265. Go Regulate Yourself: Reinvention, Cancel Culture & Finding Your Voice With Brianne Roberge

What happens when the life you built to earn approval collapses publicly?

In this raw, funny and deeply inspiring conversation, I’m joined by writer and Go Regulate Yourself podcast host Brianne Roberge to talk about the death and rebirth that brought her back to the dream she had carried since childhood.

Brianne shares how she moved from nursing into coaching, rapidly expanded her business and then lost everything when the company failed. What followed was an attempted public cancellation involving hundreds of hostile messages, widespread online criticism and even anonymous death threats.

But inside that devastating experience, Brianne uncovered the truth beneath the life she had built: she had been making decisions through people-pleasing, external validation and the desire to prove her worth.

We talk about leaving nursing and coaching behind, finding the confidence to write, using social media without walking on eggshells, responding to criticism without absorbing other people’s projections and the wonderfully dual meaning behind Go Regulate Yourself.

Brianne also shares a powerful embodied exercise for looking beneath the obvious symptoms of a problem and discovering the deeper wound, belief or unmet need that may actually be driving it.

This episode is a potent conversation about public failure, shame, reinvention, boundaries, writing, self-trust and answering your purpose when the universe stops sending pebbles and starts throwing boulders.

Links Mentioned:

Connect with Brianne

• Go Regulate Yourself Podcast and Website
• Go Regulate Yourself on Instagram
• Go Regulate Yourself on Facebook
• Go Regulate Yourself on YouTube
• Brianne’s Website, Substack and The 30-Something Bible
• Brianne on Instagram
• Brianne on Facebook

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Embodied Writing Warrior, a show for women who refuse the white metal wellness and crave food freedom built for real life, where your fire gets pained not dead. Fall in lust with your own momentum and enjoy pleasure-led creativity. Because healing was never meant to be a full-time job. I'm Kayla, writer and help coach Gone Row. Now let's make consistency feel like foreplay. Welcome back to another episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast. We have another guest interview coming in hot, and today's conversation was honestly one of the most inspiring and genuinely fun conversations I have had in a while. In this conversation, I'm joined by Brianne Roberge, a writer and the host of the brilliantly named Go Regulate Yourself podcast. As you might imagine, this was a raw and unfiltered conversation. And we talked a lot about what happens when the life you build around other people's expectations collapses and you finally have the opportunity to discover what you were meant to do instead. One of my favorite takeaways from this conversation is this idea that the universe will start by throwing pebbles. If you're on a path that might not be fully aligned, if you don't listen, it throws rocks. And if you still don't listen, eventually it starts throwing these boulders until you finally receive the message and step into the purpose that was meant for you all along. And Brianne got thrown a whole bunch of boulders, which you'll hear about shortly. She shares her powerful journey from nursing to coaching, how she went through a devastating and very public business failure, and then ultimately came back to the dream that she carried since childhood, becoming a writer. As you can imagine, this story inspired me on such a personal level. In this episode, we talk about cancel culture, shame, social media, the journey from coaching to writing, breaking free from the need for external validation, finding your real voice, refusing to carry other people's projections, and so much more. Brianne is honest, hilarious, deeply reflective, and completely unfiltered in the best possible way. Enjoy this conversation, and I'll see you again soon. Hello, Brianne, and welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

I am very excited to have you and to share your story with the listeners because you have a powerful story of reinvention that is going to inspire all of the writers and the creatives listening. So can we really start with where you started, where you are now, and what that journey looked like?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah, for sure. I mean, how much time do we have? So it's a long story, but it's a good one. And I will try to shorten it the best I can. So I have had a very interesting, a little bit unorthodox journey into writing. And it has been messy and filled with so much challenge, a lot of shame, and learning how to kind of authentically become myself. And so backing it up, like 10 plus years, I came from a childhood that was very abusive. I had a lot of different experiences in my life from a very young age that taught me that I was to be seen and not heard. My body belonged to others and not to myself. I had to make sure that everybody else was okay before myself. It was really important to people please and seek a lot of validation and make sure that I was doing okay in everything that I was doing in my life. And so my mom kind of raised me as a mostly single mom for most of her life. Um, definitely didn't choose great partners. My bio-dad um was an abusive man. My stepfather was also an abusive man. And when I got into this space of deciding what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, you know, in their high school, and I try to tell you, what do you want to be and what do you want to create out of the years that follow? I was a very confused, very um hurt child. And I always looked to everybody else's side of myself to decide what it is that I wanted to do. And my mom pushed me into a career of nursing, which was never something that I really wanted. But her and my stepdad insisted that it was going to have a good paycheck, lead to a lot of really good things in life, etc. And so I ended up pursuing that, knowing that I didn't actually want to be a nurse. I wanted to be a writer my entire life. I remember when I was younger, I had a poem published. I used to write family newsletters all the time. I was always stealing my grandparents' typewriter and, you know, writing up whatever I could. Even my grade nine science project, I can remember this still, and I actually found a copy of this a couple of years ago. I wrote a choose your own ending storybook for my grade nine science project. And so writing was always something that I absolutely loved. I wanted to be in that space, but you know, writing's not a career. A lot of people tell you that you can make money in, especially not in my family. I was the first to go to university, the first to go into the medical role. And it was supposed to be this really prestige thing, right? With all my family expecting me to do really well here. So I went into nursing and quickly forgot about writing. Didn't really have time for it, other than all of the essays and horrible papers I had to write throughout my degree, which is not the same thing. And I didn't really have a lot of writing in my background. But what I did was try to make the best out of the situation that I was in. And about 10 years ago, this is kind of the point where I had been, I guess you can say, finalizing like my nursing degree and moving into like the actual world of working bedside and the hospital, that sort of thing. And I remember this kind of being the start of my conscious healing journey, where I started to actually realize that I had a lot of trauma and there was something that I could do about it. And I didn't have to continue to show up in my life being triggered and you know, allowing that to kind of rule the roost, if you will. And so I started to make some changes and started to work on myself. And I decided that I was going to become like more health-oriented. And so I actually ended up enrolling in a health coaching certification program. And what that taught me was that there was a lot of things within my power that I could change in my life. And health was a really big component of a person's life. So why not that be my focus? So I ended up taking nursing and coaching and creating like this business that ended up having a lot of health coaching, a lot of trauma coaching in it. I always seemed to kind of come back to that. But the the bread and butter of it was helping people get healthy and happy in the most natural way possible. And so over the course of those last 10 years, things started to really shift and move in there. I built some a really good like solo practice doing this. And then I hired on a couple of nursing staff. And then I got this really bold, albeit really stupid, idea about three years ago, four years ago now, that I was gonna take this company and massively expand it. And I ended up hiring on over 20 staff, opening up over four clinic locations, and thought we were gonna be like on the cusp of this really big turn in the world where people were looking for these types of options. And I had no business taking an expansion of that size. I had no idea what I was doing or how to do it properly, how to manage people or run a company of that size. And it fell flat in my face relatively quickly. I ended up losing everything. The business went under. We ended up being put into a bankruptcy, all of our assets, my husband's pension, literally everything that we had, ended up getting lost in the mix of this catastrophic failure. Not to mention, in addition to the finances, I had to lay off all of my staff. We had to close all of our clinic locations. And so now we're being placed into the position where money's gone. We don't have the ability to pay off remaining wages or pay the vendor contracts or the leases or any of these things that we had signed for. And a lot of people ended up getting hurt because of it. And when people get hurt, oftentimes they direct their energy towards where they believe the root cause that problem is, which was me. And so, on top of all of the financial loss and the catastrophic failure and the very, very public failure that it was, I ended up also being put into like a cancel culture attempt of me online, where now everybody was angry and they were coming for blood, and I was the source of that. So my face, my picture, my story, everything like that was posted online in every single group you can imagine in our local community. And I had anonymous emails and comments on social media and all the things coming in consistently. There was times when I would wake up to hundreds of comments or hundreds of messages or emails telling me what a terrible person I was, what a fraud and imposter, and how I did this purposely to hurt other people. I even escalated at one point to being anonymous death threats in my email box. And it was a very traumatic period of time. And I'm not gonna lie, my nervous system during this period really shut down internally because I would, you know, go to our grocery store or run errands, and I would have this thought of, you know, who's gonna recognize me, who's gonna see me, and I would be darting around the store and constantly on edge. And I lived a couple of years in that fight or flight mode, not knowing what was gonna happen or who was gonna say what. And so as a result, I mean, you know, this really traumatic, horrible situation that happened was actually a really big blessing in disguise for me. Because what I didn't realize during the course of this, you know, how we always say, you know, the universe throws you a pebble. When you don't listen, it throws a rock. And when you don't listen, it throws you a boulder. Well, I had conceived like probably 500 boulders before I even chose to start this company or move into this expansion or do any of these things. And I just, I wasn't listening. I had this really deep-seated wound of needing to people please and show up for other people and like I said, validate, you know, everything that was happening in my life. I wanted to be liked, right? I wanted to be liked by other people, loved by other people. I wanted them to have good opinions of me and never say anything bad about me. And that actually being that huge driving force behind all of the decisions that I made in this company, and what ultimately led to it crashing was because I was trying to please everybody else. And especially I was trying to please my mother, right? I haven't had a relationship with her for 14 years. We've been no contact for four years. And this really was a way of me being like, oh, look what I did and look what I created and who I became, even though we don't talk anymore. And that reality was a huge slap in the face for me because I had to realize that all the choices that I was making in my life never actually were for me. I was showing up as a completely different version of myself, a masked version. Nothing that I was doing in my life was what I actually wanted or who I was. And I did make some really hard choices from that point moving forward. So in the last four years, I walked away from my nursing license. I hung up my screw-ups for good and my stethoscope for good. I walked away from coaching only as of last summer. And then I kind of have this last year of really trying to figure out what it was that I wanted. I knew that I wanted to go back into writing because I've wanted, as I said, to be a writer my whole life. And I've spent this last year since I fully hung up coaching, really finding the confidence to be in this space, finding my voice to execute that in a different way than I ever have and be more raw and unfiltered and unapologetic in what I have to say. And it's been this really beautiful lesson and learning curve that so many incredible opportunities have come out of. But I first had to go through like this major death and rebirth cycle in order to get to where I am now. So that's the gist of everything.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

That is a wild story, and just the fact that you had to lose multiple levels of safety all at once. So the financial safety, the safety of like, am I gonna get hurt when I go to the grocery store? And that like activation you'd feel from the emails and the comments, like getting canceled is like I feel like that would be like one of the yuckiest things that can happen in today's society because it's everywhere and it just like seeps into everything. And what I love is the fact that you were able to mine the gold from that and realize this was a very painful way of being directed to my purpose, but I was being directed, and now you're in this like really inspirational place from like where I'm sitting. So now you have this podcast and it's called Go Regulate Yourself. And I love it. It's like curse happy. There's like, you know, you're saying it like it is, it is unfiltered. It's such a great, like, I love listening. So can you share a little bit about what that title stands for and maybe how you even came to come up with that name because it's so creative and it people know exactly what they're getting as soon as they hear that title, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah, for sure. So Go Regulate Yourself was actually born out of this whole cancel culture attempt of me online. Because a really big thing that I recognized in this was that when people were telling me that I was a fraud, I was an imposter, I was a terrible person, all of this stuff, the problem wasn't that they were saying it. The problem is that I was believing it. I believed it to be true. I thought that they were correct. And I held on to that for way too long, longer than I should have. And when I finally started to break free of this mold of people pleasing, one of the things we recognize is that like healing doesn't necessarily make you more gentle, more nice, more laid back. It actually makes you very honest. And you're able to recognize, no, I actually do know who I am. I know that I have a good heart, and I no longer have to show up to prove that to somebody else. And if they don't see it, they don't recognize it that it's not a me problem, that's a you problem. And so go regulate yourself was born out of two kinds of notions, which, if your audience hasn't guessed it already, is a spin-off of go fuck yourself. And it's the idea behind it is on one hand, a very endearing reminder to take care of yourself, right? It's important for you to heal, for you to face the inner demons and the wounds that you have, to do something with the stuff that you've been handed in life. Because while you might not be responsible for everything that happens to you, you are responsible for what comes next. And the only way that your life improves is by you deciding that you're gonna do something about it. So it's that endearing reminder to like, hey, go regulate yourself, go take care of yourself, go do something for yourself. But then on the other hand, it's also a reminder that you are not responsible for anybody else in how they feel, how they think, what they project upon you, their triggers, the things that they needed to learn in their life. You are not responsible for any of it. So when somebody's up in your, you know, craw and they're trying to give you all their shit and tell you to wear it and that it's yours, you have this opportunity to not pick it up, to set it down, to walk away from it and to remind them to go regulate themselves. And so that was very much where the energy of this was born from. And now you're right, there's a lot of cussing in there, but the premise of it is being about mental health, right? And mental health meaning real life, about when we heal and when we do all this work, it's not about becoming saints or, you know, thinking of ourselves as being enlightened and therefore better than somebody else. It's about actually taking care of ourselves at the end of the day and being realistic about what that looks like in today's world. Because this isn't a world where things just never happen that challenge us. We're going to consistently be triggered or have things pop up for us in our reality that are going to challenge us in how we show up and how we speak and the values that we hold for ourselves. And so the whole mission behind the podcast is to talk about real life stuff. I share a lot about my own traumas, things that I went through, and also am going through every single day with the hopes that it might help somebody feel a little bit less alone and also get the tools, the resources, the knowledge to be able to move forward from whatever hardships they are facing in their lives.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

I love the dual meaning of that. And I love that you took such uh unfortunate circumstance and like you know, put a little bit of like Stephen Potler talks about big S bite versus little S fight. Big S fight is like I'm trying to hurt somebody. We don't want that. But little S spite is like, oh, you're gonna cancel me. I'm gonna come up with this ridiculously clever podcast name and create a movement. Thank you. So I love that. And I want to talk a little bit about social media in general because this is something I have had such a wretched relationship with. And what you're sharing kind of reminds me of something I heard David Goggins talk about. And he hates social media too because he's like, I don't want to go on here and post this stuff because these people don't know me, they don't know what I've been through. And he goes on this tangent and like feel that it's it's it's such a rough place, and there's you know, like you said, hundreds of people emailing you commenting, not all those people were directly impacted by the businesses you had to shut down. So there's so much like turbulence in that entire online world, and you're still on there, you have a social media presence. What is posting on there now like versus posting back when you were still in the people pleasing, the seeking validation, all those different things?

SPEAKER_01 19:32

That's such a good question. I feel like before, every time that I would post, I would go down like this spiral, this rabbit hole of what do they want to see? What version of me do they want to see? What way can I make somebody else feel like they they like every part of me, right? There's nothing to offend. I walked on eggshells with everything that I said. I would rewrite it a million times and always be worried about offending or being taken the wrong way. And if, God forbid, I did get a comment where somebody had something negative to say about what I had posted, I would either like feel this immense like guilt and shame and fear around their comment. And oh my God, who's gonna see that? And what are they gonna say? And it's gonna be this whole thing. Or I would overexplain and I would go into this method of like, oh no, you're right, and here's all the reasons why you're right. And this is actually the way that I was saying it to make you like seem like I was saying it in a different way. I was so scared of using my voice. I didn't actually even know what my voice was or my opinions that I did have because I was so conscious of other people's. I really bit my tongue a lot. And now when I'm on social media or I'm in that presence, very different experience. I post whatever the hell it is that I want, whatever's speaking to me, whatever I feel like is resonating. And it's so interesting because the more that I'm doing that, the more traction my stuff is getting than it ever has before with people resonating, comments, sending me messages, and just saying that they feel that way too. That usually also breeds into like different writing topics or podcast topics on a deeper level when you are having those very open conversations with people. I don't tread the water anymore, walk on eggshells, or worry about what people are gonna say. And in fact, you know, maybe I went too far to one side, but I actually really enjoy the negative comments now because I like to act like that mirror for other people, right? When somebody has something really nasty to say about what I've shared or my perspective, or even about me, you know, some people love to take things and make it very personal about your appearance or whatever else when you do share stuff. Whenever that happens, I actually love to engage in conversations with people in the comments because I just act like the mirror. And it's like, oh, it's very interesting that that's what you picked up based on this. Like, what's going on for you in this area that that is making you think or see this in that particular way? And it's very interesting. Because most of the time after you do that, people don't comment back. So you hope that maybe you got the idea across. But in other times, sometimes it does open up a really beautiful conversation. I've had people actually change their original comment, be like, you know what? I take it back, or I thank you for changing my perspective or helping me see that in a different way. So it's kind of cool now, my interactions on social media. There is no fear. And you know, I'm still in the very beginning stages, I would say, of like really allowing my light to shine and showing up fully in that space, but it feels so much more aligned than it ever happened as before.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

That is amazing. Like to be someone who gets to the point where you arrive, getting those like almost troll comments is so powerful. And I feel like that's a really great approach because I don't know where I heard it, but they say that like when you point a finger, there's like three point fingers pointing back at you, like literally. So I feel like that's kind of what's happening for you here. So on your social media now, who would benefit most from following you and what can they expect to see on your page, in your content, all the things.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

So I can have two very distinct divisions of like how I show up and I use my voice, I'll say. So on my like, I'll call it a personal social media where I'm doing like a lot of my own face and shares and thoughts and stuff like that, and sharing a lot of my writing pieces. That's a space for anybody I would say who's like in their 30s or around their 30s, who is navigating messy transitions in life. So if you are moving from an old identity to a new version of you, you're healing, you're recreating, you're looking to put in boundaries, to show up as the best version of you and really romanticize this thing called life and make it as delicious and joyful and delightful as possible. That would be what my kind of like personal space is for, my writing space is for. We talk a lot about those things. I still share a lot of my journey, but it's just a very different type of share. It's more of a reflective piece, going a little bit deeper into some of that introspection and inviting you to kind of do the same in relationships and beyond, versus now on like my podcast pages and the voice that's in that space, that is a little bit more raw, more explicit, more like let's talk about this from a very taboo angle and invite in some of those conversations that we might not have otherwise. And so that is kind of more of explicit nature, we will say, right? If you're not somebody who's into a lot of cussing or like those type of things, then maybe that isn't the best space for you, because there is a lot of that, but it's just very real and unfiltered in that space. And I would say both are for anybody who is in that space of healing, right? If you're in the space of trying to overcome some really hard stuff and get to a place where you want to feel a little bit better, either of those can be very allocated towards your journeys.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

It's kind of fun that you have like your PG-rated one and then like your R-rated one, and people can self-select, which is so magical. So, what are some of your favorite taboo topics to talk about on your show that don't be discussed nearly enough?

SPEAKER_01 25:26

I like to talk a lot about shame, which seems like it's not a taboo topic and that a lot of people talk to about it. But I think that truly the way in which I talk about shame is to a depth that a lot of people aren't necessarily willing to look at or be around or even hold within that space. Like I said, I am very open and I share a lot of my journeys, the deep, like dark stuff, the things that we would normally hide in a closet and walk away and never want to show anybody. I'm talking about my own stuff openly within these spaces in regards to overcoming shame because I allowed shame to depict so many of my choices in my life and really keep me hidden away from being true in my relationships or any part of my life, to be honest. And I think that shame is one of the biggest driving forces to turn us towards like numbing agents, whether we are using things for addiction or we end up being down the road of like suicidal ideation, which I was for a really long time, self-harm, et cetera. Shame can keep us completely locked off from our life. And I think that is one of the scariest things about going through hard stuff in your life, is not exactly that moment, but what comes after that moment and the choices that that can, I guess, inflict upon our lives. And so I feel like that's a really big taboo piece that I love to talk about. I also love to talk about demanding more for your life and not being as scared to like call in really big things. I just talked about relationships the other day and expecting relationships to give us something. And I know that triggered a lot of people because they don't want to, they want to follow societal contracts and ways of being right that we're expected to show up with. And so things like that are really big. I like to talk about sex and pleasure and all of these components, really just like I said, overcoming hard stuff and calling in really beautiful, joyous stuff for your life moving forward. And some of that can get pretty twisted in a really great way and sometimes triggers the hell out of people, which is kind of what I'm here for.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

So I think sometimes getting triggered is one of the biggest catalysts for healing. So you are doing the Lord's work or the death work, one or the maybe both anyways. Right, yes. So, Brian, this has been such a fun, inspiring conversation. Two more questions as we wrap up. I will always get my guests to give the listeners some kind of an embodied activation. So it can be a writing exercise, a nervous system writing exercise, a embodied way to demand more from your relationships.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Yeah, actually, I would love to leave them with something that I have literally just clicked into place this last week because it's been showing up for me in my life in a way I didn't even realize. But a really quick way of assessing what is actually the root cause behind the problems that you face in your life. And long story short, I had a massage last week where I went in with lower back pain. It's been driving me nuts, really painful. And I told her that going in for the massage. And for the entire hour, she did not touch my lower back. She worked on my glutes, my hamstrings, everywhere else. And during the massage, I was like, she's not even touching the place that I told her was a problem. And then I started to feel my lower back completely released during the entire massage as she worked on every other area. And it clicked for me that often where we think the logical problem is, like what is actually causing the problem in our lives, is not actually the root cause of what the problem is. And so it's a way of us being able to look, say you're having a fight with your spouse and you seem to continually keep coming back to this conversation of money. Is money the root? Is the relationship the root? Are those the actual problems? Or does it maybe stem from a wound or a belief around the fact that maybe you don't feel safe? Maybe you're experiencing some scarcity. Maybe you need to have a little bit more understanding or compassion, or maybe there's something that's coming up about worthiness for you. There's going to be a root cause that is actually leading you towards the problems in your life or the cycles, the patterns that keep coming up. And 99% of the time, I would argue, it's not where your brain goes towards the logical root of the problem. It's something entirely different. And it takes a little bit of some self-reflection piece to be able to assess what that might be, analyze it, and actually put some time and attention towards it. But maybe perhaps bringing that up in a meditation or if you go for some walks outside or some silent periods of your life, maybe exploring where the challenges you're facing right now might actually be coming from instead of the problem that you keep thinking it is because of, and just see what comes up.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

That is such a good one because I think there is this tendency to focus on the symptoms instead of what's really deep and driving those symptoms in the first place. And then when people want to learn more about you, connect with you further, where are the best places for them to go? As you've already talked about your podcast. So in addition to that.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Absolutely. Yeah. So for the podcast, I mean, you can find it on Facebook, Instagram, all the things. GoRegulateYourself is our handle. You can go to go regulateyourself.com, which will pull up the main website for the podcast. You'll find all the things there, all the episodes, etc. But if you're interested in the writing side of thing or my personal pages, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at it's Brian Roberge. And then Brian Roberge.com will bring you to my main substack, which is my writing profile. And my host, or I guess you can say, platform is called the 30 Something Bible. So it is around surviving and thriving in these very hot, messy 30 years of like when transitions come up and things happen, and suddenly, you know, you think you have your whole life figured out and suddenly you're thrown for a complete loop and things are changing faster than you can imagine. That is what the 30-something Bible is all about. So again, you can go to Brian Roberge.com or you can find me at it's Brian Roberge on Facebook or Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Beautiful. And I will include links to all of that in the episode description. So thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

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