Karolina LaBrecque – PhD is a holistic behavioral consultant and life coach who specializes in assisting individuals ranging from teenagers to adults of all ages in reducing stress, reaching their full potential, and living more balanced lives.
Whether you are diagnosed with ADHD, ADD, ASD, or have no diagnosis, Karolina’s approach focuses on the individual and not the diagnosis. She truly believes that everyone is capable of having a fulfilled, happy, and balanced life, and her mission is to help others achieve it.
https://helptogrowinstitute.com/ 5 hacks to simplify your life
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Karolina LaBrecque Podcast.m4a
Transcript
Hi. Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us Karolina LaBrecque.
She is a PhD and is a holistic behavioral consultant.
And life coach, who specializes in assisting individuals ranging from teenagers to adults of all ages and reducing stress reaching their full potential and living more balanced lives. So whether you're diagnosed with ADHD, ADD ASD or have no diagnosis at all, Carolinas approach focuses on the individual and not the diagnosis.
She truly believes that everyone is.
Fable of having a fulfilled, happy and balanced life, and our mission is to help others achieve it. So welcome to the show, Caroline. It's really great to have you.
With us. Thank you so much, Jill. It's my honor to be here.
So we were talking about.
A bunch of stuff before we start recording.
I'm I'm not really even sure where we should. We should dive in. But you were talking about the Beamer.
PMF.
Is that what you call it? Do you use that with?
I do. I do it, I use it daily. I'm am I use it daily. My whole family uses it daily and I then use it in my practice with my clients. The ones that are not remote or local and come into my office. They use it as well and some of my clients do purchase it and use it as well daily. So it's a wonderful device that.
Improves your circulation and recover.
OK, it actually proven to improve your circulation by about 30% on the capillary levels. What doesn't mean in a layperson language, it's that 75% of your circulatory system. It's not, it's capillaries. So we think that the heart is the main thing and it's not actually 75% of your.
All popular, your whole cardiovascular system is capillary, so the device fits like right with my lifestyle, which is, you know, holistic, no side effects, no chemicals. My body personally hates chemicals to the point of anaphylaxis, to a lot of.
So I'm very tricky like last year, I spent five days in ICU because the doctor insisted, I think antibiotics given for a kidney infection. So that that was a nice right. So I'm I I live very clean life personally and I walk the talk. So I don't just coach people. I actually do walk the talk and most of the things that I recommend.
With clients, I've tried them myself.
And Beamer fits into that. I have a system of befriending your life, and that consists of befriending quest, which is basically knowing your quest map and where are you going befriending time and fillies boundaries, befriending your mind, and befriending the body and befriending your surroundings so the Beamer.
Really fits into befriending the body, helping with recovery, and with your holistic, all being. We could spend the hour or two just talking about that. So that's all I'm going to say. But yes, definitively it's a device that if someone wants to learn more about, they can reach out to me and we can have a chat about it.
And and you and I will be having that chat.
At another time.
So how did you get started in all of this?
That's an interesting question as a whole journey and I'm glad we have 40 minutes. It may take all 40 minutes now. It will not. But so even as a child, I knew I'm a healer, so I always was kind of. I have two personalities. I have a healer and a fighter.
More more of a lawyer than a fighter.
Depending which button you push, you may get a very different person. So as a child I did modern pentathlon. To this day I fence I gunshot. I do stuff like that. It's up my alley. But at the same time, I'm a healer, so Reiki and and other things like that are also of my line.
Of work, a healer and an educator. So as a child, I always wanted to be an MD.
And then when I was ready and started college, I did a lot of internships. It was between do I want to be a vet or a dog? Right? As many of us do. And so I practiced both. I did the vet taking geeks, and I did volunteering hospitals to the point of standing, you know, being at open heart surgeries and other procedures.
And I was always fascinating. However, I did not deal well with patients dying or having to put the dog down or, and I realized that I like a profession that my clients don't die. So I finished my master in psychology.
Right.
And while I was completing that and into disciplinary car, then I moved and I did my massage therapy at the same time and I got very involved in hippotherapy.
What?
Which is therapy through horse and in Europe you can practice that without being licensed in the United States. You have to be able pity out your speech therapist. So when I moved to states, I was doing therapy across back riding.
But my PhD, so my master was in psychology. But then while I was going through psychology, I always was missing the other side of it. The, you know, the science behind the body. And so my PhD was in physical therapy research based on autism and horses because someone told me that I cannot. There's no way I'm going to ride a PhD.
Horses. So I went and did.
And why not? And so it was actually a synchronization of sensory motor synchronization and autism during hippotherapy. And I'm not gonna bore you with details. It was both behavioral and very functional biomechanical study.
So I did that. Then Mr. States totally by well not by incidents because I actually did high school in Texas and my parents were in States and I took a little briefer after my PhD. I had a job aligned in England.
And in taking that six months off, I've met my now my husband, while I was spending time with my parents. So I kind of cancelled that job in England and end up staying in States and I've been married for 15 years now.
And for a big chunk, probably 7 first years I was working predominantly with developmental disorders.
I don't like that phrase, but that it is what it is, so very severely affected people, adults and children, both with autism, cerebral palsy and basically you name it. I probably worked with with most of the diagnosis.
In a form of therapeutic horseback riding or behavioral technician, whatever. And somewhere in that road I, because my PhD was in physical therapy and physical education, I started my own fitness center out of the fencing club. I was part of, and I got into Wellness Cult.
And so I was doing that on a site while I was building my autism clientele and working with the civil disabilities and doing my credits for my BCB, a license and stays because nothing translates.
Where are you from?
That.
OK. Interestingly, United States is very weird about assuming.
How that works? So to give you an example, my master in psychology, it's five years of psychology class now only. So I have about 120 classes in psychology and I stayed in New Hampshire. Said doesn't matter. Your paper doesn't say clinical. We don't count any of it.
I it it gets even better, I actually.
Doesn't translate.
So it gets better. I actually taught at university, both in Poland, medical universities and Psychology department and at Community College in states for over 10 years. And I think psych. So I'm apparently qualified to teach this at the college level.
No, but it does not translate. So for a licensing. So I so basically they wanted me to do everything over again to which I said well, it's kind of silly for me to take classes that I teach.
Right.
So in the midst of that, I discovered the license for Bcba, which I was bridging, but a Long story short, doing the behavioral training.
I was in a car.
A very severe one, actually. Someone did the one ID into my line on the highway. So I tip on the pickup truck about probably going 45 an hour because I was hitting the brakes. Nothing broken. My CRV became a size of my fit. Just to give you a comparison.
However, severe concussion and post concussion syndrome and severe whiplash, I'm still in rehab for it. Eight years later, we'll get to that in a second, but now it's more tuning and pushing my boundaries, and sometimes my body still acts to that, pushing moves, tantrum, tantrum.
As I call it.
But it does so. Yeah. So in that journey, I supposed to be on a permanent disability. So probably 18 months into it, the whole medical team, the post concussion center, and my neurologist decided that this is all the progress you're going to get. This is what it is. Mind you, I had two children at that time.
And a three-year old and a.
Newborn.
And then so they telling me that, you know, my lack of memory, my lack of concentration, the fact that I couldn't walk a straight line and I was very wobbly. And if I step on the grass, I was flat on my back.
Because of my bus, I walked towards basically for three years practically that, that's.
It.
And neurologist literally suggested that I go on permanent disability.
Well, I'm a Polish woman, you know? Together with that line of.
You will never ride the PhD in horseback riding, so when he told me that he very strongly suggests I start applying for permanent disability through Social Security.
I very politely in English told him that I disagree with his prognosis in Polish language. In my head I said something very different that probably should help. Imagine along the lines of where it was and where he where he can put that opinion. So. And I kept searching and I'm like, you know, with my background.
The habilitation background, my background is both PT and RT. I was like, this is silly. I mean brain takes time to recover, and even in my half brain state I remember that much that brain takes time to.
Cover and there are other ways to do it, so I developed. I just kept searching and cooking my nutrition and I suddenly found three years into it. And you know, Lord has a way of working. I've heard about this guy about three times. Look at his web page because he's not much into web.
Ages old-fashioned. Pity and and then I met his wife at the networking event because I was running my business and said you have to work with my husband. They had a whole clinic and and I'm.
Like.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the personal training now and you know this and that. And there was excuse and suddenly I went to a Wellness fair. I had a booth.
He was in front of me, had another booth, and I couldn't move. Like if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be able to drive home. So he actually helped me within 7 minutes, unlocked my neck, and I was like, OK, I'm going to be on his table and for last five years I've been on his table. So there are ways.
And.
Tweaked my nutrition, tweaked mine, got introduced to Beamer.
Tweak tons of other stuff.
And here we are. You know, I'm not on permanent disability. I've been running a business.
I switched from the developmental disorders to full life coaching. I still have clients who are somewhere on the spectrum, but they're high functioning people, mostly because everyone, even I agree that I probably should not get hit, get hit on the head again.
And if you know about severe disabilities, the chances of you getting even micro concussions constantly is pretty bad, because behavior is communication and that's how they communicate. So that's how I'll end up doing what I'm doing. Interestingly, you know, it's a continuation. It's really continuation. Now, I work a lot with.
Comma, I work a lot with burnout, so a lot of my knowledge from the physical therapy and psychology of nervous system and working with working with all of you know, all of that, it comes handy and my method is 360 mind, body and spirit. And I like to say that it's 9790%.
Science.
5% voodoo and 5% common sense. Love it. Sometimes he just has to ask the client. And how is that exactly serving you? You know? So. So, yeah. So it's very science based, but it's it's not the.
Regulated science base I always look at what's newest. I'm a biohacker.
You know, it's not what was five years ago, it's what's now.
A lot of the voodoo stuff, the woo stuff as we like to call it, it's it's just, it is science. It just hasn't been proven yet. There's lots of antidotal evidence that you can gather and you know, if it's working, who cares what you call it. Let's.
Well, you know the voodoo stuff. Like, let's say the law of attraction and the manifestation. Now we're starting to touch on quantum physics and realizing that time is just a construct and you know and.
And it's a thing.
There there is. There is ******** research on that that most people can't even understand. I don't understand the very, you know, like even with my education, I'm slowly getting into it. But I'm not gonna claim that that's something that I'm reading like this, even that I'm in art. And I live on pub Med. And, you know, my my idea of some time is to read the science.
Article for in the evening. That's my idea of relaxation. We just don't know yet. It's kind of like penicillin used to be a voodoo.
Right. Yeah, use this finger and magically you got better, right? And now we have the resistance to antibiotics, which, by the way, has nothing to do with human use, but predominantly 90% of the resistance to antibiotic is based on that. And in in, in farming and in animals. And that's where the issues.
Animal.
Coming in.
And we're eating it.
And we're eating it. So for example, my I'm allergic to antibiotics, I've never taken.
So how can I react to something that my system was not exposed to?
Yet here we are, you know. So now I'm sourcing my own food from local farmers. And I'm very and I'm and about, you know, minimal.
Obviously, once you become anaphylactic, it's my my goal for so I prove the neurologist wrong. My next goal is to prove my allergologist go wrong and to actually get my nervous system and my immune system. They are very connected to the level where it's not so active.
I'm probably gonna be killing an EpiPen to the rest of my life because it's just.
Yeah, all you have to do is have one experience with that and you're like, oh, no.
This.
So yeah, and I it's also for me it's also yellow jackets. So that one is a little different story because you can't avoid those ********. And this is the time of the year when my head is on a swivel. And I'm not that weird person asking what's there, what's flying, you know, but.
Bit because unfortunately yellow jacket is a ventilator for me.
UM, but it's, uh, so my goal is next. My next goal is to come down my autoimmune system.
So it does not have a tantrum tantrum all the time and it's durable. And I know it's durable. It's just the matter. Reality, yeah.
Yeah.
I I can totally see it for you and and really that's the 1st place is is knowing that it's possible.
And.
And then.
Eventually it will.
Become a reality in your life. Everything starts with a thought.
It's a thought and you know, it's kind of interesting because we talked about the science. So the first time I got.
Allergic.
And I end up on a ventilator because of yellow jackets and probably because I waited too long. So now I know and I take the epinephrine right away.
And go to ER and they pump me up.
Of have a lovely stuff, but you know that first time you don't know. So a year earlier I was stung by 6 and I had nothing but my legs swell a little bit, you know. But it was painful. And that time I got stung by once. So I was like.
You know, whatever, right? Not the first time you got stung by a, by a bee or a yellow jacket. And so I waited, and then I went to urgent care.
Which obviously they gave me epinephrine, but it was a very prolonged time before they started to act on it. So the horror action had enough time to wrap it up to the level. But the interesting part is that when I got out of the hospital and obviously they directed me to allergy doctor, the doctor was arguing with me that I was not a phylactic.
And I'm like, so why did I just spend 3 days unconscious in the ICU unit if I wasn't unaffected? And he's like, well, the doctor overreacted so and he based it on a level of antibodies I have in my body.
2 yellow jacket.
And so to prove me wrong, he pulled my laps and he proved himself wrong because there is a protein that when you are an anaphylactic you have that protein. And I was full of that protein even with those very low numbers of antibodies in my body, which just tells you that my system is very sensitive.
Which also brings us to the conversation that not everything goes by the medical chart and the statistical probability.
I always say I'm a zebra. When I go to a doctor, I'm like I'm a zebra. I'm not a hippo. Handrick be very mindful. You see a zebra.
And that point 1% so and of course half of them said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then they're like, shoot, you know, oops, we thought we were joking. No, I wasn't. So it's it's a. It's an interesting combination. But yes, it starts with the fault. It starts with the fault and energy that you put into it. And then with work none of it is.
Fast.
None of this is.
You know, it didn't take my body five days to get to the state, so it's not gonna take my body five days to get.
Out of the state.
Of freaking out for various things.
Yeah, I.
There's there's chemistry and biology, and they work at a certain pace.
And.
Sometimes you can make it work faster by adding different things, but it's still chemistry.
You know.
Well, it's also, it's also habituation and changing your habits and and you know, I let this aside, it's the same. And I actually believe that alleges are very much very connected to your mind and.
The reactions.
If you know.
75% of your.
That is, that is actually huge gut, 75% of your immune system is in your gut.
And there is a huge gut brain connection, and if my gut freaks out, why can't I have IV antibiotics? But I cannot have any of the oral ones.
You know, like it's much safer for me to actually have an IV antibiotic than the oral ones. Not all of them, but but it's safer because it bypasses my whole digestive system.
Interesting. The other thing is, for example, that for vagal nerve that I I work a lot with vagal nerve and the vagal nerve. It's an interesting nerve if you ever.
Look it up.
It's very popular now. I actually used it in my pH. D or 19 years ago when it was a new.
Thing.
One of the reasons I used it was because of the change of the.
How do you calm a child? Right, so the change of the angle and stimulating your receptors in your heart but.
That's the site vagal nerve in Polish language. The translation of Vega is basically wondering. It's nerve that wonders, and it's all over your freaking body. It affects, like so many things, from digestion to social interactions, have tried everything else in between.
Touches all your organs.
It wanders all over the place and interestingly, vagal nerve is 75% or 80%.
Sending information to the brain and only 15% getting information from the brain.
So think about that interesting. So it brings us to that living, you know, you said you add something. I'm a big fan of eliminating. And for example, I have no desire to go back to using regular laundry detergent that I'm I have hives after using because that's just the gentle way or not so gentle way of my body.
Saying hell, this is crap. I don't want it, right? So why would I add it back in?
You know it's it's always a proposition of what serves me best. How can I befriend my life? That's when my principle says what's friendly to me.
Yeah, and it doesn't have to be friendly to everybody. It just is to you. It's specifically to your, your body and your.
Life. I love that.
It's I'm happy that you said that because.
Being, you know, defending your life, defending your mind, we think that we live in the same world. In reality, I can put 20 people in the same room and every single of this person will experience that room differently. And it starts on such meniscus level of how sensitive are your receptors?
I have this accent not because I didn't try. I'm tone deaf and yet somehow my daughter is. We haven't tested her, but she's probably perfect pitch.
Right now, she's yelling at me. Mom, get the piano guy to tune the piano. And I'm like it sounds fine to me, you know? And she's like it really has to be off for me to notice. And if you play 2 notes not to to each other, I cannot tell them.
Card.
Right, so this accent is not going anywhere because I don't hear it. That's how my brain, you know. And I tried the recordings I do ton of videos and it that's just how I hit it. There is no way of correcting it. So where I'm going with this is that what something may serve me, but it may not serve you.
And for me, the chemical sensitivities are such that we don't use anything toxic in our house because my body has a tension, tension with probably 30 minutes.
Yeah.
And and you really should pay attention to it. So I need to ask you, how do you help people? I mean, how do you work with them in terms of like is it one-on-one, is it in person? Is it online do?
You do group settings.
So I do all of the above. I've been doing it for a long time. The groups are studying. They were groups and I did solve them. I help people and I have two sides to my business. So I mentor coaches and the newest thing is my coaching certification. That's very. It's not a five day certification.
What does?
That look.
And just to be honest, it's a university level.
Knowledge really knowing the knowledge, the skills and the business side of it. So that's one side of my business and that's all online. And then my coaching, I work both in groups and in person and as a speaker and workshop facilitator, some clients come to my house, to my office, I have a Home Office. It's a dedicated.
Separate space, but I would say 96% of my clients are online. I worked a lot with burnout and stress management and executive functioning. So what's executive functioning? We haven't touched on that.
It's not executive coaching, it's basically think about being the boss of your life, so things like prioritization, time management, working memory, metacognition, understanding yourself and how to best be the boss of yourself. That's executive sanctioning in an easy way to explain. So a lot of my clients are.
Business owners and somehow, you know still that neurodiversity persists. So a lot of of them are twice exceptional, meaning gifted plus something, because everyone thinks that, you know, having a high IQ is such a blessing. Well, like with nothing in nature, if you up one thing.
It it's out of balance. So most of those people are very sensitive, very they a lot of them have ADHD and other issues that not issues, they're just narrow diverse. So I like to I attract a lot of never narrow diverse clients.
A lot of women in divorce.
They were in the process of it. Some men in divorce.
Basically, you know what's next? How do I manage my life? I want to go to the next level so.
My tagline is changing lives one behavior at a time and untangling the tangle.
You know, I have a business and I'm a mother and I have a husband and please someone shoot me because I can't anymore. Right. That's my specialty. Kind of. And tangle. The tangle of how can I balance it?
Trying to be everything for everybody.
Yeah. So it's a lot of.
A lot of burnout stress and post COVID it's a lot of trauma.
And that.
The the, the, the COVID and it's global, you know the covet. We all have trauma to some extent. Everyone goes through the life has traumatic events. Some of us, you know, land up with post traumatic stress disorder. Some of us end up with complex post traumatic stress disorder.
Which is like the next step. So I like. I actually have this graphic when I show it when it's a stress trauma, PTSD and complex PTSD. Right. So it's a spectrum. And I think the covet was hard enough that it choked up.
It pushed enough button in a lot of people that the PTSD shows up more the the dynamic change was such that, you know, sometimes it's the cherry and sometimes it's a whole bucket on the cake that makes the difference. And so still a lot of clients dealing with.
A lot of that.
Nervous system reactions, so I coach somatically, so I'm a somatic coach. We do a lot of.
Mind regulation, but predominantly also body regulation, right, because faults are faults.
And you can't really control your force even that. We like to think that we control the force, but we don't. But how you respond to those thoughts or how you respond to your environment is a totally different story. And that's what I teach my clients of.
For those of you that watched talking, you know it's that Gandalf white standing with a spell on the ground, and that's swell around him and you're just standing there. And that's part of the life to being able to just ignore the cows and still stand to your quest and stand your journey.
And stand on your path.
I'm confident that it's not going to knock you over.
And if it does to learn, learn softly, right? Because let's be honest, sometimes we get, you know, there are some things like carracks or severe trauma in family that you you can't control those. I have this saying that's not very politically correct, but **** happens. Yeah, there's nothing you can do about it.
You can learn to.
Learn to file. You know I love because with all the things I do not to get injured, my 7 year old just learned how to ride a bike and an excitement. Wanted to show me and drove from behind into my knees.
Oh.
I did a I I'm very happy I can still do it. Apparently I can still do a perfect safety roll on a concrete. My shoulder is thanking me to this day. It was about 3 weeks ago. You know, I scraped up. It was between 2 conferences and my parents.
Hit my head on the ground, which again shouldn't. Yeah. But you know, you can control for everything. And here comes your 7 year old and takes you out from behind, you know, on the bicycle. And you'll end up hitting the ground. So the ability to do the safety though, right, that, you know, even if something knocks you off.
How to soften the blow and how to get up faster and safely in that situation right is, among other things, things that I teach, you know.
Very important.
Pieces of the puzzle.
Having I had my dog like.
Ripped my feet out from under me and landed on the the cement and gravel and I had a black.
Eye.
For a couple of weeks, my husband didn't like being seen with me because people thought he'd hit me. No, no, it was the dog. But yeah, just like stuff happens.
When you're not.
Not even looking and to have the tools to be able to.
To.
To manage those kinds of things, it's it's golden. So I know you have an an offer on your website that you give to people. It's five hacks to simplify your life. Do you want to talk?
About that for a little bit. Yeah. So it's a very short per PDF. That just gives you 5 very simple hacks to to start it's it's, it's not a, it's not a solution.
Everything, but it's a starting point and it's a very, you know, very and it follows up by e-mail sequence obviously. So for seven weeks you get an.
Going deeper into that, I'm also rebuilding my newsletter, so if you get on that list I am going to start. I took a break, I changed my platforms. I want some keep to go high level and had to redo the whole system. So I'm going actually in June I'll be back to posting newsletters but.
But it's a, you know, it's a it's an easy way to start. It's an, it's an easy free way to start to just look at it from a different perspective of.
Already simplifying for mostly it's. It's called for busy woman, but it also works for busy men.
You know, so it's that's what it is. And you can also follow me on social medias. I I post a lot of the content that's around that five pillars of life and start there.
Awesome. So what's the one thing that you hope the audience takes away from our conversation today?
We've talked about so much.
Well, and we haven't even scratched the surface yet. But the one thing is that first of all, and most for is that.
You don't have to do it alone.
But that springs from love thyself. First, you cannot poor.
From empty, so you have to take care and love yourself if you want to love other people, you have to love yourself 1st and love is the highest vibration. Talking about the Voodoo love is the highest vibration. So love yourself love the world and remember that you don't have to do it alone.
You can contact me or you can find someone else. Whoever's supposed to be your guide on this journey, but it's much easier when you don't do it.
Yes, we all need community. Thank you so much for joining me.
You're welcome and.