Notes from the Edge

What if the pain you feel and the damage seen on an MRI aren’t always the same thing?

Lisa Lacy sits down with neurologist Dr. Eric Anderson, MD, PhD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer at Lin Health, to explore chronic back pain, the nervous system, central sensitization, and what patients should understand before making major decisions about back surgery.

Dr. Anderson explains how chronic pain can become a highly sensitized alarm system, why imaging findings don’t always correspond with the intensity of someone’s pain, and how whole-person approaches may help some people retrain the nervous system and regain function.

In this conversation:

• Why pain and structural damage are not necessarily the same thing, and what MRI findings can and cannot tell you.
• How central sensitization can cause the nervous system’s protective alarm system to become overly sensitive.
• The connection between stress, trauma, hypervigilance, the limbic system, and persistent pain.
• How approaches including pain reprocessing therapy, CBT, graded exposure, emotional awareness, coaching, and movement can be incorporated into chronic pain recovery.
• The questions to ask before back surgery, including expected outcomes, alternatives, recovery time, and when structural problems or progressive nerve damage may require surgical intervention.

This is not a conversation about telling people their pain isn’t real. It is about understanding pain more completely so patients can advocate for themselves and make informed decisions about their care.

Connect with Dr. Eric Anderson

Learn more about Dr. Anderson and Lin Health:

https://lin.health

Connect with Lisa Lacy

Learn more about Lisa, Notes From the Edge, and her work:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

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We are told to look for the good, raise our vibration, practice gratitude, forgive, move on, and trust that everything happens for a reason. But what happens when positivity becomes another way to avoid reality?

In this Edge Note, Lisa Lacy explores spiritual bypassing, false positivity, trauma, emotional avoidance, and the difference between acceptance and resignation. Facing what is painful does not make you negative. Sometimes it simply means you are willing to tell yourself the truth.

Two people can experience what looks like the same event and carry completely different emotional consequences from it. Trauma is not determined only by what happened. Context, meaning, safety, loss, and what happened afterward all matter.

Healing does not require pretending everything is beautiful. It requires being willing to see your life as it exists today so you can decide what you want to create tomorrow.

In this episode:

• Why false positivity can keep us from making meaningful change
• What spiritual bypassing looks like when spiritual ideas are used to avoid painful emotions
• Why two people can experience the same event and be affected completely differently
• The difference between acknowledging victimization and remaining trapped in a victim identity
• Why accepting reality may be one of the most powerful ways to reclaim agency over what happens next

Go deeper Inside the Edge

 https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

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What if the answers you’ve spent your whole life searching for aren’t somewhere out there, but waiting for you to finally turn inward?

In this Edge Note of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, mentor, and author Rosanne Annoni for a deeply human conversation about spiritual awakening, grief, forgiveness, self-inquiry, and what happens when we stop looking outside ourselves for permission, validation, and truth.

After decades as a psychotherapist and years of her own searching, Rosanne shares how therapy, meditation, loss, motherhood, relationships, and the Diamond Approach gradually brought her back to herself. Together, Lisa and Rosanne explore the difference between understanding our patterns and learning not to be ruled by them.

In this conversation:

• Why healing often begins when we stop focusing on everyone else and turn inward
• How victimhood, blame, and self-blame can keep us trapped in old patterns
• What forgiveness can look like without excusing what happened
• Why people-pleasing and doing everything alone can disconnect us from ourselves
• How curiosity, presence, self-inquiry, and accepting support can change the way we move through life

Rosanne’s debut memoir, Unfolding the Heart: One Woman’s Quest for True Nature, explores a lifetime of searching, loss, healing, spirituality, and the courage to keep standing back up.

Connect with Rosanne Annoni

https://rosanneannoni.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

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What stories disappear when the people we love are no longer here to tell them?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with entrepreneur, business coach, former United States Marine, and founder of The Story Project, Brad Koch, for a deeply human conversation about family stories, grief, memory, legacy, and the things we often wait too long to ask.

Brad shares how the loss of his father-in-law, and the realization that his wife wished she had more recordings of his voice, face, mannerisms, and stories, helped inspire The Story Project. Lisa and Brad explore why knowing someone’s story can completely change the way we understand our family, our childhood, our trauma, and even ourselves.

This is a conversation about remembering where we came from while the people who came before us are still here to tell us.

In this episode:

• Why preserving someone’s voice, mannerisms, memories, and stories can become an irreplaceable part of their legacy

• How learning our family’s stories can deepen connection and change the way we understand our own past

• Why waiting until time feels limited can leave us scrambling to ask questions we could be asking now

• How The Story Project helps families capture and preserve stories across generations

• Brad’s experience entering the Marine Corps at seventeen, the role he performed to survive, and why asking for help is not weakness

Connect with Brad:

https://storyproject.app

Connect with Lisa:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

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Why a special edition? Because every once in a while, a conversation happens at the Edge that feels too important to wait its turn on the calendar. This is one of those conversations.

At 18 years old, Liam Beville pushed a friend out of the path of a stolen car and took the impact himself. Both of his legs were shattered, his right knee was severely damaged, and he was told he might never walk again.

He did more than walk again.

Liam became an elite powerlifter, Guinness World Record holder, disability advocate, speaker and author. But underneath the records, the weights and four decades of competition was another story.

For years, Liam practiced the way he walked so people would not see his limp.

Strength became more than something he demonstrated. It became something he performed.

In this special edition of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Liam talk about what happens when survival becomes identity, when resilience starts looking like a mask, and what it means to finally acknowledge the parts of ourselves we worked so hard to hide.

In this conversation:

• Why Liam focused on rebuilding his mind before rebuilding his body after catastrophic injury

• The depression, PTSD and loss of dignity that accompanied his recovery

• How rehabilitation eventually led him into 40 years of competitive powerlifting

• Why Liam spent years hiding his disability, including practicing how he walked so others would not see his limp

• What changed when he stopped seeing disability as something that diminished his strength and began allowing it to become part of his story

Liam is a Guinness World Record holder, internationally ranked powerlifter, disability advocate and brand ambassador for Active Disability Ireland. His upcoming memoir, Unbroken: The Liam Beville Story, tells the larger story of survival, performance, identity and resilience.

Connect with Liam Beville:

https://www.liambeville.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

Listener’s Note:

Resilience is not the absence of pain, disability, fear or limitation. Sometimes the strongest thing we can do is stop performing strength long enough to acknowledge what happened to us.

Liam’s story is a reminder that adapting is not surrender, asking for help is not weakness, and accepting the parts of yourself that changed does not erase who you were before. Survival may require a performance for a season. Healing often begins when you realize you no longer have to keep performing it.

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when the workplace you once worked so hard to succeed in becomes the place you no longer recognize yourself?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with employment attorney, workplace strategist, author, and former corporate people and culture executive Natalie Holder for a powerful conversation about workplace trauma, exclusion, toxic work culture, self-advocacy, and career reinvention.

Natalie explains why workplace trauma does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it is being left out of the room, overlooked for opportunities, quietly bullied, or repeatedly questioning whether what you are experiencing is “bad enough” to speak up about.

They explore why high performers may be among the last people to leave unhealthy environments, why having language for what is happening matters, and how unresolved workplace experiences can follow us into the next job if we never stop to understand them.

Natalie also challenges the idea that the answer is always to quit immediately. Sometimes the most powerful move is understanding what happened, getting support, planning your exit intentionally, and asking better questions about what you actually want next.

In this episode:

• How exclusion and workplace trauma can hide in plain sight

• Why high performers may stay in unhealthy workplaces longer

• Finding the language to advocate for yourself

• Knowing when it is time to stay, leave, or strategically pivot

• Building a career that supports who you are becoming

Connect with Natalie Holder:

https://natalieholderspeaks.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when the roles you learned to play in relationships start costing you yourself?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with relationship and intimacy coaches Natalie Vartanian and Glenn Nielsen for an honest conversation about marriage, somatic healing, nervous system regulation, inherited relationship roles, and what happens when couples stop blaming each other long enough to look beneath the conflict.

Natalie and Glenn share how even after years of personal growth and entering their marriage intentionally, old conditioning began showing up. Natalie found herself becoming a muted version of herself, while Glenn wrestled with the enormous pressure of being the provider after the collapse of a business he had built over decades.

Together, they explore why sometimes the intensity of our reaction has more to do with what is happening inside us than what our partner actually did, and how couples can begin creating a relationship based on conscious choice rather than inherited expectations.

In this episode:

• How the “good wife” and “good husband” roles can quietly create resentment and pressure

• Why your nervous system may be reacting to something deeper than the argument in front of you

• Somatic awareness and learning to recognize activation in the body

• Taking responsibility for your own patterns without turning relationship work into blame

• How couples can intentionally create agreements, connection, intimacy, and a relationship that allows both people to fully exist

Connect with Natalie & Glenn:

https://wakeuporbreakup.com

Connect with Lisa:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive? 

Welcome to the Edge.

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What happens when accepting a diagnosis stops feeling like surrender and becomes the beginning of recovery?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author and podcast host Reza Ghaemi for an honest, funny, and deeply human conversation about living with Bipolar I Disorder, surviving mania and hospitalization, resisting treatment, and eventually learning to work with his diagnosis instead of fighting against it.

Reza, author of Bipolar Is My Superpower: How Acceptance Changed My Life and host of The Rez Podcast, shares why acceptance became a turning point in his recovery and why calling bipolar his “superpower” is not about romanticizing mania or psychosis. It is about the self-awareness, resilience, recovery skills, and responsibility he built afterward.

Lisa and Reza also dig into stigma, medication, faith, family support, disclosure, relationships, and what changes when you stop hiding your story and start owning it.

In this episode:

• Bipolar I Disorder, mania, psychosis, and hospitalization

• Moving from denial and stigma toward acceptance

• Medication, treatment, sleep, and building recovery skills

• Mental health disclosure in work, dating, and relationships

• Replacing shame and fear with self-awareness and ownership

Connect with Reza Ghaemi:

The Rez Podcast: https://www.rezpodcast.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

https://www.lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens inside your body in the seconds between a trigger, a craving, and a choice?

Dr. Deborah Rozman is a behavioral psychologist and President/Co-CEO of HeartMath. In this episode of Notes From the Edge, she joins Lisa Lacy to explore what happens physiologically when stress activates old patterns, why the familiar can feel safer even when it is destructive, and whether we can train the nervous system to create more space between an urge and our response.

They unpack heart-brain communication, heart rate variability, coherence, and real-time biofeedback, while Lisa shares how biofeedback became part of her own recovery experience. Dr. Rozman also walks through a simple heart-focused breathing practice that can be used when stress, overwhelm, or cravings begin to rise.

In this episode:

• Addiction recovery, cravings, triggers, and relapse prevention
• Why the brain can reach for familiar patterns during stress and overwhelm
• Heart-brain coherence, HRV, and nervous system regulation
• Using real-time biofeedback to recognize and shift physiological stress patterns
• Heart-focused breathing and creating space between an urge and a reaction

Connect with Dr. Deborah Rozman:

HeartMath.com

Connect with Lisa Lacy:

www.LisaLacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when telling the truth about your mental health could cost you your credibility, your career, or the way people see you forever?

In this solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy talks openly about living with Bipolar I, psychosis, borderline personality disorder, addiction, hospitalization, and recovery while simultaneously building businesses, leading teams, earning six figures, and appearing highly functional to the outside world.

This is a conversation about what happens when a psychiatric diagnosis becomes a verdict instead of information. Lisa explores the pressure to hide serious mental illness in professional spaces, the difference between mental health awareness and actual psychological safety, and why people should not have to prove recovery by pretending they were never sick.

In this episode:

• Bipolar I, psychosis and borderline personality disorder stigma

• Mental illness, employment and the fear of professional disclosure

• High-functioning mental illness, leadership and hidden struggles

• Psychiatric hospitalization, addiction, recovery and rebuilding a life

• Why workplaces need real systemic change beyond mental health awareness

Connect with Lisa:

https://lisalacy.com

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.