[LISA LEWIS] The Am I Ok? Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. Welcome to today’s episode of the Am I Ok? Podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. Thank you so much for tuning in. I would like to remind my listeners that I offer a free eight-week email course titled Highly Sensitive People. My email course provides weekly tools that help you feel more whole in a world isn’t exactly made for us and I show you how your sensitivity can be seen as a unique gift and how many others are just like you. To find out more about my email course, please go to my website, amiokpodcast.com. Today my guest is Leo Flowers. Leo is a Chicago native, corporate comedian, former1Division one college athlete with a master in counseling psychology. Leo combines his education and experience into his suicide prevention podcast called Before You Kill Yourself, which has over 100,000 downloads. It’s insightful, heartwarming and intensely funny. For the podcast he interviews other mental health experts, comedians and bestselling book authors as they destigmatize mental health and teach you how to thrive. Leo life-coaches individuals who are thriving, prosperous, and successful in their career and finances, but suffer in their relationships. Leo works with those who are hungry for connection, acceptance, and affection. Welcome to the show, Leo. [LEO FLOWERS] Thank you for having me. Wow, I’ve never had my bio read out loud to me. I sound very accomplished. [LISA] Yes, it sounds like you are well accomplished and I have so many questions I want to ask about it, just so interesting, your bio there. But before we do that, I like to ask all my guests, if you consider yourself a highly sensitive person and if so, or if not, if you would share a story about that? [LEO] It’s an interesting question because I was just having a conversation with my girlfriend, Michelle about being lefthanded and how lefthanded people, especially men tend to occupy both sides of the brain both the emotional and the logical. I think that as a result, it lends us to being a bit more sensitive. Barack Obama is lefthanded and is interesting because when I listen to interviews with him and his wife she’s often mentioned how she has to pull back some of her words when talking to him because of his sensitivity. I definitely consider myself sensitive. I mean, on top of that, I’m also a Pisces. Pisces, we’re known to be very emotional and sensitive, but the beauty of that, the being sensitive is that it makes us intuitive. It makes us aware of what other people are feeling, what the environment is like in terms of energy and it also makes us capable of reading the room and navigating different social waters. Some people only do well in a certain type of social environment where I feel like if you are, one sensitive and then two have been exposed to different environments, you learn how to adapt and develop a chameleon-like ability. I think that serves me well as a comedian because I’ve traveled the world, I’ve done comedy on five continents from Pakistan to Japan, to Canada and in Europe. Then I have a podcast which as you mentioned over downloads and stats and listeners from all over the world tuning in. So I think that being sensitive is just the piece of who we are, and it’s not the totality of who we are. So I would even want to rephrase it to say a part of me is sensitive, but there’s so many other parts to us and it’s the whole that determines how we move throughout the world. [LISA] Yes. I just loved how you describe highly sensitive and you described it like to a T there and going back to Barack Obama and highly sensitive people make great leaders as we see from his presidency. My oldest son is left handed and I consider him sensitive. I don’t know if you’d agree with me or not, but I could relate to what you were saying, just about being left-handed and having that as a man being emotional and mental to on both sides and playing both spectrums. [LEO] Well, yes. When you’re young, I’m in my forties now, and in my twenties, or as a teenager we call sensitive, it was an insult. It was a challenge or set in some type of mocking way or hurt your feelings. Now that I’ve become older and I understand the strengths that come with that and that as I referred to earlier, it doesn’t define me. It’s a part of me. I’m more empowered by that because it is through labels to some extent that help us to better figure out where we are most effective in life and what we want to do and what our purpose is. So whether it’s through coaching or comedy, or even with my family, it’s many different personalities in my family. It’s made me aware of when to engage in the situation and then when to step away from a situation and when do I need to be social and when do I need some solitude? So once you recognize what your strengths and weaknesses are that’s where the, when we talk about confidence, that’s where that comes from. It comes from knowing who you are and time, and experience and insight can give you that. [LISA] I love that. Oh, I love that message. Thank you for that. So I just want to back to the name of your podcast Before You Kill Yourself. How did you come with that name? [LEO] Wow, that’s a very powerful story. It was two parts. First part is there was a running back with Sean Salam who ended his life. He was a Heisman trophy winner coming out of college, which is the trophy that is the best trophy you could receive as a football player. Then he went on to play for the Chicago Bears and at the age of 33 ended his life. I ran into a friend of his at the gym and I asked him, I said, “Why? He seemed to be a guy who had it all.” He said, “He just didn’t know how to take care of himself.” That stuck with me, because if this individual with who had made millions of dollars, had access to tons of resources, had a family, was loved in so many ways by the public couldn’t figure out how to take care of himself; was educated, had a college degree, how many other people out there are struggling? But the title really came into fruition because I was on a plane coming back from doing shows in Pakistan with a few other comedians. I was talking about doing a suicide prevention podcast because of this story and this lady sitting a few rows ahead of us heard me talking about it and she jumps up, and this a plane and turns around and says, “Be careful what you’re talking about. You don’t know who could be listening.” She said, “Years ago I was in the bathroom with a gun to head and almost pulled the trigger and the thing that stopped me was I heard my cry. I was like, oh, I got go fee the baby.” That baby saved her life. So when I talk about, Before You Kill Yourself, it’s the idea of, hey, did you feed the baby? Did you do the laundry? Did you return your mom’s phone call? Did you wash your car, these little things that seem little, but in so many ways can save your life. Albert said, “Should I kill myself or should I get coffee?” That’s how whimsical sometimes ending our life can be, that that window can be so small that there’s so many instances of people who were going to end their lives and then a friend called, or somebody said hi, or they got a hug from a stranger. It lets us know that it’s like miniature golf, the opening and closing of that. So Before You Kill Yourself, know window of that feeling, of that wanting to it is going to close. What you do in that space is going to have a lasting impact. [LISA] Did you start the podcast first or were you already majored in counseling and psychology? How did that come to fruition? [LEO] So I’ve have always struggled with depression and anxiety and panic attacks. In looking back, as I started to learn more about suicidality, I realized I also had the precursors for suicidal ideation in that when we look at one of the reasons why people might end their lives, it’s feeling like a burden, feeling like a burden to others, to the family members, to friends, to work, to themselves, to the community, feeling like they’re too much, feeling they’re holding others back. From a young age, I remember thinking that I was a burden to my mom and that if she didn’t have me, she would have so much more money and so much freedom to go live this wonderful life. But instead she has to work two jobs to take care of my sister and I. As I became older and really not aware of that feeling, it deepened it. That grew deepened in me. I’ve called the suicide hotline twice myself and I don’t regret those phone calls. They are so well trained. I felt so seen, heard and understood and to know that that is a resource that’s available, that there’s a safety net there, and that it’s free and 24 hours and there are international hotlines. It’s a powerful thing and I tell people and encourage people, I encourage listeners don’t wait until the pain is so great that the weight of a phone is a thousand times. Call when you’re in your happiest moment, when you’re feeling good and elated and joyous, because it doesn’t last forever. The triumphs and the tragedies, they ebb and flow. The tragedy is that people wait until they feel like they’re on fire, like the building is on fire and they have to jump out the window and then go, oh, well, I should make the phone call. Well, I tell you what, you’re not going to want to make the phone call in that moment. All you are going to think about is jumping. So to call when there aren’t any flames, when the AC is going, when people are high-fiving you, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and you think this moment is going to forever, that’s when you call. You say yesterday did not feel like today. Today I’m in a good space, but yesterday scared me. I want to, I don’t know if I can survive another one of those days, because I’m sure it’s going to come back. I tell you what, you will have a very empowering, very safe and beautiful conversation, because then when that pain comes back, it’ll be easier to pick up the phone. It won’t feel so heavy. It won’t feel so daunting and you won’t have the anxiety of will this work. I’m so encouraged to know that I called and I’m like, okay, I have a safety net. If my family doesn’t pick up, if my friends don’t pick up, if somebody makes a negative comment on my social media or I get a disparaging look from someone I know that there’s a number I can call. The beauty is my girlfriend works for the suicide prevention hotline and people call some people call just to have somebody else on the other end of the line. So you don’t have to talk. You can just call to have someone there who can sit with you in the pain and the darkness and the despair. I don’t know if you did that in middle school. That was the joy of middle school and high school. You could just call a friend and you’d be on phone for hours. You might speak three words between. Maybe you’re both watching a show together, doing dishes and they’re doing something else but as we get older, for some reason our phone calls get shorter and shorter. Everybody’s busier and busier. So we lose those connections. [LISA] We sure do. Just hearing you talk about that and I think maybe that’s one of the things, maybe the good things during the pandemic is that people were reaching out more often to connect whether that was by phone or just jumping on Zoom together and just leaving their Zoom rooms open, maybe not conversing all the time, but just knowing that, oh, there’s somebody there. We can still talk to each other. We could still cook or just hang out together, even if we’re not in the same room or same space. [LEO] We love to people-watch. And it’s something that isn’t talked about as much. On Sundays I love to go to the farmer’s market and usually it’s to get fish and vegetables and fruits and those sorts of things and see what’s in season. But what I really love is to people-watch. When you talk about leading the Zoom open we’re voyeuristic and just, we want to know that everybody isn’t living this awesome Instagram life 24/7. It’s like, oh, you’re doing dishes and watching TV and some of the mundane things and cleaning things. Al right, we’re in this together. There’s something beautiful about that. There’s something also beautiful about watching people come together in a peaceful, collaborative and communicative way, so much of news, television. I’m looking at all these shows on Netflix and I saw all these reality dating shows or serial killer documentaries, all these things that can scare us from life and make us think the worst of each other. It’s really getting out your house, watching kids play in a park, watching families reunite at an airport and just watching people holding hands at a farmer’s market. All these different ways, or even just hanging out at a coffee shop, all these wonderful ways of being with people without having to maybe engage with people. Because I know for highly sensitive, it can be a bit daunting to be in communication for too long whereas maybe a more extroverted type of individuals would love to talk all day to a number of people where if you’re more introverted or feeling a bit more sensitive you’re either going to bask in solitude or just put yourself in observation mode. [LISA] It’s interesting you were talking about people-watching and I can remember just from a young age just wanting to observe families and how different families interact with each other. I guess for me, I was always looking to see how successful or healthy families interact with each other. Because the family I grew up with, I had loving parents, I’d say a good family, but I don’t think we were all connected emotionally. So I think I just grew up being highly sensitive and just wanting to see how other people interact and how they communicate emotionally. [LEO] Well, that’s the beauty of books and reading in that we can choose the type of family and people that we want to hang out with for eight hours or 10 hours, or if you’re reading a Russian novel, 20 hours. And you can get a glimpse into how people feel, why people are making the decisions that they’re making, insights into your own behaviors, into your family’s relationships. It allows us greater empathy for others and also compassion for ourselves because going back to this, a lot of it is painted of how we should be, of what perfection is. We don’t hear enough about what is, and in that we can make mistakes, have failures in our life, have struggles, have challenges, have obstacles, and just chalk it up to a part of the human experience. There are just so many books out there with families that we can be a part of and understand more of. I think that’s why book clubs are so great because you get to read about these different people and their experiences, and then you have other people to share your ideas with. So yes, there’s just so many ways to get ideas of what a healthy family looks like whether it’s through reading or even therapy. Therapy is a big one. Because we realize that sometimes our perspective of things, the way we experience something was more through our beliefs than through what was fact. Also we learn to take responsibility for our lives and our experiences and then use that to move forward to alchemize that instead of being a victim of it. [LISA] I just love that message. You have so many great messages, Leo. I could talk to you all day about this. I’m curious, do you use comedy when you work with people, when you’re doing life coaching, do you use humor and comedy? [LEO] When I’m coaching, I’m listening. That’s most of it. I’m listening to see what their emotional experiences are and we’re moving along from there. So I’m not coming in with the intention of using comedy or being serious. I’m coming in with the intention of being present. So sometimes there might be levity in our coaching session, and sometimes there might be a lot of weight to it. Typically, if the session has been one that is felt heavy and we’ve gone really deep, I always make it a point to leave every session with some type of hope. The question I like to always leave people with is what are you looking forward to? Because a lot of times we can get so into our emotions and what was, and into the past and how we want things to be that we lose sight of the beauty of life, the wonder of life. My mom is from Belize and just turned 70 years old. We had her out here for my birthday and we went for a walk one night and I’m all in my head about something. My mom at 70 years old is looking up at the stars and she’s just like, “Wow, look at those stars. Those stars are amazing. So beautiful.” She’s looking at the buildings and she’s like, “Oh, look at the design of that building. Wonderful architecture.” This is my mom 24/7, just literally stopping to smell the roses, seeing everything with a childlike wander and touching. And there’s sometimes where I’m like, “Mom, put that down. You can’t touch that.” She’s almost too childless. So sometimes we can lose touch of that. One of the things that my mom, my mom will call me with sometimes horrendous news, whether it’s personal or global, a car crash, inflation, rising gas prices, a death in a family, a sickness. After she shares all of that tragic information with me, she ends everything with, but besides that, everything else is okay. It really is a wonderful way to look at the world because no matter what is happening, I don’t care if you’re in the desert dying from thirst, yes that sucks and it’s awful. But besides that, everything else is okay. There is a bird that found water. There are children hugging and playing in a park somewhere. There is a mother giving birth. There’s a boyfriend proposing to his girlfriend. There are people helping other people cross the street and build homes. There’s a plant sprouting between concrete. Somebody just found a long lost relative. But besides that, everything else is okay, is a great way to look at yourself, to look at your relationships, look at the world. It’s not denying the truth of the horrors of the world, of the pain that you’re experiencing. It’s accepting that what you’re experiencing is a part of a bigger picture. [LISA] That leads me to, just like the name of my podcast, is it okay? Is everything okay? I am ok, besides the devastating in the world, the horrible things, there’s also all these positive things that are happening in front of our eyes all the time and to remind us to focus on those positive things too. [LEO] I love to read about astronomy and not just the world, but the universe and the universes and what’s happening up there in the stars. Just read a book that was talking about how our planet and our sun is one of a million planets and a million suns and our galaxy is one of a million galaxies. I mean, that just blows my mind. You go into the idea of a parallel universe where I’m doing this in this universe, but in another universe I’m making other decisions. Whether you believe it or not, it’s just a way of expanding our ideas of what life is and our part in it and just reminding us that we’re a part and not the whole. [LISA] How do you recommend to live your part or like, I guess, how do you help people thrive? [LEO] Yes, that’s a great question. It’s a beautiful question. It’s about accepting diversity. When we look at the earth, what’s so beautiful about our life on this planet is the diversity. The continent of Africa is vastly different than Australia, than Antarctica, than the Americas, than Europe. They all house different plants and animals and life. That’s what makes the planet beautiful because when resources dry up in one area, then we can migrate to another area. Bringing it home to us personally, is that we have a diverse range of emotions. The problem is that a lot of people want to only experience one or two emotions. We only want to be happy, joyous, and free, but the universe and life isn’t set up for that. It’s set up for diversity. So we must accept and be open to a diverse range of emotional experiences, the pain and the promise, the triumphs and the tragedies, the hurts and the healing, because the more we can expand our emotional palette, then the more empowered we feel. Now, the next time we feel hurt, we go off, felt this before, and I made it through. I can handle that. It’s like changing the light bulb. If your light bulb goes out, I could panic, oh no, the light bulb went out. What do I do? But if I know how to change a light bulb, if it’s happened before then I changed the light bulb. That’s not to diminish our pain, our hurt, our grievances. That’s to say, it’s not permanent. Those emotions are part of a wider range of emotional experiences. if you look at a baby, a baby can be crying and then you flash a toy or make a face and immediately it starts laughing or become fascinated, or it just stares at you, or just stops crying. It starts giggling and laughing, but then 10 minutes, it can start crying again. The baby has no memory of its previous emotional experience. It’s only aware of what it’s experiencing right now. As adults, we feel like we should only be experiencing one range of emotions. Life can’t thrive on singularity, on monotony, on one plant, on one emotion, the sun comes up. The sun goes down, the moon, we have different planets. We thrive on diversity. You look at your family, look at your friends, you look at any company. You look at Amazon. Amazon is a multibillion dollar company and say what you will about Amazon or any of these large corporations, but they understand it more than anyone. Amazon has bought up so many different types of companies because they understand for it to continue to thrive it requires diversity. It can’t just make its money off selling books. Facebook, same thing. So we have to be willing to expand our emotional palette, our social palette. John B. Rockefeller read his bio and as wealthy as he was, he would pick up hitch hikers because he wanted to expand his intellectual palette. He welcomed that. He welcomed people with different experiences, who had different backgrounds, different stories to tell, because he knew that that would keep his mind sharp and it would allow him to incorporate other people’s experiences into his, and then alchemize that to fortify him when he reaches those moments in his life. This is why we love superhero movies to see people who struggle in the beginning and are upset and it seems like all the odds are against them and then to see them work through. But if you notice that really what ends up happening is that no matter how powerful an individual is, Batman still has to call on the other superheroes. You have the Avengers. I forget what the other groups are, but no matter how powerful someone is, they need a team. They need diversity. They need somebody who shoots fire, somebody who shoots ice, somebody who runs really fast, somebody who can read minds. So we have to recognize that for us to thrive, going back to your original question is an acceptance of our range of emotional experiences and learning how to sit with ourselves instead of reaching for fixes through food, drugs, alcohol, and sex. [LISA] Well said, and for people that are highly sensitive, I feel just my experience as being one and as a licensed therapist and working with highly sensitive people, from the research that I’ve done is that highly sensitive people have that emotional range, like that diversity of emotional ranges of emotions. They can feel a lot and sometimes that can feel like too much and we do pick up other people’s feelings and we can hold other people’s feelings, including our own and that can feel really heavy. It’s also part of we need highly sensitive people in our population for survival. So that’s part of one of our jobs is to have that emotional capacity to really thrive and to know when there’s a sense of danger, if we go back into olden times. Is there danger? Something’s going to be attacking us or trying to eat us. So that’s what highly sensitive people are attuned to that. Also hear it as just having a sense of curiosity, about a whole range of things that are available to us in life. The curiosity I think helps us find life more interesting and engaging, and I think helps keep us going. [LEO] As soon as you get into the idea of you know everything you’re in trouble. You’re absolutely in trouble. Someone just wrote a book, something about the joy of being wrong and I find it so humorous. He gives the example of going to a party and saying Shakespeare didn’t write Romeo and Juliet, Caesar wrote it or something like that and people argued over it. He said, if we get too caught up in being right all the time, then it ends a conversation and it’s not fun anymore but when we take the chance of being wrong or just saying, we don’t know, then it gives us a chance to learn something and it gives people a chance to engage in a way that they typically may not have been able to engage. A lot of times someone will ask me the question, ask me a question that I know the answer to, and I’ll say, oh, I don’t know. What do you think about it? I do that because it gives me a chance to hear how other people think about things. I already know how I think about it. That’s boring. That’s dope. I’m not going to grow from that. I want to hear how you think about it without my influence. Or sometimes I ask people about something that I already know the answer to, just to see the joy of children. A child is so excited when they learn something and they go, did you know that the sky is blue because, or it rains. As a parent, we go, what? That’s so cool. For some reason we don’t do that with adults. Why stop that? Why is it, why would adults do, do we have to act like. I understand we don’t want to look stupid or dumb and not saying do this in every situation maybe in a job. It’s not the best time to not understand the sky being blue or how many there are and things like that. But in social situations and spaces, and just as a way of growing, it’s fun to just not know everything. It’s also fun to not act like you know everything or feel like you have to have the answers to everything. I mean, to say, I don’t know. I always admire persons who are like, I don’t know. I love that. Or even if you do know, just to say I haven’t heard of that. My friend today was telling me about something that we had a discussion about a week ago. I told him the information, he forgot I told him, and then today he was telling me the thing that I told him, and I just sat there and acted like I had no idea. I was like, what? That’s so cool. He just kept going on and on but it was fun for me. I could have easily been like you know I told you that. Then that would’ve ended the conversation. We would’ve been scrambling and searching for another thing to talk about. But instead it allowed me an opportunity to be entertained and that’s okay. [LISA] Yes, and I hear you entertain with that laughter, that chuckle. That’s quite funny and not funny, I mean, laughing at your friend, but just what happened there, experience of it. So Leo, what is the most important thing you want listeners to take away from today’s conversation? [LEO] Sit with yourself. It sounds so simple and it’s so hard and it’s a challenge for myself. I always feel like I have to be doing something. My girlfriend, because sometimes I’ll be home and she’ll be away somewhere and she’ll come back and then I feel like I have to hop up and look productive, look like I’m cleaning, working, sending out an email, working out something. I laugh at myself because it’s nothing she’s said to me. It’s a weight that I’ve put on myself. We love to show off all the things that we’ve done and it’s okay to do nothing because it’s never not nothing. Our nervous systems need a chance, especially when we’re highly sensitive to recover, to recuperate, to renew ourselves, to let our experiences wash over us, for us to absorb the conversations we’ve just had, the words we just heard, the feelings, the emotions, to turn into ourselves. We’ve given so much to other people, so much attention, so much time, money, effort. To listen to someone really takes a lot of energy. So to sit with yourself, to give yourself that permission and say, I’ve done enough for right now. I can take a minute. It doesn’t have to be, I’m not saying lay on a couch for hours. I’m saying, take a minute. When you’re done with work, a lot of people get done with work at eight, immediately hop in their car and they drive home. Why not when you’re done with work, just sit in your chair at work for a minute and let the day wash over you, then get in your car and drive home. Before you come into the house, take another minute and let that drive wash over you. You come in and you get washed up and maybe have dinner and then take a minute then eat, do the dishes. Take another minute. There’s this DJ, DJ Avicii, he ended his life at the age of 28, 23 or something like that. He was heavy in the meditation and he would meditate for hours. He got to a point where he was meditating for hours and his teacher, his meditation teacher said you only need 20 minutes. Don’t do anything longer than that. I say that to say that we have this belief that the more, the better, the longer, the better. If I’m meditating for a minute is effective and call me, maybe if I meditate for 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days. If taking one Vitamin D is good for my skin I’ll take five Vitamin D pills. It’s just not the case. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes nothing is the best. That’s why fasting has always been a part of our tradition as humans, as a people to let ourselves empty out, cutting off the social media, cut off the phones. Give yourself a minute to empty out from the experience you just had. After this podcast, I’m going to sit for a minute and just kind check in with myself. It just have to be, even be a minute. It could be 30 seconds. It’s just the intention. It’s just having that purpose, just recognizing that you matter in all this, not the podcast, not your car, not the house, nothing external. [LISA] I’m going to sit for a minute too, after this, when we’re finished, take all that in that you just said. And how can listeners get in touch with you, Leo? [LEO] You can go to thrivewithleo.com for one-on-one coaching. You can also, I don’t know if you can get a JERM from this. If you type in “daily JERMS” you’ll get an email from me, a PDF of how I do my daily JERMS and JERMS is J-E-R-M-S. It stands for journal, exercise, read, meditate, and self-talk. So any of those resources. And those will also link to my podcast, Before You Kill Yourself. [LISA] Okay, great. Can’t wait to check them out. Thank you for being on the show today. I just really enjoyed having you on and just hearing your messages that you so eloquently share to the world. [LEO] Thank you for having me [LISA] Thank you for tuning in today. Please let me know what you thought of the episode. Send me an email to lisa@amiokpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcast. To find out more about highly sensitive persons, please visit my website at amiokpodcast.com and subscribe to my free-eight week email course to help you navigate your own sensitivities and to show you that it’s okay not to take on everyone else’s problems or issues. This is Lisa Lewis reminding each and every one of you that you are okay. Until next time be well. Thank you for listening today at Am I Ok? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. . This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want to professional, you should find one.