What to Do When Your Identity Stops Working with Ruby Fremon

Hal Elrod (0:02)

Hello, and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod, and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, as well as interview world-class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves, and we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go.

What do you do when the tools that once helped you succeed and the identity that got you there suddenly stopped working? My guest today knows the answer to that question firsthand, and so do I. We talk about that. Ruby Fremon was at the height of her career when a devastating personal tragedy set up a cascade of events that changed everything. She faced harassment, stalking, a million-dollar lawsuit, serious health concerns, the loss of her personal identity, and eventually a period where she was planning how to end her life. But this is not a conversation about staying stuck in the darkness. It is a conversation about what happened next, how Ruby began rebuilding her life with the support of her husband, therapist, and closest friends. Why traditional personal development advice that you and I have been given, and we've tried it, it wasn't enough for her trauma, and how somatic work helped her reconnect with her body, her emotions, and her sense of self. We'll talk about the difference between a difficult season and what Ruby calls dark night of the soul. We'll explore how trauma can live in the body, why calming yourself during anxiety isn't simply distraction, and a practical exercise that you can use immediately to begin expanding your capacity to feel difficult emotions without being overwhelmed by them. And stay with us until the end, because Ruby shares the first step she recommends for anyone who feels like they're falling apart. And I'll share the belief that helped me through some of the darkest moments of my own life.

A brief content note before we begin. This episode includes discussions of suicide, trauma, grief, and mental health crises. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services or a crisis resource in your area. With that said, it is my great pleasure to share this vulnerable, real, and raw conversation that can help you through the darkest times in your life with Ruby Fremon.

Ruby, it's so good to see you.

Ruby Fremon (2:36)

Hal, it is so good to be reunited here online.

Hal Elrod (2:39)

Yeah, you used to live near me and then you moved to Montana.

Ruby Fremon (2:43)

Yeah, we moved to our dream state.

Hal Elrod (2:45)

Yeah, is it just beautiful there?

Ruby Fremon (2:47)

It's stunningly gorgeous. Every season is gorgeous to me as well.

Hal Elrod (2:52)

Incredible. So today, there's so much we could talk about. I've had you on the podcast before. This is your second appearance, which by the way, that's a very small percentage of folks that I love so much and get so much value from the conversation that I bring them back on. I know you've gone through what some might call a dark night of the soul. You've gone through some real traumatic events. And you and I have talked. We've both been literally to the point of contemplating suicide.

And I know we're not alone in that. I know that we actually represent, I don't know what percentage, but a large percentage of people that are listening to this, that are either going through that now or have gone through it, or might experience life events that put them in that place in the future. So with that, I love your story. I wanna hear your story and share it with folks. And then you went through all the dark night of the soul as did I, and now we're both on the other side of it. So to speak, and not that life doesn't have more in store for us. But yeah, share with folks some of the cascading events, some of the dominoes that led to your challenges.

Ruby Fremon (3:53)

Yeah, beginning of 2022, I was literally at the highest point of my career. Everything felt great. Everything felt easy. There was a flow. My husband and I were finally in a place where we were trying to get pregnant. And then in June, 2022, we experienced a shock trauma where our dog, Leia, went quote unquote missing. But what had actually happened was she was killed and the darksitters lied to us. Without going too much into the detail of that, and we can link the story actually in the show notes too, I think that would be helpful. This ended up being one of the most prolific dog care provider cases in the state of Texas. We were on Fox News. We ended up changing the laws in Texas for animal cruelty. Lots happened. However, going through that trauma, there was a lot involved. Harassment, stalking, being sued for a million dollars, a counter suit for defamation, having my entire life and history online being used against me. I went from fight into straight up dorsal vagal shutdown. My hypervigilance was so high that I couldn't leave the house. I couldn't get groceries. I couldn't go anywhere by myself, which was very different from the hyper independent woman that I knew. Now, all of a sudden, I am a dependent. I can't do anything on my own. I'm depressed. I'm anxious. Then let's just throw into the mix. All of a sudden, I'm in early onset menopause, so my hormones are declining. Because of my dorsal vagal shutdown state, my kidney started shutting down, and my vascular system was shutting down. My body was literally shutting down. It wasn't just emotional trauma, it was the emotional trauma that impacted my physical health.