lawrence, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for bringing your insights to this conversation. Yeah.
00:18:19 Laurence Walsh: Do you mind if I do you mind if I just say, um, all of my healing I put into the movie, I made the movie. I made ballroom. Um, it stars Madeline Delp, who's a disability advocate and who uses a wheelchair for mobility. And Dmitry Chaplin, who is on So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars. He choreographed the movie and stars in it. So all of the healing stuff of twenty years of overcoming depression I put into this movie. So I really hope, you know, that's an easy thing people can do, actually. They just turn on Amazon Prime or Apple TV, watch the movie and it can give you it can hopefully uplift you. That's the goal.
00:19:03 Niharika: Thank you so much for sharing that. I would definitely be checking it out for the first time. Thank you. And hopefully our listeners too. If people want to continue learning from you or connect with your work, where can they find you?
00:19:17 Laurence Walsh: Uh, I am on Instagram at Acer Entertainment. That's my nonprofit company, uh, that focuses on diverse and inclusive content that uplifts community and people. So Acer Entertainment on Instagram, Acer Entertainment on Facebook. Um, I also have LinkedIn. Lawrence Walsh Hudson, I think is the name. And, um, yeah, so I would, I would love to hear from you.
00:19:51 Niharika: Thank you for sharing that. And thanks again for joining us, Lawrence. And listeners, before we close, I want to leave you with this. Strength doesn't look like standing unmoved in the storm. It looks like bending. Adapting. Asking for help, resting when you need to, and showing up when you can. That's the resilience that lasts. That's the kind of. That's the kind that changes everything. If. And thank you for being here. Until next time. Remember, your mind shapes your reality, but your humanity shapes your resilience.
