Avery

Hi, I’m Avery Thatcher, and I believe that we can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.
That’s why on this podcast we combine ancient, Vedic, and Taoist wisdom with our modern lifestyle and latest research to show high achievers like you, how to recover your energy and optimize your habits so you can elevate your impact, and prevent an epic burnout experience.
Because burnouts a bitch in hindsight and assholes, so rather than let them win, let’s dig into the truth of a burnout.

Avery
I am bringing another guest which I’m very excited to have on.
He and I met a couple of weeks ago in a networking event and it was just serendipitous that we got put into a breakout room together.
So grateful to have Kyle here.
So Kyle, I’ll let you introduce yourself.

Kyle
Thank you so much for having me on.
I appreciate being on your podcast.
I actually think we met a long time ago.
I think we crossed paths online somewhere because there was an email trail somewhere I think about podcasting.
And then now the timing was right, the alignment was right.
And then we were just able to connect each other with so many people.
I really appreciate everyone you’ve connected me with.
Thank you so much.

Avery
Oh, you’re welcome.
That’s fascinating that we’ve met before.
I’ll have to go back through my emails and see if I can find out what it was connected to.

Kyle
Yeah, you’re getting followed by someone all the way in Perth, west of Australia.

Avery
Off to the corners of the world, for sure.
That’s super fun.

Kyle
Exactly.

Avery
So Kyle, you have a really unique story and I like to normalize the experience of struggle and trauma and to be able to talk about it, because when we’re in it, we feel like we’re alone.
And I’m not a special snowflake.
With love, you are also not a special snowflake.
We have all been through some degree of shit.
So learning from each other and hearing other’s stories can be really healing.
So why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and what your story is really meant for you?

Kyle

For sure, you’re right.
We’ve all been through some sort of sewage dump of challenges and moments that really ask everything of us.
Those moments where we either go two ways, you know, they’re kind of like a tea intersection, you know, when you’ve got those moments that really kind of kick you down.
So I struggled with like a lot of trauma or physical abuse and mental and emotional abuse when I was a teenager and I was going to one of the greatest schools in Sydney at the time and it was interesting because Here you are struggling with all this trauma and you’re holding it all down because
you’re in this place where an all-boys school preppy sort of environment and you don’t want to show any little flicker of weakness because Teenage kids, teenage boys, they can be like sharks to blood.
If they notice something, which is unfortunate sometimes, they will jump on that.
I was holding down a lot of personal family issues and at the same time in South Africa, one of my family members was murdered and another family member passed away and then at the same time my home life was just, I guess you said we can swear, so my home life was a shit show.
At that age of 14, I saw no way out.
Looking back, it’s difficult to think that you could be in such a predicament at such a young age, but you just need quite a few things in succession to go wrong.
What happened was, because there were so many personal relationships, parental, familial relationships that were so dysfunctional and traumatic, I closed myself off from other people.
As a predictive mechanism, I ended up four years later developing health problems, and through that, I finally got into stage with my life where I realised that I created that environment.
For me, taking ownership of that, not being the victim, not being The victim of something haphazardly or an occurrence happening to me, I can see now that I can take control of that, I’m not going to cut myself off anymore, I’m not going to go reclusive anymore, so that I don’t have to go through
those health struggles again and again and again.
I think that’s what I really learnt was the emotional connection between your health and how much you can impact your health.
Not just from getting anxious and stressed, you can cut yourself off from connection and in today’s day it’s so easy to isolate yourself.
When you get hurt and have been told that I’m a bit of a can be a sensitive soul and all those sorts of things, but when you go through things most other people and most other teenagers at the time don’t go through, you feel like you’ve got no one to talk to, It’s a struggle.
And the people you have to talk, I mean, I had a council at my school and, you know, I eventually went and lived with my grandmother and she was a counselor.
And I had people around me to talk to, but It doesn’t mean you talk to them.
It doesn’t mean you share everything.
It doesn’t mean you like it at all.
Or you enjoy the process or you think it’s going to help.
It is challenging, but there is always help.
There’s always someone that can just help you and people can just listen.
That’s some of the best help in the world.

Avery
So I feel, and I’ve seen a lot in my own experience as well, when we are highly sensitive and we’ve grown up in this world that’s scared to feel or we aren’t shown healthy ways to process difficult, big emotions, we become hyper-independent, we don’t know how to ask for help, we don’t know how to
share for other people.
So what did that look like for you and what changed, what allowed you to reach out for help?

Kyle
Well, you’re exactly right, you do become super independent and you go, well, no one else is going to take care of my shit other than me and I obviously can’t depend on people, I can’t depend on people that historically or genetically or make sense to depend on most.
And then so you kind of go, well, can’t depend on anyone and you get quite negative and reclusive.
So for me it all changed when I was displaced from home, I didn’t have a place to go.
It was a really extreme situation, it was really dire, I had to find somewhere to live.

Avery
What age were you?

Kyle
14. All my family is in South Africa, but my Australian family, which I guess I became assimilated with is in Sydney Australia, so I was able to, in the middle of the night, go down and catch a train and skip a train and get to my grandparents and knock on their door in the early hours of the
morning and then they open up their doors and they open up their hearts and they welcomed me in, and they really were like angels, and they became parents to me.
They looked after me, they guided me, but it’s funny even having that support, I was still isolated, I was still cut off, I had the most amazing people.
I didn’t realise it until I was quite a bit older.
I had this vision, this fantasy of going back to South Africa and being back there because every time I would go back to South Africa I would see a lot of my family and everyone would be so excited to see you.
I just felt like a flat, monotone, greyscale sort of feeling when I came back to Australia.
That’s disparity, because you’ve got the trauma, you’ve got the hurt, you’ve got all the pain you’ve experienced here, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what it is like here, but that’s your experience of it.
It takes a certain point, a big shock or a big change for you to actually go and see someone.
I had my grandparents around and my grandmother, she was relentless.
Every time I open that, every time I hand touch that door knob, she would pop up from her seat in the lounge room and come to the front door and just greet me.
It’s just amazing.
How was your day?
Like I said, I was very like, yeah, I was great and I’d scurry off to I call it the dungeon, so it was underneath my grandparents’ house, it’s where my grandfather’s drawing board, he was an architect, that’s where his drawing board was, and also where my grandmother did council sessions and
one side, so it’s scary off there, as quick as I could.
But after a while, They had an environment where I could go into their room and just talk to them.
They did not come with judgement and advise straight off the bat, but they would just listen.
They would let me talk things through.
I often look at a lot of the family because they come over at
My grandparents had so many people just constantly coming over to their house, constantly coming over, visiting them, seeing them, talking to them.
And I just kind of looked at it one day and I went, wow, everyone gets counseled here because so many people are coming there, talking about their problems, talking to their lives.
And my grandparents were just amazing at just listening and intently listening and engaging with people.
And people would just share all, you know.
And so it was like a beautiful, beautiful little space to be in.

Avery
What a beautiful gift they gave you.
A gift beyond measure.
Oh yeah, with what you’ve been through, it’s very much so for sure PTSD may play a role in there but a lot of complex trauma layers and layers over time and one of the well-documented treatments for that is to have somebody before they even start trying to give you strategies just listen to just
hold space because we need time to trust.
We’re going to keep it superficial with you, and if you push too fast, we’re going to shut down again.

Kyle
Something like that would just kind of make me go shut in and just shut down.
It was this kind of trauma loop that I was in because I would put myself out there because that’s who I am, who my nature is.
I’m excited, engaged, I want to have experiences.
I’m curious and I want to enjoy my time with other people.
And do fun things and then you put yourself out there and then someone would react poorly and then you just shut back down.
It was difficult to be in that loop for so long and you wonder when will I get out of this?
When will it change?
I know what it’s doing to me, I can feel what it’s doing to me and eventually turn into a manifested as a health problem.
I had to face it but you’re so right that PTSD because even through the health problems and then surgeries and different sort of things, That PTSD showed up years and years later.
I thought I had learned so much and I’d come so far and then I’d get up in the morning and go for a jog or I’d have a cold shower and I’d be terrified that one of my organs is going to explode or something just ridiculous.
But just that little trail of PTSD, like you said.

Avery
I find that people that come in with trauma, they process things differently and they almost skip a really important phase.
So even when nobody has died, we still can experience grief.
Grief comes in so many different forms.
But for people with trauma, I find, and maybe you can relate to this or not, but we skip over anger.
So we go straight from bargaining, denial, depression.
And we think it’s acceptance, but really I feel it’s just numbed association.
And until we get angry, we can’t actually fully heal that person.

Kyle
At that 14-year age, I had a lot of anger and I had a lot of I guess a lot of vigor and fighting back.
By that time, I was ground down so much that I just didn’t get angry.
I just went from, like you said, grief or hurt to shut off and shut down.
It was probably just getting worse and worse because I didn’t have that time to go.
And punch a wall and let it out and it does actually help you let it out.
When I was letting it out and a friend would see, I’ve got some marks on my fist and I punched the wall and he’d be like, oh, let’s go out, let’s go out and go to the gym.
People would, like around me, would help kind of guide me through that.
But then it got to a point where it just kind of skipped that anger loop.

Avery
So you’ve alluded that out a little bit, but do you want to share about your health experience?

Kyle
I had a heart disease, so basically I came home one night from the gym and the gym was really a great sanctuary for me.
I was coming back from the gym one night and I sat on the couch and Independence Day was on the screen and all of a sudden I got really hot.
So I took all my clothes off and I sat there naked and then on the couch and then I got really cold, put everything back on.
The second night I went to the fridge and I went to get water and I collapsed.
And then the third day I went to the doctor, they gave me some tablets.
They said, we think your gastro got home throughout the tablets.
I just kept saying to the people that I was with, I said, I need to go to the hospital.
I just knew I was like, I need to go to the hospital.
There’s something wrong.
And then eventually I got taken to Uncle, he saw me walking down and he just said, take this kid to doctor.
If the doctor doesn’t take the hospital, you guys take him because he’s got a virus and I can see he’s got a virus.
Going to the doctor, lovely Chinese doctor that I like this beautiful man that I had spent like teenage years kind of going to every now and then.
He actually gave me this book titled, Hope, with beautiful landscapes because he knew about some of my upbringing.
More than just the doctor to me, it was like someone very special.
So he noticed these red tips on the ends of my fingers, red dots.
And he said, 10 years earlier, when he was studying in hospital, he said, he noticed these and what it meant was that you got an infection on your heart.
He said, yep, you need to get into an ambulance right now and go to the hospital.
So I got rushed to the hospital and then I was I was in the hospital and I told my family, like, I really didn’t go to toilet.
And then I couldn’t go to toilet.
And then a nurse came over and she looked at my paper and said, Oh my God, you’re supposed to go through to ICU as soon as you got here.
Like, your organs are shutting down.
That’s why, you know, like, we need to take you through right now.
She took me through.
The doctor said, Carl, we’re going to put you into an induced coma.
And, you know, when you’re so sick, like a peripheral vision, like, everything, you’re kind of just like, Okay, yeah, that sounds induced coma, sounds like a good idea, sure doc.
And then, so he put me into induced coma and then he told my family that I would most likely pass away and that I would likely not wake up.
And what happened is that I had a bug eating a hole into my heart.
And so obviously, spoiler alert, I did wake up.
And then, yeah, and they didn’t know what it was from.
They had like eight sort of investigation areas open, these different things that it could have been.
The number one thing is intravenous drugs, which I didn’t do or don’t do or never have done.
That was the number one thing and then all these other things, maybe playing rugby.
But then it didn’t make sense because I was playing rugby Saturday and Sunday and so for me to have an impact at heart, it was for me to be able to do that much cardiovascular exercise but I couldn’t find a source.
And so then I had a long, long healing, long, long healing journey, recovery journey.
I went from 90 to kilos, like pure muscle, like I was well built.
And in the space of a few weeks, I was down to 77 kilos in the hospital.
So it was a rebirth in for sure.

Avery
Absolutely.
I remember when I worked in the ICU, Part of our training, they showed us the research that for every day you spend in the ICU, it’s three months of rehab or which we recover, minimum, and especially if you’re in the induced coma space.
So yeah, that’s, it sounds like such a scary experience for me to have gone through.

Kyle
I remember when I got out, I spent six weeks in hospital and I got out and I was just crying because I could see the sky and feel the warmth of the sun and I just kept hugging family and then I would hug them again and then hug them again.
It was so funny, those simple things that are so beautiful in our life, I was able to have a new appreciation for.

Avery
So I think you’ve already shared a couple of things that have worked for you, also appreciating life in a different way because of what you’ve been through.
And then the gym was helpful for you.
What other strategies worked for you and which ones didn’t?

Kyle
Friends was maybe one of the things that worked to a certain extent, like having friends, because it’s somewhere where you could kind of forget about your life, you could kind of go, you know, and especially at that age, I could go, okay, I could forget about it.
But it wasn’t really people that I could open up and talk to, you know.
So for me, I mean, the biggest strategy was like, is there trust, like really getting to know that one person.
So like, My grandmother was the person that I ended up talking to, you know, and then I had a best friend that I shared a little bit about and then, you know, it was funny when other friends, you know, would kind of tease me or whatever, like when I wasn’t there, he would stand up for me because
he’d be like, no, you don’t know what he’s been through blah blah.
So it’s finding those people that are just like naturally loyal.
When I was in hospital, that friend went and saw my grandparents and went to check in on them and catch up with them.
I didn’t ask him.
He never shared it, he never promoted it.
I just found out through my grandparents that those sorts of people really vetting the person you’re going to share with.
Because yes, you can share.
You can share with everyone.
We have these social media devices.
You can share your story with anyone at any moment.
Hold a close to your chest who you’re sharing to, I think, because you could feel, you could share something with the wrong person and feel 10 times worse once you’ve shared it.
Or you could share something and say, oh, this is what I went through.
And then you, yeah, I went through something similar, you know, and you’re like, oh, shit, like, you’ve just taken my bean and put it through the ringer, you know.

Avery
Yeah, exactly.
But it’s not a competition.
Trauma is not a competition.
We all deserve to heal, no matter how big or little it is for sure.
That friend sounds wonderful.
I’m so grateful that you had that kind of friend in your life.
Are you friends still?

Kyle
Yeah, I’m still friends with him.
He’s over in Sydney.
He was just a really mature friend.
He just kind of had a bit more maturity than the rest of us.
It was interesting.
And he would always do the right thing.
He was such a loyal person who wanted to do the right thing.
And we didn’t always agree.
That’s another good takeaway.
We didn’t always agree.
We had a lot of arguments.
But we had a lot of great moments, like bonding and sharing.
So that’s what a friendship is.
I think it’s unrealistic to think that every moment, same thing with a relationship, it’s just going to be butterflies the whole way through.

Avery
I can’t remember who calls on this, but someone that I was listening to, it might have been Brendan Bouchard, he talks about growth friends.
So, growth friends aren’t ones that agree with you all the time.
They’re the ones that push you, they’re the ones that challenge you and also have your back.
So, it sounds like that person was a growth friend for you.

Kyle
I’ve had a few of those people and it’s funny the people that have not always said the nicest thing or maybe like the right thing or the company thing or thing I want to hear at that time.
Those actually have been the people that have kept relation for the longest and have shown up there the most for me.
And I guess it is that accountability.
I believe in you and I want to hold you responsible for who I believe you can be.
Even if it’s just repeating what you said.
You said you do this.
I love that quote.

Avery
What advice could you give somebody that knows that they need to trust, that knows that they need to start letting people in, but it scares the fuck out of it?

Kyle
Probably the best advice I could give, and it is terrifying, it is hard, and it’s uncomfortable as shit.
It’s freaking uncomfortable.
Recognise that It’s hard when you’re going through it, but recognise that everyone has had an experience in life that is very similar.
We all have about five key problems that we’re dealing with.
There’s layers, unique intricacies, but we’re dealing with hurt, abandonment, fear, worry about the future.
There’s a few key problems that cycle over and over again that kind of show up and they might show up with different titles or they might show up with different themes but they are very much similar problems.
When I was younger, I wasn’t feeling appreciated and not being acknowledged and then that kind of showed up the whole way through my life.
I was like, wow, I’ve got this acknowledgement that I need to work on.
I would say that a lot of people that you don’t even expect that you think are all together have gone through some things.
So when you’re sharing, realise that you can relate and you can connect with a lot of people.
And that’s probably been the most interesting thing that I’ve found through my journey is like, wow, you can really connect with a lot of people My stepfather put it perfectly and said we are all having the same experience, but we are experiencing it differently.
This human experience, this collective consciousness that we are all agreeing with is very similar, but we are each having our own sort of hero in the movie story experience of it.
Sometimes we think we are all alone and no one is going to understand.
No one understands, no one is going to know all these kids driving their daddy’s BMW to school and their problems, their world is totally different.
Who was I to judge?
I got no idea.
Just because they are driving their daddy’s BMW, they could have an abusive father.
Whatever may be a real hard father, they can never be good enough for.
So I’ve got no idea and that’s where that kind of perception or that judgement, I don’t care what you look like, I don’t see in colour, I don’t see in status or a class, I just see human.
And I think that’s something that’s important is that people at all levels, everyone has their own struggle, everyone has their own If we can open that heart a little bit more and connect, you don’t have to go straight into it, you don’t have to dive into what their problem is, but make them feel
uncomfortable, but if you just share a little bit more, people will want to resonate and share, and then they’ll go, oh my God, you’re another human.
We can be human together.

Avery
Absolutely.
Was that the driving motivation behind writing your book, or was there something else?

Kyle
So the big driving motivation was I came back from Sydney and my grandfather had passed away, so I went to Sydney and I saw him walk by held his hand as he passed away, so I was able to see that moment, which was a beautiful experience, difficult but incredibly difficult, incredibly rewarding just to be there and looking after him.
I came back to Perth and sat in my room and I was just in deep prayer and I just said, God, Ether, energy source, just please show me the path that I’m supposed to be on now. I don’t want to waste any more time.
I don’t want to thumble around life or knock any more.
I think I’ve had quite a few experiences.
Can I get on path? And then this vision of this book The title was something my grandfather said to me two months before I went into the induced coma.
When I was 18 he said, well, was it on the couch?
We weren’t talking about anything that was on the couch and he just said to decide your destiny.
That went straight through one ear and out the other, but it came back all those years later. I think it was just a real pull to be doing something and be contributing and be giving Gifts that I can give and showing up every day for more than just me, you know, for my community, for my family, for the people I’ve never met, like, you know, exactly what we’re talking about, like, how can you
be there for someone else, you know, like, what ways can you do, what strategies can you use to connect and allow other people to open up.
So it was just, I was like, I need a tool to be able to help with more people.
I love photography, I love my business, I really do and I love helping people.
For anyone listening, you can help in what you’re doing right now.
You can always help in what you’re doing right now.
So that’s where the book came because I just wanted to help in a different way, in a new way.

Avery
That was such a beautiful message to end on there.
You can help in what you’re doing right now.
Because we always think that we need to do something different, do something better, be able to learn more.
But as we are as enough, that was so beautiful.
Thank you for that.
Tell me, Kyle, if people want to learn more about your book or other things that you have going on, how can we connect with you?

Kyle
A great success and it’s been a heck of a journey.
I’ve got the book coming out and you can find it at www.deciduedestanybook.com and then on there the rituals of deciding your destiny course will be.
There will be different resources and different things people can kind of get involved in and yeah, please reach out.
I’m always keen to help and connect and collaborate.

Avery
Sounds wonderful.
We’ll make sure that we link to everything in the show notes.
So thank you so much, Kyle.
I really appreciate your vulnerability and I know how hard that is to do.
So I am so grateful for that and for you being able to hold space for that as well.
Is there anything else that you’d like to leave for our listeners before we let you go?

Kyle
You can always bring joy into people’s lives.
There’s always opportunities and always ways that you can kind of connect and help and contribute.
My grandparents’ error, that’s what they did, because they didn’t live as isolated as we do today.
Even before 2020, how isolated we lived is very different to how they lived.
They were always contributing, they were always looking after someone else’s kids and going over here.
So they were always doing different things.
So I would just say, look for ways, creative ways, and it’s so cool in the digital age that we’ve got these tools we can contribute in very creative ways.
That’s what I would love to live with.

Avery
I love that.
Thank you so much, Kyle.
Thank you so much for listening, I really hope you found this episode helpful, validating, and maybe you even got a few ideas to try yourself.
If you did enjoy this episode, I just ask that you share it with someone that you think might also benefit from listening to this podcast.
In doing this, you’re not only helping those that you love, you’re also helping me get this podcast into the hands of more people.
Together, we can really make a difference.
And before I let you go, do you know your default self-sabotage style?
There are four main self-sabotage styles that ultimately lead to burnout, and knowing yours can make a really big difference in your ability to prevent burnout from taking over.
Awareness is the first step and the second step.
What you can do with this awareness of your default self-sabotage style, I will send you some ideas for what that second step could be after you complete your quiz results.
So are you ready for this quick quiz?
Go to becomingavory.com slash quiz to try it out for yourself and take the first step on your intentional burnout recovery journey.
Becomingavory.com slash quiz for that self-sabotage style assessment.
That’s it for now, see you next week.