Human Amplified

Somewhere along the way, exhaustion became aspirational and burnout became proof that you were working hard enough.

In this episode, Elizabeth Moore, co-founder and co-CEO of Triluna, shares how hustle culture and chronic stress led to panic attacks, anxiety, and burnout severe enough to make her leave corporate life entirely.

We explore workplace stress, nervous system regulation, toxic productivity, and why wellness culture can sometimes become another form of perfectionism and control. If you’ve ever struggled to separate your self-worth from your output, this conversation will challenge the way you think about work, wellness, and burnout.

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Self-care can sound small compared to grief, violence, burnout, or collective trauma. But for Coco Kennell, the rituals of soap making and skincare became a way to process all of it.

After the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the Soap Life 360 founder found herself navigating exhaustion, heartbreak, racial tension, and deeply personal wounds while still trying to care for herself, her family, and her community.

What started as homemade soap eventually became a way to start conversations about healing, self-acceptance, sustainability, and emotional survival.

In this episode, Coco shares how Ferguson shaped her understanding of community care, why learning to trust your body matters, and how small acts of self-care can become grounding during difficult seasons of life.

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Support for this podcast comes from Bed of Nails. Visit humanamplified.com/episodes/089 for your 15% discount on Bed of Nails products and link to shop from to enhance your self care practice.

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Long before social media intensified the pressure to perform identity, many people were already learning how to survive by hiding parts of themselves.

For Brendon Watt, that started early. Growing up feeling deeply sensitive and different, he learned how to shape himself around other people’s expectations in order to belong. Over time, that pressure to fit in turned into people pleasing, self-judgment, secrecy, and eventually addiction.

Brendon reflects on the emotional exhaustion of performing versions of yourself for acceptance, the fear of vulnerability that keeps so many people hiding, and what began to shift when he stopped protecting his image and started being honest about what he was actually struggling with.

We move through trauma, authenticity, belonging, emotional healing, and the strange loneliness that can come from spending years trying to become who the world wants you to be instead of who you really are.

At some point, many people stop listening to themselves. Not all at once, but slowly through years of pushing through exhaustion, overriding discomfort, prioritizing everyone else’s needs, and convincing themselves their feelings are something to ignore instead of something to trust.

Carrie Akre reflects on the emotional process of reconnecting with yourself after years of self-abandonment. The musician, podcaster, and intuitive life coach shares how intuition, shadow work, and emotional honesty can help people better understand their patterns and make better decisions.

Together, we move through emotional exhaustion, trauma, boundaries, people-pleasing, and the subtle ways many people lose touch with themselves while trying to survive, succeed, or be what everyone else needs them to be.

When Jon Mullins sat down to write “Better Man,” he wasn’t trying to create a viral song. He was trying to survive one of the hardest seasons of his marriage.

The Nashville singer-songwriter and former The Voice contestant opens up about his wife Whitney’s traumatic brain injury, the emotional toll it took on their relationship, and how music became both therapy and a lifeline. 

From relearning how to communicate to writing songs rooted in real pain, Jon shares what it means to love someone through uncertainty and why vulnerability became the foundation of his artistry.

Ron Karr spent much of his childhood learning how to read a room before anything exploded.

Growing up as the son of a Holocaust survivor meant living around unpredictability, hypervigilance, and chronic stress. Those early experiences shaped the way he approached trust, conflict, communication, and emotional safety in relationships for decades afterward.

Ron shares how trauma and stress eventually showed up physically through years of debilitating back pain, why people become emotionally reactive in conversations, and how creating emotional safety can completely change the way someone responds to you.

We also explore victim mentality, emotional triggers, empathy, leadership, and the neuroscience of trust, including why people shut down, become defensive, or feel safe enough to open up.

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in repetitive arguments, frustrated by conversations that go nowhere, or wondering why certain relationships feel emotionally exhausting, this episode offers a practical framework for changing the dynamic without trying to control the other person.

Anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, emotional overwhelm, and chronic stress often become so normalized that people stop recognizing them as signs of survival mode.

For trauma therapist and ascension coach Amie Dean, healing meant learning how to reconnect with the parts of herself buried underneath fear, grief, chronic illness, and years of emotional survival.

We look at inner child healing, spiritual awakening, intuition, emotional trauma, and the ways unresolved pain quietly shapes how people move through relationships, work, identity, and everyday life.

Amie also shares the medical trauma that changed her life and how learning to trust herself became part of her healing process.

If you’ve ever felt emotionally exhausted, disconnected from yourself, or stuck in patterns you can’t seem to break, this conversation offers a grounded look at what healing can actually look like.

What does systemic racism in America actually look like in real life?

Former police officer and criminal justice expert Peggy Kingsbury opens up about growing up white in the Jim Crow South, surviving childhood trauma, and realizing decades later that white privilege changed the course of her life.

She shares how racism shaped schools, policing, foster care, opportunity, and the assumptions she carried as a young cop. We explore implicit bias, systemic racism in policing, childhood trauma, poverty, domestic violence, and the connection between unstable homes and the criminal justice system. 

Peggy also reflects on what changed her perspective, why she believes policing in America needs a more human-centered approach, and what it means to move from being “not racist” to actively anti-racist.

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode does come with a trigger warning and especially for our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) listeners.

We discuss in detail the topics of what it was like living in the Jim Crow south as a little white girl, a normal atmosphere of overt racism and covert racism, the integrating of public schools, domestic violence, gun violence, abuse, alcoholism, and resulting trauma. Listener discretion is advised.

Black philanthropy is about far more than charitable giving.

For Kia Jarmon, it’s about who gets to define community needs, who holds power, and why the racial wealth gap continues to shape nearly every part of American life.

That conversation opens into something much bigger: systemic racism, cultural appropriation, collective trauma, white supremacy, and the emotional labor Black Americans are still expected to carry every day.

Kia also explains why healing cannot happen without discomfort, how trauma passes through generations, and why rebellious joy can itself become an act of resistance.

If you don’t already know me, or you want to get to know me a little better, I’d love to get to know you too! To start, here’s a little bit about me and why I’m here with Human Amplified: 

Hi, I’m Brandi Fleck. I’m a storyteller, writer, artist, avid student of human nature, recognized communications and interviewing expert, and the found of Human Amplified

I care about you more than anything else and I’m here to help you more fully embrace your humanity so you an experience all the badass things about life regardless of what you’ve been through in your past. 

I’ve been there, trying to heal from the hard times, and I know it’s possible. 

So, let’s tell your story. 

Let’s embrace it. 

And then, let’s change it. 

Because babe, that ripples out and changes the world.

For more information, visit humanamplified.com.

Original music by Ryan Sauls.