got to give you. Did I give you the phone.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Great. Okay.
All right.
All righty.
Well, here we are again, Joyce.
And welcome to another
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So we're talking about always what's good. Yes.
You just came back from the dead.
I was over the dentist.
And I'm one of these kind of freaky people that actually like the dentist.
Because this guy is really cool.
Give him a shout out, doctor doll. Doctor doll. And.
Yeah, like the procedure.
Well, not so much that.
But but they have.
But they have a really good bedside manner there.
I'll say Michelle and Doctor Doll,
but I went there yesterday to get a couple crowns.
I mean, I've been crowned before, but not quite in this way.
That's right.
Well, yeah, I know, but a couple of crowns and has some novocaine.
And I think I've got a, you know, podcast, a tape today,
and it's going to be a talk, a cruise ride, radio shows, a record.
But luckily I'm able to semi speak today.
Be semi coherent right.
Yep yep. And speak.
Do I ever tell you my my. No.
And by the way, before we do that let's give you an introduction.
I call you doctor B or Doctor Coop's doctor.
I saw her Ted talk recently that you did Newport.
It was so friggin good. She is just so real.
Her story is so inspiring because she's become a very, very dear friend to.
But tell us your your your dentist or Novocain story there, doctor.
Bridgette Cooper. Good to see you, by the way. Hey.
Yeah, so I was probably 7 or 8.
I had a, believe it or not, a small mouth.
Okay.
Why not?
Okay.
Many big teeth for my tiny little mouse.
So they did a lot of interventions
when I was young, trying to rip out teeth and orchestrate this whole.
Yeah.
And so one day, I went to the dentist and I took out four lower teeth.
So, lower teeth and had no at one time.
At one time. Whoa. Lots of no.
Yeah.
So I said, my mom sit in the back seat
because I'm not on here when I her to ice cream.
You know, one of those like sure, sure.
Getting them chocolate dipped.
Oh, I love chocolate dipped.
Oh yeah.
Getting my mom kept saying no.
You know, extras were not a thing in our world.
And I kept begging.
And finally she was like that. She she.
And the entire ride home, she had.
And for those moms out there, you can identify with this.
She had one of those.
I told you so, as she.
And I could not.
Yeah.
I didn't have any, like, any straw. Right.
Oh, yeah. Oh, wow.
And so I got home, and I throw the whole thing away.
Yeah,
I told you so.
We sat and I could see her little eyes.
All right,
Chocolate.
I, I know I had one of those.
Oh, you have to clean.
Really?
Yeah. I don't know, maybe it's like trauma. No.
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I haven't had that. I never I love their blizzard, right?
I love the blizzard test when they turn it upside down.
Oh, that it passes.
Oh these are test with us.
Let's go. And still stuck in it. But.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah I mean all of us are pretty much strict with our nutrition.
All three of us here.
But but if I was able to eat something or you were able to do something,
you're like your favorite junk food.
But it wouldn't put any calories, it wouldn't
have a detrimental effect on your body.
What would it be? Key lime key lime pie.
I make them fast.
Coconut cream pie. Oh. Oh, so you need to come back.
There's already a second edition with. Right?
Just for that alone,
please add the key lime
actually brought it to friends for their birthday party.
Cake. Oh, coconut cream pie.
Yeah yeah yeah. Oh, wait.
I'm a pie person. Okay.
Excellent. Baker right here to it.
But I never did a coconut cream pie because my family doesn't like coconut.
And no, we do joints. We do.
I mean, yeah, yeah.
I'm leaving,
anytime
I come home from stuff from from Joyce with stuff from Joyce, my wife.
Because I hate her, I love her, I hate her,
I love her, you know, the devil angel from the cartoons.
But but
incredible. Incredible.
But I think I like to bake.
Like I said, no one else really like.
I like things with nuts in it and.
And me too. Me too.
Yes yes yes.
Right. That's what's good now I'm hungry.
Yeah. Me too.
Where's the caterer? Okay. Should be here.
And you mentioned that her, your Ted talk.
Yeah.
But I want to tell you to everyone who's listening, you must,
must go to Cooper.
Just, go there.
Yeah, you can go to my website. The there.
Because that it will change your life.
It changed my life.
I watched it twice.
It's, let me just say this.
It's it's a little tough to watch.
Just a little.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, we actually discussed,
as an organization because each Ted is independently run,
and it's a volunteer organization through the Ted, organization.
And I actually asked, is there should we do it tomorrow morning?
Like, should we do some sort of a trigger warning label on it?
And they said no.
And I said, okay, you know, I think that, yeah,
I, I think a lot of people need that before they head into that.
But you're, such an inspiration, which is why you're all.
And what's good, because it does have a good ending.
But the first time.
Yeah, you were beaten. Yeah.
And this is by your father and I hold your mother, of course.
Responsible too.
You are eight weeks old.
Yeah, absolutely.
It was actually the moment.
And you and I were talking about camera
before this, that, And what you don't know when you watch the Ted talk
is that I actually froze at about the three minute mark
when someone gasped, because what I did was I set it up as a speaker does.
And I said, the first time my father beat me, I was eight, eight weeks old.
Someone gasped in the audience
and I froze.
I was, I thought to myself, oh my gosh, I've hurt someone with my story.
I that I wasn't prepared for.
I was prepared for the the with the eyes.
I was prepared for all that.
So I didn't look at any faces in the audience of like 400 people.
And I was very well prepared.
I was not prepared for that.
And I froze for 27 seconds, finally walked off stage
because I didn't have any more words
and had to remind myself of where I was in the story.
But that moment was was yeah, that's that's
one of the the hit in the solar plexus kind of moments.
I'll tell you a document I heard eight weeks.
And also being violated, not just being beaten, I mean an
eight week your daughter at eight weeks,
I think I cried
like, at six years old, you know,
it was ongoing.
Ongoing.
And I think that's what happens.
You know, I remember when I was in college and I was reconciling my story
and recognizing that I had some outlier experiences.
And then I had a lot of things in common
with some of my female peers, which is a heartbreaking reality.
And even some of my male peers.
But I, I recognized that because I had been
groomed and victimized at such an early age, I had no sense
of myself in my own self-protection because none of that trapped.
So I was in situations not only because of a lot of other familial
and kind of other structure situations, but I was really just unaware
of any way of protecting myself because I never learned.
Right?
I mean, I had just been part of what I was drawn to.
I was just a moth to a flame.
So those future violations were I was
I think I think predators can, can sniff out right now.
And I think I gave off all of those, those senses and,
and at that young age too, there's no frame of reference.
Did you think that this was like something that was just indigenous to you,
or it was something that maybe was happening in other families?
How do you process that?
I, I just saw myself as marked,
what I saw myself as this is this is my life.
You have no unprotected.
No. Not really.
You know, I, did some things later on in an attempt to do so,
but I think she was so consumed by her own demons that I think she.
I found it very hard to step in and protect.
Even when I would tell her things and share things with her.
I think she had a hard time imagining creating a different circumstance for us.
And she would actually send you back.
And yeah, she she was divorced at the time.
She got divorced. She left my dad.
Actually had my dad extracted from the house, under
because he was a drug user and dealer and,
and had him arrested and he went to jail,
and we were able to kind of escape a bit.
But then she sent me back there for,
sleepaway visits, you know, and, and that shocked me.
Yeah.
That knowing that, knowing she was sending you back to the abuser,
you would think the maternal instinct would just,
you know, kick in at that point to protect, I mean, even later on.
And I remember telling a friend of mine this,
and they were like, wait a second, I didn't know that was part of the story.
My dad had actually my, stepmother had died.
And some of those
experiences are in little landslides, which is my story, of how she died.
But she died, and he came to stay with us.
And I was eight, and my mom reconciled for two months.
And he was back in the house.
He was doing drugs.
He was doing whatever.
And I, I think if you're in the frame of mind that my mom was in of being
she was abused or and he'd been beating her
until I came along and he beat us both right.
I think the idea of going back to
that doesn't seem all that for him, of exposing your child to
that might not just seem like something you would fight.
Was it kind of like the. No. Maybe. Maybe.
I think she I, you know, I my mom died, 12 years ago
now, and, she ended her life,
that tortured
existence is just, I think when you are along
for the ride of that, I think that's a that's what's going to happen.
I was so fortunate that you're here and you're inspiring others
because I work with many, many women who have,
similar stories and in a sense,
like I did with with abuse and as a hypnotherapist.
Yeah, they really want to forget.
But sometimes you must confront.
Yeah.
And you did that and then, and then you go to that other side of forgiveness.
Yeah.
And the some of the women that I've worked with,
they refused to go there and they have ongoing health issues.
Oh yeah.
Yeah I know you know, the cost of that takes place
because it's the anger that eats and the manifest right on the body.
It just affects the whole immune system. Yeah.
And I think one of the things that I, I came to recognize, like,
you know, when I look
at the whole trajectory of my life, there have been so many
beautiful moments, so much like one of my favorite movies, collateral.
Oh, yes.
So much collateral to me.
Even in the hardest moments. Right.
Even in the darkest of days, there's been something.
And I.
And I know that I wrestled so hard with this idea of forgiveness.
And it was because it was weaponized early on.
It was used as as leverage to get me back in a relationship
who are going to continue to do any harm.
And so what I had to put in its place was rage.
I had to have rage against them, because if I ever gave them forgiveness,
I was just going to put myself back on the chopping block, right?
Right.
So it created a safe distance because no one's going to come near
someone who's raging at them. Right?
But it didn't do me any good.
It was toxic to me.
I was consuming the poison instead of ridding myself of my right
and I think there was a transformational moment for me and I, and I worked at it.
I saw therapist, I did all the things I thought I was supposed
to do to clear this energy out of my world,
and it wasn't until I was watching this movie actually reading the book.
And then that movie came out The Shack.
Oh, sure. What a. I love that movie.
I know, spiritual,
a lot of different spiritual, emotional, psychological lessons from it.
But the one that punched me right in the face was
when the author talked
about the two parts of forgiveness.
And the first part is the severing of the emotional tie
that keeps you bound to the moment that any of this happened
and let me tell you, in order to keep rage alive in me,
I had to keep replaying that moment, those moments, over and over.
And it was like a movie on a loop over and over again, like Groundhog Day
almost, you know?
Yeah, I could be angry, yeah, about what had happened
so that I wouldn't risk getting emotionally close and tied.
Right.
And it was severing that emotional connection.
What would I be left with if I broke that connection?
If I stopped validating how hard and awful where would I be?
And it was the author saying that second part, which was then
deciding how much proximity anyone could have to me.
There was a light bulb moment.
It was like, oh, right.
Yeah, I can put boundaries in the place that rage held.
I can say, I understand
where you were, and I cannot go back and change an unchangeable past,
but what I can do is stop reliving it
over and over again, now that at that point,
the people who had done me harm were dead and I was still carrying it around.
And I thought, you know, if I can break this tie and then decide
that they cannot have proximity to me, then I get the best of both worlds.
That's freedom. Yeah.
And so my clients have actually.
And they've nicknamed this this version of forgiveness.
Forgiveness because it's these version of for,
bar of goodness.
I like that it's not mine, but
that's what
the freedom was, was this idea that the more that I regurgitated
this story, the more that I told the story and had it stand in the place of,
of almost like, well, I'm the way I am because I'm this way because.
Right.
That was just carrying forward
their pain in life.
Right.
You know, and that was just that was unforgivable.
I was like, you're a surrogate.
Yeah.
Right. Like, hey, by the way.
Yeah. Handed over to me, right?
I remember being in this in this huge workshop with a couple hundred women,
and someone asked me, how did you move forward?
And I was like, May not me.
Why would I have, like, they stole all those moments from me
through their own pain journey.
If I continue to carry that forward, are you doing the same thing?
Yeah, right.
And who am I going to hurt along the way?
Lord knows I did.
Yeah, I hurt countless people with my own pain,
whether by shutting them out or inviting them in or overwhelming them,
or how do I try to minimize the the shrapnel.
But their shrapnel was
almost like you were saying, like, you know, this stops here.
It's a new day.
Yeah. Right.
You became liberated.
After you read this check.
Yeah.
It was like in a moment
because I think I've been on the journey for a while trying to figure out
how do I stand in this place of being unattached to the pain
without losing the grief I had for what I experienced.
Right. Because that's part of it.
Like I worked in, organization, did a lot of volunteer work
for girls who'd been sex trafficked and then became justice involved.
And one of the things that I said to them was rage is the most beautiful emotion.
Not what you
do with it, but the fact that you feel it.
Because the fact when you feel rage, you're saying I deserved better.
You know, and letting go of that rage was very scary for me
because was I stopping saying that I deserved better?
No, no, no, I had to evolve past it to be able to say,
oh, I'm going to do something with this experience,
and that's going to be what stands in its place now.
When you first when you first discovered that rage
and you were able to deal, how did you respond?
Was, I mean, did you like throw things up against the wall?
Did you scream and holler?
It came in bursts, right.
I think my three suicide attempts were obviously were internal.
Three suicide attempts.
And that was the
internalized rage that was the I have no place to put it.
So it's control here, right?
There were screaming matches.
There were there was all of that. Right.
There was the, the just, you know.
Yeah, yeah. Soul level scream.
But yeah, I mean, I think
it went out. It went in.
It sounds like you got crawled over a glass to get to a certain point.
It's like cope with the rage at that
with the suicide attempt.
Sure. As you're crying out. Yeah.
I'm like, I'm done.
Yeah, like I'm done.
I can't think of any other way to do this.
Look at you today.
Look, so many people without that story.
Yeah, but here's the thing.
I remember sitting in my
I went to finally went to therapy on my own, not being court ordered or,
you know, mandated, you know, after some of the things.
But I went in on my own and I said, again, this is this ends here.
That I was 18. I broke in contact with my dad. Yeah.
You know, from the. Yep.
And I, I went into
the service office and I was like, help me.
I don't know, I don't know how to put myself back
together, but I need to deconstruct this and put this back together.
And I remember saying to her, I am so glad this happened.
And she's like,
back, back up, back up.
Yeah, that is not an okay response.
I said, no, but I am
because I'm going to use this to help other people.
Like I am.
I am going to do something with this because there isn't
another reasonable choice. Yes.
Like if I have gone through this,
that had to be for a reason, because it sure as heck wasn't this.
It wasn't to just to get here.
You know, there's something beyond this and that.
That fire in my belly is what carried me through.
I think we talked about crawling across class,
which I think a lot of us can relate to.
We all have those stories, whether it looks like mine or not.
We've all had our pain journeys, we've all had our,
you know, moments of being a girlfriend of mine.
I used to call being on the
yes. And somebody told me a long time ago,
you know, Joyce and Doctor B that the road to success goes for the dump.
Yeah, for everybody.
And and if you peel back the layers, Joyce and I talk about this all the time.
Everybody's going through something.
I don't say going, but growing through something, you know.
And it's made us the people we are today.
So sometimes it's allowed by God or the universe.
Whatever you decide to say, I say God to use you as
an inspiration, which obviously he's done with you.
He's done that with Joyce, with her journey.
You know, all of our journey for sure.
I mean, I think when we are standing beyond whatever that moment is,
we can look back and help people across that, through that fire.
We haven't been through it. It's harder.
Right. It even if the men to be identical.
Right. The experience of fire.
It's like you could say I know what you're going through.
I've been there and there is a bright side at the end.
We have with loss we know that or whatever it may be.
And have been there.
I mean, I can relate to that.
I think is someone like Joyce Meyer.
Oh yes. She's amazing.
And she has a similar.
Yeah. Yeah.
And look, look at the thousands of people she speaks to every week.
Yeah, yeah.
And then millions listening in.
And it's because of that story.
But it always amazes me that
she can tell that story now.
And you can tell that story now
without really dragging you down and back into that.
Well, I know you being a certified hypnotist.
Yeah.
When I went into hypnosis
to find, I mean, there were so many steps on the journey.
It's not just one thing.
It's not
like all of a sudden just miraculously, some people have that miraculous.
Yeah. So kind of turning point.
Mine were a lot of pebbles in that road.
One of them was writing my story because I would have a point
when I would go to any therapist, I'd say, listen, if you wanna charge me for 1
or 2 visits to read my book, go right ahead.
I'm not telling the story again.
I'm not doing it.
I told him, I told him, I told it a million times.
I'm not putting my body through that rhythm here.
Yeah, read the book. Right.
Come back to me when you have questions you want to talk to me about.
How does that relate to my life?
Now let's have at it.
I am not going to tell you the brutal story.
It's not going to happen. Right? That was one.
Two was hypnosis,
which was bringing me
back and severing the emotional,
physiological response to the memory of that trauma.
And they had to bring me back into it and bring me into that regression space
of remembering what it must have been like to be trying to crawl for safety.
And what a visual.
Trying to crawl to safety. Right.
And it's like I think that and I could see it from outside of myself
and see all of those contracts
that we have with one another like a soul level.
Doing this thing, having this moment,
it was then that I could look at it and not feel the grief of it.
I could just simply see the pathway of it.
So that was, that was life changing.
Yeah. Right.
So you were able to disconnect to a point.
Yeah.
At that point it's almost like you're looking at it
like a movie, like it's your life, but you've been able to
emotionally kind of step back a little bit.
Detach, detach. Yeah. Exactly.
To a point, to a point.
But I think it's also maybe you'll appreciate this this verbiage.
It's integration.
Right.
It's like being able to see the quilt.
You know all the threads, all the imperfections, all the pieces
and not looking at just where the hole is or where the Ma was
or where the error was.
But now to see the whole thing all at once
because that's, you know, right.
And, and it's so freeing because I look at you and I just see nothing but joy.
When I first met you the first time, you'd never know that you went through this
because when we were introduced by a mutual friend, I saw nothing but joy.
And the way you carry yourself and the way you help other people.
And when you're up on the stage or in front of people,
you you just really carry yourself so well even during that, that, oh yeah.
Heartbreaking. But it was also so.
Yeah, it was feeling that
I could do anything at the end of that.
Thank you. I'm glad you asked what I wanted. Right.
And then there's another talk you should look for everyone.
And that is your talk.
The talk you gave about doing,
right off the stage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I'm hoping I have applied to do another TEDx talk
about what drove me off the stage and what brought me back
on, which is my understanding of how people get to where they are in life.
Just based on brain development. Right.
And how you come to the moments you're in, the way that you're in them
and how you can shift that.
Right.
And, there's there's many lessons in that.
But, yeah, I think one of the things about Joy that I've experienced
is that the death of pain
often equates to the height of joy.
It's. Yeah, it's like a bouncing ball.
Like the harder you bounce, that lower it goes and the harder it hits, the higher
it can come back.
Yeah, you're in the abyss and then you're back up in the mountain there.
Yeah, yeah.
So deeply. Yes.
And for whatever reason, you miss them.
And then when you recognize you miss them so much because you loved.
Yes, yes.
The depth of the grief is the depth of the love. Yeah, yeah.
And so many people are
afraid to love so deeply because they're afraid to get hurt.
But I rather go out there and love deeply and be hurt me every time.
Hurt me every time. The rabbit.
Like at the end of your life.
Just, try to be loved.
Me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Love. Yes, yes.
Go out.
Yeah, yeah.
I read your whole story because I'm looking at your list of books.
You wrote a lot of good things, and you have a new one coming.
Yeah, I have the.
I have the eighth out that came out last year.
It was a very long story tribute to my daughter's request.
I write a book and I call it the book.
The book because she was she was putting she's funny with her. Yes.
And she kept at it relentlessly.
Are all the books I wrote? Well, it's not the book.
When are you going to write the book? Yeah, the book.
The book.
College graduation.
I surprised her with writing the book.
And it's all about how I, we, we misused time and how we can use it better.
And so I created and created these tools and have these tools
that I use with four pillars of being present,
being intentional, being decisive and being effective with our use of time.
So okay, so another book I have another book.
Yeah.
And of course my favorite book so far is unflappable.
Oh yes.
That was the I mean, I love them all, but unflappable as one.
I read for the first time in a little landslide.
Well, that's your memoir. That's the memoir.
That was last summer, you said, or so I wrote.
The book in May.
I published it in April-May.
Okay. Of 2025.
Unflappable came out in October of 2023.
And then before that pain. Rebel.
Yes. 2020 during the pandemic? Yeah.
Before that was little landslides, which is my story.
And now I wrote it from the first person, which me,
if you think watching the Ted talk was hard, buckle up, buttercup,
because reading Little Landslide, I write it from first person as a child.
Yeah.
I mean, do you feel writing that catharsis?
Okay.
You know, I sat down and most of those stories, most of those.
Yeah, I wrote within 10 or 15 minutes.
I didn't think about them.
I just it just sort of was a therapeutic.
It was so therapeutic because I was finally putting again,
I was getting to put it on paper so I didn't have to say it anymore.
Like, I don't have to tell that story. Yes, yes.
I can just say, you know, go to page 34, right, to tell you that story.
Oh, you read it. I'm so sorry.
And I and I have a trigger warning in that book to say
if you've had significant trauma
or any trauma, frankly, not having.
And let me just define trauma.
We've all had bad things happen,
and some of us have had a lots of bad things happen.
And that's trauma
when we really suffer from it, when it carries forward
throughout our lives is when we're missing.
And this is what the data proves out
when we are missing a compassionate witness to the trauma.
So when you don't have someone standing by you,
when you're going through the trauma and or when it's just happened to say,
I see you, I feel bad, I hear you.
That was hard, and you're going to get through this.
That's when trauma, big trauma, digs its talons into us.
Right?
And I think that we don't appreciate sometimes.
Oh, we can help be for other people a compassionate way.
Yes. Yeah.
You know, and I think that's if we can all be called to something, it's
to be that, like we always say, be kind to everyone
because you never know what battle they're going through.
And every single person is battling something like,
we are here to help each other.
Yes we are, and that's what's good.
Yeah, it is what's good. And I said, a dark
post the other day, which was
people are always fighting a battle and you can't see it.
Punch them.
That's good.
Very profound, very profound.
Yeah.
Sharing this with us.
Thank you for having me. Doctor. Me.
Thank you for being the inspiration you are to so many people.
And I for one.
I'm glad that, those attempts, those two solid suicide attempts
never worked out because you been here for a reason,
you know, because it would have denied so many people your your, you know,
the amazing things you do
in this world really is for those of you who are struggling in that space.
And I've had friends who family members who have taken those steps.
Hold on. Yeah.
Hold on. Reach out. Absolutely.
Well, thank you so much for tuning in, watching, listening
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And they're not just stories of the truth.
And hopefully this has helped you.
And if you're going through a real tough time right now,
feel free to reach out to Doctor Be reach out to us, and,
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Till next time.
God bless Hey, I heard you got engaged.
Congratulations.
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Hi, I'm John Cadillac, Seville with John Seville entertainment.
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