Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs with Benjy Sherer

with Benjy Sherer

Aug 8, 2025 · 00:40:00

Today's guest brings a truly fresh and practical approach to emotional healing and resilience, one that speaks directly to entrepreneurs, founders, and high performers navigating constant stress. Benji Scherer is a mental health coach and emotional fitness trainer who helps people conquer anxiety, stress, and trauma without endlessly analyzing their past. His approach is pragmatic and body-centered, turning moments of emotional distress into opportunities for healing and strengthening. Having overcome his own struggles with anxiety and depression, Benji Angie now teaches these tools and practices that help leaders build true emotional resilience from the inside out. Welcome to The Total Entrepreneur: Mind, Body, Spirit, where we turn cutting-edge science into practical strategies for entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Dr. John Torrance, Entrepreneur Inc. 5000 honoree and professor of entrepreneurial practice at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. Each episode, we dive into mental, physical, and spiritual health with expert guests offering actionable insights to help you thrive and perform at your highest level. Let's get started. Benji, welcome. It's great to have you here. I'm excited to talk to you.

Same here, John. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for bringing me on.

Yeah, of course. Well, so the first thing I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of conquering anxiety and trauma without analyzing the past. Um, that's a radical idea. It resonates with me because too many times we hear people talk about the fact that you have to like perseverate on it and look at it and analyze it in order to get through it. And I don't know, that never really resonated with me. So I was just wondering how, how this works and how your approach to that works.

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously there's— I could talk about that for hours, but let's put it this way. Um, if you Imagine that you sprained your ankle 20 years ago and you never really did anything about it. And so when you sprained your ankle, you had to adjust the way that you walked so that, you know, you avoided putting weight onto the muscles that were injured. And so you developed this weird way of walking and you managed to get through your life all right, but maybe you couldn't run, you couldn't play sports very well, and whatever, you got through your life. But now it's 20 years later and That weird way of walking is starting to create problems in your hips and starting to create problems in your neck and starting to create other pains. And maybe you recognize that, maybe you don't, but you just recognize that you're in pain. So you go to a physiotherapist finally to deal with this. Now, when you go to that physiotherapist, does it matter at all whether you sprained your ankle playing basketball or whether you did it playing hockey or whether you did it slipping down the stairs? Is it going to be relevant at all what happened 20 years ago? in order to assess the damage to your ankle right now and to teach you how to walk properly and change things?

No. No.

Exactly. It's not gonna matter at all. So people very often confuse. So when it comes to healing anxiety, like in that metaphor, obviously the thing that you went through in the past, whatever, however you sprained your ankle, that's the trauma event. And then there's all of the defense mechanisms that you created throughout your life, all of the ways that you keep people at arm's length, all of the ways that you're sarcastic so that you don't have to be all the ways that you avoid feeling and processing your emotions, that's your weird way of walking. And then you go to the physiotherapist, that's going to the therapist or the psychologist right now. And a lot of people, psychologists included, keep on confusing the trauma event, the thing that happened in the past, with the trauma. The trauma is the wound, the wound that exists as it is now. Like you get wheeled into a hospital and they say, oh, he has trauma to his left arm. his left arm. They don't say that he got punched in his left arm because they're referring to what exists at the moment.

Hmm.

So healing trauma is about dealing with what exists in the moment, dealing with your defense mechanisms, dealing with how it hurts right now. And when it comes to mental health and anxiety, trauma, the way that these things hurt, The pain that you feel in the moment is your unresolved trauma. That's all of these things. I like to say that in moments of trauma, it's like your head says to the heart, okay, hold on to this pain. We're not ready to deal with it right now. We're not safe in this moment. So hold on and I'll come back and deal with it later when we're safe. And then when you get triggered by someone cutting you off in traffic or a partner not listening to you and telling you you're not good enough or whatever, that in that moment, that thing that's been buried inside of you for a long time comes up to the surface and says, hi, here I am. Here's this pain that you didn't deal with. Are you safe? Are you ready to deal with me? And it's in that moment that you need to have the skills and tools to heal, because that's when it's the easiest to deal with. You don't stuff it down and then go to a therapist's office to try and dig it up.

Yeah.

You live your life building the skills and tools that you need to handle it when it comes to the surface, because that's when it's the easiest to deal with. I mean, it's the toughest to deal with then because you're getting triggered, but that's when it comes to the surface. Don't deal with something that's buried 6 feet underneath. Deal with something that's in front of you saying, hi, here I am. And that, yeah, that's how we do it.

That is a really great metaphor, you know, the injured ankle, right? Because, yeah, you know, physical therapist isn't going to say, okay, let's go back and, and play a hockey game again just so we can kind of, you know, figure this out. Right. So, no, I really like that. So it's, it seems very pragmatic. And so, so what, what does emotional healing look like from this practical everyday perspective? Like, so when, when something pops up and triggers and says, hey, here I am, are you going to deal with me or not? What does that look like when you deal with that?

Yeah. Well, there are 3 elements to our experience of our trauma, but of reality in general. So there's our thoughts, our emotions, and our sensations. And anytime that we get triggered, each of those 3 elements is involved here. Now, they are 3 completely separate things.

Say those elements again one more time for me.

Thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

Okay, gotcha.

Those are the only things that you can experience. So thoughts is all of your intellect and your thoughts, your imagination, your rationalization, your logic, all that going on in your head, all of the conscious and subconscious, but all of the, you You know, intellectual kind of audio dialogue going on in your head and the visualizations. Then there's sensations, which is your experience of your body and your experience of the outside world— sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. Then there's emotions, which are intangible and a little hard to describe, but it's the mood you're in, the vibe, the energy of the moment. And as I was saying, those are 3 completely separate things. Like, they have nothing to do with one another. Not directly. It's like sight. It's like colors, shapes, and numbers. You can't multiply 23 by green because they're not the same kind of thing. And you can't intellectually analyze emotions because they're not the kind of thing that can be intellectually analyzed. They're just not. But they are constantly manipulating each other in an ongoing circle. So when you get triggered, Well, your body tenses up and that puts— that's you getting into a state of fight or flight. And when you get into that, well, your mind starts to intervene. It wants there to be a rationality. It wants there to be a narrative to it. So it starts thinking all of the reasons why your life isn't going well and all the reasons why this thing is terrible and all the reasons why you should be upset or worried or afraid or whatever. And then because your mind is thinking that way, well, it keeps you in a state of— fear or sadness or anger. And then that emotion creates more of a stress response. That stress response creates more thoughts and those thoughts create and around and around and around in circles. And underneath all of that is where the hurt really is. So you've spent a lifetime running away from the discomfort of processing your emotions. So going back to what I said before about your brain saying to your heart, okay, hold onto this trauma. It's— there's a certain amount of pain in that moment that we don't know how to deal with, and we've spent our lives running from that pain. So to circle back around, to really answer the question, what does emotional healing look like at a practical level in the moment? Like I said, emotional healing happens when we get triggered. And the way that I approach things Is that first we need to deal with that cycle going on: thoughts, emotions, sensations. Each element is constantly bleeding out onto the other. So when we get triggered, we need to have practiced and we need to have built the skills and the muscles to recognize. Okay, wait a minute! I'm getting triggered in this moment. That in and of itself takes a bit of practice and a bit of self-awareness. And then once we accomplish that, then we need to deal with each of those three elements. So firstly, the body, the nervous system. Okay, relax my body, get my breathing right, which doesn't mean breathing exercises, but it. means breathing properly. So get my breathing right, relax the muscles because I'm starting to get tense. My shoulders are getting up, my jaw is getting clenched. Okay, relax the muscles, relax my posture. I need to show my body that I am safe. And that can happen in the snap of a finger. I recognize, oh, I'm triggered. Okay. Once we get the body right, then we need to deal with the thoughts because the thoughts that you're having in that moment, they're not accurate.

Hmm.

Your negative, worried, fearful thoughts are never— there's 4 things I like to point out to my clients. They're never necessary, meaning they're not the only way that you can think of this thing. There's another way of thinking about it. They're not helpful, meaning they're not going to help you get to the end result that you want. Angry thoughts aren't going to help you communicate with the person you're angry with. Fearful thoughts aren't going to help you figure out the best solution to this thing. They're not appropriate, meaning that they don't fit with the ultimate self-loving, inner peaceful version of you that you want to be. And they're not enjoyable. So if they're none of those things, then we can stop and go, oh, right. So I guess I don't need to invest myself in them. They're not the logical thing that I thought they were a second ago. They're not an objective reflection of reality. So what are they? They're a manifestation of your emotions. You are afraid, so you're thinking fearful thoughts. But okay, now I've got my body relaxed and I've got my thoughts recognized that those aren't real. So now I can turn my attention to the emotions and I can show you how to handle that emotion. That's when we get to what people will call sitting with your emotions. But sitting with it isn't enough. Firstly, you need to know how, because a lot of people say sit with your emotions, but they don't tell you what that means or how to do it or how to respond to your emotions properly.

Right.

So learning how to properly respond to the emotions, that's the step that we need to take there. And then we need to go a step further because sitting with the emotions isn't enough. If you just sit with them, then they build and build and build and build and build until eventually you'll go back into your worried thoughts and you'll go back into your stress response.

Hmm.

So now that we have the nervous system calm, now that we have the thoughts out of the way, now that we have you accepting your emotions, then it's time to finally find and feel into the discomfort that's really at the root of that in the moment. And when you can find that and feel it without fear, without extra thoughts, without any resistance, then we can help your body actually process it. Because that, like I said, that's it coming to the surface and saying, hi, here I am. Are you safe? So we're going to teach you to say, yes, I am safe. I'm ready to deal with you. Thank you so much for coming to the surface because you've been buried inside of me this whole time and weighing me down. And yes, I'm finally ready to listen to you. Hmm.

That is very practical, right? And it, it almost seems like it's a, it's a mindset shift, right? So am I oversimplifying it when I say that? Like it, so it seems like a lot of this, a lot of the thoughts and emotions you might have about something are really the result of a mistaken belief. 'Cause you said they're, they're, they're wrong, right? They're, they're not even accurate. So maybe these mistaken beliefs bubble up and they get you into this cycle again. So.

Yeah.

Is it as simple as just, you know, just dealing with that, finding a thought that feels better and moving on? Or is that just an example of, you know, repressing it so it'll kind of show up worse another day? 'Cause I'm trying to find that, that balance there. 'Cause it almost seems like, you know, if, if you are okay with it and you've moved on and you don't have negative thoughts about it anymore, maybe it's resolved. But I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on that 'cause we certainly don't wanna repress what's there too.

Yeah, you're, you're very much in the right direction, both of Mainly in what you said of the doing that would just be repressing it. So yes, finding a better thought around it is a part of the process, but it's just a small part. So I just gave you, like when I talked about, you know, dealing with the nervous system and then the thoughts and then the emotions, and that I gave you a very wide overview, but there are very specific pieces of the puzzle to how to do this appropriately. And we definitely don't want to be just pushing away the negative thought and saying, oh, well, I'm thinking, you know, I should be worried about the future. Because a lot of people— like, I've spoken to people who told me that their psychologists, for example, told them to tell that thought, oh, just shut up and go away. You're not, you're not welcome here. I don't need you right now. That thought is a part of you. It's a manifestation of a part of you that's wounded and afraid and injured. So how are you ever going to achieve genuine self-love and inner peace? How are you ever going to become one with yourself, to put it in a cheesy kind of way, if you're telling some part of you that you're not welcome. So you said that this is like, there's a false belief here. I don't know if you said limiting belief, false belief. There is, but it's not so much a conscious belief or even a subconscious. Like, it's not something that we need to identify our limiting beliefs specifically, because there are a lot of, you know, psychologists, therapists, coaches that deal with that. Like, let's find the specific limiting belief of I'm not good enough, or if I don't produce enough, then people won't respect me kind of thing. And there are those kinds of limiting beliefs that we can deal with along the way. But ultimately, because my approach is to move away from the analysis, and the ultimate truth of the matter is that there's one false belief around all of this which exists for all of us. And it's just this one false belief that we really need to deal with. And it's not a thought-based, it's just this subconscious belief. And the belief is, as I've been saying. The belief is that the discomfort that comes along with your triggers and your emotions is a threat. That's it. We have— in moments of trauma, 2 things are true. Number one, you are not safe, either emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, whatever. You're genuinely not safe in that moment. And trauma doesn't need to be getting kidnapped and thrown in the back of a car.

Right.

It could be your parents telling you you're not good enough. It could be a partner taking advantage of you because you're too honest or something. It could be your friends making fun of your dreams and goals.

Right.

But in that moment, in one way or another, you're not safe. And simultaneously, you're feeling the discomfort of this emotional turmoil. So your brain starts putting those 2 pieces of the puzzle together. Wait a minute, emotional turmoil, that turning feeling in my stomach, that tightness in my chest, that feeling that I'm having in that moment. That is associated with being unsafe. But the emotional discomfort doesn't mean you're not safe. That's actually what it feels like when your body is trying to process emotions, but you've become afraid of it. You've become afraid of processing your emotions because usually it's in moments that you're not safe that your body is trying to process emotions. So that's just the core belief that we need to get past. We need to show you, your mind, your heart, your body, How to feel safe when that emotional discomfort comes up. When you can achieve that, the rest just starts happening naturally.

Yeah. So I'm thinking about this in the context of entrepreneurship, right? So, you know, starting companies, growing companies, exiting companies, all of that is just full of emotion. And I keep thinking about, you know, 2 people, you know, one, one with what you know, quote unquote, a thick skin and somebody with a thin skin. So it seems to me like the same event could happen to 2 different people. One could be traumatized by it and one might just be able to move on with their life. So I was just, before I move on with some other questions, I was hoping you could address that because I think the, the perception of an event has a lot to do with it. Is that true?

The perception of an event? Absolutely. Um, cuz we never really perceive things head on, but I think, um, An interesting piece of what you just brought up is the difference between, let's say, how a thin-skinned person, as you know, or a thick-skinned person might deal with it. But as we were saying a moment ago, so because it sounded to me like you were saying that, well, a thick-skinned person will just deal with it and move on. And you were saying it as if that person isn't being affected by this thing. But a thick-skinned person absolutely is being affected by it. They're just responding to it in a different way. They are still putting up a barrier. They're still not going to respond to it in the most confident, most self-loving, most authentic way. They will respond to it with their defense mechanisms. They just won't crumble around it. So there's the thin-skinned, quote unquote, person who will— oh, well, they can't handle this. And so maybe they quit their job, or maybe they crumble and they cry, or maybe they need to run to the bathroom to deal with their emotions for a second. And then there's the other person, the thick-skinned, quote unquote, person who stiffens up. and responds from a place of maybe aggressiveness or a place of just defensiveness or a place of rudeness and does not have, let's say, the state of mind to stay completely calm, to make a decision that is most in alignment with what is right for them and what is right for their business, they will still— they are responding to their defense mechanisms. It's just in a different way. So this is one of the reasons why a lot of people, entrepreneurs, businessmen, CEOs, the powerful, people can go decades thinking that everything is okay. And then they come to me after decades when something finally crumbles, because it's like— I like to say it's kind of like diabetes in the sense that you can be overweight and eating too much sugar for years and years and years and years and years before something finally snaps and you become diabetic. And it's not that You were completely healthy until that moment. It's just the straw that broke the camel's back that finally switched how your body was operating. So people can live— these thick-skinned people can be living with unhealthy defense mechanisms, taking their anger out on their family, walking around with stress all day, every day, not feeling and living and enjoying their lives in all sorts of ways. And it's not until something finally snaps. And then the anxiety finally becomes unmanageable, or they slip into a state of depression, or they go through burnout, and then they finally can come to me and we go through this healing and they finally realize, oh wow, I've actually spent the last 25, 30 years in this state of fight or flight. And I didn't realize just how much I've been suffering. I didn't realize just how much my family was suffering. My father, for example, was an accountant, and he was stressed all day, every day for 40-something years. And it wasn't until he retired that he realized how stressed he was. So people can go through this for decades and not realize it. And for anyone listening who might be resonating with that, I would encourage you not to wait until you quote unquote become emotionally diabetic in order to deal with it.

I love that diabetes analogy or metaphor as well, because it's true. You could, you know, your, your hemoglobin A1C could be slowly creeping up over the years, still within the normal range, right? Not diabetic yet, but all sorts of bad things could be going on in your body, much like these, these traumas. So what I was thinking of was, so like there's a difference between somebody like the the quote unquote thick-skinned person we just talked about and somebody who truly doesn't take offense to something. So like, I, I, I talked to a, a, a spiritual person and he's like, you know, if something doesn't trigger you, it's because you just don't believe it, right? Like if someone were to come up to me and, and trigger my, I'm not good enough, um, belief, that would, I would be triggered, right? But if somebody were to come up and call me a yellow Volkswagen, it wouldn't bother me because I'm like, well, I'm not a yellow Volkswagen. What does that have to do with anything? Right?

Yes.

So I was interested in your perspective on that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can barely say it better myself. You're absolutely right. It's only when we have some element of thinking that this thing might be true that something will genuinely trigger us, or it just resonates with— like, it might not be a one-to-one linear relationship where they say this one thing, but yeah, it's only if it resonates with something that you're already carrying inside of you. So I 100% agree with that. There's a It's an interesting story of the Buddha where, you know, someone comes, he's teaching in a town and someone comes to him and starts insulting him and he just sits there with a smile on his face. And so the story is that it's, it's one of the town's spiritual leaders who doesn't like that the Buddha is teaching in his town. So he comes the first day and he insults him to his face and the Buddha just kind of sits there. And he comes the next day and he gets more personal about it and is really vicious. And the Buddha just sits there with a smile on his face. Next day, the guy comes and starts insulting his daughter and, you know, all that. Buddha's just sitting there and the spiritual guy is getting really, really angry. Like, why aren't you responding? Why aren't you like getting upset about this? And the Buddha's response is, look, if you give someone a present and they don't accept it, if you put the gift in front of them and they said like they choose not to take it, who does the gift belong to? The spiritual person goes, well, I guess it belongs to me. The Buddha says, yeah, it's the same with your anger. You're trying to give me your anger and I'm just not accepting it. It's yours. You— it's all on you. Like, I don't— I just don't need to take it on.

Yeah.

So I think what you pointed out, a very important point there, that there is a massive difference between someone who is thick-skinned and so doesn't respond in the way that you think they would versus someone who genuinely isn't triggered. It's—

yeah. And I think, yeah. So the difference is, you know, are you, are you actually triggered but repressing it, or are you just not triggered because you don't believe it or you're not accepting the gift? Right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think to put it different, instead of thinking about it of thick-skinned, think about it in terms of wearing armor and then ask yourself, okay, so there's someone who's really weak and can't take a punch. And there's someone who walks around town all day wearing their armor. You don't want to be either of those. The really strong man, the really strong samurai warrior, whatever, can walk through town without their armor on. And that person— it's a lot nicer without your armor on. You can get some fresh air and you're not carrying 50 pounds of steel on you. So that's the point. There are these tough, powerful CEOs and entrepreneurs and businesspeople who are walking around with their armor on every day. And they don't realize it, and they're going to sleep with their armor on every day, and they wake up with their armor on every day, and it's crushing them. They just don't realize it.

That's a great point too. So I want to switch gears just for a second and kind of talk a little bit about the, you know, somatic awareness, nervous system regulation, and that sort of thing. And I've, I've, I've seen you say that your body is trying to help you heal. So can you walk us through what you mean by that?

So this is part of what we've been talking about already. Like I said, in moments of trauma, we experience something, as you said, somatic. So this turning feeling in our stomach, the feeling of being gut punched, the tightness in our chest, the lump in our throat, any kind of— I like to refer to them as energetic sensations.

Hmm.

They're sensations in the sense that, like, you can point to them. You can point to where I'm feeling this thing in my body, which makes it distinct from, let's say, an emotion. You can't point to happiness. You can feel happy. You can't point to happiness. But a sensation is something that you feel in your body that you can point to. So it's a sensation in that sense. And yet it's not technically physical, like that turning feeling that you feel in the pit of your stomach. You wouldn't see it on an X-ray or an MRI machine. You wouldn't see any physical evidence of this thing happening. So it's a sensation, but it's not physical. It's energetic. So that is the thing. That's what it feels like when your body is trying to process something. But like I said, we've learned to associate that energetic sensation as a threat. So we're running away from it. We're stuffing it down. We're trying to distract ourselves. We're doing everything that we can to avoid feeling and processing it. But the whole point is to let that thing finally move through us, like trying to push a golf ball through a garden hose because we've been resisting. Like the—

God.

The ball is trying to move through and we Tense up around it. No, no, no. I don't want to feel this thing. The goal is to open up the pipe and let that thing finally move through us. And when it does, it can be a little bit uncomfortable in the moment. But as you start getting used to this feeling of processing your emotions, it can actually feel really good. It feels like— I like to tell people, look, the emotions, those energetic sensations, the discomfort that you feel inside of you, It can't hurt you. It, like, it can feel uncomfortable. It can maybe even be painful, but it cannot harm you. It does not have that possibility. But you know what does harm you? All of the things that you do to avoid feeling it. All of your defense mechanisms, all of your coping habits, all of your drinking, your overindulgence on TV and in food or whatever else that you use. All of the ways that you run from that. Those are the things that creep up in your life and end up causing problems. So we're avoiding short-term discomfort by not feeling and processing that discomfort inside of us, but we are creating long-term problems. So in terms of the body is trying to help us heal, that discomfort inside of you that comes up when you're triggered, that's your body trying to say, hi, here I am. Please look at me. Please look at me. Please look at me. Please look at me. Please look at me. And instead, like, it's over here saying, please look at me. Please look at me. Please look at me. And we're going, hmm, I wonder what's over here. over and over and over, and the body is in the back yelling, no, wrong way, over here. So it's trying to help you heal. We're just afraid of going through that discomfort.

Yeah. Yeah. So you, you've called this work a calling in a way. And so to me, that sort of, you know, that bridges a little bit of, you know, the, the spirituality, mental health gap. But I was wondering just about your own journey. Like, did you, did you have these experiences of anxiety, depression, mental health issues that brought you here? Or how, how did, how did you get to this place of doing this amazing work?

Firstly, thank you for calling it amazing work. But yes, that's exactly, uh, it's exactly how it happened. I struggled immensely with anxiety for most of my young life and, uh, several periods of depression when I felt lost in various ways, all kind of culminating in about 2017, 2018. My whole life kind of fell apart in various ways. I was living a kind of like— I was living an artist's lifestyle at the time. I was running a recording studio and I was working sound at these clubs, and I was also performing in various ways, which was amazing and beautiful in certain ways, but there were some emotionally unhealthy lifestyle habits attached to that as well. And I ended up at this club, which we don't have time to get into right now, but this place that I finally felt at home in, but what turned out to be very emotionally abusive. And I fell madly in love with a woman who turned out to be like— we're still friends to this day, so I'm not judging— but like, she is a, in her own words, She describes herself as a sociopath. She feels like she can't feel emotions. She has to fake these kinds of things, and I didn't realize that at the time, or I didn't believe her when she told me that. And she's an alcoholic and suicidal. So between my own unhealthy habits and the emotional bullying and kind of betrayal and stuff that happened at that club that meant the world to me, and the heartbreak from this woman who could not properly return the affection and the love that I was giving her, and just like a whole bunch of really intense situations that happened. happened around all of that, I completely broke down. I couldn't run my studio anymore because I couldn't focus on anything. So I shut that down. I got into a really deep, dark suicidal depression. And when nothing was helping, I couldn't, you know, therapy and just, I did same as you. I didn't think that analyzing this was gonna get me anywhere. I was already very self-aware. So thinking about it wasn't the solution.

Yeah.

Meditation was just a bandaid. So things like CBT and meditation, medication, none of those things really were helping me. And the fact that none of them were helping me was making me feel more hopeless and more helpless. Like, here are all the things that are supposed to be helping and none of them are helping. And I had to put all of that aside. I had to put everything that I thought that I knew about mental health and about emotional healing off to the side. And I had to just start investigating my own experience.

Mm-hmm.

And thank— and when I say that it's a calling, it's very much in the sense that Look, they say that your purpose on this life is where 3 things kind of overlap, is where are your unique skills and talents? How can you best be of service to people? And then a third is, I guess, usually is like, how can you earn money? Like, what is— what can you do for this world that is valuable in that sense? And for me, it's those 3 things. It's— but mainly like the money, that's aside. But The, the first thing is that this is where all of my skills and unique talents and introspection and experience in life all come together in a way that I can truly be of service to people. So that's what I mean when I say it's a calling. It's not something that I chose. It's not something that I ever sat down and was like, hmm, I wonder what I should do for a living. I guess I'll be a mental health coach. It's just, this is— What naturally comes out of me once I discovered the most self-actualized version of myself. It took a lot of inner healing, and they're like this work, this interview, for example. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to prepare for it. I don't have to, and this all came from personal experience. This is just what happens with me when I get my fears and my self-doubt out of the way. This is the most natural thing in the world to me, and. And over the last 8 years or so, I have transformed lives doing it. People who have done decades worth of therapy see more results in weeks of working with me than they have in all of that time. So that's what I mean when I say it's my calling. It's just me being me. And by being me, helping people transform their lives in the right direction. I like to say that emotional healing or any— I think this can kind of apply in a lot of ways. But mental health, emotional healing, I think should come down to this: heal yourself and then show others the way. Oh, I love this. Because if you're a psychologist that has never experienced anxiety, but you've studied it out of a book and you think that you can understand it, if you've never been suicidal, if you've never been depressed, if you've never— if you are still succumbing to your own ego and your own triggers and your own defense mechanisms, then great, you passed the tests. I was in a very prestigious law school, and I can tell you that just because you get into a prestigious environment and just because you can pass tests doesn't make you qualified as a person in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I just don't think that someone who only studied these things academically and passed the tests in and of itself makes them the right person. to help others through their healing journey.

Yeah, and I, I agree with that 100%. So I was like, as you were talking about your own process and helping clients, I was thinking, is there anything that surprised you, um, you know, in terms of the healing process, either with yourself or with your clients? Anything like that?

I mean, I didn't really intend or expect any of this, so I think I just say the most surprising thing is the extent to which my patients have changed and my clients have changed. Like, I have a lot of clients who managed to get off of their anti-anxiety and depression meds. And that's something that, like—

Amazing.

Because I don't want to vilify and demonize medication. So I like— I have my issues with them. I have my issues with the idea of using them for the rest of your life as just a crutch. But I don't want to demonize or vilify them. Sometimes they are important and helpful. So I never tell my patients, all right, now you should get off your meds. They— a lot of my patients, my clients come to me, they don't like the fact that they're on these medications. So I give them the skills and tools, and in time, in their own time, they manage to get off them and stay off them. So I guess that's been one of the most surprising things, that we really can overcome a lot of those more chemical-based, physiological kind of direct issues, and people have been able to get off and stay off of their medications.

That, that alone would be a win, right? But then they're gaining all these other things too. So a couple of things, you know, we, you, you talked about, you know, the, the Buddhist story. We talked a little bit about healing yourself first and then showing up for other people. So to me, that sounds like it's got a very spiritual element. So I was wondering if, if you believe that emotional healing is a spiritual process or has that sort of element in it.

Absolutely. That's, uh, you know, I don't know how much more time we have here, so I'll try and keep this short because it's a long story, but To try and put it in a short sort of way. So when you asked me how I discovered this, you know, when I said that I was going through that deep, horrible depression and everything, I also simultaneously started going through what I thought, at least in that time, was a spiritual awakening. And in hindsight, I don't know, you know, like I was in a very emotionally turbulent place. And in that kind of emotionally turbulent place, your brain chemistry changes, your perspective changes, all sorts of sorts of things. And I was looking for a narrative in my head to soothe my pain. So I believed and allowed myself to believe that I was going through something that was extremely spiritual. And now that I've come back down to reality, I'm at a more grounded place emotionally. I can look back at that period of my life and realize, whoa, Benji, you, like, you lost the plot. You had gone completely off the rails with it.

And yet...

It led me to my calling. So there were some elements of it where I can genuinely say that, all right, I kind of lost my mind. And there are other elements of like, but then it did lead me to the right place. So I very much believe that there is a massive connection between emotional wellness and spirituality such that emotional wellness is the bridge. to spirituality. So some of your viewers, or you might know, there's this kind of scale of consciousness that was made by a guy named David Hawkins. Do you know of it? Yeah, it sounds like— Okay, so it's the scale of kind of the emotions that you can feel and the states of consciousness that you can be in. And at the bottom, there are things like shame and guilt and fear, and then there's acceptance and willingness, and then there's love and joy. And then the top 30% of that scale is enlightenment. So there is this chart here, and if you're living in fear and guilt and shame, which most people are living at, while simultaneously trying to live in a spiritual place, that's, I think, what ends up creating this kind of spiritual dissonance, this kind of spiritual psychosis, which is kind of what I was living in.

Yeah.

But if you want to really connect with your spirituality, then you need to work your way up through that chart naturally, learn to live at a place of willingness and acceptance, then learn to stabilize yourself at joy and at love. And when you can stabilize yourself in joy and love, then you might have moments of feeling what inner peace and enlightenment feels like. But we have to work our way up. So you can't— this is— I also have strong beliefs about, you know, spiritual people who also— or people who claim to be spiritual while also being very angry and judgmental and bitter. And, you know, I don't think that those 2 things can go really hand in hand. So emotional wellness, emotional healing is, I think, the bridge to discovering and really living in a place that we can call spirituality in our own hearts.

Yeah, I actually— that was a really great way to pull it all together. I appreciate that. So, Benji, if people are interested in learning more about you and the work you do, where can they find I would say the easiest place is just my website, benjisherercoaching.com.

I do have a couple of books out there. Feelings First Shadow Work would be the one that I would recommend people to start with. And if they just go to my website, they can reach out to me. I'm, I'm open. I'm always glad to hear from people who resonate with what I have to say. So you can feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions, if you want any resources, anything Thank you so much for listening to the Total Entrepreneur Mind Body Spirit Podcast.

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