We recently connected with Ken Burwood and have shared our conversation below.
Ken, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
So many paths and twists and turns. It might seem all over the place, but everything below plays a role in finding my purpose, and there’s so much more that I could write also!
Even though I’m focusing on some of my challenges here, I’ve also had MANY good times in life. Honestly, I’ve had more positive times than negative times! But when our mind’s feel so negatively about ourselves, it can truly hurt and make us want to escape it all. Most of my life has been spent trying to learn to handle these harsh and painful inner feelings toward myself.
I’ve been trying to figure myself out for most of my life. I’ve had anxiety and self-esteem issues since I was a child. I’ve always lived in my head. Understanding my emotions has always been a challenge for me also. One of my sister’s told me that she’d heard me sometimes say that I hate myself and my emotions as early as 10 years old.
My sisters have all told me that I was adorable and a little sweetie up until I was eight, but then my parents separated and I closed up something fierce—I changed. From then until I was an adult, I couldn’t stand being told “I love you”, being hugged, or being photographed. Any form of attention, even if positive.
I first tried therapy when I was 24 to address my social anxiety, and they had me on medication for the anxiety. I made some progress, and during that time I even pushed myself to, one by one, slowly get used to allowing people to hug me, and to hug them back, and then allowing family to tell me they loved me, and eventually say it back. My Dad was the last one I said it too, and the hardest, because society had raised me that “guys don’t say that to guys”, but I did it, and dad said he appreciated it–he said that he and his father had never said it to each other because society didn’t allow it, but they always knew.
I didn’t get past these fears for myself though. I pushed myself to get used to the discomfort because I knew my family would appreciate it and that they probably didn’t feel good when I always pushed any of their care away (my step-mom had even cried because of it when I was a 13 because she thought it was about her, but it was about me, I loved my step-mom, and I couldn’t even stand letting my own mom show affection for me). So I forced myself to deal with the discomfort and get used to it for my family. I eventually pushed myself past my fear of being photographed a couple years later too, for similar reasons.
When I was younger I also NEVER wore anything that would get attention–I wanted to be unseen. I overcame the fear of being hugged and saying “I love you” long before I overcame the fear of wearing clothes that stood out. There’s an entire two decade-long arc of me slowly stepping out of my comfort-zone with clothes, from my upper 20s until my upper 40s. Many of the fun/inspirational clothes that I LOVE wearing now took me YEARS to get comfortable enough to wear. A story for another time, but these types of fears are important parts of my journey and of my purpose.
It was a combination of the therapy, remembering how my step-mom had felt a decade earlier, plus having my first girlfriend for a few months in my early 20s that helped me to realize that it would be meaningful to my family if I overcame those fears of being shown some care from them (I was 21 the first time I ever dated, so learning what it felt like to want to hug or express love was new to me, and helped me to see what it might feel like for my family that I was too afraid to allow it).
However, that therapy also eventually lead to a medication-withdrawal induced depression that brought me to the edge suicide. Word to the wise: Don’t dump all your medications in one shot without weaning off with professional support, no matter how frustrated you are with your psychiatrist!
I’d never thought about suicide before then, however, ever since then I’ve occasionally had suicidal thoughts for the past 25 years, especially when my self-hate thoughts got too strong and I wanted to escape them. But I never came close to acting on those thoughts again, they were passive.
After that breakdown I had to go back onto anti-depressants to restabilize, and the next few years involved an entire renewed religious arc of my journey, but a story for another time! 😉
I did several things in the early 2000s to push past fears. Worked at a daycare for a year and a half–I loved it! Went to university, despite fears of loans. Studied abroad in Russia, despite fears of even visiting a city, never mind another country. Eventually got my job that I then had for 15 years until 2023.
Though, in 2012 because of depression after a breakup and not wanting to be alive, but also knowing that I wouldn’t actually hurt myself, I’d tried to just stop eating as long as possible to “do it the slow way”, but after half a year of minimally eating and dropping to an unhealthy weight, I pushed myself to start eating normal again because I knew that was only going to hurt my health in the long run and only make my life worse.
Through the years, I occasionally tried therapy on and off at times (at university and then later online). I’ve looked up articles and videos over the years trying to understand myself and my own self-esteem, anxiety, and imposter syndrome issues. I’ve known for YEARS that I had imposter syndrome, and found it frustrating that even knowing what it was I still had it anyway! My mind simply wouldn’t take credit for my successes, despite all of the evidence of my capabilities and knowing I was highly valued and appreciated in my career by many people. I’d feel that it was “only because I work so hard, but it’s only a matter of time before I can’t keep up anymore and then people will realize that I’m not as skilled as they think I am.”
I never let anyone at work know about my inner doubts though. I just told myself or my friends/family who did know: “It’s just me being me” and then I’d get my job done anyway. It’s funny, after my breakdown in 2022 (see below), when I told some of my co-workers, they were like: “Ken, I thought you were the most confident person in the department! You’re the most skilled person I know!” I’d just hidden my self-confidence issues from them really well.
However, things came to a head in Spring 2022. My long-standing underlying concerns about my performance at work, pressures of being a new homeowner for the first time in 2020 just before the pandemic, and then the additional isolation from the pandemic itself, and then letting my mother move in with me in 2021 to help her since she was in early stages of Alzheimer’s…
No one thing did it, but it all built up and in 2022 I had a major breakdown and fell into a massive depression. I just wanted to escape from myself, even though there are also so many things about life that I do love! In all honesty, I’ve had far more positive times in life than negative, but with my mind attacking me so much, it hurt and I didn’t want to be here with the abuser in my head.
I still didn’t believe I would have acted on it, though I was simulating all sorts of ways in my head, but rejecting everything as either too likely to survive and make my life worse, too painful, or too graphic (I couldn’t stomach the idea of making someone else discover me if I used a more effective but messy method that most men tend to use–I’ve always hated gory things myself, so I couldn’t put someone else through finding such a thing).
I finally told one of my sisters what I was struggling with after a couple weeks of it. It scared her because she’d known someone else who had been at the same point as me, and who had honestly thought he wouldn’t hurt himself, but then attempted within a couple months anyway. But I convinced her to let me keep working through it for the time being. However, a few days later, things got worse, I was having stronger breakdowns and I told my sisters that they needed to take my mom away because it wasn’t fair for her to be near me while I was like that. Then I went and deleted ALL 12 years of my Facebook history and ALL of my SMS history. YEARS of writing to and from friends and family and personal messages gone. It took me HOURS to individually delete every single entry, one by one, and make sure it wasn’t recoverable.
I would have deleted 20+ years of email too, but I exhausted myself before I got to that and I went back to bed…
I was trying to erase myself and find SOME way to push myself over the edge in hopes that SOMETHING would get me to finally get “depressed enough” to actually “escape” from myself.
Throughout that day my family and friends started showing up and had an intervention, trying to get me to admit myself into a hospital, but I wanted to have online therapist visits. They eventually called the crisis line, who determined that I was “active” and I was forced to go to the hospital against my will.
I wasn’t happy, but I also told my friends and family and the therapist on phone that while I was very angry at the situation and that they had no right forcing this on me, I also wasn’t angry WITH them personally. I knew they were just trying to protect me, even if I didn’t think I needed it, and it was important to me that people understood that I didn’t have negative feelings toward them themselves.
I ended up staying at the hospital for 10 days, with the first three in the emergency room, waiting for a free room in the psych ward. While I didn’t like being forced into it, I still knew that I needed therapy, and I’d even tried therapy a couple times in the past few years but never stuck to it because work would get busy and all my focus would go to work. But, since I was trapped at the hospital anyway I decided to make full use of the time as best I could. Once in the psych ward, I only had to stay three days legally, but by the end of the second day I was starting to think that maybe I did need to stay for a bit longer; it was helping, and I worked with the psychiatrist and ended up staying for a full week. There were some challenges while there, caused by another person who had decided to target me, but all in all, it was a good experience for me.
After I was out, I was on short-term disability and I went into intensive out-patient daily group therapy for the next 14 weeks during summer 2022. I also started individual therapy 3 times per week, and I’m still in individual therapy to this day, though by now we’ve reduced it to once every 3 weeks.
During that time, I kept having a lot of depressed cycles, despite being on anti-depressants again. And during one of those in June 2022, my sister sent me a TikTok video of someone who had simply made a motivational message for one of her followers. I didn’t watch it at first, because I was in a pissy mood, but after my sister talked with me and helped me settle down some, she got me to watch it, and the video hit something deep in me and meant a lot to me. I’d never used TikTok before that and didn’t even have an account, but after the coming weeks I ended up watching all of that person’s videos from the browser without an account. She just had a great sense of humor and personality that I enjoyed and resonated with.
In parallel I was still in group therapy, and over the summer multiple other patients and the group therapists told me how much they liked having me there and that I shared a lot of good insights.
Through this I started realizing that, because of all of the information that I’ve gathered over the years trying to figure myself out, that I might have some skill in this and I also enjoyed helping–even in my job as software QA I always enjoyed helping others and improving other people’s skills, it’s something I naturally enjoy. So I started considering maybe going back to school to become a therapist.
However, that would need to wait for the future! I had a new home to pay for, and I needed to stabilize myself and get back to work from short-term disability first! But, I thought maybe I’d look into night classes for fall 2023, once I was back to work for a while and stable.
At the same time, in July 2022, I had been really bothered because the antidepressants were suppressing part of the way I experience music! Essentially, some music gives me ASMR responses that I absolutely love, but the anti-depressants suppressed it (I’d never even heard of ASMR at that point. I simply knew how it made me feel, and I found out it was ASMR later). BUT, I managed to find a small set of musicians whose music managed to break through it, even when songs that were consistent for 20+ years couldn’t. I was VERY grateful, and I wanted to thank them because it meant a lot to me.
Short aside: Expressing gratitude for meaningful things people have done for me has always been naturally important to me, long before I even knew about the importance of gratitude and mental health. I gave three girls anonymous gifts in 8th grade because I just wanted them to know they were appreciated because they had been nice to me. Anonymous because I was too afraid to let them know directly–it was just simple appreciation for being nice to me, nothing more! But even that was too much for my anxiety to tell them.
I’m a person who NEVER used social media in a social way before. I never even used to log into YouTube, I just searched it from an unclogged in account because I didn’t see any reason to log in. I only had Facebook for friends and family, and that was it.
I had NO interest in social media or being visible. In fact, I’d always wanted to just be forgotten like I never existed.
I created a Twitter account to thank those musicians there, because it was just text and I found them all there. However, it felt too little to me, and then because of that one person who’s videos that I’d watched on TikTok the previous month, I looked on TikTok and found all of those musicians there.
I did NOT want to make a public video, I had NO intentions to EVER be on social media, however it was VERY important to me to thank them, and TikTok seemed the best option to tell them thank you in a way that felt true to me… So once again I pushed myself past my fears and made one video (well two videos because TikTok had a 1-minute limit then! Plus a third video shortly afterward for another band that got through the medication).
These were meant to be the ONLY videos I would ever do, but I showed it to the group therapist and she said “That looks like a good creative outlet for you.” To which I replied: “Oh no! I don’t do social media! This was just one special thing that was important to me! I’d be too anxious to do anything like that!”
She planted that seed though! Some days later, I went to make a short video for a small joke to send to my sisters, having completely forgotten about the therapist’s suggestion, but then I remembered it. I thought NO WAY! But then realized I was going to make the video anyway, so I could decide after I made it if I wanted to also share it. I was happy with it, so I decided I’ll just take the risk and post it anyway. Some days later a similar thing happened again. Then it sank in that I did kind of enjoy it.
Later after that, thinking about the idea of becoming a therapist in the future, I realized that maybe in the meantime I could use TikTok to start talking about my own healing journey. That way, I’d still be helping even if I wasn’t a therapist yet. If nothing else just to help someone else feel a little less alone.
At first I thought “why do that? I’m not saying anything that others haven’t already said before.” But I also realized that not every person will see everything that’s already out there, some people are looking for the first time and they might just happen upon mine first. PLUS, I also knew that you could have 10 different people say the same thing in their own ways, and just ONE of them might resonate with one person, while someone else resonates with another person–it’s not solely about the underlying message, but about the connection with the person sharing the message that can sometimes make the difference. So having multiple voices out there sharing the same things was still worth it.
This is how I started sharing my own healing journey on TikTok! Three years later, I’m still sharing. There have been a LOT of ups and downs since then!
There’s even a university teacher who found my videos and uses them as part of a degree program for therapists in training on Diversity and Inclusion. He reached out to me and asked if I minded using my videos as part of the course, and I gladly gave him permission–I share to help! He uses my videos during the section on people with mental health issues. It’s been a key part of that course ever since then for almost 3 years now. Last spring I was even invited to be a guest speaker in his class for the first time, and we have plans for me to return this fall as well.
He said he’d never seen anyone do what I do. We often see professionals talk about it, and also people who have personally gone through it talk about it, but AFTER the fact. But I was sharing my healing journey WHILE on it, in a very open and authentic way that was true to me.
Back in fall 2022, after leaving group therapy, I also learned about life coaching for the first time, joining Success Insider’s Life Mastery Achiever’s (LMA) coaching program, by Tim Han. By 2023 I’d realized that being a coach was also an option that I felt even more drawn to than becoming a therapist.
I was doing really well most of the first half of 2023. I’d been back at work, participating in a few online communities, following along with a life coaching course, and trying to move toward being a coach. I’d even signed up to go to their in-person “World Class Achievers” (WCA) life coaching retreat for November 2023,
I even finally got diagnosed as on the autism spectrum in 2023–considered low support needs. I’d wondered about it for 20 years, but never got tested until 2023 when all of these other things were happening (again, story for another time).
Another important thing: I met someone who would become my bestie in this life coaching community in early 2023 also. She’s been a VERY important part of my journey too, but another story for another time. Suffice it to say, even though we live on different continents, she’s been part of everything with me since then. We’ve talked each other through a lot.
However in the late spring of 2023 my mind started attacking me in very painful ways telling me that I was fundamentally broken and couldn’t communicate or be a coach. I was depressed for half a year after that, and I went into the life coaching retreat later that fall in a bad head space.
I had already been anxious about the retreat, there’s a whole story, but in short, I was so disappointed in myself for not getting past my anxieties, that I couldn’t handle it and I fled from the retreat on the second day. I walked almost 2 hours away, all the way down a mountain in Thailand (on a paved road, to be fair). They eventually convinced me to come back, at least give it the rest of the day, and fly home the next day if I still couldn’t handle being there.
I wasn’t doing well the rest of the day, and I kept having difficulties with myself. However, I was invested in OTHER people’s success, even while disappointed in myself. But I finally did break through at the very last minute that night. From there, my mood shot up and I was in an extremely good state for the rest of the retreat.
After that retreat, the coaches invited me to return in fall 2024. They knew that I wanted to be a coach and they saw a lot of potential in me. I knew that it would be good to return, though I was concerned about my finances, since I had returned to disability in 2023 after trying to work for several months but still needing to focus on my mental health. But I decided to take the risk on myself that I’d be back to earning in 2024 and I agreed to attend the retreat again in fall 2024.
Over the next couple months I still had short ups and downs, and my mind continued to try to find ways to tell me that I couldn’t’ be a coach: ANY reason, even if not related. Felt an emotion? Had a misunderstanding? Got into an argument? Didn’t know what to do? Couldn’t remember something? … You name it… My mind would jump on it and scream: “See! You can’t be a coach!”
But I kept getting through those and in late December 2023 I joined Mastermind’s Business Academy (Action Academy back then), which helps train coaches to run their own coaching business. I was doing well with the program at first, but then my mind started feeling more and more foggy, it was taking me longer to get things done and I start feeling anxious and stressed about it, and my mind eventually latched on to that and I started isolating–the WORST thing I could have done, and honestly still my Achilles heal that I need to be careful about. I fell into another major depression that lasted until April 2024.
After that, I backed off of trying to coach. I was afraid of myself by then. There was a clear pattern that the harder I pushed toward coaching, the more my mind fought to take me out!
For the time being, I just needed to stay stable for an extended time! Focus on the basics: Good rest, good diet, good exercise, get outside, work in the garden, and socialize (my weakest point).
Even though I’d paid good money for it, I mostly ignored the Mastermind program for the rest of the year, and also stopped trying to move toward coaching. It was more important to focus on my stability.
During the past few years I’d heard from multiple therapists and psychiatrists about the potentials of psychedelic assisted therapy and its potentials and research going into it. I’d NEVER done any kind of substances, I still have never even sipped coffee. The first time I drank alcohol I was 33 (girlfriend got me to try, though I was VERY afraid and I felt like I was betraying my parents), and I still almost never drink to this day. So I had conflicted feelings about the idea of it, but the research was compelling to me, because I knew that even though my therapy and coaching were helping, there was still something inside of my that I couldn’t figure out.
During that time in 2024 when I was just trying to stay stable, I found out about a psilocybin assisted therapy retreat run by the Inner Shift Institute. Alice, the owner, is neuro-divergent herself and she enjoys working with neuro-divergent people at her retreat. I talked with her and did some research and it sounded like it has a lot of potential, so I decided to take a financial and psychological risk and sign up for the retreat (I’d never done ANYTHING like this, and I had NO clue what to expect). It was scheduled to happen in late November 2024, a few weeks after my upcoming 2nd time at the WCA life coaching retreat.
I knew that all of my continuing therapy, the life coaching, and my own continuing knowledge gathering still wasn’t enough for what I needed. I had a LOT of knowledge, but something in me never wanted to let go. Within the first year that I knew him, my own therapist often said that normally by the time people have as much self-awareness as me, they break through, but there’s something inside of me that was refusing to let go and it was a matter of figuring out what that is.
So, it was worth taking a risk to try the psilocybin assisted therapy.
This time when I went to the life coaching retreat, I wasn’t depressed, though I intentionally held myself back and didn’t let myself get into too good of a mood. I was AFRAID of myself. Afraid that if I started moving forward with coaching, my mind would start attacking me again. I’d done decently since that April, with only a few short periods of depression, but I KNEW it was fragile and that I still hadn’t made any internal changes that would help me. My mind was calmly telling me: “Just give up. Stop pretending that you’re more than you really are. Go back to software.” I’ll tell you, in a lot of ways that voice is a lot more dangerous when it’s calm than when you’re in the middle of an anxiety attack. I hadn’t ever given up the desire to be a coach, but I was also VERY afraid to get too close to it again. Even though I didn’t have the same extremes as in 2023, I consider 2024 as the harder of my two years at the WCA retreats.
But I did finally allow myself to fully reconnect with my drive to be a coach by the last day of that retreat!
The coaches at the retreat also gave me a VERY special gift for having come back to the retreat a 2nd time. An adorable stuffed bunny. They knew that throughout my life multiple people from family to friends had independently called me The Energizer Bunny (which I always changed to The Kenergizer Bunny). My bestie also named him: “Floofearkins”! He’s “floofy”, has ears, and is a forest kin. Plus he “floofs away the fear” AND my bestie and I call each other our kindred spirit. Floof has been with me on every journey and important milestone since then for the past year. People have even told me that I was infusing him with my life and essence! He’s extremely important to me and dear to my heart for everything and everyone that he represents.
A few weeks after WCA retreat , I headed to my psilocybin assisted therapy retreat, Floof and a baby picture of myself in hand, with the intention: “I’m ready to deeply connect with my self-worth, self-compassion, and self-faith.”
This retreat was very different from the life coaching retreat. I found it extremely peaceful for me. Besides the therapy sessions themselves, we also participated in group discussions, practiced several types of meditations, journaled, etc. It was led by very skilled and trained therapists. There’s a lot that happened, but the biggest thing that I took from the retreat was connecting with my core self in a VERY deep way that was more than just words. Through my two psilocybin assisted therapy sessions I connected with a part of me that I KNOW truly loves me and only wants the best for me. It’s a part of me that I’m very familiar with, none of it seemed like a new experience. It’s my own inner voice, when I’m in a good headspace. My own voice that I’ve been talking to myself with for my whole life. But I connected with it in a deeper way than anything I’d experienced.
This was EXTREMELY important.
In the past, whenever my self-doubts or anxiety would get triggered, my self-abuser would then also get triggered and tell me how much it hates me and wants me to die, trying to drive me and shame me into changing. It’s an extremely painful side of myself. But, whenever this side of me would get triggered, then I would doubt ALL of the positive work that I’ve done, I’d think that THIS part of me is always hiding in wait, just looking for any crack, any chance to pounce and tear me down. So, if this was ALWAYS there, but the positive things required work, then all of the positives must not be real and this self-hateful part of me must be the “real” constant within me.
However, later in February 2025 I had a very intense inner work session with myself when my self-doubter was triggered and I was working with it in the mirror to soothe it, but then my self-abuser got EXTREMELY triggered. I ended up in front of the mirror working with those two parts of myself for a full 75 minutes. THIS is the moment that always would have made me throw away all of the positive work in the past, and in fact this was the first time since November that I’d felt that I’d completely lost connection with my core self. However, even WHILE I was in a VERY triggered state, and worried that I might start questioning my connection to my core self, I KNEW in that moment that even with the disconnect, I still LOVED myself at my core. I KNEW for a fact what I experienced during the retreat in November!
This was HUGE for me. By the end of that 75 minutes I had reconnected with myself. Even though I was drained and not fully in a good mood, I hadn’t lost myself. This was the first time I’d ever gotten through something like that without doubting all the positive work I’d done!
In April 2025 I returned for a week of individual therapy with one of the lead therapists from the retreat who I worked with a lot in November, Cony Faine. This was another very meaningful experience for me that has continued to help me, particularly learning a way of slowly using my hands while I talk to help me to regulate, slow down, find my words, and connect with my heart space.
My intention for this 2nd round of psilocybin assisted therapy was: “I’m ready for my self-doubter to deeply understand that it can trust me AND itself, even while sharing its concerns about the uncertainties ahead.”
Through 2025, there have been many more successes and challenges that I haven’t listed here. Practicing multiple regulation tools, intentionally practicing connecting with my intuition, daily meditations and continued journaling and parts work.
I’ve had some down cycles, and triggers at various points, but each time I’ve learned something from it and came out stronger for it!
During the first half of 2025 I was primarily focused on still integrating and working with myself. I knew that’s where most of my focus needed to remain, and I couldn’t risk pushing myself too hard toward being a coach yet. Though in parallel I was working with the Mastermind Business Academy (MBA) courses, as my secondary focus at a safe pace for myself.
But after a month of integration in May after my second set of psilocybin assisted therapy sessions, and several other things that came up later and seeing the lessons that I learned, I felt I was truly ready to start shifting my focus more toward finally becoming a coach, after years of ups and downs.
I renewed my MBA subscription in May, and in June I signed up to attend their Launch Lab event, an accelerated in-person event to help people launch their coaching businesses. The event was in September.
In the first week of August, my nephew was killed in a car accident, then 10 days later his mother, my second oldest sister, died from a seizure. Her seizure was the day before I was supposed to come down to be with family because of my nephew, and it would have been the first time I’d seen her in 3 years. I shared a video asking for people to share healing energy and thoughts for my sister the morning of her seizure while she was at the hospital, and one of my best friends drove me a couple hours away to the hospital, where I spent some time with her while she lay unconscious, shared some of my feelings and my challenges and successes from the past three years. I cried, laughed, and told her that I loved her. Then my siblings and I sat with her until she passed.
In the meantime, the video that I shared went extremely viral. Normally my videos only get 50 to 200 views, but this video of me asking for care for my sister touched many hearts. The comments in it have been absolutely beautiful. We all sent her off with a world’s worth of love!
Even before this, I’ve had people tell me that my videos have helped them, but because of my video for my sister, many more have started following and watching my other videos, and saying that it’s helped them. Perhaps my sister’s way of helping me and others! Who knows, but it’s a nice thought. She’ll always be in my heart either way.
This overlapped with my preparation time for Launch Lab, and I’d even gotten into a triggered state after giving most of my attention to everything around my sister for several weeks, and falling VERY behind in my Launch Lab preparation. But In the end, I got what I needed done, and it was honestly a good reminder to that self-shaming self-abusive side of me that it can trust me when I tell it that we’ll get what we need done, even if not as quickly or how it THINKS we need to, and that when it attacks me, it actually slows me down instead of helping. I spent a week recovering from that self-attack… A week that could have been used toward my preparation.
Launch Lab went very well! Many people said that my story touched them, and I saw my words touch people’s hearts face to face. It was meaningful to me.
After Launch Lab, just this past weekend of September 20th 2025, I visited with a friend who I’d gone to the WCA retreat with in 2024, During that weekend, I met a woman from the area and long story short, we’d had a lovely time meeting, and she’d even joined my friends and me for dinner on the evening of the 20th too. I very quickly felt like there was a connection, and she did as well. Not romance, but a shared understanding and someone who I “saw”.
But the next day she called me and confided in me about some challenges that she was facing, and that she’d really appreciated the day before because it was the first time she’d felt “normal” in a long time and was able to just enjoy herself and forget her troubles for the evening. She said she felt guilty for not telling me about her problems sooner, which of course she never needed to tell me. Long story short, I trusted my heart and my intuition and I invited her to visit with me for a time while she worked out some of her personal things.
She was going to visit me at my friend’s for dinner later that evening to talk with me about it more, but never came. Based on our earlier conversations, I knew that she might be experiencing some anxiety, and I sent occasional messages with my own status–I sat for a couple hours by the gate of my friend’s community, in case she still showed up and I occasionally called and sent her gentle text updates, but her phone never answered.
The next day, Monday Sept 22nd, I went to the airport as planned, but just as my plane started boarding, that new friend called me and said that she would like to come with me to Boston to visit for a time. My intuition still told me this was the right thing, so I told her yes, and I left the airport to meet her. After doing some things, including a special trip to a place that she’d wanted to see for a long time, and that I randomly happened to be at the day before when she called, we got some of her things, then headed off in the direction of Boston. I bought her two new tires for her car as well, because they were very worn. Then we drove to Payson AZ and slept for the night at a local inn (separate beds).
The next morning while eating breakfast together, and having some good conversations, a friend of hers started harassing her, saying that she was calling her therapist and going to lie to the police and report her as kidnapped even though my friend was answering her phone and telling her that this was her choice. This “friend” was generally unwilling to help directly, but also not willing to let her make her own decisions, it was abusive. My friend decided that she was going to just stop listening, and then I had a short followup meeting from Mastermind. While I was in my meeting I could hear that my friend had called someone else on her phone, and then shortly before my meeting finished she came in, grabbed some of her things and went out the front door. Once I was done, I went to the front to let her know I was done, but instead I found her car gone and my luggage in front of the door.
The people she was talking with had triggered her anxiety so badly that she got into an anxiety attack and abandoned me there, despite her truly wanting to go with me and having originally followed her own intuition.
The one thing of mine that disappeared during this time was stuffed bunny Floofearkins (Floof). I had thought that she’d accidentally left him in her car when she left, but a week after this all happened, just two days ago, she called me to apologize. We talked for an hour and a half, and it was a good conversation. But I found out that she had left Floof with my luggage in front of the inn room when she left. It was one of the other guests who saw it and stole Floof during that 30 minutes while he was outside. Luckily they didn’t steal my entire luggage.
Floof was an extremely meaningful gift to me because of everyone and everything he represented and everything that he’d gone through with me for the past year. He’d been my constant companion on my journey since 2024. I’ve broken into tears crying 6 different times in the past when telling friends about Floof being gone, and while looking through photos for this very interview. Losing him hurts just as much as losing my sister last month–I love Floof very much. He was just as much a part of me as any live pet would have been.
I wish that she had accidentally kept Floof. At least then I’d know where he was and perhaps he would have given her some comfort.
I can’t get angry at her for abandoning me, she was having an panic attack from abusive people in her life pushing her over the edge. I know what strong anxiety can do to a person and I know what it feels like. I’ve fled from situations myself when my anxiety became overwhelming–like my first year at the WCA life coaching retreat in 2023. I know what it feels like. I’d like to think that she and I are still “friends at heart”, even if things went this way and we never see each other again, and from our conversation when she called two days ago, I believe that is the case.
I am truly proud of myself for how I handled that day! I didn’t panic or get anxious. I asked the hotel for a taxi reference, called him, found out he was a full hour and a half away after JUST having dropped someone else off at an airport, and he’d have to drive back to Payson to pick me up and then drive me an hour and a half to a different airport to catch the last flight home to Boston. But we had enough time! He said he almost never gets airport runs, never mind two in the same day back to back! I never lost my smile or got into a mood, and I had a lovely time chatting with the taxi driver the whole 90 minutes to the airport and enjoying and being in awe at the beauty of the Arizona mountains. I can thank a lot of my therapy for being able to handle this so well!
Even though I’d only known her for a few days, I felt a connection and that I cared about her, like I care about my bestie or my sisters, I trusted my intuition to help her, and I still believe that I did the right thing, even if it cost me a good deal of money with transportation, hotel, and buying her a set of new tires, and my very meaningful bunny plushy. But that’s just money and objects, and people are more important.
I’ve done a LOT of work to help identify my intuition and not second guess it in the past year, and I’ll continue to follow my intuition. I believe she needed to know that there’s someone in this life who she could trust.
This is exactly the type of reason why I have taken my VERY hard path the past few years, aiming to move toward coaching. My mind has fought me on it, terrified that I won’t be a good enough coach, that I won’t think of or remember what I need when the time comes, and that I’ll let people down. And part of my mind has tried to abuse and bully me into giving up and just going back to my old career, or giving up on life. But I’ve NEVER truly given up on myself, even during months long depressions. This has all been very important to me, and it’s been worth the challenge and the struggle.
It matters greatly to me to help others who’ve had similar anxiety, self-esteem, and abusive inner voices holding them back. I KNOW what it feels like and if I can help even one person to feel less alone and to get through this sooner than without my help, then it’s worth all the challenges that I’ve faced and that I’ll continue to face–I know that I still have challenges ahead of me.
I want people to know that even though those inner voices hurt and feel like they hate us or want us dead, that’s not really what those parts of us want. They’ve just subconsciously learned unhealthy lessons, such as self-shaming through hate was a way to “motivate” us to change something. They’re just very misguided and confused parts that are trying to “help” and they need care and attention to re-learn these old painful patterns.
Life just showed me how resilient I am, and it ALSO showed me the power of following our intuition and hearts vs the danger of letting others and anxiety override our intuition. Two different reactions in the same exact situation!
Here are the websites for the coaching and psilocybin assisted therapy that I’ve attended:
Success Insider: https://www.successinsider.com
Inner Shift Institute: https://innershift.institute
Cony Faine: https://linktr.ee/Conyfaineyogapsychology
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Traditionally, I worked in software quality assurance, and I still enjoy working on computers.
I’ve always been a natural helper, even people at my SQA job noted that, and my VP even told me once that I help too much! 😁 But to me, helping was always an important part of my work. You improve people’s lives and skills by taking time to help form deeper understandings of things! This helps everyone in the long run!
But, as you’ve seen from my purpose in the previous section, which GREATLY overlaps with this section, my focus has been on becoming a coach to help people with similar anxiety, self-esteem, and indecision issues that I’ve faced most of my life. It’s extremely important to me, because I know what it feels like and I know how much I’ve held myself back because of it.
I’ve been going through my own journey working to get to this point where my mind could handle moving forward with it. I still have my moments, but it’s a continual process.
It’s not about getting rid of anxiety, but about learning to better manage it and all of our other parts from our core self.
It’s about taking action, even while we’re afraid.
About being gentle with ourselves even when we’ve made a mistake, and gentle with even our parts that sometimes hurt us.
About learning to connect with our true self and guiding all of our inner parts from there.
It’s a continual process, not a destination.
I’ve been sharing my own healing journey on social media for three years as I’ve gone through it. It’s been a roller coaster!
People have been telling me that they’d like me to write a book. Something I NEVER would have considered in the past, but I think I will do it in the future, First things first though: I’m working on getting my coaching career launched right now!
I was just at Mastermind.com’s headquarters in mid September for their Launch Lab event, and I’ve got good momentum toward launching. I’m working on my website in parallel to writing this interview.
I’ve written poetry in the past too, and I might eventually make a small poetry book. I have ideas for using poetry in my coaching as well.
Photography and videography are some of my hobbies, and I’ve painted and drawn. Nothing at a professional level–though back in my 20s when I had started therapy, I HAD also started art school, but that medication withdrawal induced depression side-lined that for me. Yet again: Another side story all its own.
I named my coaching business: Reflected Being
I did a lot of mirror work in 2023 and I also do most of my parts work in front of the mirror too. It’s also about becoming beings who have deeply reflected on our inner selves and what is important to us. There’s a lot of word-play and meaning built into this name for me.
I haven’t launched my coaching site since I’m still developing it. There are still placeholder images, and my base website is pointing to a placeholder from my hosting company.
But my page for getting a video about how I discovered that I was self-shaming is functional, if still needing some tweaks (E.g. I’ll be replacing the stock images with my own).
https://unmaskingshame.reflectedbeing.com/optin
Here’s my Link In Bio Page, with links to my TikTok, YouTube, and my ANCIENT personal website:
https://www.hopp.bio/kenburwood
I designed and hand-coded my old personal website back in 2007 and I’m still happy with the design. However, it needs a redesign to work smoothly across modern devices–modern smart phones didn’t even exist then! Its original host had gone out of business years ago, but I resurrected the site earlier this year on another service and added my newer poems. I plan to redesign it in the future, but for now it’s best viewed from a PC. You can see my poems, some of my old drawings, photographs and other random writings there.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Core Values and Understanding:
Always trying to understand both myself and others. Being open to discussions without judgement. It doesn’t mean you have to accept everything presented to you, but always being willing to learn and weigh new information as it comes. And identifying, understanding, and rooting in my core values and knowing what is important to me, even if it was a more difficult path. I knew what was true to my heart.
Intentionally identifying and knowing your own core values first helps to stabilize your own foundation, and you can always re-evaluate your values over time. We are fluid beings. Leading from there with care and compassion can help you to understand yourself and others, without losing yourself in other people’s stories, and take in lessons that you find valuable, and be OK with other differences in others that aren’t for you.
Intuition:
I’ve often 2nd-guessed my intuition many times over my life, thinking that I didn’t have enough “evidence” to back it up. But from experience, I’d learned that my intuition has often been reliable because of past experiences. Though, even once I knew that I could trust my intuition, I’d still be unsure if I was experiencing intuition or anxiety.
But I’ve been doing a lot of intentional intuition practices in the past year and that’s helped me to build more trust not only in my intuition, but in my ability to distinguish intuition when it’s happening, rather than after the fact. It’s been very helpful for me!
Never Give Up:
I’ve had many ups and downs, and to be fair, I’ve had more ups than downs, but I often wanted to give up on myself when I was in my lowest moments, and often did for a time. And even still to this day I have moments where part of my mind tries to get me to give up because I feel overwhelmed.
Even while writing this very interview, because it has taken me well over 8 HOURS of writing my thoughts so far and I’m still only on the third step, I was feeling overwhelmed just 15 minutes ago when I stepped away to the kitchen. and part of my mind wanted me to give up.
But through all of my challenges, I’ve never truly given up on myself. Therapy, Group therapy, Coaching, Researching info for myself, life coaching retreats, talking with friends and family, sharing my videos both the ups and downs, pushing myself to face anxiety and do Toastmasters, Improv classes, Yoga, Mediation, Psilocybin assisted therapy. MANY inner battles. I’ve literally traveled completely around the world 3 times and half-way around the world twice in search of improving my self-view and mental health. And MANY more things that I haven’t even scratched the surface of in this interview.
It ALL mattered, and deeply connecting with my core self during the psilocybin assisted therapy was a keystone, which I never would have considered without everything before it too.
I’m proof that even if you have extended moments when you’ve fallen back, if you keep getting back up and keep fighting for yourself, you CAN succeed, no matter how much it feels like you can’t when you are in the middle of a deep down-cycle.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Honestly, I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing now. This has been a challenging journey for me, and I know that I’ll continue to face my own challenges as I go.
But following my heart and helping others who have faced the same types of painful inner-voices, self-esteem, and anxiety challenges as me is very important to me.
I know the pain that comes from holding ourselves in our own chains, and I don’t wish that on anyone.
This life is filled with so much beauty all around us, from our beautiful Earth to the dances, art, music, athletics, acts of pure care and so many of the beautiful things in reality and in humanity. There’s so much here that many of us hold ourselves back from in fear.
There’s also so much darkness in humanity as well. But much of that comes from harm and wounds being passed down from generation to generation, and I fully believe that there’s more beauty in humanity than darkness. So much potential!
We need people who are facing our own challenges, and sharing our light to help others, who then also help others, either directly like I want to, or simply through being more healed and breaking the cycles.
It’ll take more time than just within our own lifetimes, but just imagine 50, 100… 500 years down the road, if the healing keeps outpacing the harm… A world full of healed people. Just imagine!
THAT is the afterlife that is important to me. Care and compassion for the people who come after us, and also striving to make this life a better place for my presence than it was when I entered it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hopp.bio/kenburwood
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kenburwood
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kenburwood
Here are also links to coaching and therapy centers that have been important parts of my journey:
Success Insider: https://www.successinsider.com
Inner Shift Institute: https://innershift.institute
Cony Faine: https://linktr.ee/Conyfaineyogapsychology
Image Credits
Photos by Ken Burwood
Drawing by Elizabeth Newton
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
