Notes from the Edge

What if the person you became to survive is no longer the person you want to be?In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with speaker and leadership consultant Jon Symes to explore the unconscious stories we build around identity, masculinity, success, leadership, and survival.Jon calls this work Narrative Liberation: recognizing the roles and beliefs we adopted to navigate life, then deciding which ones still belong to us.They talk about the cost of being “the strong one,” the provider, the good guy, the high performer, or the person who always has it together. Jon also shares how early survival adaptations can begin, including changing the way he walked as a boy to avoid social judgment and carrying that performance for nearly twenty years.Together, Lisa and Jon explore midlife reinvention, masculinity, people-pleasing, leadership, family roles, authenticity, and what happens when the identity that once protected you starts costing you pieces of yourself.In this episode:• Survival performance and identity• Narrative Liberation• Masculinity and provider pressure• Midlife reinvention• The “good guy” mask• People-pleasing and self-abandonment• Leadership and authenticity• Family roles and inherited stories• Reclaiming the parts of yourself you learned to hideConnect with Jon Symes:https://www.wholeandfree.meConnect with Lisa Lacy:https://www.lisalacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when a pastor trades the pulpit for a 24-year career inside the FBI?Eric Robinson spent 12 years in Christian ministry before becoming an FBI Special Agent, eventually serving 15 years as a SWAT operator and working investigations involving counterterrorism, crimes against children, gangs, drugs, financial crime, civil rights violations, political corruption, and national security.But this conversation isn’t really about badges, guns, or cases.It’s about what happens to your understanding of human beings when you’ve spent decades sitting across from victims, informants, criminals, survivors, and people living through some of the darkest circumstances imaginable.In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Eric Robinson talk about:• Going from the pulpit to the FBI• 24 years inside federal law enforcement• What ministry taught Eric about interviewing, trust, and human behavior• Witnessing trauma without losing your humanity• Why context matters when we judge another person’s choices• The relationship between trauma, circumstance, crime, and survival• Why mentorship and nonjudgmental support matter• The psychological weight of believing you have to be perfect• Dropping the mask Eric wore as a pastor• Fear, competence, repetition, and learning to trust yourself• Why making the “wrong” decision doesn’t have to destroy your life• Humanizing people without excusing harmful behavior• Choosing curiosity over judgment• Why Eric believes we need more kindness in difficult conversations• His upcoming book chronicling the unlikely journey from preacher to FBI Special AgentEric’s story is a reminder that people are almost always more complicated than the headline, the crime, the job title, the mistake, or the label we’ve been given.Sometimes understanding another human being starts with getting curious enough to ask what happened before we decide who they are.Connect with Eric Robinson:https://preachertobreacher.comConnect with Lisa Lacy:https://www.lisalacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the behavior we’re trying to stop is actually trying to tell us something?Bryan Post is a child behavior expert and creator of the Fear to Love Method whose work challenges parents to see difficult behavior not as defiance, but as communication from a nervous system experiencing stress, fear or unmet needs. In this conversation, Bryan and Lisa explore what changes when adults stop trying to control behavior and start looking underneath it. They unpack why a stressed parent cannot regulate a stressed child, how consistency creates safety, and why the feelings we learned to suppress in childhood can continue driving our reactions decades later. Bryan also shares his “Reflect, Relate and Regulate” approach and a powerful story illustrating what can happen when a parent gets curious about the fear beneath a child’s behavior instead of immediately trying to correct it. In this episode:Childhood trauma and nervous system regulationTrauma-informed parenting and difficult behaviorAdoption, attachment and emotional safetyWhy punishment and control can intensify stressParent self-regulation and co-regulationHow childhood survival patterns follow us into adulthoodGrief, emotional healing and unresolved traumaReflect, Relate and RegulateMoving from fear-based reactions toward connectionWhy behavior can be an opportunity rather than a problem Connect with Bryan:www.feartolove.comConnect with Lisa:www.lisalacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why can peace feel more uncomfortable than the crisis you spent years trying to escape?Lisa Lacy, trauma educator and host of Notes From the Edge, explores one of trauma’s strangest contradictions: the nervous system can mistake what is familiar for what is safe.In this solo episode, Lisa gets personal about becoming extraordinarily good at functioning inside chaos, from building a high-pressure career around competence and crisis management to constantly monitoring the emotional weather around her. She explores what happens when the emergency finally ends, but your body is still waiting for the next one, and why ordinary moments of safety can become part of retraining the nervous system.In this episode:Trauma, hypervigilance and the nervous systemWhy peace can feel boring, suspicious or unsafeWhen competence and productivity become survival strategiesOverfunctioning, caretaking and monitoring other people’s emotionsThe difference between connection and intensityWhy stable relationships can initially feel unfamiliarLearning to tolerate other people’s disappointmentResting without feeling like you have to earn itTeaching the nervous system that calm is safeHow ordinary can eventually begin to feel like freedomConnect with Lisa:www.lisalacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive? Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What did we know at five years old that we somehow forgot along the way?Tiffany Dennison is a kindergarten and first-grade educator with 22 years of experience whose work centers on play, belonging and social-emotional development. Her classroom offers a fascinating reminder that children may understand some of the fundamentals of being human long before adults complicate them.In this conversation, Tiffany and I talk about what happens when children are given enough time to actually play, why belonging and emotional safety have to come before learning, and what five-year-olds can teach adults about repairing conflict without dragging yesterday’s resentment into today. We also get into screen time, storytelling, nervous-system regulation and Tiffany’s own journey of recognizing and releasing people-pleasing.In this episode:Play-based learning and why unstructured play mattersSocial-emotional learning and childhood developmentBelonging, emotional safety and nervous-system regulationHow children repair conflict differently than adultsThe effects of screens on connection, creativity and attentionStorytelling as a tool for learning and human connectionWhat adults model for children without realizing itPeople-pleasing, identity and learning to listen to your bodyWhy slowing down may be one of the most important things children can teach usConnect with Lisa Lacyhttps://www.lisalacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.