Soul Talk and Psychic Advice

How to deal with Struggle

• Dr. Donna • Season 1 • Episode 23

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What if the belief that you should be “the exception” is the very thing keeping you stuck? We pull back the curtain on the hidden cost of chasing shortcuts—how social media’s obsession with outcomes breeds shame, how spiritual bypassing promises immunity from pain, and why trying to skip the hard part quietly drains your self-trust. Through candid stories of grief, resilience, and real-world wins that didn’t come easy, we map a path that honors both tenderness and truth: life isn’t a punishment system, it’s a growth system, and struggle isn’t a detour—it’s an initiation.

I share what I’ve learned from clients, coaching, and loss, and why being intuitive or spiritual won’t spare you from the human curriculum. Together we explore why specialness often grows from trauma and exhaustion, not arrogance; how avoidance stretches suffering; and how to reframe discomfort as safe stretch rather than danger. You’ll hear gentle, direct steps to build capacity: name fear without shame, reach for community care, break challenges into doses your nervous system can hold, and track your unbroken survival record.

If you’ve felt abandoned by people, God, or the universe, this conversation offers grounded compassion and a practical way forward. You don’t need a loophole to live a full life. You are already seasoned, not fragile. The strength, resilience, and wisdom you seek are here, waiting on the other side of honest effort and supported discomfort. Listen, breathe, and then tell us where you’re ready to stop bargaining with fate and start walking your real path. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of my podcast, Soul Talk and Psychic Advice. You know, the other day I had seen Gary V mention how people just want the good stuff and they don't want the struggle. And I can relate. I have seen many posts. I have spoken to people who they feel bad if they have to struggle. And they don't understand that everybody struggles, that struggles where the character is built. I see people all the time begging mentors online to just, you know, work with me. How come you won't work with me? When really they want that person to just show them the the cheat code. And this is how people get caught up in these financial get rich quick schemes, right? Because we don't want to struggle anymore. And I grew up poor and I know what it means to not want to struggle, but I also knew that struggling was part of the process. And yes, you've had coaches go, well, you're only struggling because you're of your mindset or something. There are people out there who say this stuff. And it causes people to think, if I'm struggling, am I wrong? Am I a bad person? You know, why do I have to go through this? If they believe in God, does God love me? Why is this person having an easier time than me? But what we don't see is that we don't know what it took for someone to accomplish what they accomplished. Remember, all of these big companies, Amazon, Google, all of them started in a garage. They started from nothing, they didn't just magically appear. A lot of these brands that we have now, like Colonel Sanders, I think he started KFC when he was 65. And right before starting that, he had given up and he's like, I just want to end it all. I just want to end my life. And then he started KFC, but he had to go door to door, he had to struggle, he had to find people who would help him sell his chicken. You know, there's all these stories of people who went through a lot to get to where they are, and it's something about when we because social media shows us wealth and success, and we just see outcomes. We don't see what happened before that, we don't see what it took to get there. So this is going to be a difficult topic for some. Some people aren't gonna want to hear this, they're gonna turn this off. But I do all these things because I've learned, I've learned from you guys, I've learned from coaching and doing readings what needs to be said. And my mind has led me to this. My spirit guides have led me to discuss this topic. And a lot of people want to be the exception, they want specialness, they want it to be easier for them. You know, and it's where depression can really set in. I've seen people get depressed believing that. I remember in school there was a student who she would say, Oh, people are gonna fly in to see me. It's just gonna come easy. I'm not like everybody else. And when we graduated and that didn't happen for her, she got severely depressed. So we have to watch what we feed ourselves, and we have to stay connected to reality even when reality is painful. So this belief that we should be the exception can hurt us, that life should go smoothly all the time. If we just do the right things or heal enough or stay positive or manifest correctly, and we see bad things happen to good people all the time, but and there are people who will say, Well, they must have done something to deserve that, and that's so rude. I've had people say stuff like that to me when my son died because they're so busy deflecting, hoping that it doesn't happen to them. So we believe all these things to try to escape pain, right? Life for some people are about avoiding pain at all costs. So a lot of people secretly hold the belief. I don't want to go through the hard part. I want to say I had the lesson, I want the breakthrough, I want the blessing, just without the struggle. Everybody wants a testimony, but they don't want to go through what it took to get that testimony, and sometimes it's a beatdown, it is a spiritual beatdown, and sadly for some people it was a physical beating. Okay? And you, you know, a lot of people who have testimonies and have founded foundations and all this stuff went through a lot of hell prior. They, you know, and sometimes they talk about it, or when they talk about it, it may seem so light, but they went through something. And I'm not saying you have to suffer and bleed to have success, but you have to know it's not gonna be smooth selling. And I've done readings where people are like, I just want my life to be smooth and be easy. And I say, well, that's a fortune telling, and I I'm a life strategist along with me and a psychic, so I'm gonna tell you the truth. And they can get mad, they can hang up. Some people have hung up, you know, they just get turned off or they leave bad feedback. But we have to be honest that life isn't easy, it it isn't designed to be easy all the time. You know the saying you get what a you get rid of one problem and another one replaces it. That's reality, you know, and that can be stressful. It used to drive me crazy because I had so much trauma, I just couldn't handle nothing else. And now I'm just like, okay, what it whatever, I deal with it, I've dealt with everything else. And if you can remind yourself you have survived up to this date, you feel more empowered and know that where it was hard sometimes, it can get easier, but it won't make every bad thing go away. Sometimes bad things just happen. And so I want to be gentle but honest because it's part of the human experience to have struggles, to have some difficulty. And sometimes we all feel, especially when we're tired, overwhelmed, or creamy, grieving, that nothing else can, you know, just can't handle nothing else. After my son died, I got audited by the RS. And that was just awful. But the auditor also had lost a sibling, so we kind of, you know, she was gentle on me because she was grieving, she knew I was grieving. But yeah, you know, that was awful. But and it was something I had to deal with, and I couldn't even really make sure I had my receipts lined up. I had to pay a friend to help me get organized for that IRS. And it's like, why do I have to go through this right now? Because life is life, and sometimes life is unfair. So today I want to help you understand why we want to skip the struggle and what it cost us, and how embracing the necessary parts of our journey actually creates peace, resilience, and empowerment that we crave. A lot of things that I know is because of what I've gone through. Yes, I do a lot of studying, but it's what I've gone through, and the experiences with great clients and difficult clients, and you know, clients who cuss me out, all of that helped me get here. And if you think about what you know, you know it because of the good and the bad that got you there. So this is a a kind of a gentle conversation, but it's direct. No shame, no judgment, just truth. You know, it it serves no purpose to judge anybody. Um let's start with why we hope that we are the exception. We truly do. Let's start with honesty. Most people secretly hope that they will be the one who doesn't have to go through the fire. The one who meets their soulmate without heartbreak, the one who grows successfully without failing, the one who heals without facing their emotions. There's a lot of bypassing out there. The one who becomes wise without being brought to their knees. Yep. Why? Because struggle scares us. It does. We because we all know how bad it's gonna get. Because pain overwhelms us, it does. Because deep inside many of us still carry the childhood belief, if I try hard enough, if I'm good enough, then life will spare me, right? I grew up very religious, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, you know, just be good and God will bless you. You know, if you're not good, God will punish you. I grew up like that. This is especially common in people who were parentified, who became the strong one, who were told that they were mature for their age, are special, are stronger than most. Yeah. You learn to be responsible for everything, so you assume the universe will be responsible for protecting you. And a lot of times the strong ones were not feeling supported by the universe. But being special isn't immunity from being human. But being special isn't immunity from being human. I just want to say that again. Being spiritual doesn't exempt you from life. And I remember when I first got into spirituality, a lot of people were hoping that being spiritual was gonna free them without going through the struggle. Having a big heart doesn't give you a backstage pass around pain. It doesn't. Being intuitive doesn't eliminate the lessons your can't soul came to learn. It doesn't, trust me. I even knew that my sister's dog was gonna bite me. I even told her a year before. And I couldn't even stop it. So a lot and a lot of times people think if they're psychic, they can prevent stuff, they could control life. You can't, trust me. I know. And I read for other psychics and I get readings from other psychics. We're not in control. Nobody's really in control of everything, just some things. Very important to remember. So, you know, you have to understand that life is just life, it doesn't exempt you from anything. And sometimes the deeper truth is that being intuitive won't eliminate lessons, and a lot of people want to do that, right? And we have to understand we want to skip the struggle because we don't believe we'll survive it. Haven't you been through something that you just didn't think that you would get through that you would survive? You thought it was gonna break you and bring you to your knees. I have more than once. And yeah, and you know, that's why I'm so sensitive when people say you can't, you know, get through grief or you can't heal certain things. It's like I'm a survivor and I've seen other people do it. I'm a testimony, and you know, you guys have been testimonies already to yourself and to other people because you've been through something that you think you wouldn't have survived, and also we don't trust our capacity, our inner strength, our resilience. We underestimate how well we will actually handle the hard things. But you know, people handle hard things well, and whenever I talk to someone going through something tough, I try to remind them of their strength. I tell them you know it's hard and you have a right to feel your pain, but I want you to know you're handling this the best you can and you're doing quite well. I want to speak to their soul. So we hope quietly, desperately, that life will just go easy on us. We do. But here's the gentle truth. You're not sent here to void to avoid your life. You were sent here to live it. And sometimes it's on the edge. Trust me, I know. The danger of trying to skip the hard part. Let's discuss that. When we try to bypass the struggle, three things happen. We stay stuck longer, we really do. Avoiding the work doesn't save us, it stretches to suffering out. What we resist doesn't go away. It's simply wait. Sometimes it gets bigger, right? The universe just makes it bigger, the lesson, much bigger. Um number two, we lose self-trust when we try to bypass the struggle. Every time you avoid something you are capable of handling, a part of your heart hears, maybe I shouldn't try. Maybe you're not strong enough. So we don't trust ourselves, we don't trust our strength. Avoidance quietly erodes your relationship with yourself. Number three, we never experience our own power. How are you supposed to know you're powerful? Sometimes it takes a butt kicking, a spiritual butt kicking. There's a version of you on the other side of the struggle, a version that only emerges through the doing, the healing, the facing, the trying. That's why when you see wise people, they've been through something. They didn't wake up wise, they've been through it. When we bypass, we rob ourselves of meeting that version of ourselves. And sometimes we go, hey, I could have dealt without that, you know, to get here, but no, somehow we just had to go through it. You know, we don't get to see our own strength. We don't get to witness that we can survive, we don't get to discover that we can rebuild. Skipping the struggle is a fantasy that keeps us small. And here's the direct truth. The one we often don't want to hear. Every person you admire has walked through something. Every person you admire has walked through something. No one is exempt. No one gets to skip the human curriculum. Human curriculum is crappy at times, but we all gotta do it. We're here. Specialness is a trauma response. It really is wanting to be special because it's not out of narcissism, cockiness, or arrogance. It really isn't. But when we hear people wanting to be special, we knock them and we judge them when we, you know, they get called narcissists, they get called arrogant. But it's bigger than that. So sometimes the belief, maybe I'm different, maybe I won't have to struggle like others, comes from trauma. It's the inner child saying, Maybe this time it won't hurt. Maybe I finally be safe. Maybe life will treat me gently because it hasn't before. People just want to break. This isn't arrogance, this isn't longing, and no, no, no, it's not narcissism. Most overused term. This is a craving for softness, for mercy, for relief. And I want to honor that. Okay. You you want to honor this about yourself. You just want softness. You're not wrong for wanting ease. You're not wrong for being tired. You're not wrong for wanting the universe to protect you or wanting God to protect you. Nothing wrong with that. But healing isn't about escaping life, it's about becoming strong enough to live it fully without abandoning yourself. Sometimes it's hard to show up, but it's all about showing up. Your spiritual growth isn't meant to lift you above the human experience, and a lot of people hold that in a spiritual community. It's meant to support you through the human experience. That's what spiritual growth is. Spirituality is. It doesn't make you elevated, evolved more, or you know, special or better than other people or unique. No, it's just to help you, you know, through the human experience. So life doesn't punish. It really doesn't. And it breaks my heart when I hear people say they feel punished. I just want to hug them tighter. The fixer in me wants to hug them tighter and say no. And you know, I really try to work with people when they feel that way because a lot of beautiful people feel punished. And I hate to say life just teaches you, because I could just seem like, well, Daniel, that lesson, but I think it teaches us a lot of things. You you know, I've learned so much about grief, and I I learned I always knew my son was special to me, but boy did I learn it, boy did he raise me. You know, and sure I could have dealt done with all out all that, right? And just had him, but you do learn stuff even through awful things. So when something hard happens, many people think, What did I do wrong? Most of the time nothing. 99% of the time nothing. Why me? I hate when people say why me because there's no good answer. A lot of times I just say the shit's unfair. You know, sometimes I'm just blunt like that. Why is this happening again? Am I attracting this? You know, let me say this clearly. You're not being punished. You're not being punished, you're not being punished. You're not cursed, honey. No, you're not singled out for suffering. No, sometimes life just is crappy, and there's a lot of good moments, but there are some hard moments. Life isn't a punishment system, it's a growth system, and that feels kind of yucky too to say it that way, but that's what it is. It's a growth system. Struggle isn't moral failure, it's not any type of failure, it's part of the human condition. We don't struggle because we are broken, we struggle because we are alive. And the more spiritually awake someone becomes, the more they realize struggle isn't a detour, it's initiation. It's a thing that cracks us open to compassion, to wisdom, to intuition, purpose, and death. Have you guys ever met somebody who's just gone through hell and they're so nice and kind, you think, is this genuine? It really is. Because they've heal their healing, but they filled it with compassion. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood for a while, Pico and Robinson in LA. And I didn't know what the numbers were on the people's forum. And I was a kid, I was seven, and I didn't know. But these people were so nice, so kind, and I remember being hungry, and one of them had, you know, a a shop and gave me a free hot dog. And, you know, they weren't wealthy looking back, but they're so generous and and they will smile and it's like, how can you have gone through what you've gone through? A Holocaust and be so kind. You know, we've met all kinds of people who have gone through hell and they're so kind because they've been through And they don't want to inflict that on anybody else. So, you know, this journey of the struggle is a thing that reveals who we truly are. We don't grow because life is easy. You grow because you walk through what you once believed you shouldn't. So, how to stop trying to skip the struggle? Here's some gentle direct steps. Acknowledge your fear without shame. It's okay to be afraid. Sometimes life is scary. We don't know what's going to happen next. Say to yourself, I'm afraid this will be too much for me. That's honesty. And healing begins there. Reach out for help. Reach out for support, therapy, your pastor, whoever, your confidant, your coach, whoever. Reach out. Don't try to figure it out on your own if it's too tough. Remind yourself of your history. You have survived every hard day you ever had. Your track record is literally a hundred percent. It literally is, no matter what you've gone through. You're not fragile. You're seasoned. You are seasoned. You're not fragile. You may have felt fragile at times, but you're not broken. You are seasoned. Step three, break the struggle into pieces. No one heals all at once. No one changes all at once. No one faces everything in one day. Your nervous system works in small doses, and that is enough. It really is. Step four. Be willing to feel uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable can be uncomfortable, right? It can feel like danger. It can feel very vulnerable. Like what's going to happen? Am I safe? Can I protect myself? But be willing to feel uncomfortable. Because discomfort is not danger. Discomfort is your soul stretching. It really is. Let it stretch. Breathe into the discomfort. And let people support you. You do not have to be the strong one alone. You do not have to carry the weight by yourself. Healing happens in community, in connection, and safety. Reach out. Reach out for support. Don't do it alone. Shift your definition of struggle. What if struggle isn't the enemy? What if struggle is a doorway? What if struggle is a teacher? What is a struggle? What if the struggle is making of you? What is it making you become? What is it forcing you to become? When you stop trying to skip the struggle, you finally step into your real life. The one that is meant for you. Not the one that you're trying to avoid. Remember that. You know, sadly we all got to go through it. Before we end, I want to leave you with this. You do not need to be special to survive what you're going through. You just need to be human. We're all human and flawed. Your strength is already here. It's already here. Your resilience is already here. Your wisdom is already here. You don't need a loophole. You don't need an exemption. You don't need to bypass the difficult chapters. You just need to trust that you can walk through them. You can walk through the difficult chapters that you know are hurtful, where you feel like you're alone, where you feel abandoned, you can walk through it. And you can come out wiser, softer, stronger, and more yourself than ever before. The struggle is not here to break you, it's here to reveal you. So I want to leave you with this. For any of you out there who feel abandoned by people who you thought would care for you, abandoned by God, abandoned by the universe. It can feel very raw and it could feel very lonely. But sometimes there's a moment where we are alone, where we feel alone, because the support around us is there, but they're just holding space. The universe is holding space, God's holding space. The people you love, sometimes they're being pulled back so that you can find your strength, your wisdom. And so in that moment where you're feeling alone, you're actually becoming the most powerful, the strongest. You know, I remember those moments of just feeling alone and abandoned. That's where you're really finding out that you are a baddie, that you can get through this. And so, you know, for someone who's been through a lot, and this could be emotional for me too, because I love to encourage people. And I can say you've got this. And if you need help, reach out, reach out to to services, reach out. Nobody has to do anything alone. You don't. But if you're having a moment of loneliness, find your strength in it, and part of finding your strength is reaching out for support. So I want to thank you for listening and know that you're always being supported no matter how you feel. It's very important to do that. You know? You don't need a loophole, you don't need to be an exception, you don't need to bypass the difficult chapters. Just need to know that you can walk through them. It isn't here to break you. So thank you for listening and have a great day.