Why Your Nervous System Won't Let You Rest
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
First aired September 6, 2026 Dr. Charleanea Arellano has spent over 30 years as a clinical psychologist and leadership coach, but the framework she's best known for now, the Embodied Narrative Framework, didn't come from a textbook. It came from putting away laundry five years ago and noticing her own body bracing for impact, for no reason at all, at age 55, after decades of actually being safe. Dr. Arellano built her career studying how high-achieving women lead while carrying nervous systems shaped by trauma, and by the added weight of managing how their race, sexuality, or gender is...
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Why Business Leaders Need Negotiation Skills
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
First aired August 23, 2026 Annette Mullin spent 24 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, nine of them as a crisis negotiator, eventually leading one of the busiest negotiation teams in the country — averaging over 100 call-outs a year. She worked patrol, sexual assault, internal affairs, and homicide, becoming LVMPD's first female homicide sergeant, before spending her final years as the department's director of employee wellness in the aftermath of the October 1 Mandalay Bay shooting, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. Now a negotiation instructor and coach...
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Why Comedy Might Be the Best Medicine For Mental Health
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
First aired August 16, 2026 For over a decade, Dave Mowry couldn't get out of bed, couldn't shower, and couldn't walk to his own mailbox without waiting until dark so a neighbor wouldn't catch the look in his eyes. In 1994, a psychotic break sent the successful businessman and family man into a depression so deep it cost him his house, his career, and 14 years he calls his "lost years." He slept in his clothes for months at a time. At parties, he'd stand against the wall and pray no one came over to talk to him. Then, at his wife's urging, he walked into a stand-up comedy class for people...
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Why Imposter Syndrome Keeps Leaders Stuck
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
In this episode, Dana is joined by Kurt Bush, a trauma-informed coach who helps leaders move from imposter syndrome to authentic confidence. Kurt shares his own journey with imposter syndrome, from feeling like a fraud in corporate leadership meetings to realizing his true calling. He explains that to make a change, the pain of staying the same must become greater than the pain of changing, a threshold many of us fear crossing. Kurt introduces the ERT (Encounter + Reflection = Transformation) framework, a practical approach to help you get unstuck. He reveals why the first step to moving...
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Your Midlife 'Crisis' Might Be Burnout (with Jody Brooks)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
A midlife crisis isn't actually a crisis. That's the challenge Jody Brooks puts to anyone who's ever felt lost, restless, or quietly convinced something's wrong with them somewhere around 40 or 50: what looks like burnout, and what people love to write off as a freakout, is more often a calling. His own arrived at lunchtime at the office, buzzing canteen and all, when he found himself sitting in a restroom cubicle, crying so hard he could barely breathe. No brutal meeting that morning. No disaster. Just the quiet moment his body picked to file its formal complaint: burnout wasn't a "rough...
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How You Can Find Hope After Rock Bottom (Aaron Ryan)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Two in the morning. Sitting on the toilet, clothed, bawling into a pillow, because a broken PC was the last thing standing between him and the self-employed life he wanted so badly he could feel it in his teeth. That's where my guest this week hit rock bottom: not one dramatic collapse, but months of computer problems piling on top of a dream that felt like it was never going to happen. A client shared one quote with him that day, and Aaron Ryan has carried it in his back pocket for almost twenty years since: "The temptation to quit is always greatest just before your greatest success." Aaron...
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How Your Body's Intuition Can Heal You (Rebecca Russell)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Four years of chronic pain. A fibromyalgia diagnosis. Muscle relaxers, pain pills, migraines, MRI after MRI. And through all of it, my guest this week kept hearing the same quiet voice: something doesn't fit. Rebecca Russell listened to it anyway, tracked down a neurosurgeon, and asked for one test nobody else had run: a discogram. It found the bulging disc that had been the actual problem the whole time, and eighty-five percent of her symptoms disappeared after surgery. Rebecca is a metabolism and lifestyle coach, certified essential oil specialist, and author who's spent more than three...
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Why Successful Entrepreneurs Set Boundaries (Chris Shurian)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
My guest this week has a word for himself I'd never heard before: "entrepreholic." Over 39 years, Chris Shurian has built, operated, bought, broken, and resurrected companies in remodeling, construction, manufacturing, real estate development, foreign investment, hospitality, restaurants, and retail. He's also survived cancer and finished two Ironmans. And in 2008, when the economy crashed, he was so extended, so "all in, all in, all in," as he puts it, that he spent the next two years meeting with his banker once a week just to survive it. We talk about what it actually felt like to launch...
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Why Loneliness Hits the Young Hardest (Dr. Anthony Silard)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Picture a hand-written sign taped to a bus stop in Japan: "I'm 87, I don't have a family. Would some family take me?" No one answered. He died a couple of months later. That story, from my guest this week, is the starkest snapshot I've ever heard of what loneliness researcher Dr. Anthony Silard calls a global epidemic, and the twist is who it's hitting hardest: not the oldest of us, but the youngest. Anthony is a professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology and an internationally recognized authority on relationships, emotional intelligence, and personal transformation, and he's the...
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Avoiding Failure Guarantees It (with Mark DeCarlo)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Picture a high school track meet: a sixteen-pound shot put thrown the wrong direction, a burst spleen, three weeks in a hospital bed. That's how my guest this week learned, at sixteen or seventeen, that avoiding failure is exactly what guarantees it. Mark DeCarlo woke up after three days unconscious to a doctor telling him ten more minutes and he'd have been dead, and he's spent every day since orienting his choices around one question: will this make me more happy or less happy? Mark is an Emmy award-winning comedian, bestselling author, and in-demand corporate speaker and leadership trainer...
info_outlineSusan Gold remembers coming home from school one day and seeing her father's clothing flying out the second-floor window onto the front lawn. She raced to pick up each piece as fast as her mother could throw it down, trying to keep her father in the house, because she didn't think she'd survive without what she calls his "pseudo protection." That's the kind of chaos Susan grew up in as the middle child of five, and it's exactly the kind of toxic family story I wanted on Phoenix and Flame, because so many of my listeners are living some version of it right now.
Professionally, Susan Gold is the kind of name-dropper you actually believe: she attached celebrity talent to projects in New York and Los Angeles, talked Andy Warhol into an on-camera Pontiac commercial, helped launch Fox News Channel at Roger Ailes' request, and got Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Taylor Swift, and David Beckham interviewed by cartoon characters for Disney Channel. But the reason she's on this show is the book she wrote about what came before all of that, "Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom," and the years of addiction, clinical depression, and narcissistic relationships that came after it.
We talk about the difference between forgiving your parents for what happened to them and still honoring what happened to you, why the "point one finger, three point back at you" axiom can trap empaths in abusive relationships, and how Susan finally learned to stop carrying weight that was never hers to carry. If you've ever felt like you had to be perfect to be safe, this conversation is for you.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-rj2AuUvUc
In this episode
- Why understanding where your parents came from doesn't cancel out your own experience of what they did
- How growing up in chaos and unpredictability teaches you to stay perfect, quiet, and constantly on guard
- Why "point one finger and three come back at you" can quietly trap an empath in a relationship with a narcissist
- The moment Susan's marriage ended, and the year-long "no eye contact, only in writing" period that followed
- How to stop carrying weight, guilt, and responsibility that was never yours to carry in the first place
- Why it can take a full decade of real work to heal from childhood trauma, and why that's not a failure
Timestamps
- (00:01) Welcome and guest intro: meet Susan Gold, author of "Toxic Family"
- (04:16) Growing up the middle child of five in a toxic, competitive home
- (09:25) The three-year separation from her mother that started the unpeeling
- (13:03) The polished-cabinet story: trying to earn safety through perfection
- (16:31) Addiction, a decade of clinical depression, and getting real help
- (20:54) The "Saran Wrap" feeling: why authenticity felt too dangerous
- (23:24) Meeting her "Prince Charming," and the marriage that followed
- (25:23) The moment her ex-husband said, "I'm filing for divorce"
- (31:09) Why "point one finger and three come back at you" is a trap for empaths
- (34:46) Boundaries, the yard metaphor, and owning only what's actually yours
- (36:51) Where to find Susan and her retreats
About Susan Gold
Susan Gold is an author and talent producer whose career includes attaching celebrity talent to film and television projects in New York and Los Angeles, launching Fox News Channel at the request of Chair Roger Ailes, and securing A-list celebrities for Disney Channel's "Phineas and Ferb." She's also the author of "Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom" and now leads retreats, webinars, workshops, and private sessions helping people drop outdated storylines and live from authentic freedom as adults.
Learn more at SusanGold.us.
Favorite quotes
"There were very few scraps of authentic love doled out. And we fought like dogs to collect them." —Susan Gold
"I would talk with friends about feeling like I was layered in Saran Wrap and I couldn't really connect authentically because it felt too dangerous." —Susan Gold
"This is the universe doing for you what you cannot do for yourself." —Susan Gold, on the moment her marriage ended
Resources mentioned
- SusanGold.us: Susan's website, retreats, webinars, workshops, and private sessions
- "Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom" by Susan Gold
Related episodes
- Healing From Narcissistic Abuse: more on recognizing narcissistic dynamics and reclaiming your sense of self after them.
- Finding Yourself: Ascension From Childhood Dysfunction: another honest conversation about rebuilding identity after a chaotic childhood.
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