Caroline: 0:04

What if your body knows before your mind admits it? The first signs of misalignment rarely show up in your calendar, or in the performance for your career. They show up as tension, exhaustion, or pain in your body that refuses to go away. What if those signals aren't obstacles, but invitations to realign success with wellbeing? This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we're here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who've navigated big career transitions themselves so you can see what it's really like to make bold changes and feel inspired to create your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours. Today's guest is Garrett Wood. He's a clinical hypnotherapist, executive functioning specialist. and founder of Gnosis Therapy. Garrett helps executives, founders, and entrepreneurs achieve sustainable high performance with without trading their health or relationships. Over 18 years, he's developed the A cubed framework, assess, accommodate, align, which maps capacity across seven key drivers of performance, sensory intelligence, bio budgets, emotional regulation, core beliefs, attachment patterns, values, and executive functioning strengths. His approach blends outcome-based coaching, somatic regulation, and clinical hypnotherapy to end the boom and bust cycle of burnout. Because real success is built through your wellbeing, not at its expense. In our conversation, Garrett and I explore how achievement often comes at a cost and what it really means to create success that sustains you. We talk about how the body stores emotion long before the mind catches up, the link between ADHD and burnout and how to rebuild from the inside out. If you've ever wondered why you keep pushing, even when you're running on empty or how to turn awareness into aligned action, this episode is for you. Welcome Garrett to Your Next Success. I am thrilled to have you here today.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 3:01

Excited to be here, Caroline. Thanks for having me.

Caroline: 3:03

Thank you so, so much. one of the things I love talking about and diving into is people's careers, their stories, their transitions, all the lovely pivots that brought them to today. So we'll get to today and the amazing work that you do and how you help people. But we could dial it back, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? Where did you grow up? What you love doing for fun? What were you interested in? All of that.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 3:33

Yeah. Fun question. I moved 11 times before I was 11 years old, so my dad was in the hospitality business. So one of my dads, anytime that you get a promotion, you get a new location and then you gotta beat year over year sales for a couple years and then you gotta do it again, or you gotta try to beat your best. And so, we would move every couple of years. But I spent a lot of my youth in Bakersfield, California, so. Like Central Valley, kind of California. Pretty hot triple digit heat, most of what I remember from it. But growing up as a kid because we moved so much, it was really challenging for me to kind of like make those transitions. So to keep myself entertained. I would have books to read during all the long car trips'cause we would go cross country sometimes. And that hasn't changed as you can see back there. Quite a bit of books so that. Has been kind of one of my passions that stuck with me my whole life. It's probably the most consistent passion that stuck with me my whole life. Everything else has kind of come and gone, so.

Caroline: 4:29

'Cause I moved a lot as well. My dad was a teacher, then a principal, then a superintendent, and my mom was a nurse so it kind of worked'cause she had a career that was able to be mobile. How did it work for you with your parents? And then my moves were always in between school years. But for yours, moving 11 times before 11, were you moving in the middle of a school year and how did that work?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 4:52

We did that a couple times. I think moving to the east coast and then back was mid school year, I remember moving to New Jersey and hearing the teachers say idear. And I just remember being a child, being like, idear? What is idear? Instead of idea. And it just didn't compute in my little brain at the time. I didn't understand accents and regional accents. That was one of the things that stood out to me the most.

Caroline: 5:13

Interesting. And going into these new school areas without knowing anyone. Like for me, a good byproduct of that is I can walk into a room of people I don't know, and I know how to do that well. I always also kind of thought like, if I was a boy, it would be easier. Maybe girls were kind of cliquey and maybe not so welcoming. What was your experience?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 5:40

Yeah, I didn't notice the gender issue then, probably more so now, I could see the difference of that, but when I was a kid, I really was more shy than anything. So the books were my friends. I did have other friends. They were acquaintances. But as soon as you start getting into that deeper relationship, you're moving again. So it never really seemed like it formed. Right? Yeah.

Caroline: 5:57

And so then when you kind of settled into a Bakersfield area, were you then at a place for a consistent long period of time or still switching?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 6:09

So I had one of my best friends still to this day. I met when I was 10 years old. We went to a dinner theater play of Dracula. For my 10th birthday, Ed, we just hung out. Two weeks ago so,

Caroline: 6:19

That's awesome.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 6:20

Yes, long-term friendships have formed and maintained. We don't get to see each other as often as we would like, but it's really nice. Yeah.

Caroline: 6:26

And so when you were growing up, like what did you think success meant? Or from your viewpoint, what was success? What was successful? In that moment as far as like what you thought the world, like what was it successful to be a human adult that you're successful if you, what?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 6:48

So I grew up in a household where money was definitely a topic of conversation. Making sure we had enough of it, making sure when we wanted things that we knew the cost of it. My mom's a very frugal person. She won best dressed in high school, but it wasn't'cause she was out buying fancy clothes, it was'cause she was making them herself. So some of that wore off on me as a kid. I would go to JC Penny and get like a little jacket and then go to the fancy skate shop and like pick up the skateboard, like patch. And then I would sew that on. So I'd be like, okay, cool, I got the cool jacket, I'm gonna fit in with the cool kids. And instead of paying 45 bucks, it was, you know, eight bucks or 12 bucks or something like that. So acutely aware of money, so success at that time in my life meant making enough of it that you wouldn't have to worry about those things that you could choose to go and eat out. If you wanted to, instead of having to count pennies for lunch that day, you know, dig in the couch for change. Right? Look in the car. Back when we used to have cash.

Caroline: 7:45

Yeah. Our kids can't ever just be excited and find things when they're cleaning, you know? So.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 7:52

Yeah. Pick up the couch cushion. Oh my gosh. This is enough for Taco Bell. Here we go. Let's go. Yeah.

Caroline: 7:57

Were there signs then? As far as. You're being interested in helping people and those types of things when you're little or,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 8:08

Not so much. Yeah, just the books. So there was a time where as I was growing up later, when I was like 15, 16, I grew up skateboarding. I found some friends there. It was super fun. You gotta be away from people for a long time. You were just out there for hours. It felt very freeing and kind of rebellious to be on a skateboard, although we were just sweaty kids hanging out. But in the skateboard magazines, there was a professional skateboarder who got paid and he had a really nice car. They did a magazine spread of his tricks on one page, his car on the other, and he had a girlfriend. And his girlfriend I thought was rather attractive and she was in the car. And so at that age I was like, wait a minute, you can get paid to do something you love. Get paid enough to be able to afford cool things and to have people in your life that appreciate you, that you want to hang around. And I was like, that's pretty cool. And he happened to be in a skateboard video that was titled Fulfill The Dream. I was like, oh, wait a minute. And so I kind of inadvertently adopted that as a mantra at like 15, 16.

Caroline: 9:08

Cool. Okay, so then high school kind of comes and goes, and what did you think you wanted to do beyond high school? And then what did you end up doing, after you left, after you graduated?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 9:21

Yeah, so when I was in high school, I saw that money piece being important and I looked around at jobs where people made a lot of money, and it seemed like investment banking, personal finance, that area was the way to go. There wasn't a lot of that in Bakersfield, but we did have like a Merrill Lynch branch who had the bowl on the logo. So when I moved out and went to college, I got a chance to hang out with some people that were involved in that industry. I kind of had them mentor me. I was bartending at the time, and I got a chance to meet a lot of them. And when I was being mentored by him, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. I'm learning a lot. And then when I was bartending and seeing them out, I was like, oh, they have all their bills paid, but they are not happy. They are not, happily married. They're not happy in themselves. They're not happy with the hours that they have to work. This isn't kind of something, if this is what that looks like, I don't know if it's for me.

Caroline: 10:15

I see.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 10:16

And so I kind of had to reevaluate that. And I was bartending when I was like 20, 21 kind of. So,

Caroline: 10:21

Interesting. So you're seeing the

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 10:22

Yeah, it was interesting.

Caroline: 10:23

discrepancy between the day job and what you think success should look like. And then these people beyond their day job, complaining, utilizing substances, talking about not loving their life. Yeah. Interesting.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 10:44

And obviously I probably had a selection bias being at the bar. I'm sure there was plenty of happy people in the finance industry going home to their families and enjoying themselves. They just weren't at the bar where I was at with them, but it seemed to be so ubiquitous that it really made me question like, oh, wait a minute. Having enough money isn't enough to be happy. But that maybe a prerequisite for success, but it's definitely not the only thing. And so that kind of stuck around a little bit.

Caroline: 11:09

When went to college, what did you study?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 11:13

Business marketing and then I started taking philosophy classes and eventually switched to philosophy as the major and business marketing as the minor.

Caroline: 11:22

That's cool. And then happened? As college goes by, you're bartending. And then what?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 11:28

Yeah. So I started my own beverage catering company, which was pretty fun. Learned a lot. So if you had a soay at your house, I could show up with a full bar. Not just like the basics, but like every mixed drink. So if you wanted like. Whatever rum specialty drink or every like little, it was Apple martinis at the time because of Sex in the city. We had that we could serve that in your backyard to your friends and people really appreciated that. So that was kind of fun for a while. Yeah, so lots of different experiences in entrepreneurship. That was one. There's a couple other little jobs, but they weren't as successful as that one. But that was all in additional, I was going to school and bartending. And when you're bartending, 8:00 AM classes and 4:00 AM close times don't always overlap real well. So I spent a lot of time trying to navigate the difference between both of those, but I did learn a lot about people. Behind the bar and then learned a lot of different formal functions about people, philosophy, cognitive biases, all that fun stuff during the day. So it was really interesting.

Caroline: 12:24

That's fascinating. Okay, so then beyond college then what? Then what did you choose to do? How'd that transition work?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 12:35

Yeah, so the reason why I got into bartending is because I understood alcohol at a young age. I saw, you know, my parents have drinks and they felt. Much better after two, three beers. And I'm like, oh, cool. What is this? This seems to be magical. They went from not great kind of grumpy to like pretty relaxed. This is interesting. And so when I was bartending, I saw some of the worst stuff of that, which was interesting. But for myself personally, to get away from some of using those substances in my own coping mechanisms, I started running a lot and I ran so much that I like tore my meniscus, stretch, fractured my feet. I had no clue what I was doing. And so after a couple of rounds of training for marathons, I was like, I need some help. So it was the first time in my life I raised my hand and asked for help from somebody that was a professional. And so I went and got a personal trainer, strength conditioning coach, and I really enjoyed that process with him. My running got better, I got better mentally, physically, emotionally, and I saw how much he enjoyed his day-to-day existence.

Caroline: 13:30

Ah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 13:31

He once again, selection bias. He loved what he did. He loved all of his clients, and I was like, wait a minute. This is interesting. He's probably the most successful person I'd seen up to that point where every day was a good day for him.

Caroline: 13:45

And how old were you at this point having this realization? It could be two great things. Asking for help and seeing stuff.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 13:53

That was probably 22. Because I started becoming, working in that industry at 2007, so quite a few years ago now. Yeah.

Caroline: 14:02

And then what. Now you've got this interest in fitness, seeing someone, helping people, loving their life, loving their jobs, seemingly successful. I guess you didn't necessarily see him after his job, I wonder, or did you?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 14:17

So I did, yeah. He was such a nice guy. He had a twin brother and they married sisters anyway, so they were like a big happy family. It was really interesting. So they would invite me to go have coffee and hang out with them. So it was really interesting to see them outside of that training session with them. And they genuinely happy, healthy people.

Caroline: 14:36

Wow.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 14:36

So it was pretty cool to see. Yeah. And I became a strength conditioning coach. I worked with a lot of people, a lot of the clients that I worked with had a lot of time, money, and energy, and they'd worked along their life to be able to have that resource. And in their process, they'd given up a lot of their health. And so they were trying to go back and claim that usually in their early thirties. Mid thirties. And they were trying to get healthier for their kids, healthier for themselves, healthier for their partner. One woman I worked with, I really enjoyed it. Her husband had run a bunch of marathons. He was the the fit person in the family, and she'd had two kids, and so she was like, I'm tired of that label. I don't want to be the not fit person in this household. This isn't cool. I don't like that. So by the time we got done working with her together, she had ran two marathons. One of them, her and her husband both ran together and she beat his time, which was pretty cool. So she finally became the marathon, you know, reigning champ in that household, which was pretty cool to see.

Caroline: 15:30

That's amazing. This is fun. All right, so you're getting this now, this helping people vibe this overall wellbeing kind of vibe. And your route in that moment is through exercise, fitness, and helping people that way and then happened? Then how did you expand more?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 15:52

Yeah. So at that time when I was working with people, you spend a lot of time with people. I mean, you're spending three hours a week with these people. Nine months on end, which is a long time. And you're seeing people when they're pretty vulnerable, when they're grunting and sweating and like cursing'cause they're working hard. And there's a lot of vulnerability that shows up in that moment. People kind of share some of their feelings, their thoughts, and stories come out. And there's a couple of times where the stories that came out, it made me feel like we were working on the wrong end of things. Like there was better help for these people and that I was not. The help that they needed was over here and I was over there, and I really wanted to be able to try to understand that a little bit more. So, for example, there's one person I worked with. She really wanted to be fit and healthier her whole life. She put a lot of effort in the fitness facility. She gained and lost her body weight two or three times over when we were working together, and every time she would get to a weight that she felt strong and fit and couldn't move, she would get a lot of attention. And the attention she got, she did not appreciate. Because it reminded her of an incident when she was a child and she was just coming through puberty, and the attention that she got then was so overwhelming and inappropriate for her at that time that it was much easier to just move away from all of that attention and in any way she could. And that subconscious kind of experience was continuing to show up even into her, you know, 20 years later in her life. And it wasn't conscious.

Caroline: 17:23

It was a like a protective mechanism and I had gone, I'm still working through that, but I didn't realize that that was a thing and it was just like, well, I can get to this fitter thing and snap a picture, I wish I was that picture again. While working with you, did she already know or you saw maybe before she's, how did that work?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 17:48

Yeah, it was kind I don't know if you've seen that Mel Gibson movie. It's a marketing movie with, I can't think of her name. She was, anyway, Mad About You He can read women's minds and he comes up with this idea. It's like Nike, it's not just. No games, it's just sports, right? And they like both think of this idea a co-occurring way, and it was almost as if that happened. We were talking one day in between sets. I'm like, so what's going on? Like, we were doing so much work here. What happened two weeks ago that changed these behaviors? She's like, I don't know. I'm like, okay, well happened, you know, what'd you do differently? That was just slightly outta the norm. She's like, well, I did go on a first date. I was like, oh, how'd it go? She's like, real, really well. Okay, cool. She's like, yeah, it was a little creepy at the end. we just continue to have this conversation just really innocently. And by the end of that session, she and I had kind of made those dots and those connections just talking about what was going on. And I do think when you're in that like altered state, which exercise can put you in. You do kind of get a chance to remove yourself from like the normal default thoughts that we typically have and you have a chance to kind of look at them from a different angle and doing that, you come to new conclusions, new realizations, and that has been consistent I found since then, even till now.

Caroline: 19:04

And also there's like something to like the body keeps the score. Things have to move through your body. So if you're already moving in some sort of different way, exercise wise, not only are you freeing your mind to be able to process things differently, but maybe emotions or things are being at the same time. What a powerful connection there. And then what? Then how did that kind of evolve?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 19:30

So just like you said right there, the body keeps the score. At that time, I made a transition from working with clients into leadership where I was managing more of the people that responsible for their clients, and I was responsible for them. And so it went from being really fun and hanging out with a bunch of my friends. And helping people to being like the person that has to tow the line, the person that has to enforce the rules. And that made a really interesting transition for me emotionally. I felt really isolated at that time. And I got overuse injury where I had some chronic hip pain and so I couldn't run, I couldn't lift for a couple months. Which is my normal natural outlet, my coping mechanism for the stress of feeling those emotions. So when you talk about the body keeps the score, did I get injured because I was over training? Was I over training'cause I was stressed? If I wasn't stressed, would that training have not resulted in an injury? These are all like chicken and the egg kind of stories. Now, I believe I think they're all one and the same. But at that time I didn't know that. So I just went about my business as best as I could, and I was in an ER on a Friday night'cause I could not stand the pain in my hip anymore. I just could not bear it. I was like, I need to get more support with this. And the attending physician was palpating my groin, the pectinius, which is like an adductor of the hip. Really right there in your groin. And he was kind of like, hey, there's nothing wrong here. So what are you doing here on a Friday night, having me palpate your groin? There was kind of an accusatory implication there, and I was like, you know, sir.

Caroline: 21:01

Like,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 21:03

There's this, I am here because I'm in pain. But that lack of like empathy or understanding from someone when it comes to chronic pain, is a theme that I've seen a lot of times, because pain, like you mentioned, is like a bio-psychosocial experience. It is an emotion. Oftentimes people with physical pain will go and look for a physical intervention, but it's the wrong way around once again. And so an attending physician when they're like, everything's fine here.

Caroline: 21:30

And

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 21:31

It feels like they're discounting.

Caroline: 21:33

Maybe he just hadn't, maybe never will. But was it just a young ego thing he didn't know. He was just book trained. And that those books weren't know, Body Keeps the Score wasn't in that section or,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 21:47

Yeah. Chronic pain is a really interesting phenomena. We talked about it in philosophy in school where people who have like phantom limb pain, their brain's understanding of where their body ends and the world begins is like part of the scaffolding of your brain. And when that changes dramatically really quickly, it takes a while for your brain to catch up to that. So. Even if you gain a bunch of weight or lose a bunch of weight, there's a chance of that too. That's sometimes a play of body dysmorphia. But in chronic, like in phantom limb pain, if someone loses a limb, they're like, man, something's wrong. My hand that I no longer have itches. And the itches consistently present. And that's actually your brain being like, no, something is wrong and when you address it. But it's on a subconscious level. It's on a neurological level. It's not on like an actual like. Vision level. And so they'll do mirror therapy where they pretend like you have a hand using your other hand as the mirrored version of you, the rubber hand. There's a really cool thing you kinda look at the rubber hand experiment where they'll put your hand under the table, they'll place a rubber hand over it, and they'll stroke the rubber hand and you'll start getting tickled. They'll smash the rubber hand with the like hammer and your hand will feel pain, even though there's no connection there and it's just mapped over mirror neurons just seeing it. You believe it to be true and it does happen to be true for you in that moment.

Caroline: 23:06

So he just sends you out of there said there's nothing to fix here?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 23:10

Nothing.

Caroline: 23:10

And

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 23:11

Nothing to fix here. And you know what? He was right. There was nothing. I I know my experience is real. I know that I'm actually in pain and he is right to dismiss me because what he's saying is there is nothing I can do. And he's right. There's not, he can prescribe me pain medication or he could cut something out. That attending physician had nothing in his bag of tricks that was there for me, nothing I needed. But he didn't offer me other solutions.'cause that's where it's like our medical system's a little bit,

Caroline: 23:40

Right.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 23:41

You know, spread out.

Caroline: 23:42

Because

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 23:42

Real deep holes.

Caroline: 23:43

people only deal with the life and death emergency, and if you don't look like you're gonna lose your life in that moment, that now becomes another specialty. They just refer you next. Next.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 23:57

Yep, yep. And so the help I actually did get that released that pain and that discomfort was like a really quick, easy manual therapy technique called active release technique. Can you just touch that tissue? Take that person through an active range of motion. And that's enough for your brain to be like, oh, I can release this tension. We don't need it for anything. And I was able to squat and run around in like five minutes after being with the actual provider who just did some hands-on work

Caroline: 24:25

Like massage?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 24:26

I was like, blown.

Caroline: 24:27

like

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 24:28

Yeah.

Caroline: 24:28

of massage person that knows stuff or who was that helper? Yeah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 24:33

So that was a doctor of a chiropractic, but an osteopathic manual therapist, physical therapist, athletic trainer, massage therapist. They're all able to do those type of release techniques and I was working with a lot of people. They're really active. They got their aches and pains sitting down all day. They have their own emotional stuff going on. They have their own things that are showing up in their body. So at the end of that year, I referred most my clients to this practitioner. And then by another six months after that, all of my trainers that I was developing, they were beginning to refer all of their clients to him as well. And I was like, man, people are showing up. Having to be able to do pushups, sit ups and squats, having to push heavy weights. They're not excited to be here. They're willing to be here. They're like putting up with it. But when they go see him and come back, they're excited. They're enjoying it even more. So similar to when I first got into strength and conditioning, I went back to school and learned how to do that technique and then a bunch of other ones. And that was pretty interesting because what you're talking about, body keeping the score. It's really amazing when you're doing manual therapy with people and you give them some type of stimuli. There's like a story that comes with it and you're like, you know, one time I was with my brother and we were 10 and we were messing around, and then this thing happened. And while you're doing that technique and they're telling that story, something happens. It's like you pull up that program in the mind where that pain is stored, and then you give it a different comforting experience, and then that experience kind of goes back and then their body goes, wait a minute. We don't really need that tension anymore. We don't need that coping mechanism. We don't need that movement pattern. Oh, okay. And I don't know if we're talking about the emotions that it doesn't need, that it's holding onto or the result of the movement control pattern. I don't know if they're different things. I think they might be diff like the same thing just from different sides, like the elephant's trunk versus its ears versus its tail.

Caroline: 26:33

You're working with people and doing some. Body movement manipulations, allowing things to release full range of motion, blah blah blah. And then you are asking questions or they just randomly, oh, funny, you move my leg that way. How does that part work?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 26:52

Originally it was just talking and it would come up organically in conversation. Yeah. And then eventually after enough of that happens, you're like, oh, maybe there's something more to this. Maybe that's actually the important part. And so if you get into some of the deeper literature for how memory reconsolidation works or like cohesive, coherence therapy is what they call that you don't remember things from the first time you made that experience. You remember them from the last time you remembered it. So anytime you go back and you pull up a story, you're not pulling up the original story, you're pulling up the last time you told it. And so if you were in a good mood, well fed, well rested, and your, you know, nervous system was in a relaxed, calm state, it changes how that memory feels to you.

Caroline: 27:42

Interesting.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 27:44

And put it away. The next time that it comes up organically, it's not as distressing. It's easier to be you. It doesn't change what happened. It does not change the facts of the situation, but it changes how it affects you in the present moment.

Caroline: 27:57

That's

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 27:57

And that is kind of the phenomenon that we were experiencing together as they were telling that story and having that experience with a sensation.

Caroline: 28:05

Cool.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 28:05

It was just giving the body more information to update its understanding of what it needed to do to be successful.

Caroline: 28:10

Interesting. Okay, so you're noticing patterns. You're on this quest to really help people not surface, but like dial it back to before and to like, where's the root of this thing? And now you start coming across some clues of, okay, maybe it's not just It's body mind guiding all that and different releasing and you go to school, you get more of that knowledge now you start helping and implementing with people. And then what?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 29:23

Yeah. So that was kind of what I was doing on the side. Well, just like when I was bartending, I was gonna school just like when I was it, I'm always doing two or three things at once. So at the time I was working a corporate job. I was overseeing seven locations. Each location probably had 10 to 20 people. It was a lot of work. I believed in the work we were doing'cause we were, I was helping train develop people to do that type of work that I was talking about. And we were working with pretty, you know, dedicated individuals to their health and wellness. And I really believed in the mission. I really believed in the values of what we were doing. And it was really nice'cause we had these really tight feedback loops. We were a sales driven organization, so I could see if we made an implementation to the field, what showed up immediately? Like what affected change within like three hours you would have a new report, you'd be like, did that work or not?

Caroline: 30:14

Yeah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 30:14

It was pretty interesting because you could learn a lot about leadership, about management, about anything, any theory you could ever see, you could put into practice. And within a few moments, a few months, you would be able to see that feedback really quick. And I was working a lot. My chronic pain was back.

Caroline: 30:31

Ha!

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 30:31

My sleep was terrible. My attention. Not running at the time, no. Because I was in the car so often when I would get out. Just being able to stand up and move was quite an accomplishment at the time. It wasn't great.

Caroline: 30:43

But yet you're in a company helping people be well, and you're working so much that you're quickly becoming unwell you don't have the time to do the things that had been your outlet of physical fitness release helping. Yeah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 31:02

Absolutely. And that creates a vicious cycle,'cause if you don't have that release, that feedback loop's tighter. Stress gets more intense. There's no break from it. And then when you do get a break from it, it's wears your body down and then you need to recover from that. So you eat some comfort food. Maybe you stay up late and watch some, you know, mindless tv. I think at the time it was the office, you know, who knows? Parks and Rec maybe. And then now you're in trouble.

Caroline: 31:25

Where the pain showing up for you? Did it move around your body or did your pain stay in a similar, was it your hip still or what was that?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 31:36

Yeah, so I always like to talk about that, like if you take a soda can, right? Like aluminum can and it's sealed, you can put a lot of pressure on it and it withholds a lot of force. There you go. But as soon as you crack it open, it's ability to resist pressure kind. It gets dissipated wherever maybe the aluminum is weakest at, but if you get a little bit of a bend there, it doesn't matter if you blow it back up and sealed it back, it would still crumple kind of in those same places that it crumpled before. And so same thing would happen, my hip, my back, hip back, hip back. So anytime I'm getting. Just stressed, or I've been operating out of a stress mode for too long, or I've been in, go, go, go, go, go. I will feel my back. I will feel my hip. First sign is your sleep's not great. Second sign is you're a little grumpy at the dog. Third sign is you're a little short tempered with everybody. Things get on your nerves a little bit more. Silly things that show up, like you gotta download the Zoom updates before you go into a meeting.

Caroline: 32:31

I get it.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 32:32

But then if I continue to ignore that, my hip and my back will let me know pretty quick. Yeah.

Caroline: 32:38

And so

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 32:39

Yep.

Caroline: 32:40

now that you've experienced this many does your hip and back still end up hurting or do you now react before that point knowing.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 32:51

Sometimes you're in a cycle where you do need to perform as best as you possibly can. You don't have the luxury to take that time off or that downtime. The frequency, duration, and intensity is much less than it's ever been in my life. So I will take that as a win. Is it gone? No. Will it ever be gone? Probably not, but as long as the frequency, duration, and intensity are moving in the right direction, I am happy with the progress. I will take it.

Caroline: 33:15

Okay.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 33:16

Yeah.

Caroline: 33:16

So, and as you're at that corporate job that's like slowly wearing you down, but you changed, so what preempted that or like what made you say, you know what, the pain of staying the same is now greater than the pain of doing something else, I think I want to?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 33:37

So I wish it was, you know, oh my relationship with my partner is struggling. This isn't good. We need to go get some help. I wish it was, oh, my back pain is flaring up. This isn't good. I need to go get some support and slow down. But what it really was is I was in a meeting, with one of my colleagues replacements. So he'd been replaced, let go, and then replaced within two weeks. While we're in this meeting, we all got word that he had decided to take his own life because he'd been with that organization for 20 years and given so much of himself and was always at the top of those like spreadsheets, always at the top of the P&Ls and the goals. And he was someone that we all looked up to. And when he was let go, it was a shock to us. And then we got word. It was even more of a shock to us because he'd given so much of himself that his identity was tied in with that position. Without the position, there wasn't much left for him. He felt like that was worth saving or investing in, and that was a big wake up call for me.'cause that was, hey, it doesn't matter how values aligned you are with the organization, it does not matter how much the work you're doing feels like it's actually making an impact. It's not enough to be successful. Even if it pays the bills, even if it's something you enjoy doing, if it's taking your wellbeing, it's almost more dangerous for some people if their passions align with their work. It's almost more dangerous if their values are aligned with work because they value that work and the outcomes from it more than they do themselves. And in that moment, seeing that play out for him over his life, was like a really strong wake up call that, hey, whatever you're doing, the road you're on, we gotta back it up and kind of rethink this a little bit.

Caroline: 35:15

And so how did that affect you? How did you back it up?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 35:22

So at the time the organization I was with, they did a big study and they found that the people that got the best quality of sleep saw the biggest health gains.

Caroline: 35:30

Oh.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 35:31

So in their blood pressure and their insulin resistance and their ability to show up and complete their workouts, and I was like, oh, okay. Sleep's the thing. We gotta get more sleep. Okay. That'll be the thing. The one thing that fixes everything. But I couldn't figure out how to get more sleep. My sleep was terrible. I couldn't get to sleep earlier. I had to wake up and I had to wake up. So I found this idea of non sleep, deep rest, which is essentially just closing your eyes and breathing and just letting your nervous system go seemed to be effective. Seem to have some benefits of sleep. Not all of them, but enough that it helps on your physiological, restorative processes. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And then I found out that hypnotherapy and hypnosis is a state of non-sleep deep rest. And I was like, okay, let's do it. So I jumped all in and went and got a hypnotherapist. We met for about five sessions, and at the end of those five sessions, my sleep was much better. My back pain was better, my relationship was better. The P&L stayed the same, but our turnover was less. My relationships with my subordinates were better. Their relationships with their team members was even better. There was way less stress, and we were getting even more done than we had before. And at the end of that I was like, oh, I've been the jerk the whole time. I've been the bottleneck. I've been the problem. It's been me. Oh, okay. Good to know.

Caroline: 36:51

Interesting.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 36:52

So kind of a wake up call there too. Yeah.

Caroline: 36:55

Interesting. Okay. Okay. And so now, this is so cool. It's like an unraveling, right? Or like a layer by layer trying to get, this is so cool. And so

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 37:04

Those dolls. The nesting dolls, right? Yeah.

Caroline: 37:08

And so then you go all in and learn how to do that to help other people?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 37:14

Absolutely. Yeah. And so once again with that body work piece, you know, there's only so far you can go with the body. There's other things that are going on if you're doing that body work, but someone's telling themselves a story at the same time that's reinforcing that. It's interesting. Mind, body, emotions, experience, intelligence, consciousness. I feel like they're all the same thing.

Caroline: 37:37

Hmm.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 37:37

We just have different ways of talking about it. Like the blind men talking about that elephant. No, it's

Caroline: 37:42

Right, right.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 37:43

and hard. No, it's soft and leathery. It's all the same thing. We just have different needs for it.'cause we have different specialties. So, Being able to see it from the body side, the somatic side, and then being able to see it from the subconscious side. And then obviously working with people on a conscious level to be able to get them to do things that they don't enjoy doing, but understand the benefits from in coaching. It's been really interesting to be able to work with people now, helping them show up and take care of themselves, but now it's a bigger scope. It's not just fitness, it's wellbeing. So that's been pretty cool.

Caroline: 38:13

so you left that corporate job to make your own company?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 38:18

Yeah, after that, I opened that in 2018,

Caroline: 38:22

Yeah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 38:22

So yeah, a few years now.

Caroline: 38:24

And has your scope in your company stayed the same or has it continued to evolve as you realize, more nesting dolls.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 38:37

More nesting dolls always. So there's, when you start getting into wellbeing, you're like, okay, what are the bottlenecks for people's wellbeing? Yes. Sleep, food, nutrition, health. Got it. Okay. Movement. Okay. Positive emotions. Yes. Subconscious beliefs that keep you stuck in these patterns. Okay, sure. But then the quality of your relationships and what's contributing to that and what makes it easier, what makes it harder? What are the frictions that show up there? And also like, one of the most surprising things for me, I think was a woman that I worked with who was in leadership, had another person on her team, and they had to do feedback and she really appreciated this person on her team. But they struggled to communicate well. They felt like they were enemies, viscerally, did not enjoy each other's presence. but they couldn't explain why. Neither of'em knew what was going on. They're like, no, I respect them. They do good work. It's fine. We just can't, we just don't vibe. Not my vibe. Right. So we kind of talked about what was going on and they were doing this, their feedback meetings where they would sit across from each other in the conference room. It's a big conference room, really nice big table. Everyone off in the background, kind of secluded sun coming in on one side, but because you had the window on one side and then you had glass all the way around, the words would just reverberate off the walls. And so a little bit of criticism, you would just hear it like kind of echo forever. So we were just like, let's mix it up. Let's get you regular, let's go on a walk together. Let's, if you're both moving in the same direction side by side, maybe something will shift enough that you won't, like despise each other. So they tried it and now they go out to drinks after work. Now they're friends. Completely. Yeah. Completely different experience.

Caroline: 40:21

like this person was a style D and that one was a C. It wasn't necessarily that it was the environment that the words were delivered in, not necessarily the way the words were delivered?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 40:35

Exactly. So there's a lady, she's a doctor, Anne-Marie Lombard. She's in South Africa and she has this work called sensory intelligence, which is really fascinating where your sensory thresholds matter. If you are in an environment where your sensory thresholds aren't met, you can't be a good version of you. So a lot of people talk about IQ being important in corporate jobs, and then people are like, oh, no, no, no, it's not IQ. Everyone's smart. It's EQ. It's okay, you be emotionally regulated around and with other people. And the better you are at that, the more success you'll be. Her argument is, is like, well, those are both important, but if you're not in a state where you can be regulated, none of those matter. Because that supersedes it. And she's got really good work and studies backing it up. And she's not alone. There's a bunch of other interpersonal neuropsychologists that talk about regulation matters most, and then co-regulation. And then once we have co-regulation, then we can do the reasoning, then we can do the feedback. And so some people, if they're in a really crowded environment, it's not the people that's messing'em up. It's the visual movement. For some people, it is the closeness of other people. Some people, if they're in like a library setting, they're so understimulated that they're looking to engage in ways that are probably healthy. So it's finding out what works for you and putting yourself in the way of that. and it makes a really big difference. It's really fascinating how much the environment plays a part in your ability to express your regulation, your intelligence.

Caroline: 42:02

You know, now a days, or maybe it was just after having kids or something, or, or seeing many different children and different experiences and then realizing, neurodivergence was a thing and, you know, perhaps realizing later in life that that was a factor for me. And then even beyond just, you know, and then there's different levels of neurodivergence. You can have ADD, ADHD, autism, but the sensory is a huge factor there. And somewhere along the lines,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 42:33

Absolutely.

Caroline: 42:34

Cause I saw that now you do ADHD kind of coaching as well, but yeah. When did you become interested in that expansion? Yeah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 42:46

So about two years after I opened my doors for my clinic, there was a couple trends that showed up. One, everyone was burned out, right? Which is what we were focusing on, and it's self-selection bias. A lot of people had physical issues in their body that were showing up as tension. Similar to I had in my story. They had had a history of being through some adverse childhood experiences, so their ability to regulate emotion was more challenging than others. Then there was another thing that showed up. It was like, yeah, I have ADHD, I take medication. I've had this my whole life. That was like half the clientele that was there, and that seemed really strange to me. I'm like, this is 8% of adults have ADHD. Right. They meet the clinical diagnosis of having a disorder.

Caroline: 43:25

Or 8% are diagnosed and know they have ADHD. But how,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 43:31

And then how many people.

Caroline: 43:32

it now?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 43:35

It's much higher than that and arguably should be growing because ADHD in women hasn't actually been a focus for a long time. So the numbers are still not representative of the actual population'cause we haven't been doing the right work. But hopefully that'll change soon. But it was just fascinating to me because I didn't recognize, I didn't know much at the time, and some of these behaviors seemed normal to me. They seemed like, oh, that's just. Everybody Right. so after two years of having similar conversations, I was like, oh, maybe this is something that I need to go look into more. So I went and got some more schooling, went back. There's a bunch of opportunities to dive deep in on that stuff. But having gone through that, I started ticking boxes. And so I went and met with a psychiatrist and we went through the formal neuropsych evaluation process and they're like, yeah, absolutely. You've probably had ADHD your whole life. There's no doubt about it. And you probably got it from this person in your family. And here's how it shows up. And that's when it all started to kind of click a little bit more gelled for me personally. That was one of the frameworks that definitely was a missing component, and the sensory piece is a component of that for myself, but less so, than some of the other ones. Executive dysfunction is a really fascinating one for me.

Caroline: 44:44

Yeah. And how did that executive functioning and executive dysfunctioning, and when you don't know or you're overachieving in areas. Did you know how to study? Was it planning an organization? Was it distractibility? How did it show up for you?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 45:01

Boredom. Intense boredom. So impulsivity and like raising the stakes. So at work. when I was a kid, when I was working, I'd be like, okay, great. This is boring. I know how to do the job now. So how can I make this more challenging? Well, if I show up with less sleep and I can get more done elsewhere and still get the job done, okay, good. Now the job is more entertaining and I got more side stuff done. So sleep has always been that like, never prioritizing. It has been a theme in my life and I couldn't get to sleep as a kid. And one of the most linchpin in the diagnostic criteria was me sharing that experience. Like I've had trouble sleeping, getting to sleep my whole life. And I mentioned it to my mom and she was like, oh yeah, that's normal. No problem. Here's Tylenol pm. That's how I've been getting to sleep. And I was like, oh, okay. And that was just normal in our family. And it wasn't until I spoke to someone at 40 something years old and they're like, oh, that's not a typical experience for most people, but for his specific subset of population, it's a very common one. So that was kind of an interesting.

Caroline: 46:04

So let's talk about sleep now though. Did you flip your schedule? Were you one of those like, let's stay up all night, kind of people then like let's have as less sleep. Yeah.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 46:13

Yeah. Yep. Is the least sleep as possible. So from like junior high, even elementary school, all the way through till probably mid thirties, I would sleep very little and drink a lot of energy drinks. Yeah. Yep.

Caroline: 46:29

I didn't read this research, but I heard about this research that if don't have enough sleep, everyone's gonna go crazy. You had read and yet were you the exception in your mind or you just didn't need it or was this this fun game? What was.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 46:45

So once you're inebriated, right, you don't know you're inebriated. So once you're sleep deprived and you're used to operating that way, you're not aware of the lack of ability to operate because your brain just shuts down its ability to even perceive that in the first place. So you have to look for external cues like, am I doing a good job or not? And if those external cues are there, then it makes it really hard. So some of those external cues obviously were, you know, aches and pains in my body, short temper, all the other things that were contributing to it. if your metrics are performance based and they're outside and you're meeting them, you're not really tuned into those somatic things, you're not really tuned into those interpersonal things, and so on paper you're like, no, I'm good. Everything's good. Look, everything's good.

Caroline: 47:33

I don't know if

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 47:33

Yeah. Not a human being. Yeah, exactly.

Caroline: 47:37

maybe not integrate. Yeah. Interesting, interesting. So now, how do you prioritize sleep or do you?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 47:47

So I have my Oura ring, which is nice feedback. I have external information'cause it gives me feedback, which makes it easier to make informed decisions. So if I have a bad couple nights, take it easy or I lay off the caffeine more. But I do take medication to help me sleep to make that transition easier. It's not necessarily sleep medication, but it's a medication that makes it harder for you to elevate your heart rate or harder for you to get into that like thinking state. so it's easier to just relax and let go. but even when that's not enough, it's a sign that like something showing up emotionally that needs to be processed. And so that's where you gotta slow down, take the time, call somebody, reach out, journal, you know, sit with yourself a little bit and that still shows up. So yeah.

Caroline: 48:32

How do people work with you now? Like who's your typical client? Typical demographic age. Who are your people?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 48:43

Who are my people? My people are the ones that are trying to do everything they can and it still doesn't feel like it's working and they don't understand what needs to change, but they know that something has to change. Yep.

Caroline: 48:55

And how do they work with you? How do they find you? Is it only in person or how does that work?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 49:02

Yeah. So most of my clientele now is remote, which has been really nice. So I have some people that are in Thailand. I have some people that are in the UK, which is pretty cool. And then all across the states and Canada. I have one person that's in South America right now, which is kind of interesting scheduling wise, but we make it work. And so, you know, we do a little framework where we're gonna do a lot of assessments. From that we look at how can we accommodate. Their own unique nervous system needs. Like how do we best accommodate how they work best? And then how do we design and align what they need to do in a way that actually works for them? And so it's a lot to try to navigate'cause there's so many little things that can show up and be helpful from that sensory processing stuff that we talked about. Executive functioning process, their attachment styles, subconscious beliefs, but a lot of it is about teaching them tools and techniques for somatic regulation where if they need to be able to perform and they need to be able to respond to that performance in that moment, we can give'em tools to upregulate their nervous system. And then even more important than that, there's a lot of ideas about tools that they can do on their own that can turn that off. cause if we have that switch and we just turn it on all the time, eventually it won't turn on anymore. It just won't. And it will just be stuck in off, and that's what burnout typically is. And it's because they've been doing it for so long with so little recovery, that's typically when they show up. But luckily I have been able to catch people enough times where it's not working as well as it used to. So they're like, wait, what's going on? I need to fix this now. And so teaching people how to get out of that state and then recover and then we'll switch back and forth, and having that flexibility to be able to regulate themselves. When they need to has been really powerful for most of my

Caroline: 50:45

What are the assessments that you use as your main kind of tools? Are they the same for everyone or is it a combination of a mixed drink for that person's palette. Like,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 50:57

Yeah. I love it. Great question. What's your palate? What flavor profile are you looking for? yeah, What's your unique flavor of burnout? When does it show up? When do you feel the most anxiety or stress? Right? What are the most protective things? Because if someone's completely in full burnout in that moment. The way to help them move through that isn't doing more, it's actually doing less, and it's doing more of what works, what's already good, and doing less of what makes them, you know, stress out a little bit more, but sometimes they're in situations, they can't just like go on a sabbatical, they can't quit the job. And so we have to figure out things to bridge the gap. Yeah. And a lot of people make this assumption, you know, in leadership they talk about don't personalize the issue. Look for the process behind it and a lot of that's like, let's not try to look for shame, blame and guilt. Let's look for like solutions to this. And a lot of times, we think it's the other person, we think it's ourselves. When sometimes just like that, those two, co colleagues, it was the environment that they were trying to have that conversation and that actually seemed to make the difference. If we can figure out these little things that are showing up and we can align you and match it to the environment, it's amazing how much easier life can be. Like it really is. Yeah, if I had known what I knew now, then I don't know if my life would've looked very different, but it would've been more enjoyable and less stressful for sure.

Caroline: 52:22

And in some ways you had to experience those things so that you could intimately understand all these different ways that burnout shows up with the chronic pain in the body and the exhaustion and all of those things, so that your mess is now your message. Right. That's a.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 52:40

Yeah.

Caroline: 52:41

Or somebody

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 52:41

Yeah. Favorite quote.

Caroline: 52:44

Is your testimony. I was like, oh,

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 52:46

Yeah.

Caroline: 52:47

me uniquely qualified to help in these areas. So that's interesting. So as of this has evolved for you and you saw the different things of externally successful, internally unfulfilled, all different, you know, Russian dolls or whatever kind of nesting dolls that there are, how do you now define authentic success your perspective?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 53:17

Yeah. I definitely think that success is built through your wellbeing, not at its expense. So if your pursuit of something is diminishing your wellbeing, that is going to be dangerous, eventually it's gonna be risky. And some people have a very high tolerance for risk. So I would never tell someone how to live their life. That is for them to decide for themselves, and if you are sacrificing your sleep, your health, your relationships to pursue something, it's a dangerous scenario. Because that goalpost continues to move what counts as successful or arrived or enough, if you are that type of person, you'll never arrive. It'll never be enough. And so what you give up in the meantime, time and the means of getting there becomes a really big compromise. So making sure you bring your wellbeing along for the ride is really important. And it actually improves performance in most cases. I will tell you, I am a much better person with more sleep to be around my team. They didn't go to hypnotherapy, they hung out with me, but they were better because I was better. And the better I was, the better the business was. The better they were, the better their relationships were. I always think back to growing up as a kid, you know, if my mom had more time at home, if she had to work less, if she could have been more present because of those things we're taken care of, how much different would our relationship have been? How many more memories and stories and jokes would we have had? Right. Same thing with my dad's. And so I do think that there's this trickle down or ripple out effect that happens when people in positions and leaderships and they're in an organization that if they can be a better version of themselves, everything around them gets better, and we all are affected by that. So.

Caroline: 55:01

Absolutely. How do people find you? How do people work with you?

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 55:06

If they're professional and they wanna find me professionally, they can go on LinkedIn. It's Gnosis Therapy, which is a silent G, so it's G-N-O-S-I-S therapy or they can email me if they want, Garrett at Gnosis Therapy. They can follow me on Instagram, Gnosis Therapy, or my website. Also, www.Gnosistherapy.com.

Caroline: 55:24

We'll be sure to have all of that in the show notes. But Garrett, thank you so, so much for sharing your story and all these beautiful insights and how you help people. So I really, really appreciate it.

Garrett Wood Gnosis Therapy: 55:37

Yeah, it's fun to be able to have a chance to share it. Thanks for having me.

Caroline: 55:39

Garrett, thank you so much for your wisdom, your insight, and our beautiful conversation. To learn more about Garrett's work, visit Gnosistherapy.com Until next time, keep aligning your work with the life you are meant to live. Thanks for listening to your next success with Dr. Caroline Sangal Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.