Episode Overview:
In this raw and unfiltered episode, Kristen Boss shares one of the most vulnerable moments of her life—the unraveling of her personal identity, the toxicity of success addiction, and the deeply human consequences of building self-worth entirely around a business. This is the second part of her behind-the-scenes story, and it’s not easy listening. Trigger warning: This episode discusses topics such as suicidal ideation, addiction, emotional breakdown, and marital strain.
Through heartbreak, pain, and brutal self-awareness, Kristen details how she reached her breaking point and the darkness that ultimately led to her healing journey. She explores what it means to lose yourself in the pursuit of achievement, the false safety of validation through external success, and the courage it takes to ask for help and be seen in your most broken state.
This is not just an episode—it’s a lifeline for anyone who has ever felt like they were falling apart behind the scenes.
Timestamps:
00:03 – Welcome + Important trigger warning
01:27 – The weight of sharing hard stories
02:19 – Ignoring the warning signs and pushing through pain
04:35 – The season of invincibility and missing the check engine light
05:28 – How validation addiction builds unnoticed
07:34 – Business as a dopamine supplier and feedback loop
09:31 – “Am I loved? Am I safe? Do I matter?” – Using business to answer soul questions
11:46 – When the business couldn’t answer anymore
14:44 – The fragile sense of self and the beginning of the breakdown
17:11 – Escaping with fiction, fantasy, and avoidance
19:26 – When you justify the escape by saying “I’m not hurting anyone”
21:33 – Traveling constantly and still feeling empty
23:49 – Using wealth to numb pain and buy happiness
26:24 – The fallout: A marriage crisis and being found out
28:48 – The darkest 72 hours
30:45 – Keynotes, private jets, and suicidal thoughts
33:44 – The people who said “Come home”
37:19 – The return: facing the consequences and fighting to rebuild
41:02 – Why this wasn’t the end, but the beginning
43:19 – Starting a 12-step recovery program
45:27 – First virtual meeting in a hotel robe—true humility
48:17 – Radical grace, empathy, and the gift of being chosen despite the mess
50:11 – A call for listeners to let others in
Key Takeaways:
- Success addiction can look like high performance, but it often hides profound inner unrest.
- Business cannot answer the deepest questions of identity, love, safety, and belonging.
- Escapism—whether through work, reading, shopping, or performance—can quietly become destructive.
- Healing begins with brutal honesty, surrender, and letting people in.
- True freedom starts when you’re willing to be seen and loved at your lowest.
Call to Action:
If today’s episode resonated with you, don’t keep it to yourself.
- Screenshot and share it on Instagram, tag @thekristenboss so we can shout you out.
- Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help others discover this life-changing conversation.
- Visit www.kristenboss.com for coaching programs, resources, and support.
Resources Mentioned:
- Episode: “2:00 AM Business Thoughts” – For deeper insight on Kristen’s launch-driven business model and dopamine cycles.
If you or someone you know needs mental health and/or addiction support:
- National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US): Call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org – Available 24/7 for free, confidential support.
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained crisis counselor. - 12-Step Recovery Programs – While not named specifically, Kristen mentions her journey into a recovery process that saved her life. Research local and virtual resources if you think you need help: https://findrecovery.com/
Next Week:
The journey continues. Tune in for Part 3 as Kristen shares how healing began—what changed, how she restructured her life and identity, and how redemption and freedom started to take root.
“In my pursuit of freedom, I put myself in so much bondage. I was suffering. I was dying. And I didn’t even know it.” – Kristen Boss
Transcript for episode 231″Part 2: The Fall”
Kristen Boss (00:03):
I see you with brand new eyes. You are listening to the Kristen Boss Podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week, I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning. Hey friends. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Woo. This week’s going to be a doozy. In fact, before we get into it, I’m just going to give a little disclosure or a disclaimer in case you are listening with little people or loved ones, particularly little ears. This has some heavy subject matter that includes suicidal ideation, addiction, and other fun things like that.
(01:27):
So this is my trigger warning for you. If those are sensitive topics and you don’t want to hear them to protect your mental health, probably should skip this one. All that to say, man, I just kind of went straight to it with the content and trigger warning, but I feel like it’s a respectful thing to do, not knowing anyone else’s story as they’re listening. Sometimes you just have to be in the right state of mind to hear stories like this. So we’re going to be continuing on with the second part of the story I’m sharing with you. And so last week we kind of talked about the rise, the glory, kind of the birth of the empire, for lack of a better statement. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I almost never get headaches, with the exception of I had a freak health crisis this last summer.
(02:19):
I’ll save that for another episode, but that it involved headaches. I’m fine now. But all that to say, I’m not one that is prone to getting headaches, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have not had a headache, and I don’t even know how long. And today’s the day I’m recording this particular podcast episode, probably the hardest one I’ve ever had to sit down and record. And of course I get a headache. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. In fact, I just kept putting off recording this podcast. I think I just kept waiting being like, okay, it’s going to be Monday, no, Tuesday, no Wednesday, no Thursday. I guess I’m recording Friday, so this is the time. So here we go. Let’s just dive right into it. So last episode, again, I talked about kind of, if you remember, I kind of talked about the parts of me that had showed up in my business, the version of me that was longing for approval for validation, kind of like the high school version of me that was like, Hey, she didn’t get that validation in high school.
(03:23):
And so she was seeking that validation in adulthood and feeling that sense of worthiness of accomplishment and how I looked to my business to answer that, for me to provide that for me. I think what’s really interesting is when we’re in that, I don’t think we really realize that’s happening. I don’t think I would’ve, if somebody had asked me, Hey, are you going to your business for validation? I don’t know if at the time I would have told you yes, I think I would’ve been like, no, I think I would’ve maybe told you for lack of a better term, my logical brain. I would’ve been like, no, no. I know my worth is apart from my business. I know these things. However, maybe subconsciously and how I moved around in the world, it was very different. And so there was the part of me that was looking for the validation, and then there was the part of me that was in that season, I called it the season of invincibility, where you really, I became, in my mind, untouchable in my winning season where there were warning signs that I ignored.
(04:35):
And if you drive a car and you see your dashboard light up, and suddenly you see the check engine light, most of us look at that and we’re like, yikes. That’s a problem. I should probably take that into get looked at, because if I don’t get it looked at, I could blow the engine below a transmission, then I’m without a car. And that becomes a really big problem. What I think is alarming and quite scary is that most business owners, myself included, I had several check engine lights. My dad dashboard had lit up multiple times, and I kept driving. I kept thinking, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s probably nothing serious. I don’t think I recognized the signs until it was too late. So part of this episode is I do want to talk about the warning signs. The warning signs I ignored and not just ignored, but I thought they were normal.
(05:28):
I just was like, this is just the cost of business. This is just how it feels to be a business owner. This is normal. Because I didn’t know differently. Nobody was having those conversations. So in that I had that season of invincibility, I thought that could never happen to me. I watched other people burnout. I watched other people’s life implode or fall apart, and I just thought too bad for them. That would never happen to me. I thought I had things in place to protect me from that. And so what had happened in my season of invincibility, because there was that feedback loop that was happening that was reinforcing my sense of self, my validation, and because of what was happening adrenaline wise, watching a lot of money coming in, I had talked about this I think in my last episode, not last episode, but probably, I don’t know, maybe 15 episodes back.
(06:29):
It was called 2:00 AM Business Thoughts. If you haven’t listened to that episode, it’s a good one. Go listen to it. But I even talk about how when we experience intense highs in business, and for me that was really high infusions of cash. We had a launch based business where twice a year we would do a big launch and the business would have large infusions of cash, and then the business would kind of float in between the infusions of cash for lack of a better term. And so my body, my psyche, so to speak, was used to seeing and experiencing large deposits of cash. And what would happen is in the downtime, I would start to feel a sense of restlessness. I would feel a sense of worry. And it was usually about, I don’t know, maybe 60, 90 days post after a launch, I’d start to feel a sense of restlessness again, a sense of worry, a sense of fear, and start thinking about the next launch.
(07:34):
And here’s the thing is with every launch because of the insane dopamine rush, an adrenaline that my body would get from that is my body went looking for my brain and my body actually went looking, for lack of a better term, another hit, another fix. And it had to be bigger and better than last time. It had to at least be the same size launch as the last time or bigger or those things. And so I became a kind of, for lack of a better term, addicted to winning, addicted to watching a lot of money come in because for me, that meant I’m safe. I am okay. I feel a sense of security. I don’t have to feel afraid. Well, that feeling, the feeling of security was always incredibly temporary and it never lasted long enough. And it was amazing just how my brain was always offering.
(08:34):
Yeah, but it could all go away. But what if it all falls apart? And the fact that you could be so scarce while still resourced, blows my mind when I look back on that. And so here I am, we’re developing this feedback loop where my business is now. I’m enmeshed in my business. I can’t separate me from my, I’m over identifying with my business. I’m getting my validation, my emotional worth from business. If you think about it, it’s becoming my business in many ways was becoming my supplier like a drug dealer. I would go to my business and it would give me what I needed. Oftentimes we move through life asking these three questions. Am I loved, am I safe? Do I matter? Or if it’s not, do I matter? Do I belong? I feel like those are the synonymous. So you can interchangeably use them, but am I loved?
(09:31):
Am I safe? Do I belong? And all three of those questions I had conditioned myself to believe and see and feel and experience that my business answered them. Am I loved. I could go read reviews. I could get dms and be like, yes, the people like me. Am I safe? Money would come in, I could believe, awesome, my resources are secure. The mortgage can get paid or whatever. All these things do I matter, okay? People would praise me or say, were excited to have you. There would be, for lack of a better term, a little bit of fan girl culture. And it would be like, yes, I matter. So it was just like any time my soul would ask, am I loved? I’d go to my business, am I safe? I’d go to my business. Do I matter? Do I belong? Wow, what a scary condition I was creating outside of myself externally in things and things beyond my control or putting my happiness and my identity and my worth in the hands of others.
(10:41):
Not realizing I was doing that. Because to me it looked a lot like serving. I’m like, I’m serving people. I’m helping them. I’m helping them get results. They’re telling me their marriages are better, they’re happier, they’re parenting better. And here I am, I’m a mindset coach, and I’ve spent more than 5,000 hours coaching people and I’m trauma informed, and I had all of the things, all of the knowledge, and it’s just so amazing how we can be the expert in other people’s lives and be so ignorant to our own failings. And now mind you, I wasn’t so ignorant to think I was perfect or infallible. I knew I had mistakes. I just had no idea little fractures that were beneath the surface that had formed in my season of invincibility when I thought I was untouchable. And so usually in the next season after invincibility, there’s, there’s a season of exposure or when things don’t start, how do I put it?
(11:46):
The slot machine. I kind of viewed it. My business was a slot machine and it kept paying me and I kept winning. And eventually that’s not, and it’s so funny, I would coach my students on this being like, Hey, we’re not always meant to be growing. It’s not linear. You’re not always growing 30% year after year. But that was the story of my company. We grew 30, 40% year after year after year after year. All we knew was growth. And even in sustainability, I would just be like, okay, how do we sustain this? How do we sustain this? But really my bigger fear, my bigger anxiety was like, how do I still matter? How do I make sure I’m never forgotten? How do I make sure I’m not left behind? Because that was my greatest fear. My greatest fear was that I was going to be left behind.
(12:33):
I was going to be irrelevant. And if I’m going to be really honest, I was just like, there’s going to be someone else. Someone else is going to take my place and I will be forgotten. I might be the IT girl. Now I will be forgotten tomorrow. So mine as well get while the going’s good, for lack of a better term, welcome to my inner most thoughts. And it’s hard to share this, but I want to give you context because that also is a warning sign. The fact that I was that wrapped up and so afraid and just like I just got to run. I only have so many years of this where it’s almost like a Hollywood actress being like, I only have my beauty and my youth for so long, so might as well cash in big. It’s like, I only have this for so long, so might as well cash in big, like take advantage while I’m here.
(13:28):
Make sure I stay ahead, make sure it was just hard. It was tiring. It was exhausting. It was exhausting. It wasn’t my calendar that exhausted me. My calendar was actually quite light. It was the mental and emotional conditions I had subjected myself to that was killing me slowly. And so when you’re asking the questions, when I’m asking the questions, am I safe? Am I love, do I matter or do I belong? And the business can’t answer that to the degree I expect. So if I’m always winning and I fall short of expectations, I didn’t realize what a fragile, a fragile sense of self I had built so that when I experienced, most people would still say the in my mind, what I had considered a loss. Most people would consider a great win, but I had such a distorted sense of reality. It’s just like, yeah, no, but I didn’t come out on top or no, but it didn’t go to these things.
(14:44):
And so this is when the exposure starts to happen. And so there was a moment where I didn’t win at the level I expected to win, and I wasn’t okay, not because of, I think a business owner that had at the time, a more mature business owner that would be able to separate self from their business would’ve been able to be like, this isn’t a problem. Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s the me Now looking back at what my very fragile self saw as a loss back then, I’d be like, oh, that wasn’t a loss. Here’s just a couple things we could do. The me now would’ve handled it so differently. But the me then broke and she didn’t know what to do with that. And my sense of self started to crumble. It’s like, okay, but hold on. I came here. You’re the business.
(15:44):
You’re my dealer. This is where I come and get adrenaline, dopamine, validation, worthiness, identity. I just want you to think of this toxic relationship I had created between myself and my business, not even necessarily my audience, but my business. And so it’s just like, again, I had dehumanized myself. I became a thing to sell. So this is important that I lay this groundwork because it sets up for what broke. It sets up for the fall. So if the business is meant to answer those things, if I had dehumanized and didn’t see myself as precious and worthy and deserving of love unconditionally and that I had inherent worth, but instead I had to go and earn that and seek it and find it, and my dealer could not supply me anymore, I started to crumble. And when the business could not provide my drug of choice, which would’ve been winning worthiness, attention, validation, I started to first disconnect. My first sign was I disconnected.
(17:11):
I dissociated. I could not, I remember being so numb, I could not feel, I could not access feelings. I had a big ugly cry. And then I remember somehow shutting off and shutting down. I kind of knew I was escaping. I didn’t know how badly I was escaping. And so for me, a vice at that time to escape my pain was reading my Kindle. And Hey, listen, I love reading. It’s a form of, I read today, I read for different reasons today and we’ll talk about that. But I lost myself in my Kindle. And it wasn’t just like, oh, just read a little story here. I’m telling you, nobody was home. Kristen was living in some other, I was living in other people’s realities, getting whatever I wanted from the book there. At that point, it would’ve been numbness or dopamine. I would numb out to my reality and get dopamine from a book, and I would just inhale the next book, inhale, the next book.
(18:28):
I even remember thinking and saying like, wow, I think I’m escaping. I think I’m running away. And then in my mind I was like, what harms a book? It’s like, I’m just running away. I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not hurting anybody. Listen, if you say anything, if you’re doing something and you at the end of it, or you’re justifying it by saying, I’m not hurting anyone, check in with yourself. That’s a huge warning sign, but I’m not hurting anyone. I promise you, you probably are at the very least yourself. And I was hurting people. I was hurting myself first. And so I didn’t even realize that I would read and read and read, and then I’d come up for air and then I’d feel horrible and I’d be like, oh, it feels horrible coming up for air. I’m going to disappear again.
(19:26):
And at the same time, so there’s me disassociating from my reality, my dealer, my business isn’t feeding my addiction at the level I need it to, and I have created this condition where I’m needing that fix and I’m starting to feel restless. I’m like, I need the fix. I don’t know how else to describe it to you, but massive restlessness. And so at the same time, I’m also starting to feel a pull of like, is this still where I’m supposed to be? Is this still the message I’m supposed to have? Is this still the audience I’m meant to serve? That’s just slowly, that’s just kind of hanging out in the background, okay? It’s not a big thought yet, but it is like I’ve always known, okay, I might expand my reach beyond the industry I started with. And it was just starting to niggle in the back of my head, for lack of a better term.
(20:31):
I will also say at this time, this is last year, I’m not going to give exact timelines because some of you, I dunno, I don’t want to give exact timelines. Some of you might be able to piece certain events to certain places in certain times, and I’d rather not. But it was last year and I was gone a lot last year. I think I spoke on more than a dozen stages. I was gone. And that’s just my speaking. That wasn’t like my normal business travel on top of that. I think I was gone maybe two weekends a month last year. Do the math. That is mama and wife being gone a lot. I’m also, I’m still getting, how do I put it? The addict, that part of me is still getting her fix from stages, but she’s not getting it from the business in the measure in the dose she’s used to.
(21:33):
And so I’m noticing this, I’m seeing this, and I’m also like, it’s fine. Once I can just fix these things, I’ll feel better. So instead of me taking control, I’m waiting for my external, literally saying, when my external circumstances get better, then I’ll feel better. Well, now I’m outsourcing my healing to waiting on an external thing to change that I might not have control over. But I had a warped sense of control in my mind. I could control anything. I was just used to solving any problem in my business. This is the reality, and here’s what I’m going to do, and this is the reality I get to create. Until reality wasn’t flushing out the exact way I predicted and I didn’t know what to do with that being like, what I’m used to being able to do A plus B, equal C, why isn’t that happening right now?
(22:29):
And so I will also say in this time, I didn’t realize it until, again, hindsight in this place, not only was I escaping in fiction, I was able to, from an abundance of resources in my life, I was able to buy myself out of most uncomfortable emotions. If we wanted do a quick trip to Disneyland and drop a boatload of cash there, we could if I wanted to, shoes, bags, clothes, vacations, I could buy myself out of almost any unpleasant emotion. And I didn’t realize how, because I was running, I didn’t realize it, but because I was running away from pain and running away from myself, I became this insatiable person that was constantly needing dopamine input or something. It was out of control. And so there I am not, I’m shoving down my emotions. I’m disassociating, I’m escaping hardcore. I’m fantasizing about running away from it.
(23:49):
All of these are huge red flags. These are warning signs. I even said to a friend, I said, Hey, sometimes I secretly fantasize about getting just sick enough to be in a hospital for a week so that people don’t need me. Hello. How’s that? Not a massive, massive warning sign. But again, I’m also just how I was justifying that was like this is the weight that comes with carrying the responsibility of a large business, of making sure our employees are taken care of, that we’re meeting payroll, that were suddenly this business where everything felt fun and light. It felt like this impossible, overwhelming responsibility, not just to myself, but to others. It’s not just my mouth. I have to feed and my husbands and my kids. It’s our team and it’s these people and it’s paying all these bills, and suddenly it’s no longer just like a business that’s, like I said, fun and exciting, enlightened more, and now it’s like this.
(24:56):
It’s a business with expenses and overhead and all of those things. And suddenly now there’s pressure. And I’m like, I don’t know. I was starting to crumble under the weight. And it’s hard for me to say that because an Enneagram three, I see myself as pretty high capacity. Go get ’em, do hard. But under the weight of the responsibility, I was crumbling. And a year before this, I had asked my husband to step in as CEO because he was really good with meetings and leadership, and he could hold the weight really well. Whereas I emotionally was starting to crumble under the weight because at the end of the day, I was like, I just want to coach.
(25:42):
I just want to help people. I just want to make content, make intellectual property. I never woke up and said, I want to be a CEO. Someday. I was drowning. And I was like, I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to get out of this. And also, but also I need this, but this is where I get my worth and all of these things. So this is where it gets a little dark, and this is where you might decide that you hate me forever. I don’t know. I’m just telling my story because maybe somebody needs the breakthrough too. I don’t know.
(26:24):
So to kind of sum up and get you to where this point is like, okay, we have a success addiction that needs adrenaline, dopamine, validation, feedback, worthiness. I had dehumanized myself and myself, which means I cheapened myself and didn’t see myself as someone with value and inherent worth. When you set all of that up, what I ended up doing was seeking the validation and the dopamine and the adrenaline in harmful ways, harmful ways to myself and in catastrophic ways to my marriage. And I was away. I was on a business trip and someone had once said to me, Kristen, the best thing that ever happened to them was that they were found out, was that they were discovered.
(27:24):
And at the time when she said that, I was like, that sounds like the worst thing in the world. And I was found out and I was away from home. And thankfully I think it was a mercy. It came out. I was found out relatively early in my pursuit of seeking validation from not good places. But in that my world fell apart in that. In the breaking of that, in the finding out, in the exposure of that I broke. I will tell you clearly I was not well. I was not well, and I didn’t realize just how unwell I was until quite later I kind of imagine, this is not me, but maybe somebody who has an addiction, like a substance abuse addiction, and maybe in their really dark times they can look back on when they were living in squalor, just thinking of, I just need the next fix.
(28:48):
And the sober version of them would go back and look at the squalor and be like, you were living in filth just for the hit for, oh my gosh, how did you live like that? But someone who’s not of a sober mind, they’re not taking into account their environment. They don’t know how bad it is. So it’s from a very sober mind, I am able to look back and be like, I was really not okay. This was quite destructive. And so I was away and I was delivering keynotes back to back on some of the biggest stages I’d been in.
(29:23):
And I will tell you, those contracts, those keynotes I’m pretty sure saved my life. I brought a tissue box to this podcast, but I’m pretty sure those keynotes saved my life because there was something about knowing that I had signed contracts and that there were people waiting for me to get on a stage that had me waking up the next day still. So when I don’t know how else to say it. When I was found out, I was in a city where I was alone in the height of luxury in a Ritz-Carlton, and my life was falling apart. I had everything I had ever wanted, and there it was all falling apart around me and wondering if I would even be able to go home. And it just so happened that at the time, my husband was at a business retreat with a bunch of friends of ours, a bunch of mutual friends were all in a mastermind together, and one of my good friends was supposed to be there, and she had last minute decided to not go on that trip.
(30:45):
And it just so happens she lived down the street from where I was delivering my keynote at the time. And so in that, when life truly fell apart and I had no one else, I called her and I knew in that moment the reason why she canceled on that retreat last minute because she would need to be there for me. And I’m a person of faith. So I do think that was a God thing. I think I look back on that. I’m like, what are all the things and the circumstances and the people that essentially saved my life? I called her, she came to the hotel, and I had at this point, no pride left. I told her everything. I said, you will hate me. I had never hated myself so much as I did in that moment.
(31:45):
I don’t think I knew self-loathing at that level like I did in that moment. Truly hated myself. And there is nothing better than someone who can love you in that moment, who can get in a Ritz-Carlton bathrobe with you, order room service while you are falling apart and telling them your harshest darkest truths, the thing that shames you most, and that someone can look at you and hold space for you and say, I still love you and you’re still worthy. I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than that. And so I knew. And so at the time too, I had called my friends, I called a handful of friends that were at the event with my husband and called them and I said, okay, I’m not about preserving my image. Here’s the thing. Support my husband. This is what I did. I messed up.
(32:52):
There was no, I didn’t even care about image management in that moment was I was just like, it was the true cry for help. I was like, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve blown it up. I don’t think there’s coming back from this. I don’t expect any love. I don’t expect any grace, but if you can just go and be there for my spouse, and that is when I will say that is those, I was gone for 72 hours and those were the darkest 72 hours of my life. That was where I would, and I was expected at this time while my life was falling apart by my own hand, there is no victim in this. This is a hundred percent responsibility. I did this.
(33:44):
I am living in the reality of two of my biggest keynotes, five star hotels, getting on a private jet to go from one keynote to the next, thinking about taking my life. And the only thing keeping me around was the friend that came to me in the hotel and stayed with me until I fell asleep. And then several friends that I called that stayed with me on the phone all night, or I was just like, can you just be on the phone with me until I fall asleep? And then getting up the next day being like, there are 5,000 people waiting for me to deliver this. I literally would live it. It was fight until the next time I get on stage. And then I would get on stage and my body would give me this insane flood of adrenaline to get on stage. To this day, I think it might’ve been one of the best keynotes I’d ever given at the literally, no one could know how dark it was as soon as I stepped off stage.
(34:47):
And what would happen is as soon as I stepped off stage, all the adrenaline would leave my body and the come down from it was terrifying. And that’s when I had friends that were calling me nonstop. We love you. Hang in there. We love you. And I was just like, I just got to get to the last keynote. And I just wasn’t sure if I could go home, even if I was welcome home. I didn’t know if I could go home for myself. And at least this was all falling apart for me in a different city. Something about going home and realizing and seeing the collateral, the damage of what I had done, call me a coward. Maybe I was where I was like, I can’t go home. I can’t face this. I can’t face this. I can’t face me. I can’t face them. I can’t face this.
(35:42):
And I had a plan where I was going to, as soon as I stepped off stage, I was going to stay and check myself in somewhere because I was truly not okay. And by a great mercy, I was called by many people who loved me, and they said, come home, you are loved. Nothing is beyond repair. Come home and by a miracle and by unconditional love and all of those things, I’m not going to sit here and say, it was easy. It was the hardest thing I ever did was go home, pack my bags. And by the way, I had secured a pretty big deal interview with a very big time business owner, and it was going to be a pretty big deal business wise. And I called up that company, the assistant, and I said, I may never get this opportunity again to get this interview, and I don’t care. There is an emergency at home and I have to leave now. And so I took the next flight out of that city home and I gave up. I could have cared less. I could have cared less what my business, the consequences of that. I could have cared less about my business. I was like, I have to go home and save my family. I have to go home and fix what I’ve done.
(37:19):
And that was the longest plane ride home of my life. And that is when I knew I was going to come home and face my reality and realize, okay, we have some really hard, hard work ahead of us. And my husband knows I was doing this podcast, and this is also partly why I’m holding it close, and this is my story. So it’s not maybe one day he’ll come on and share his part of the story, but it’s not, his part is not mine to tell. This is my part, my responsibility and understanding what it took to finally shake me out of the sick dependence I had built on this business that I had called my empire, and just how badly I had so to speak, because I needed validation that badly because I needed winning because I was so lost in that. And I had essentially created an emotional and mental prison for lack.
(38:42):
I was really unwell, and I knew I was going to come home to work and to repair and to healing, and that I was committed to doing whatever I needed to do in order to not just, there’s fixing the consequences of our actions. Like, oh, there’s cleanup I got to do. And then there’s like, no, no, no, regardless of the consequences of my actions, I have to clean. I have to acknowledge the root cause of this and how I even got here. How did I get here? I thought I would never be here. I looked down on everybody else. I had these thoughts. I thought I was immune. How foolish to think I was above things. What is it like pride comes before the fall? Okay, yeah, I must have had a lot of it because I fell pretty hard. And that whole thing was the wake up call, the wake up call to the fact that my business could not save me anymore.
(39:50):
It could not be that. It could not be my identity. It could not answer all of these questions and that all of the promises I had thought came from entrepreneurship were false promises in the sense of like, yes, is there still freedom? Is there still options and choices? And yes, all of those things are still good. I had just placed too much on those things. In fact, in my pursuit of freedom, I had put myself in so much bondage. I was suffering. I was dying. I was so deeply unhappy. And if you’re like, you’re a liar, Kristen, and you were posting on social media and you didn’t show this person, if I was lying to you, I was lying to myself too. It wasn’t like me waking up every day being like, how can I deceive my audience? It was like I was lying to myself. I was living in the lie until it all fell apart. It all broke. And you can say, I’ve lost all respect for you, Kristen. I’m never going to listen to another episode. You know what? Maybe a version of me 5, 6, 7 years ago might agree with you and be like, yeah, me too.
(41:02):
But this is not the end of the story. In fact, I think this is, we’re right before the best part. I know it sounds horribly cliche, but it’s always darkest before the dawn. But this is the great rescue mission on my identity that I had to be liberated from this thing I had so sickly tied myself up in. And I didn’t know at the time when I came home that it was going to mean letting go of the business. In fact, I did not let go of the business because of this incident. I think it’s important to say this is not why. And I’ll share more of that later of the turning point, and that’ll probably be in the next episode. But when I came home, I was like, I am committed to healing and I’m committed to acknowledge, to do the work, to figure out how did I get here and how can I prevent this, and how can I take radical ownership here and how can I, the very first thing I need to heal is my family, or actually really myself and then my family, and then my marriage, and then those things.
(42:07):
And so I’ll never forget when I talked to my therapist, she said, there’s always, after a major life crisis, there’s typically two responses. And we always have to look for when someone’s actually ready to heal. And when someone’s ready to heal, they are beyond what they’re not doing, image management or crisis management to just make the pain go away. It’s when they truly realize, I have a problem and I need to go get help, and I need to work on what’s actually going on here. Because sometimes people, when there’s a blowup, most people are just trying to do damage control from the blowup or ego control. And so she’s like, we always want to make sure that you are doing the work for the right reasons. And I knew, okay, this is my work. And so one of the things I did was, no, not an alcoholic, no, didn’t have a substance problem, but there was some addictive personality coming.
(43:19):
There was an addiction here. There was a, I am not, okay, I am not. Well, I, and I actually decided to do recovery, do a 12 step program. And I will tell you, when I got home, the healing was hard and it was brutal, and it was ugly. And I’ll never forget, we had a planned family vacation in Hawaii at a five star hotel at the Maui, four seasons glamor everywhere. And I was still sitting in the consequences. I was still sitting in among the debris of the fallout, so to speak. And I just remember sitting here being like, I wonder if anybody else here at the Four Seasons, their life is in shambles and we’re here drinking a Ma Thai. The cognitive dissonance, again, the cognitive dissonance between me being on a private jet, considering taking my own life and me being at the Four Seasons wondering if my marriage is going to survive.
(44:31):
I don’t know how else to describe it to you other than an out of body experience. I’ll never forget the bartender that just kept bringing me my ties while I was sobbing my eyes out at the pool a mess. And it was hard. And that was when, on that trip is when I was challenged like, Kristen, have you considered a 12 step? And I was like, that’s, oh gosh, my first response was not great. I was like, what? I’m not an alcoholic. I don’t have a drug problem. She’s like, you have a problem. And we kind of talked about what might be a good fit for me. And she’s like, you can join virtually anonymous. No one will know you. And so here I am in a hotel, five star hotel. I had left the pool, the kids were at the kids’ club, and I decided to remotely join my first ever online 12 step meeting.
(45:27):
And I had never, I can’t describe to you the amount of fear I was feeling of just like, who’s going to be there? Are they going to judge me? I chose, I think one in a European standard time. I was like, cool, no one in America. And I’m joining on my Zoom, and to my horror, again, it’s anonymous to my horror. I have my first and last name on my Zoom account when I log in. I’m like, oh my God, they’re going to know who I’m, and I’m like, I’m dying. I’m like, God, I’m so afraid. Again, I was still wrapped up in my own chain, but I’m like, I will do, healing is the most important thing I could possibly do right now. And God knew who was going to be on that zoom that day, and it ended up being these three women in the UK in their fifties.
(46:18):
And I was never met with so much love. And I’ll never forget, like, hi, I am Kristen, and I’m sitting here in Hawaii at a family vacation in a five star hotel, and I blew my life up and I think I have a problem. And that was the start. That was the start of my healing. That was the start of coming to the end of myself. That was the start of seeing people like I had never experienced so much unconditional love that I felt was so undeserved, so unmerited as I did in the season when I was in my darkest, when someone could sit with me in a bathrobe and hear and hear my story, and hear me and love me, and hug me and choose me, and that I would experience the love of a husband who would also do that, who would also love me, choose me, forgive me, and all of those things.
(47:15):
I don’t think there’s anything more humbling than that in our life than when somebody can look at all us, look at us and all of our yuck, all of the mess we’ve made and still say, I love you. I see you. You’re worthy. And there’s nothing more beautiful than that. And there’s nothing, I think that has made me more empathetic to people than understanding my own suffering, to look upon the suffering of others with deep compassion and empathy and even understanding, having to do a new understanding of addiction and the sickness that it is, and hearing stories and meeting people and realizing, oh, I see now and doing the work. So I’m actually going to, it’s so funny. It’s so hard for me to want to close the episode here because I want to be able to walk you through the good part, the healing.
(48:17):
But I think this is a great place to stop here. Next week is going to be all about the healing and what’s changed and what’s different and the story now, because right now as I’m leaving it, it’s pretty yucky. There’s a lot of debris. There’s a big mess. It’s dark, and I don’t know, I feel really sick to my stomach. I’m absolutely terrified of ending this recording and handing it off to my team for people to listen to. So I don’t know, maybe if you’re listening to this and you’ve ever had a moment in your life where it was that dark, it was for me, call people. Call someone. I promise you, there are going to be people that say, I had people saying, come home. Come home. We love you. Come home.
(49:16):
I had people unconditionally love me when I felt so I was ashamed. I was filled with self-loathing and to be met with love. So I would say in your darkest moments, it is not weakness to cry for help and to say, I’m not okay. It is the most extraordinary act of courage to say, I’m not okay, and I need help. And then to let people love you and to let people in. I know it’s the scariest thing in the world to let people in, but when you do let people in and you let them see the part of you that you are convinced is so repulsive, that will push them away and they choose you anyway. There’s nothing more beautiful and more powerful than that in the whole wide world. But it does involve the scary, vulnerable thing of letting people in. And maybe that’s what I’m doing right now is I’m letting you in.
(50:11):
I don’t think it’s right or appropriate to give any more of the details, and I realize some of you’re going to fill in the blanks and maybe create a much bigger story in your mind of my blowup than what it is. I think I’m okay with that for right now. It’s just like I compromised myself. I compromised the thing that was most sacred, and yeah, and this is part of the story. This is part of the wake up call, and so maybe you have an opportunity to let someone in your life and see the parts maybe you are ashamed of and not proud of, and experience the beautiful thing of unconditional love and forgiveness, and that you might actually still be worthy despite all the stories you tell yourself. So that’s the episode for this week. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. Thanks for maybe your empathy and your compassion as you’re listening. I’m just going to thank you for it anyways. Maybe you have judgment, I don’t know, but if you have empathy and compassion and kindness and grace, thank you for that. But I’ll be excited to come back and share with you the best part, the healing journey, the turning point next week. We’ll catch you then.
(51:53):
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, as you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenboss.com is starts right here.
