Even Tacos Fall Apart

Anyone curious about the science behind trauma, the truth about what happens after we die, or why the hell they still can't seem to calm down no matter what they try will find something in this conversation worth holding onto.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/tina-erwinWhat happens when a retired Navy commander who spent 20 years working with the US submarine force also happens to help ghosts cross over? You get one of the most unexpected and genuinely fascinating conversations we have had on Even Tacos Fall Apart.Tina Erwin joined us for Mental Health Monday, and she did not disappoint. Tina has written nine books on metaphysics, developed the Crossing Over Prayer, and spent decades helping trauma survivors understand something most doctors never look at: what adrenaline actually does to the body after trauma, and how to get it out.Adrenaline doesn't just flush out of your system after a traumatic event. It can stay in the body for years, quietly poisoning everything. Tina calls it adrenaline poisoning, and she explains how it connects to a condition called pyroluria, a deficiency in vitamin B6 and other key nutrients that can trigger rage, anxiety and in some cases murderous ideation in people who have no idea why they feel the way they do. She has worked with veterans, abuse survivors and teenagers who had been failed by every conventional approach, and she has seen people transform once the nutritional and biological piece gets addressed alongside everything else.Then there is the ghost work, and yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. Tina helps earthbound spirits cross over, and she teaches regular people to do it themselves through the Crossing Over Prayer, which is free on her website. She walks through why some spirits do not cross, what it feels like to live in a haunted space without knowing it, and why she believes you should not have to hire a psychic to help your own loved ones move on. She also shares a true crime story involving remote viewing, a storage unit in Virginia and a missing woman who had been trafficked for over a year. It is the kind of story that is hard to shake.What ties all of it together is Tina's core belief that science and spirituality are not in conflict. They are, as she puts it, the same thing. Whether she is talking about quantum entanglement, nutritional deficiencies or helping a guilt-ridden ghost finally accept that they are loved, she is always pointing toward the same goal: helping people stop surviving and start actually living.

If you've ever felt like you were drowning while everyone around you seemed just fine, this one's for you.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/noah-mayNoah May has lived with depression since he was 13 years old. He was bullied relentlessly, watched his grandmother disappear into Alzheimer's, grew up without a father, and by the time anxiety hit at 18, the physical toll was so severe he lost 20 pounds, could barely open a bottle and his legs shook walking down stairs. This is his story, and he's not holding anything back.In this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, Noah opens up about what those early years actually looked like, not the cleaned-up version, but the real one. The suicidal thoughts at 13. The porn addiction he developed as a coping mechanism. The friends who looked right through him. The teachers who didn't do much better. And the moment his mom caught him, sat him down and instead of just punishing him, asked what was really going on. That one conversation changed everything.Noah talks about being diagnosed with clinical depression at 14 and anxiety at 18, what it felt like to finally have names for what his body had been doing, and why he waited years to try therapy because he genuinely believed it was only for people who were "crazy." He also gets into the physical reality of an anxiety disorder that most people don't talk about, the kind that doesn't show up as a panic attack but as months of unexplained nausea, dramatic weight loss and a doctor who had no idea what was wrong.The conversation also goes into what his healing looks like in practice. For Noah, it's been podcasting, writing poetry, finding the right medication and building a support system from scratch after leaving behind a high school class that never really saw him. He's candid about the fact that most of those people still haven't reached out, and that he's made peace with it.Noah is a journalism graduate from Auburn University and the host of the Lethal Venom podcast. He's turned his own pain into a platform for other people who are still in the thick of it, and his whole thing is simple: you shouldn't have to feel alone in this.If you've ever felt invisible, been told to just get over it or wondered whether things actually get better, this episode is for you.Keywords: depression, anxiety, mental health, depression and anxiety, overcoming depression, mental health podcast, living with depression, teen depression, clinical depression, mental health awareness, depression recovery, anxiety symptoms, mental health journey, Even Tacos Fall Apart, Noah May

If you've ever been called resilient when what you really needed was a hand, this episode is for you.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/malisa-hepnerMalisa Hepner has lived a lot of life. Foster care, addiction in her family, incarceration, profound loss... and she went beyond surviving to build a career helping others navigate the same kind of pain. As a therapist, speaker and podcast host, Malisa brings both clinical expertise and raw personal honesty to everything she does, including this conversation on Even Tacos Fall Apart.We dig into what resilience actually means, because it's not about bouncing back fast or being "God's strongest soldier." Malisa talks candidly about how she used to resent that word, how it felt like people watching her drown while cheering her on. Her reframe of the word is powerful: resilience is the ability to show up authentically, find meaning in the mess and know that nothing outside of you changes your worth as a person.Self-compassion gets a real, practical look here too. Malisa walks through how it started for her as a single decision... a decree, really... to stop tearing herself apart and start treating herself like someone worth caring for. She talks about the body-based tools she uses when grief or anxiety gets loud, how to get out of your head and into your heart in about 90 seconds, and why your brain is genuinely lying to you most of the time it feels like catastrophe.One of the most powerful threads in this episode is vulnerability. Malisa was told by a trusted friend that she was emotionally unavailable, and she was furious! ...until she realized the friend was right. She had been retelling her trauma like it happened to someone else, using humor as armor, and calling it healing. That moment became the foundation of her podcast, Emotionally Unavailable, and a whole new chapter in her own growth.This episode was recorded just one month after Malisa lost her son to an accidental overdose. She shows up anyway, in real time, and shares what grief is teaching her about trust, connection and asking for help. It is one of the most honest conversations we have had on this show.If you are navigating trauma recovery, complex PTSD, perfectionism or just trying to figure out how to be a little kinder to yourself, this conversation could help.

When Joy, known online as Compassion & Consoles, joined MommaFoxFire on Even Tacos Fall Apart, the conversation went deep fast. Joy is a licensed professional counselor, a doctoral candidate focusing on anxiety and trauma, and someone who uses her own lived experience with mental health to inform the work she does. This episode covers trauma reactions, gaming as a coping tool, how schools fail kids with unrecognized trauma, and why the DSM does not have all the answers.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/joy-compassion-consolesJoy pushes back on the narrow definition in the DSM, which limits trauma to things like threats to life or sexual assault. Her take is more practical: if an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, not just in the moment but over time, that counts. Chronic, ongoing situations where you have no escape and no control can be just as damaging as a single acute event, even if a textbook does not say so. Invalidating someone's trauma because it does not fit a checklist is its own kind of harm.Social support is the single biggest protective factor after trauma. Studies consistently show that having even one safe, supportive adult can make an enormous difference, especially for kids. Other risk factors include pre-existing anxiety, avoidant coping patterns, genetics and family history. The less control someone feels they have in the aftermath, the harder recovery tends to be.This is where Joy gets fired up, and rightfully so. Children who have experienced trauma often cannot put what they are feeling into words, so it comes out as behavior instead: running out of classrooms, ripping up work, shutting down completely. That behavior gets labeled as defiance, ADHD or ODD, and the actual cause never gets addressed. Joy is direct about it: she has never worked with a kid diagnosed with conduct disorder whose behavior was not better explained by trauma or anxiety. Slapping a behavioral diagnosis on top of a trauma reaction does not help the child, it just gives adults someone to blame.Joy is a single-player, narrative-driven gamer. She talks about how games like Detroit: Become Human and the Uncharted series offer something genuinely valuable: story, agency and a chance to emotionally invest in characters in a low-stakes environment. She also gets honest about anxiety spiking during combat sequences and having to walk away from games entirely, which opens up a real conversation about how gaming intersects with stress responses.Drawing from both research and personal experience with an eating disorder in her late teens, Joy explains why thought suppression backfires. The more you try to block a thought, the louder it gets. Mindfulness-based approaches, which focus on noticing and accepting thoughts rather than fighting them, are a better fit for trauma recovery.The episode closes with a look at mental health needs in the workplace. Reasonable accommodations are legally required, but many people do not feel safe enough to ask for them, and many employers do not know how to respond when they do. A pool table in the break room is not employee support.Find Joy on Twitter at Compassion & Consoles and follow Even Tacos Fall Apart for more conversations about mental health, gaming and the messy, real stuff in between.

If you've spent most of your life feeling like you're performing a version of yourself that's just slightly off from who you actually are, this episode is for you.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/angie-dixonAngie Dixon is an author, artist and creator of the Leonardo Trait, a framework for understanding the kind of brain that runs on curiosity, cycles through a hundred projects at once and absolutely refuses to pick a lane. She's also late diagnosed autistic, and she spent decades masking before a severe back injury seven years ago forced everything to stop, and forced her to finally start living as herself.We talked about what unmasking actually looks like, and it's not the dramatic transformation the word might suggest. For Angie, it started with novelty t-shirts. She began wearing them to physical therapy because those were the ones without paint on them. That small comfort became her whole wardrobe. Unmasking, she says, tends to be gradual, personal and a lot less cinematic than people expect.One of the most clarifying things Angie said in this conversation is that neurodivergent people are not broken neurotypicals. We're not a defective version of something else. We're just different, and that difference is worth protecting rather than hiding.We also got into the Leonardo Trait itself, which Angie describes as profound creativity in a chaotic world. If you think in spirals instead of straight lines, have 37 browser tabs open in your brain at any given moment and feel like the self-help books everyone else loves were written for someone who is simply not you, you might be a Leonardo.Angie was diagnosed with autism at 55 after nearly 20 years of writing a book she thought was about creativity, only to realize it was actually about neurodivergence the whole time. That realization sent her back to the drawing board, and the result is a manifesto about being who you actually are rather than the acceptable version of yourself you've been performing.We talked about burnout warning signs, what to do when rest isn't enough, how to stop treating unfinished projects like personal failures and how to figure out the difference between professional adaptation and genuine self-erasure. We also talked about her AI assistant Ziggy, who once told her that a plain t-shirt would make her look like she was about to hold a hostage.If you're questioning whether you've been masking your whole life, Angie's take is simple: if you're asking, you probably already know the answer.Find Angie and her Unmasked summit at her website, and check out the summit itself, which was designed specifically to be the least overwhelming format possible: email only, no endless video calls.Even Tacos Fall Apart is a Mental Health Monday podcast. New episodes weekly.