This Is What Complex PTSD Does To Your Body — And How Leslie Haynes Learned To Listen

Leslie Haynes (00:00)

Sometimes I would be a shell of a person. I would just start sobbing. It felt like I was grieving; I was letting a past version of myself show up and be fully known. And me, as present-day Leslie, was hugging her, saying, "You can be here."

In 2021, that's when I realized, as part of this implosion, that I'd been psychologically abused since the sexual abuse stopped when I was a kid. That has just messed with my mind and my understanding of my identity so much. So when we talk about false narratives, wooh, those are personal.

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Jason Montoya (00:55)

Welcome to an "Inspirational People" episode on the Share Life podcast. I'm Jason Scott Montoya, and today, I'm speaking with my friend Leslie Haynes. Leslie, say hello.

Leslie Haynes (01:04)

Hi everyone, great to be here.

Jason Montoya (01:05)

Yes, thank you for joining us and sharing your life with us. Leslie and I know each other because we went on a Global X mission trip to Honduras a few years ago. Leslie is a systems thinker and a storyteller who helps people uncover their true identity and build lives that align with it. As the systems and process manager at TrueFace, she creates frameworks that foster growth, authenticity, and connection. With a background in digital environments and community formation at North Point Ministries, Leslie blends strategy with a deep passion for grace-filled transformation at work and in everyday life. Leslie has quite a story, and we're going to dive in and tease it out. So Leslie, pick a spot in your story and let's go from there.

Leslie Haynes (01:44)

I'll start with this: I'm 37 years old, and my early life was marked by profound trauma. I tried to ignore it for a really long time. I'm now in a season where I am embracing that. I'm embracing who I was, who I am now, and what I've been through. I'm loving myself through it instead of just acting like it didn't happen. I now have a diagnosis of complex PTSD. I've been on this journey, trying to figure out what that is because it's widely talked about, and it's super rare. How do I live with that each day? Some days are easier than others because I've never been safer than I am now. A lot of these things come up because I'm safe. So, yes, I'm on a journey.

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Jason Montoya (02:37)

So, let's tee up a few pieces there. You talked about embracing it. Why were you resisting the thing that you're now embracing? Why do we resist it? What's going on underneath there?

Leslie Haynes (02:48)

Honestly, for me, it was a lot of training from early on. I think about my life as being trained from an early age to think a certain way, show up a certain way, walk into a room a certain way, respond to others a certain way, and feel or not feel a certain way. Over time, that created a facade that didn't really feel like me. I started to feel a dissonance in me, that who I was was not who I was showing to the world. There was so much more behind the scenes than what I was showing. It was almost like an iceberg. People could see the little top of it, but there was so much more underneath. I started to find that when I allowed myself to come out of the shadows, slowly but surely, and started to process my trauma in safe environments, I began to see that my vulnerability was celebrated. I was always told that what I bring to the table would not be celebrated. And what I'm finding is that it's the opposite. I can show up and be fully known, which is creating deeper relationships because you can only be loved to the degree that you're known. If I'm only showing you part of me in a relationship, you can only love that part of me; you can't fully love me. I started saying, "You know what? I'm just going to show people all of me, and the right people will choose to stay in my life or opt out." I started living my life that way, and over time, I have created a circle where I can come out of those shadows and be fully known with whatever I'm dealing with.

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Jason Montoya (05:06)

So there's a couple of layers there that I think are worth focusing on. One is you wanted to be known, but you were afraid of being known by the people around you. You had to experience being around people that would pull that out of you and provide that safe context to get to the point where you were willing to accept the consequences of being who you were, being sincere. What is going on there in terms of, I guess we could say your community has at least some toxic elements? Why would you want to stay in that? Is it because it's better than nothing to keep it a secret and stay in that?

Leslie Haynes (05:45)

A lot of times, we believe that any connection is better than no connection. While it's true that you shouldn't be alone and isolate, if you're connected to people who continuously hurt you, you can't actually let yourself heal. It's like a wound that you just keep ripping open. It's never going to scab and it's never going to heal all the way through. What I've found over time is that what is broken in relationships has to be restored in relationships. You have to have relationships in order to grow, mature, and be loved. However, those relationships may not be from your family of origin. Based on how those people were trained in their family of origin and how they were trained in your original family, you can't change something overnight. It takes time. You have to train that out of you. You have to look at other relationships and learn from them. You can put language around the relationship you had because everything seems normal until you have something to compare it to. Once you compare it to something, you can look at it and say, "No, that is not what I had." Something that's been super healing but also super informational for me is watching my adult friends parent their children or the way they talk about their children. That's not what I had. Seeing it allows me to compare it with what I had, and then it allows me to say, "Oh, maybe it really was as bad as my nervous system internalized." Maybe it was as bad as the survival mode that I put on and wore for 20 years. There's a reason I showed up like that. Hearing from and learning from others, and being in a relationship with people who can show me a healthier version of what I had, allows me to start trusting that the healthier version could come out of me.

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Jason Montoya (08:34)

So, help us understand, when you say you have this complex PTSD, what are the types of things that trigger that, and what was it for you that fostered that in your own story?

Leslie Haynes (08:49)

Let me start off with this: PTSD is a term that's thrown around a lot nowadays. So, let me be clear about what it is. PTSD happens when a traumatic event happens. We all have those. Everyone goes through traumatic events. What happens with some people is that once you go through that event, it gets stored in your nervous system as trauma, and it kind of gets stuck in there. It's like a repeating process; it just gets stuck. If someone has a safe, normal childhood, they could develop PTSD as an adult and eventually learn new techniques and come out of it because it's based on one traumatic event that gets stored in your body when it goes unprocessed. For me, with complex PTSD, the complex part is because it is so much more complex. I had multiple forms of trauma happen multiple times while I was growing up. I had sexual abuse in my family of origin, by my brother and my mother at three, and by my father at 17. I also grew up in chaos, being shipped back and forth across the country to my biological mother's house. How that's stored in my body as a young person, trying to process it, is stored as trauma. I learned from a very early age that I needed to be stuck in survival mode: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. I just lived in those states for 37 years until I really started to realize how dissociated I was constantly. I wasn't showing up in any room fully as me. I had suppressed feelings and stopped listening to my body for years. I was 200 pounds and had no idea what my body was trying to tell me because I had quieted it for so long.

That complex PTSD happened because all of those traumas got stored in my nervous system while my brain was forming. It is so much more ingrained in who I am and how I show up in a room. What that's looked like in the last couple of years, as that has come out, is that at 31 years old, I was bedridden and couldn't move. I had pain all over my body. I couldn't brush my teeth. My husband would sit dinner on my chest, and I would just scoop it into my mouth at 31 years old. All of it was tied to trauma that was wrapped up in who was in my life at the time. While I had forgiven the people who had hurt me, that didn't make them safe. As I continued to have a relationship with those people, my body was screaming at me and telling me, "It's not safe, get out." I, in turn, was telling my body, "No, shut up. We're doing things. We've got stuff to do and we have to love our family." The symptoms got worse and worse. Jason, you saw that firsthand. Unfortunately, your kids saw that firsthand. When we were in Honduras on our mission trip, I had an episode where I had a panic attack that then moved into an episode of full-body paralysis from my neck down. I was paralyzed for almost two hours. Episodes like this have now happened about 13 times, where I've been fully paralyzed from the neck down.

The one in Honduras was especially traumatic because I wasn't around anybody. I was around people I was supposed to be leading, and they were showing up for me in such a beautiful way, but I didn't even have the safest person in my life, which is my husband, there. I'm paralyzed, and I can't swat these bugs off of me, so I just had bugs crawling all over me for two hours, which I still have issues with. It's hard for me to just kill a bug, which before that trip I had no problem with. But when they crawl all over you for two hours and you can't move...

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Jason Montoya (14:08)

Yeah, that's how they make horror movies.

Leslie Haynes (14:35)

This is what some of my dreams are made out of these days, Jason. So sometimes it shows up in wild ways, where my body will shut down in an instant, and I will be completely paralyzed. I have just learned to roll with it.

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Jason Montoya (14:47)

And how old were you the first time it happened?

Leslie Haynes (14:57)

I was 36 the first time it happened. Last year, as an example of how this shows up: leading up to my middle sister's wedding last October, it was such a beautiful time. We had amazing family come into town and all of that, and my sister's wife is amazing. I'm so excited that she's in our family, but leading up to that, I was around family a lot, and there was a lot of extra stress on my nervous system. So what that looked like practically is present-day Leslie would show up in a conversation and be able to be present and fully me. But then behind the scenes, I had to give space for past Leslie to come out. What that looked like is, between July and October of last year, leading up to my sister's wedding, I had ten episodes of full-body paralysis from my neck all the way down, where I just had to give my mind, body, and emotions space to breathe. I literally would shut down completely. Sometimes I would be a shell of a person. I would just start sobbing, but it felt like I was grieving. I was letting a past version of myself show up and be fully known, and me, as present-day Leslie, was hugging her and saying, "You can be here. You can take up space in this room."

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Jason Montoya (16:53)

So it was almost, I would guess, like something triggered it, a part of that trauma pocket was now coming out, and you didn't have any control. You had to just let it happen, right?

Leslie Haynes (17:03)

Yeah, and sometimes it really was just triggered. Think about triggers as the straw that broke the camel's back. It's not necessarily tied to that one thing. For me, oftentimes in this season, my episodes are triggered by a loud noise. Something that would make someone with a normal nervous system just flinch, my nervous system does not have a margin for that, and so I can't flinch. I just shut down and sit there for 45 minutes while my body comes back online.

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Jason Montoya (17:40)

Well, would you say this is an accurate description? I've had experiences where past me would face something and then was unable to overcome it, and there was some kind of a challenge or a trauma. Then that kind of got buried. Years later, I faced and overcame that, and it was like it reconnected that old thing into that moment.

Leslie Haynes (18:11)

Yes, 100%. It's like you learn it in the left side of your brain, which is where you store all the facts and figures of, "This is how it is." But when you experience it, it moves to the right side of your brain and gets stored in the relational side of your brain, or if you see someone else experience it. There have been some recent studies that have come out that show that, I think it's done in rats, and it's the same in humans: if I see something good in your life, it has the same positive effect on me as if that same good thing happened in my life. It's almost like I can watch all these amazing things happen to you, and it's like I experienced them too. So they're moving to my right side of the brain. I can believe that these good things are possible because someone else has experienced them. Once you can start to imagine that, you can allow yourself to really believe it. It's not just that you understand that it's possible, it's that you believe that it's possible and trust that it is possible.

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Jason Montoya (19:36)

And does that also play out with books, movies, and TV shows, or is it just real-life stories?

Leslie Haynes (19:42)

Yeah, absolutely. I think so much that I gravitate towards real stories and documentaries because part of that is just my own story. Someone who grew up in survival mode, I need to build my understanding of the world based on facts and figures, not based on a dream world because the dream world is not the one that I'm trying to survive. I'm just now coming into new levels of consciousness as I create safety for myself today. I'm coming into new levels of consciousness where I'm able to dream and create in a way that I've never been able to before. So I've always gravitated toward real stories and memoirs, especially in the last few years, because memoirs have allowed me to put words around things that I thought, experienced, or felt in a room but couldn't put words to. But also, fiction stories allow me to dream in a way that I never would allow myself to dream because I had to show up in the real world. So both really work in tandem and allow me to exist in a world that I absolutely have to survive in, but then allows me to dream about what might be possible one day and allow me to think outside the box.

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Jason Montoya (21:13)

Yeah. I think it might be hard for people to understand. I'll use a visual to help. When you're drowning in a riptide and sharks are chewing on your arms and legs, it's hard to think about strolling on the beach.

Leslie Haynes (21:35)

100%. Yeah, I'm a little focused on the shark teeth.

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Jason Montoya (21:38)

So help us to connect that dot. People might say, "Well, Leslie, how is it that you are drowning?" What's going on in your days? You've kind of told us some milestones, so from 17 to 31, what was life like? What was going on that you felt like you were in that survival mode?

Leslie Haynes (22:05)

I didn't even know I was in survival mode because that's all I knew. I mean, I thought I was thriving. Past Leslie had no idea. Because I was thriving based on where I had been. But thriving based on where you had been doesn't mean you're thriving. It's like...

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Jason Montoya (22:28)

So a little bit better is better, but it's not like how it should be.

Leslie Haynes (22:30)

Exactly. It's like, we say this in our family, "Just because this is the healthiest relationship you've ever had doesn't make this a healthy relationship." We say that a lot in our family. It's kind of like that. My life looked steady. I was building a life with my husband, and all these things were falling into place. But at the same time...

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Jason Montoya (23:04)

At what age did you get married?

Leslie Haynes (23:06)

28, yeah.

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Jason Montoya (23:08)

And from 17 to when you got married, were there more traumatic experiences in that period, or had all of it come before that?

Leslie Haynes (23:18)

There were some traumatic experiences that happened in that period, but I had really started to build the life I wanted. I kind of recognized that I'm going to take me into whatever relationships I go into in the future, so I better make sure I like me. So I started dating me. I would take a book with me wherever I went, and I would go out to eat by myself. I started dreaming about what a life would look like if I had to live this whole life alone. What would I want that life to look like? I just started building that life. Part of that was in that season, I probably will always have abandonment issues because I was left by my mom and my father at 17. So, but I started to flip the narrative, not that everybody is eventually going to leave me, but more, "I don't want to hide parts of me, waiting for someone to find that out about me and then leave." I want to show up fully known, and people can opt in or opt out. I started building this safe environment where I could come and bring all of me.

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Jason Montoya (25:05)

At what age were you at that point?

Leslie Haynes (25:06)

I was fresh out of college, probably in college, actually, in my early 20s. But it would still be another ten or twelve years before I fully came out of the shadows because even though I was showing up fully me, I was still carrying secrets from my family, stuff that I would take to the grave. But those secrets wouldn't come out until 2021 when they all kind of resurfaced in the family, and there was a big implosion. It wasn't me that brought all that out.

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Jason Montoya (25:50)

What do they say, "Don't shoot the messenger?" You were the messenger in that sense? No?

Leslie Haynes (25:54)

No, it resurfaced. It came out from someone else, and so I was being asked, "Did this happen?" and I could just confirm it. I didn't have to tell my story over and over again.

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Jason Montoya (26:04)

And you verified it. In that moment of verifying it, did you feel a sense of burden being removed?

Leslie Haynes (26:22)

I did, but at the same time, while it wasn't being denied anymore that it happened, it also wasn't being owned either.

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Jason Montoya (26:36)

No one was taking responsibility or being accountable.

Leslie Haynes (26:38)

In 2021, as part of this implosion, that's when I realized I didn't know that I had been psychologically abused since the sexual abuse stopped when I was a kid. That has just messed with my mind and my understanding of my identity so much. So when we talk about false narratives, wooh, those are personal.

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Jason Montoya (27:17)

I mean, people use the word gaslighting. Is that what you're thinking of, or is this different?

Leslie Haynes (27:21)

Yes, there was gaslighting. I was being painted as a liar in every circle, but I didn't know that I was being painted as a liar.

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Jason Montoya (27:42)

So your reputation was being trashed by all these people, which is humiliating and embarrassing.

Leslie Haynes (27:46)

Yes, but also in private, I was being told, "That didn't happen." As an adult, I can say all of my symptoms point to it for sure happening, and it for sure got lodged in my nervous system. So I can see that as an adult. I can see the facts and figures that prove it. So it allows me, as Leslie, who was psychologically abused and wasn't allowed to believe it, to now believe it.

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Jason Montoya (28:31)

Fundamentally, one of the layers that's going on is a power struggle, right? It's using power, in this case, to manipulate you and make you believe certain things for whatever purpose they had, and you having to push back. But coming from a position of woundedness, brokenness, and isolation, how is someone supposed to fight that kind of power?

Leslie Haynes (28:57)

You don't fight it. You have to remove yourself from it because this is also part of it. My abuser is the one person in my family who loved me the most and was the kindest to me, but that didn't make her safe. You have to get out of that situation in order to start healing. Because like I said, I was still in that situation because I had forgiven the person. I know that people abuse because they've been abused, and so I know that these things that she did to me happened from a place of her being hurt. But that doesn't make it not hurt me. So if you're in that situation, flee. Get out. Find someone else for safety because you will never be able to find safety with that person.

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Jason Montoya (29:58)

In most cases of abuse, you have enablers around them or systems in place that make it possible. Is there anything you'd speak into that as it relates to your situation? Was that relevant?

Leslie Haynes (30:15)

Yeah.

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Jason Montoya (30:17)

I think a lot of times we think, "Well, I didn't do the abuse, so I'm okay." But we might actually be enabling an abuser and either know it and don't want to confront it or maybe don't even know it.

Leslie Haynes (30:27)

I'd say that the abuse is the symptom. So pay attention to the symptoms that come out of you because there's something deeper underneath, because that person just needs to be loved. The people who say that they're not the abuser but watch it happen and don't do anything... if you're not paying attention, they're not culpable, but they are. But also, sometimes it really is just really hidden. So stop letting people hide in plain sight: the enablers, the abusers, and the victims. Just stop hiding in plain sight.

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Jason Montoya (31:27)

I think one of the dynamics as the abused person is you face the wrath of that person and that power struggle. I think people are afraid of standing up to that power and facing that wrath. You mentioned your reputation. If you go against this person, you know they're going to tarnish you in every possible way, right? I had an experience with a toxic mentor when I moved to Atlanta in 2005. When it ended, that's exactly what he did. He essentially started contacting everyone we both knew, and he would BCC me so I could see every single person he was sending his message to. He would essentially talk about all these things about me and how horrible I was, and it was rough. I don't know if that would have shaped it, but I got to the point where it didn't really matter. When you face dark powers, there are consequences.

Leslie Haynes (32:24)

There are, but there are consequences to staying silent too. So it's like this: it's hard to stay silent, and it's hard to speak up. Choose your hard.

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Jason Montoya (32:30)

I like that. That's good. I would say speaking up is probably, yeah.

Leslie Haynes (32:36)

It's hard to keep going with the status quo, and it's hard to make change happen. Choose your hard. Which one has the bigger impact? Which one will allow you to be more free? Choose that hard.

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Jason Montoya (32:54)

And one that you don't have regrets about, one that's freeing for you and other people, one that's taking responsibility, being accountable. It only gets harder as time goes on, right?

Leslie Haynes (33:07)

Some days are hard, and some days are easy. It's just, right now, I'm in a season where I have more easy days than hard. But there have also been seasons where I can't get out of bed. So...

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Jason Montoya (33:17)

You had this traumatic childhood experience. You get through your 20s, you're trying to reshape your life, you end up getting married. A couple of years into that, you are bedridden. Talk about your husband and his role in this and how that played out for you.

Leslie Haynes (33:32)

Yeah, this has been something I've been processing a lot lately. My husband, Alan, has been such a safe place for me to show up and bring all of me. But it has taken a long time to bring those layers. It has been an onion over years, and I am so grateful that I'm in a relationship where we have grown together, and he has accepted each version of me because I know that is not necessarily promised or guaranteed. So I am so grateful for that. I have just been becoming more me as it goes on. I think about a big block of marble. Over time, there was a shell of who I was. But even as I got married, and Alan started to heal some of my childhood wounds just by being there and showing up for me consistently, as he starts to heal some of those childhood wounds, I'm able to kind of take pieces off of that sculpture and say, "That was never me." I can stop carrying that. "That wasn't me." I'll let that go, or "That served me for a season, but that doesn't work anymore." Slowly but surely, this sculpture of who I really am is emerging, and Alan has just been so great to love me through that, show up consistently for me, and continue to assure me that he is going to show up for me because that's a fear that I have—that one day he'll leave like everybody else did. If that happens, I'll be fine because I was built for that, you know? He and I joke about that a lot, too, because I was trained to be...

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Jason Montoya (35:49)

Have you ever seen the movie "Gravity" or "The Revenant?" There are stories of a person who just survives, one thing after the next, and they survive to the end of the movie.

Leslie Haynes (35:49)

That's me. I am the revenant. Alan has just been a place where I have been able to bring whatever version I am willing to show him, and he has accepted it with full grace. That has made all the difference, and he has not looked away. In these seasons that I've been in, where I am having these deep PTSD episodes where I'm paralyzed for an hour and a half, and Alan is cleaning up my snot as it runs down my face, it's not pretty. But he is there, he is not looking away, and he is not flinching. And that has made all of it different.

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Jason Montoya (36:51)

There's something really important there that I think is worth emphasizing, which is to be human is to be dependent. In your situation, when you have these moments of paralysis, that is what it means to be human: to be completely helpless and dependent. Ultimately, we are dependent on God. We don't exist, nor do we, in terms of our death, have any control. We have no control, so we're dependent on something beyond us. I think that terrifies us, but it's the most human part of us.

Leslie Haynes (37:23)

It terrifies me for sure because relationships—complex PTSD is a relational trauma, relational traumas that have shaped me—so relationships don't feel safe. But I've learned over time that some relationships can be safe. It's taken time to train that back into my system. My natural state is still to not lean on anyone, but I also know that, to your point, Jason, our God is a triune God. He doesn't just have relationships; he is relationships, and we are made in that image. So if we are made in the image of God, who is a triune God, who could be nothing but relationship, then we are bound to relationships. We're shown that from when we are infants and we are bound to a caregiver, and our nervous systems feed off of that caregiver. You learn how to regulate yourself based on someone else's nervous system. That's how you learn to survive in the world. Not how I learned to survive, but that's how most people learn to survive and regulate themselves: by looking at someone outside themselves. So it's exactly to your point. We are relationships. You cannot run from it. You could be hurt by it and probably will be hurt by it in this world. But there are great people in this world too, and those are the ones that you should gravitate toward and allow them to heal your other relational wounds. Don't continue to look to the same people who hurt you to also be the ones to heal you.

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Jason Montoya (39:20)

So your husband has this transformative impact on your life. Then, a couple of years ago, you started having these episodes. But you also jump into this program that also plays a role in your healing. So talk about the last few years and how that has played out to today.

Leslie Haynes (39:39)

Yeah. I started this mentoring program about ten years ago, and it slowly but surely helped me identify the lies that I had believed in my life and start replacing those with the truth. This is something that I... there were so many lies that I believed, and it has taken me almost a decade.

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Jason Montoya (40:07)

Like what would be a few specific examples that you could throw at us?

Leslie Haynes (40:09)

Here's my... this is what I internalized, and it was like, remember doing three stars next to it because I was like, "My God, yes, that's what I believed." I am worthless. I must perform to be accepted. I must be heard to be of value. These were some of the lies that I believed. None of these things are true. I am worth dying for. That is what Jesus has shown me and taught us. God loves me. He chose me for things that are just specific for me. So these things are not true, but they're things that I believed. I wasn't necessarily able to pinpoint the lies right away, but I started to notice the behaviors and emotions that oozed out of me. I was like, "Where'd that come from? Ooh, that was an over-exaggeration. Why did that happen?" I started to be curious, not judgmental. The Ted Lasso quote is, "Be curious, not judgmental." But I started to be curious: "What is that in me, and where did that come from? Where did that lie get lodged? What year did I start believing that? What happened to me that made me start to believe that? How can I undo some of those and start to believe things that are actually true?" Because over time, you can take what you think about and replace it with new things, and that trains you over time to just show up differently. That is what I have done over and over and over again. Once I got through that mentoring program, I immediately signed up to mentor others because, one, I just have a passion for mentoring and walking alongside others. But then also, I knew that selfishly, it would make me retrain myself over and over and over again, and I could just continuously replace these lies because these lies are so ingrained in who I am and how I show up that it has taken a long time to start to show up differently.

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Jason Montoya (42:13)

And I'll give an example of how the lie is actually used to trap us. When I mentioned the toxic mentor, the performance was one that I struggled with in that dynamic. So dynamics are a really big piece of the puzzle because how we respond to certain things is a program. I would try and perform for this person, and then he would tear me down as a performer. Then I would think, "Well, now I gotta try even harder." Now I'm trying to do what I did, but level up. I just kept playing that game, and the tower would just keep falling. But it created this dynamic that he could then just continue to exploit me because I would just continue to play out that role. So changing the narrative, changing the belief, changes the dynamic and creates a new dynamic that prevents us from being trapped. Would you say that's a helpful explanation?

Leslie Haynes (43:27)

Yeah, definitely.

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Jason Montoya (43:30)

If someone... as we've gone through your story here, is there any other part of it that we haven't highlighted or dove into that you think is worth mentioning, or have we covered it?

Leslie Haynes (43:41)

Yeah, there's one piece that people are drawn to. In the last year and a half, I have lost 75 pounds without Ozempic or any other medication and without restricting my diet or anything like that. Part of it is learning to listen to my body. But the main two other things are, I added fiber to my diet. I learned that most Americans aren't getting enough fiber, and I for sure wasn't. So I added fiber, and then I also added a powder called Athletic Greens, which allows me to get vegetables every day. I'm microdosing a whole bunch of vegetables every day, so I'm less stressed about adding that into my diet and everything. Once I started those two things, literally all the weight just fell off. It has been wild.

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Jason Montoya (44:38)

Wow. So how do you make sense of that?

Leslie Haynes (44:42)

I think that my body had been storing fat for years. Part of that was because I was eating too much because I wasn't getting enough fiber. But that's the only piece that doctors would tell me: "You need to stop eating as much." That's all the world would tell you: "You need to restrict yourself." But the problem was that my body was storing fat because it wasn't getting nutrients. So it was storing fat, telling me, "You're starving me, so we're just going to store up fat because you're not giving me the things I need." It stores up fat, and then the second I started giving it nutrients, it was like, "We don't need this fat anymore," and it just fell off. Because I wasn't getting very many nutrients as I was eating, because I was eating a normal American diet, which was like fries several times a week. And then a new thing I started doing is adding more protein. Especially now that I've dropped all this weight, what my body is looking for... my body wants to know that it's safe and I'm going to sustain it. And so now it's looking for protein, and it's holding on to the little bit of fat left because it's like, "No, no, we've lost so much. Are you sure we're not starving?" Once I give it enough protein each day, it's like, "No, we have enough food. We're good. We can drop this weight." And then it just falls right off. It has been a wild year and a half of just learning that. Listening to my microbiome. I've done a lot of research. I love learning, so I just enjoyed learning about the microbiome, and I was learning so much about neuroscience as I learned about complex PTSD. It all kind of went together. And then I was also working in data consulting, doing data science type stuff. All of it and data science is based on neuroscience. It all kind of fed together and just made this cute little nerd bank for me to just lay around in. So I've learned so much.

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Jason Montoya (47:04)

So you've had a mental and a physical transformation. Wow, yeah.

Leslie Haynes (47:14)

I really have. I mean, I'm off of all my pain medications. I was on nerve pain medications for like six years, and I'm off of that. I've even, through the latest healing with some of my psychological stuff, just recently weaned myself off of one of my anxiety medications. So, I'm sleeping by myself without medication, too. It's like I'm coming into new levels of being able to show up and regulate myself and feel things in real-time, and not just store that feeling down forever and not process it. I'm letting grief come as it comes. If something big happens during the day, I'm letting myself pause and actually feel it. It's just slow, consistent work of showing up for myself.

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Jason Montoya (48:22)

So you grew up, and you learned how to survive, and now you're learning how to thrive. So what does it mean to "live better?" What does that mean now?

Leslie Haynes (48:30)

For me, living better is that I want people to live out of who they are, not who I am. I want to help people learn, like, to identify their values, their wiring, and their passions and start to build a life that aligns with that so that you're not showing up as the world taught you to show up or as your family of origin taught you to show up. You're showing up out of the whisper in your heart that really comes from your creator that says, "This is who you are, and it is perfect."

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Jason Montoya (49:20)

How has all of this affected your work life and your career over the years? What kind of role has it played, and what has it taught you about that dynamic?

Leslie Haynes (49:32)

Yeah. So I gravitate toward systems and work because I just love to tinker. Over time, I worked at North Point Ministries, which is an Atlanta church. I worked on the nonprofit side in their systems and in adult ministries, kind of doing small groups and getting people into groups and stuff like that. Groups and relationships have been such a central point for my healing and my being able to come out of the shadows and share things in small doses. For me, that is so ingrained in everything I do. As I finished my season at North Point Ministries and was dreaming about what was next for me, I started doing some work with TrueFace, and I was just really drawn to the way that they approach faith and the way that they just want people to be fully known. It was all the things that were themes in my own life that allowed me to see TrueFace and be like, "That's the thing I've been looking for." Once I saw it, I was like, "Let's go." So they brought me on, and I've been working for TrueFace for about a year now. We just exist to help people come fully alive in who they are created to be. We exist in the identity space and small group space, which is what I was trained in for so long. It's such a great fit for me, and my skillset really aligned with what they needed at the time, which was more of the systems and the back-end stuff.

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Jason Montoya (52:09)

There are a lot of toxic work environments and toxic bosses, but at least those two had pretty healthy environments. Has that been a steady, reliable thing through your life, or is that more of a recent thing?

Leslie Haynes (52:09)

That's more of a recent thing. I have had some not-so-great bosses. I worked in the restaurant industry for nine years, so I had all kinds of bosses. I was cussed at, kicked out, and all kinds of things. But I have consistently looked for mentors in my life. That has been a consistent thing for me. I don't necessarily always look up to bosses, but I gravitate towards people around me that have the thing that I want. It's someone that is showing up in relationships the way that I want to show up in relationships, so I want to learn from that person. So my bosses have not always been the greatest before I started in ministry. And I mean, we're all humans, so even in ministry, we show up as humans because that's what we do. So there are good days and bad days, but for the most part, I have had incredible bosses that have allowed me to continue to grow, show up, and when I have a day where I can't function, that's okay. They give me space to be who I am.

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Jason Montoya (53:45)

That's neat. Speaking of bosses, how has mentoring played a role in your story?

Leslie Haynes (53:52)

I have consistently looked to mentors to learn from, like I said before. I look to people to be like, "How do they parent? Ooh, that's different than how I was parented," or things like that to give me a healthy contrast to what I had. That has helped to give me language. Once I have language for that kind of stuff, I can actually let myself feel the weight of it. Once I have language that, "Okay, it was as bad as I think," then now I can feel that, and I can actually feel the weight of that leaving. Mentors have been such a great space for me to process those things and to... I often look to those people to model what these things look like in my life if they can. As I was starting to dive into complex PTSD, I read a memoir called What My Bones Know, and I allowed the author, Stephanie Foo, to model what it looks like for me to show up and hold my complex PTSD with open hands and say, "Okay, how has this affected me?" I look to people like that that I may never meet. Stephanie Foo models that for me. So she mentors me regardless of if I ever meet her. I allow myself to be shaped by those people around me that I choose. I'm more intentional about being specific about who I'm choosing to learn from.

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Jason Montoya (55:51)

And I think it's important for people that are in a relationship with people that have faced complex trauma. You mentioned there, you had to open yourself up. As much as you might want to help somebody else, if they don't open themselves up, you're probably going to get frustrated trying to change them, right? Talk to us about that.

Leslie Haynes (56:11)

There have been seasons where people have tried to get me to feel things deeply, and I wasn't there. I wasn't able to feel things then, period. But also, I could not show up in that space. Just because you know it's part of someone's healing journey doesn't mean today's the day. Just walk with them and let them show up in their timing and gently guide them. It's all one day at a time. Growth happens one day at a time. Healing happens one day at a time. You can't just wake up and say, "Today's the day I'm gonna be healthy," and it just happens. It doesn't happen that way. So you have to slowly train yourself over time to show up differently. That is slow, unsexy work, but it has to be done. There have been seasons in my life where I have not been as integrated as I am today. I have shown up for people in their trauma and wanted to say, "This is what you need to do next," or, "Let me move your life around and rearrange you." I've tried to do things for them, but you've got to want it yourself. They may not want it yet, but if you continuously show up with kindness, showing them that one day they can show up for themselves like that, then one day they'll be able to go through it. But today may not be that day, and that's okay, because it takes a long time to undo damage, especially relational damage.

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Jason Montoya (58:18)

And there's probably a lot of cues that you're looking at to see if it's safe that are so subconscious and trained that even little things can make... you can just see how someone acts, behaves, or responds to certain things.

Leslie Haynes (58:34)

Yeah, there's so much that was so ingrained in my subconscious that I had no idea of. I mean, for 28 years, I was having panic attacks and had no idea. I was having choking panic attacks and had no idea. Those were ways that my body was responding on my behalf. I didn't have to tell it to panic; it just did it. In fact, I thought I was pretty calm in that moment because I was so dissociated that I was calm, but my body told the truth, as it normally does.

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Jason Montoya (59:15)

Have you heard of the show "Severance?" It plays with that disassociation idea of the innies and the outies, and they don't know the other. Speaking of stories, what are some stories and narratives that have shaped who you've become and who you are now and that inspire you?

Leslie Haynes (59:31)

Yeah, I definitely gravitate toward real stories, like I said. I read a lot of memoirs because it gives me language for what I've been through, but also in an odd way, it makes me feel like I'm not alone. I have community, even though those people don't know that I exist. I'm grateful that they exist and that I can look up to them. That has been really helpful for me. Reading memoirs doesn't have to be about trauma or anything, but just anything to give language. I really enjoy learning about systems and culture, too. So reading books like "The Color of Compromise" or Caste, by Isabella Wilkerson, books like that allow me to absorb everything that has been going on for generations and then allow me to make sense of it because that's what I was designed to do. That's what I feel so natural in: taking in a bunch of information and then making it make sense. So I gravitate toward real stuff, but I do love an occasional murder mystery. But I've also had to take a break from some content because, two years ago, my uncle was beaten to death. That has opened up all kinds of things. My content became very limited. I had to filter out a lot of content very quickly because anything with violence or blood... sometimes it's not even blood; it's just a red color that can sometimes trigger me because it just puts me right back in the day that I found out and how I imagined my uncle dying. It is... so content is constantly being shaped based on how my complex PTSD is showing up in that season, and that's just what it is. I am embracing it, and now I carry things with me everywhere because I just expect to be triggered wherever I go. I just live my life that way, and I'm becoming a ninja around triggers. It's been cool how many resources have come out, especially since COVID. I think more people are becoming aware of neurodiversity, people whose nervous systems are wired differently than the neurotypical people. So things like cute earplugs are coming out so that a loud noise doesn't have to trigger me. I can have these cute earplugs that now match my whole outfit, and I don't have to look like a dork.

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Jason Montoya (1:03:14)

My experience with you is we joke a lot. So talk to me about humor. How has humor played a role in this whole journey, or has it?

Leslie Haynes (1:03:23)

My life has been so serious. And I think enough about the serious because I was stuck in survival mode for so long that joking and humor is how I live. My husband, one of his top five values, is fun, and we literally... that is all we do in this house is we just giggle together and we have fun and we do silly things because life is too serious. Even in some of the most serious times, I've been completely paralyzed, and we are just giggling together. I'll tell one story. We have a king-size bed, and there was a time that I was paralyzed, and I got stuck in the middle of the bed. Alan was like, "Well, that's where you live now. I'll see you later," and he left the room. We just started giggling. I'm like, "No, I can't get out on my own." Eventually, he rolled me out of the bed because I couldn't get out on my own. But we just giggled about it because what else are you going to do? I can't brush my teeth today, but we're going to find a way to laugh about it because it's too serious not to laugh.

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Jason Montoya (1:05:02)

Tell me if you've ever had this experience. I think it was 18 or 19; I got in a car accident and totaled my car. Thankfully, me and the passengers were all fine. It had an effect on me mentally, but I didn't process it. Sometime in the next few days, I was with my wife now. We were just dating at the time. I put something in the microwave to cook it, and it was a plastic bowl, and it wasn't made for the microwave, so it just melted. I started laughing, and I could not stop. I started laughing for an hour. I could not stop laughing for an entire hour. It was like I was stuck in this mode because of this event, and then it kind of purified it. Have you ever had anything like that happen?

Leslie Haynes (1:05:51)

So many things. I mean, that's kind of what led me to doing that mentor program where I was replacing lies with truth because I was noticing that some of the behaviors and emotions that were coming out of me didn't really make sense. The more I looked at it, I started saying, "Okay, if that doesn't make sense, then there must be something underneath the surface." I started going one layer deeper and saying, "Okay, one time, Alan and I fought over trash, the trash can." It wasn't about taking it out; it was that the trash was filling up too quickly. It's trash. We're just going to take it out when it's full. But for whatever reason, we were both under a little bit of stress at the time. I think my sister was living with us temporarily, so there was more trash going in the trash can, but for whatever reason, it just... we were kind of stressed out, and that was the thing that put us over the edge. But on paper, what it showed up at at the time is "The trash is full. I'm so angry." And I was like, "Why am I angry about it? Why are we fighting about trash right now?" It is the silliest thing. First of all, once we realized that, we just started giggling because we're like, "What are we fighting about?" Then we realized, "There is something deeper underneath the surface, and that's why it doesn't match up." So in your life, when you see something like that, a behavior or emotion that comes out at you that doesn't quite match up with the situation, just become curious about it. Start taking notice and just say, "What am I believing right now? What am I telling myself?"

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Jason Montoya (1:07:46)

It's interesting that you say that because it kind of connected a little dot. I don't know if they're connected, but I'll say it. I had an experience probably about 10 or 11 years ago where I wept. I wept for an hour, and I wonder if there was a grief there. When I did weep, I felt like that was appropriate. But looking back at the car accident, I mean, there was grief there that I had to process in this situation. Perhaps I didn't know how to grieve, so I laughed, you know?

Leslie Haynes (1:08:25)

So many of us are not taught what grief looks like, and grief looks different for everyone. In my experience, I've been through a lot of grief in my life. I've lost a lot of people, some of whom are still living and I lost them, and some of whom are dead. I've had to grieve them along the way, but I didn't always grieve them along the way. Sometimes I waited ten years to actually grieve. Sometimes grief will come up, not necessarily with a loss of a person, but with mourning the loss of something you know you should have had, like mourning the loss of a normal mother-daughter relationship. I'll never have that. I still have a relationship with my biological mother, but I didn't grow up with her in a mom role, and so she will never play that role in my life. I've had to grieve that even though she's still alive and well, and we still have a relationship. I've had to let go of what I thought our relationship would look like and what I've read about what mother-daughter relationships are like. I have to separate that because I will never have that experience. So sometimes grief comes in layers. Sometimes I'm grieving a person, sometimes something that I've been through, something that I should have gone through, or something that I should have had but didn't.

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Jason Montoya (1:10:25)

That's interesting because I have this hypothesis that a lot of our societal issues are a lot of unresolved grief and a lot of not accepting the things that would make us feel that grief. So we're perpetuating trauma upon each other, which is going to require more grief to deal with.

Leslie Haynes (1:10:32)

Yes. Similarly, I have a theory that a lot of the chronic pain happening in the United States is relational pain and emotional pain that people are storing in their bodies. It's probably because they are still connected to the people that hurt them, and their bodies are screaming, "Get me out of here."

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Jason Montoya (1:10:51)

And trying to add... I think there are dynamics, going back to the dynamics and the acceptance. I think the acceptance piece is so important because to accept what you're describing is to acknowledge that there's something wrong. For me to acknowledge that, if I've been denying it for so long, there's a pride element there, too. "I've been wrong for the last ten years." I'd rather not feel that.

Leslie Haynes (1:11:20)

Totally. But if that thing is true, it's always going to be true. So wouldn't you rather switch today than switch in ten years? You're eventually going to have to switch your way of thinking. It's like, "Choose your hard." Do you do it now, which will be hard? Or do you wait ten years before you actually start approaching yourself with kindness and curiosity and diving deeper into your story and how you were molded into who you show up as today?

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Jason Montoya (1:11:58)

I actually think in a lot of ways, it's probably going to be our generation and younger, because I just don't see a lot of movement in the older generations in that regard. For me, it's like, "Well, something's wrong," but I'm not as attached, I guess. I don't know. But it's like, "Okay." I'll use the church as an example. There are a lot of things wrong in the church. Seeing that and recognizing it and leaning into it and accepting it, for me, it's like, "Okay, that's fine." But for some people, it's like, "Well, then there's something about it that they can't do that same thing." I don't know, what do you think?

Leslie Haynes (1:12:34)

I think that millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha are all trained from an early age to constantly be evolving. The generations that came before us, because they did not have the internet, are not trained that way. So for them to constantly be growing, evolving, and taking in new information, that's not their natural state. But for me, I grew up while the internet was coming up and while social media was coming up, so I'm constantly taking in information. If I have a question, I immediately know an answer. Someone who is maybe 20 years older than me grew up in a world where if they had a question, they may just have to have that question for the rest of their lives. So they're not trained to be constantly evolving and taking in new information and constantly updating how they show up in the world. So in a lot of ways, I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for Gen X and older because they were not trained to be constantly evolving like we were. And so they have it harder in some ways. In so many ways, we are kind of against them because they are the ones that are stuck in their ways and not evolving. So that frustrates us who are evolving. But I think more recently, I've come to understand that they are the product of their environment, and they were all taught that at 18 when you're done with school, you stop learning. Unless they have a natural bent towards learning or enjoy that, they don't gravitate toward it, and you can't blame them for it.

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Jason Montoya (1:14:30)

And if their way of life worked for them, you know, it's kind of like your survival mode. It worked for you for a while, and it had consequences that had to be dealt with that kind of surfaced maybe the blind spots. Maybe that's a big part of it: there are a lot of blind spots and unseen consequences upon others, which our way of life causes, and if we are blind to them, we're not seeing the consequence, right?

Leslie Haynes (1:14:41)

Yeah. That's something that really shaped me. In college, I heard a sermon series called Climate Change, done by Jeff Henderson. It was about how the way you show up in a room has a certain climate, regardless of if you're aware of it. He presented this question: "What's it like to be on the other side of me?" That changed everything for me because I started thinking, "Okay, just because I don't name it doesn't mean that everyone in the room doesn't feel it. I might as well name it and claim it and let's do better." So in that season of my life, I reached out to two different people in every single group I was in at my work. I was leading a guest services team at the church. I asked two people on my team and two people who were leading me. I asked friends, and I asked people who were in my small group. I really wanted a clear picture of how do I show up in a room and what is your experience of me, because it doesn't change regardless of if I know it or not. I might as well be aware of it. I started that process like 15 years ago. That's part of me building the life that I want and building the reputation that I want and being the person that I want to be: having a clear view of myself and not just ignoring the blind spots because they're going to shape the room regardless of if I'm aware of them.

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Jason Montoya (1:17:09)

I think that's super helpful, especially when we talk about some of the things we talked about earlier in terms of power dynamics and cultures because when you're on the bottom of the pyramid of power, if you're the vulnerable, you experience that climate, that environment, in a very different way than the people at the top, and that can create weird behaviors and responses. So we've covered a lot here. What have we missed? What's left to wrap up these threads here?

Leslie Haynes (1:17:17)

The only thing I want to mention is that I am working on a memoir project. As part of my own healing, I wanted to get some of my memories out of my head and onto paper, and it has just flowed out of me. I am currently working on that and am unsure what's next or where it will be published or if it will be published. But it has been a great exercise for me to just process some of these really vivid episodes that I've had of paralysis and to kind of piece together how it got to that point. There are chapters like that that are really experiential and drop the reader right into that experience with me, alongside me. And then there are chapters where I'm making sense of all that I've been through and the systems that have shaped me and the narratives that have shaped me. So it's been a really fun project, fun, but also hard. It has been so great. I have written 30 chapters.

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Jason Montoya (1:18:45)

You're almost done, yeah. How far along are you?

Leslie Haynes (1:18:52)

I am kind of in the phase of just finalizing it, making sure that all the narratives make sense and that it's accurate. I'm pretty close, at least as far as I can get it on my own.

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Jason Montoya (1:19:10)

So you're almost done. How do you feel about this?

Leslie Haynes (1:19:17)

I feel great. It has been... I have known for probably about 12 years now that my story would one day come out, that I would one day tell it. I've sat down at different times in my life to write and I've kept lots of notes. There have been deep seasons of growth where I've just documented things profusely. There's been a compulsion to document those at the time, but there's never been a time until now that I've sat down to write and been like, "It's time to write." Any other time that I've sat down to kind of piece it together, it's been like, "Nah, not yet." There have been no words that come. None. It's like, "No, we're not ready." But this time when I sat down to write, it was like, "Girl, we are ready. Let's go." It has just been flowing out of me, and it has been so fun. I really just want to model what it looks like to approach your story with grace, kindness, and curiosity, and to just start to piece together what your body and mind and feelings have probably been telling you for a long time.

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Jason Montoya (1:20:47)

That's exciting. Does it give you anxiety to not know where it's going, or is it exciting?

Leslie Haynes (1:20:53)

I think if this was a vision that was just mine, it would give me anxiety. But because I have known that this is deeper than just my story that is being told through this memoir, it doesn't carry weight. It feels like, "I'm just gonna see where it goes."

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Jason Montoya (1:21:17)

That's awesome. Let's talk to the person that's like, "Okay, I wanna move along this journey like Leslie has done." What's the starting point? What's the next step? Where can they go until your book is out?

Leslie Haynes (1:21:30)

One of the books that has really helped me and given me a lot of language, and just affirmed all the things that I've learned in the last two years, is Make Sense of Your Story by Adam Young. He is a therapist, I believe. He also has a podcast. He really just walks you through how to approach your story with kindness and curiosity and kind of helps you to piece together how the things that you've been through have potentially shaped you. So I would definitely recommend that one. It is done through the latest thinking about neuroscience, clinical psychology, and theology. It is just really well done. So I highly recommend that. If you're curious about God, I would recommend reading The Path: What If the Way of Jesus Was Different Than You Thought. The ministry I work for, TrueFace, just released this earlier this year, and it is such a visual way to experience the gospel in a way that actually sounds like good news, which is what gospel means. So much of what the American church is offering, in my experience, doesn't sound like good news. To me, that is a natural indicator that that's not the real gospel. I would definitely recommend this book. It is so well done, and it is not boring. It is experiential. It is told through an allegory of the story of Tal, who is a young architect. But it also has guide notes in every chapter, which reads like you're talking to a mentor, someone who's a little bit further along than you in their faith and can help you to unpack your own faith and your purpose. So those are two great things that I would say until my memoir comes out that would be a great place to start, to start approaching your story with curiosity and kindness.

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Jason Montoya (1:24:01)

What's something they could do in a relational or communal as a step? That would be something they could do on their own, but what type of thing could they be looking for to kind of get involved in at their church or their community or what could help them as an example?

Leslie Haynes (1:24:18)

I would say, look for safe people. Look for people who you start to come out of the shadows with and share the last 10 percent of what's going on with you. Look for people who are not just going to tell you to "buck up" and "pull up your bootstraps," but look for people who are actually going to see you and soothe you. I think I said this before: you can only be loved to the degree that you are known. Once you can start to show up in these relationships, being fully known, then you can start to soothe some of the parts in you that were unloved. So start creating that safety, whether it's with friendships. If you have someone in your life that you think could be that safe person, start taking small steps and kind of testing the relationship a little bit and see if it's safe. If it is, then let that person know you. At TrueFace, we say that love is the process of meeting needs for one another. If you don't say that you have needs, which we all do, then you don't let anyone meet your needs. I have had to learn that I am needy. Even though I am super independent, I am still needy. There are ways that I allow Alan to meet those needs and allow friends in my life to meet those needs. But if I don't ever speak up, they can't meet them. So just start coming out of the shadows, and finding the people who can create that safety so that you can start to heal some of your deepest wounds because you don't have to keep opening them up. You don't have to carry them around forever. They can heal.

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Jason Montoya (1:26:27)

That's awesome. Well, Leslie, thank you so much for sharing your life and your story with us today. This has been an episode of the Share Life podcast, and we'll see you on the next one.

Leslie Haynes (1:26:37)

Thanks, Jason.