Episode 021: AnnaLynne McCord

Full Transcript

Intro: 00:01

Hi, I’m Rock Thomas, the founder of M1. The tribe of healthy, wealthy, and passionate people, also known as fulfillionaires. You’re listening to The #IAmMovement Podcast where we believe the words that follow I am follow you. Join me and the world’s greatest thought leaders as we discuss the power of transformation and making success a part of your identity.

Rock Thomas: 00:31

And welcome to the call, AnnaLynne.

AnnaLynne M.: 00:33

Hi, thanks for having me.

Rock Thomas: 00:36

I’m thrilled to have you here. I often have on entrepreneurs and people that are helping my listeners and community build their wealth and build their empires and that sort of thing. So you’re going to bring a little bit of a different flavor for us today and I’m excited about that. And everybody has a story, everybody has a background, everybody has labels they were given and some of them serve them and some of them sort of strangle them and some people never get out from under them. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your story and maybe some of the labels that you were presented with and have you hung on to some of them or have you changed some of them and become something else?

AnnaLynne M.: 01:15

For sure. A little bit of all of the above. I grew up in Georgia, I was homeschooled my entire primary, secondary education, and I graduated when I was 15. I moved to New York and studied acting at that time because I had to get out of my house where I grew up in, a lot of childhood trauma. I would not actually remember most of the trauma until about 18 months, well, no, about 16 months ago.

AnnaLynne M.: 01:49

Yeah, so I was undergoing PTSD treatment in late 2018 when I uncovered memories of child sexual abuse, and so I’ve been working as a president of an anti-human trafficking organization for your ambassador for over 10 years, but the president since 2016 and I’ve been so passionate about this issue and I’ve been very vocal. I’m the survivor of sexual assault when I was 19 which I’ve talked openly about, and I thought that I had done all this work and I was good and I’d fixed myself and oh, I basically was just like, why am I still pulling in negative energies, negative relationships, or cycles that were just still a little too similar to the things that I’d been pulling in when I hadn’t done any work.

AnnaLynne M.: 02:41

So it was really kind of confusing and I was getting frustrated and I sat down. I have a crazy affinity for neuroscience, so I’m obsessed with the brain, I’m obsessed with the mind-body dynamic, and so I’d known about the treatment of EMDR for a long time, but I was reading a friend’s book and then I just became compelled to just go and do it finally. And I sat down with the doctor and I was like, “I have fixed myself from here to here. I am good. What is wrong with me? You have to fix me because something’s going on in the body.” And I was.

AnnaLynne M.: 03:18

I was very cerebral. I had done all of this mind work, and I had found the ways of removing the narrative that had held me back and I had found forgiveness and found compassion and love, and it was all inside my head, and none of it in my body. So the doctor was funny, she started laughing. She’s like, “Well, this is what we focus on. We focus on bodies. So we can figure it out.” And Rock it was crazy within, I did two sessions of intake. We went into processing. I know very well help with psychology process goes because of all of my studies.

AnnaLynne M.: 03:58

So I’ve quickly answered all the questions that I knew needed to be answered and was just ready to get into the treatment because I was like, I’m just going to get this treatment, this will be the last thing, and then I’ll be fixed, I’ll be good and I can just move on with my life. That was not what happened, obviously. The third session was our first processing session with the actual treatment and I popped the bubble on years and years of latent memories of sexual abuse, and it was just earth shattering.

AnnaLynne M.: 04:32

I mean this is the work that I do. These are the kids that I help. This is not my story. This didn’t happen to me. I’m not a kid who was sexually abused. I mean I was just, my entire world was rocked and my narrative of my story, of my AnnaLynne self and how I had come to be who I am all of a sudden got really, really, really messed up, and I didn’t have any kind of grounding and I felt very, I was splitting, I was going in and out of the consciousness that had been frozen in my body all these years of that child self was very, very much alive suddenly, and I couldn’t contain when she would be taking over my body and I would come out.

AnnaLynne M.: 05:22

I would speak in baby talk, and baby vocabulary but I had done so much mindful practice and meditation for seven years straight that I was literally capable of thinking from my own vocabulary as a 31-year-old woman and it would come out in baby voice, baby vocabulary. I couldn’t push through my presence. It was a really profound experience because I knew what was happening. So half of me knows from neuroscience and from psychology, and all of these things that I’ve learned what my body was going through, which was obviously the way it’s kind of referred to as dissociative identity disorder, but I wasn’t disassociating from it.

AnnaLynne M.: 06:08

So I was experiencing the identity disorder part while being fully aware that it was happening and incapable of taking the reigns back and having my own voice.

Rock Thomas: 06:17

Wow.

AnnaLynne M.: 06:18

So I immediately got on a flight to Cambodia where the centers that I work with, I’ve been working for, like I said, for the last over a decade now and I contacted the founder who’s a survivor of human trafficking and I said, “Somaly, I am getting on a plane to see you, not as the president of this organization, not as an ambassador, I am coming as a girl that you need to rescue because I’m a mess.” And I landed in Cambodia, two of the girls that I was able to put through college for psychology where my 24/7 care through the night while I was going through this.

AnnaLynne M.: 06:56

So everything was just such a beautiful full circle healing experience to be able to just get to where of my happy places in the planet where there’s so much love for me and I had so much obviously love for my girls there and there’s a lot of, that’s where I learned compassion and where I learned forgiveness and self-love and all of these things was from these beautiful survivors and their resilience, and to be able to be with them going through this and to not feel alone, to just feel like I’m one of the girls was really, really profound and within one night, Somaly’s so funny, she’s just like, she’s rescued over 7,000 girls.

AnnaLynne M.: 07:37

She’s like, “Oh, sister. I save girls all time, takes you five minutes. No problem.” I’m like, “This is a real thing. I’m actually struggling here.” She’s like, “Five minutes, no problem.” I’m like, she literally fixed me in five minutes, within after the first night of being there I did not split again. I had been splitting every day multiple times a day since the memories came back and got on the plane I think 10 days after and one day in Cambodia with her and it was done and I would continue to go on and have body relives.

AnnaLynne M.: 08:11

So I would flash back kind of the way war veterans would grab their weapon and think they’re on the battlefield. My body would relive what actually happened to me and I would feel it inside my body. I would feel everything.

Rock Thomas: 08:24

Wow.

AnnaLynne M.: 08:25

It was as if it was happening. My body would involuntarily move with the rhythm. It was very harrowing at the same time it was a complete split and this is the thing that I really want people to know who deal with trauma, that they can totally reset their nervous system and fully not just heal but I have the sense that this never happened. Not like-

Rock Thomas: 08:51

Really?

AnnaLynne M.: 08:52

… I am who I was meant to be before this happened. It’s almost like the kind of the analogy I give is, I was this little light and someone put this dark thing on top of me. So I thought I was dark, but when I got the dark thing off of me, I’m still that light, untouched, untainted, undamaged, and I believed I was damaged for so long. I believed I wasn’t worthy of someone loving me unless they were using my body.

AnnaLynne M.: 09:20

I didn’t have any self worth and I had very low self-esteem, and I was not the obvious victim. I was very defensive about all these feelings. So I was very like, fuck you. Don’t fall in love with me, the fuck’s your problem. I was like that. So I was like leather wearing spikes and middle fingers to the sky. That was me. So really not a person that people reach out or even try to reach out to support.

AnnaLynne M.: 09:52

I was so defensive about love that it just would, you don’t touch me with a 10-foot pole if you care. I don’t want anything to do with you. What do you pity me? What’s your problem? And this is something that I think that people don’t always, when they don’t understand trauma, they have this concept of victims in their mind that they’re going to be these sad people but need help and love and nurture, and that’s not all of the time, the way it works with us.

AnnaLynne M.: 10:20

When I experienced extreme violence as a little girl, and because of that, I became violent in my energy field, and that meant that if you got close to me, you would experience my violence, and this is unfortunately what we create in our world, right? So the work that I’m doing now, launching my movement, The Love Storm is because I’m love and I’m a storm.

AnnaLynne M.: 10:48

I was very violent and I’ve been able to transmute that violence into an intensity that I created with love but I’ll never lose that part of me, that’s a fierce little chickadee out to make her way in the world happen. But I’m thankful that it’s coming from that light that had been hidden for so long in that dark little place, and now I can conjure all of that in a powerful way that I believe utilizing the tools that have helped me heal.

Rock Thomas: 11:25

It seems like, you know when you watch a movie and they start with the end at the beginning and then they go back and tell the story?

AnnaLynne M.: 11:32

Yes.

Rock Thomas: 11:32

It kind of feels like you’ve had a life like that where you were living this life, and maybe we can break it down a little bit because I think that might be useful is, so you left home at what age?

AnnaLynne M.: 11:45

Left home at 15.

Rock Thomas: 11:46

At 15?

AnnaLynne M.: 11:46

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rock Thomas: 11:49

And when did you start kind of the anger side, the darkness, the lashing out? Was that at a young age? Younger than that?

AnnaLynne M.: 11:57

It was a young age. I definitely had kind of was very internalized at that time. So I used it as fuel to follow my dreams to be an actress, and it didn’t really fully, you didn’t see it play out with partners. I didn’t have a boyfriend until, well I guess I had been on my own for like a year and a half and I met someone, but we had a beautiful, really pure relationship, which is ironic considering everything, and I think that there was still that child inside me that was still somewhat open even after everything that had happened. And I definitely had my fears and stuff that played into the relationship but the anger hadn’t materialized yet, and then I started having really bad nightmares when I was 18.

AnnaLynne M.: 12:55

Someone said something that triggered me and I started having really, really horrible nightmares and visceral dark, dark stuff. And I had experienced what I would label domestic abuse in my home. It was discipline, but it was extremely excessive and it left bruises for days and it was, I have a problem with people who hit children because I see it as legalized violence against children.

AnnaLynne M.: 13:24

I don’t understand how we will… I literally ask the question, so it’s not okay if your husband comes home and hits you because I mean, you didn’t get dinner done on time. So are you sure? I mean, dinner should’ve been done at six and he just hits you a little bit and they’re like, “This is unacceptable. No, of course not.” And I’m like, “Are you sure?” But two grown adults can hit a small child and people seem to have no problem with that. I really have an issue with it.

AnnaLynne M.: 13:51

So you tell a child don’t hit and you hit them to tell them to not hit. It’s like the incredible logic that people live by like okay, we’ve thought this through. But yes, so I experienced that, and then the nightmares came and the anger followed after.

Rock Thomas: 14:08

So what inspired you if you were disconnected from what really happened to you to start helping with human trafficking before you even really consciously aware of what you had experienced, what do you think happened there?

AnnaLynne M.: 14:20

Well, it’s really interesting because I got out to Los Angeles, I thankfully started working, I was on the show Nip/Tuck, which kind of put me on the map, especially in the industry because it was a very industry watched show in the film and TV industry. And right after that I was offered the show, 90210, and I didn’t want to do the show. I was a thespian and I didn’t want to do some vapid little show about teenagers. I was all self important and I was also going through a moment where I just felt really unhappy.

AnnaLynne M.: 14:56

Everybody was congratulating me on being so successful so early on, and I just talk about wealth and I did not have the wealth that mattered to me, which was wealth on the inside.

Rock Thomas: 15:10

Did you have a little imposter syndrome?

AnnaLynne M.: 15:12

I mean, I think that I…

Rock Thomas: 15:16

You felt like you…

AnnaLynne M.: 15:16

Honestly it was just like what did my nine-year-old self think that what was wrong with her? She thought that we were going to be happy doing this. I was like, she’s screwed me up. I need to leave. It was honestly, I just really thought that I’d gotten it all wrong. That my lifelong dream had just been a mistake and I contacted my old acting partner in New York and I said, “I’m coming back to New York. I’m going to work at Starbucks and find a new passion. I hate this town. I’m out of here.” He’s like, “You’re an idiot.” She always says, I never told you, you’re an idiot. But in my mind she was reprimanding me and she was like, “You have such a platform and you have such an opportunity.”

AnnaLynne M.: 15:52

She was Miss Florida state, she’s been a humanitarian her whole life. She’s always done all this great stuff, and she was the first one who educated me on the issue of human trafficking. And so she and I actually were about to celebrate our 10-year anniversary. Going to Cambodia together in March but she got me educated, she got me involved, she had me take 90210 with the idea that I was going to do it for something that was bigger than me, and that was really how it started.

AnnaLynne M.: 16:17

I got on the plane to Cambodia, thought I was going to go help and talk about not understanding victims, thinking I was going to go help these girls. They changed my life and then they changed my life again and then years later they saved my life, and as you’ve said, it’s been kind of in reverse. But yeah, that’s kind of how it played out.

Rock Thomas: 16:36

It’s really cool. So tell me a little bit about some stages of your identity. How you saw yourself. So many of us in life suffer from the, I’m not enoughness and Brené Brown talks about we wake up and we don’t have enough sleep and we didn’t have enough time and we don’t have enough coffee, and there’s not enough gas in our car, and I didn’t do the presentation well enough when we get it home and we’re just beaten ourself up and then we look for other things to fill us up. Maybe a partner or maybe some drugs or alcohol or TV or gossip or what have you, and that’s such a vicious cycle until we start to fall back in love with ourselves and accept ourselves and appreciate the journey we’ve gone through and start to really take those experiences as teachers and life lessons and then help others kind of grow through it. So were some phases you saw yourself as a young woman then as an actress and then take us to today? What are some of those different identities you’ve had?

AnnaLynne M.: 17:36

Absolutely, and I love for Brené Brown.

Rock Thomas: 17:40

She’s awesome.

AnnaLynne M.: 17:41

She’s the queen. She helped me find vulnerability and see it not as a weakness but as a strength. Yes, so one of the major phases for sure was just an absolute a belief, just an absolute knowing that I was not lovable. That there was something disgusting about me or gross or dirty and owning that because that was my defense mechanism.

AnnaLynne M.: 18:05

I’d be like, oh I’m dirty. Yeah, I’m fucking dirty. Yeah, it was like that, and so I never drank, I never did drugs, I never even had a cigarette, but I was extremely addicted to my sexual life. That was the way that I could turn off and I would obviously come to find out that I was quite disassociative about that obviously. But that was the only time the thoughts would stop because I had a standard of perfection that no one could live up to, and I-

Rock Thomas: 18:38

For them or for you?

AnnaLynne M.: 18:39

… For me and anyone who got close to me obviously. There was zero tolerance and I could be quite, to use Tony Robbins conscious level power God, “quite ruthless” and I saw things very, I had a little bit of blue too, I was very rigid at times of like this is the way the world works and everything was based on all of my observations of patterns and stuff in the world and never asking, do I agree with them? Just that I never wanted to be on the other side of them, and it’s ironic because now I literally do everything different than everybody. I’m like I saw him on stream, but at that time the sexual dynamic, if that wasn’t happening, I just didn’t feel loved. The second that it would stop, suddenly my love source went away and I needed another-

Rock Thomas: 19:34

Lets break that down for a second because I think the curse of being attractive is that you get a lot of opportunities to get attention.

AnnaLynne M.: 19:43

… Yeah.

Rock Thomas: 19:44

And have you been able to recognize the difference between love and attention?

AnnaLynne M.: 19:49

Thankfully no, and it’s sad especially for someone because I’m very much an internal person and I process internally, I can be very gregarious and when I speak or do the things that I do in my work, I can appear to be quite extroverted and all of that but it’s very draining for me and I actually value one-on-one experiences, that’s what it fills me up. So the attention part that I was thinking I was seeking was actually just to be seen.

Rock Thomas: 20:30

Of course.

AnnaLynne M.: 20:31

I felt invisible. I felt that no one saw me because no one saw what was happening to me. So yes. So I’ve thankfully been able to determine the difference now and I see a lot of people who give me attention and I actually, my energy field feels drained from it ironically. So it really is an alert system for me that this is not something that’s valuable for myself inside. This is something that they’re gaining value in giving, and thank you for your intentions, but I’m okay. I love me now. But yeah, in the beginning of my life it was all I saw, it was constant. Like anybody just see me, just love me, just touch me, just do… You know?

AnnaLynne M.: 21:17

All of that was desperate, and then it was in finding the work, it became projection. It was, I’m going to save everyone, I’m going to save everyone because I can’t say myself. Oh, there’s another one to save. Oh, look another one, and I’m dying on the inside. So then that was kind of my introduction to love was projection love is what I call it, and then it was healing. I’m started to begin that process of healing through external, that love that was unconditional, that was shown to me, that wasn’t attention, that was genuine love, and it was a lot of times in Cambodia from my girls. And now The Love Storm is because I just want to love this planet the way I have been loved and say thank you, and also hopefully it changes the energetic field in our world.

AnnaLynne M.: 22:05

That’s what I learned a lot about myself in the last year and a half since all of these memories came back is that my energy field, what has shifted has been miraculous, but it’s only been energy. Nothing changed. I’m still me, I’m still my own self. The only thing that changed was this dark energy is no longer a part of my cells in my body. My system is reset and I float in an energy field that’s much higher and it’s attractive to people in a different way than that kind of dark energy pulls people in and away, right?

Rock Thomas: 22:41

Right.

AnnaLynne M.: 22:41

And I’m so thankful that I understand that. And Dr. Joe Dispenza has been someone that I… I was just listening to his book Becoming Supernatural again before we jumped on the podcast because we literally have to dive into the cells and dive into the inside of us and release those things, and it’s simpler than we think. Breathwork has been the biggest thing, Sematic Breathwork. Doing stomach, heart breath and getting trapped energy out of my cells, bringing oxygen and life to parts of my body that had been frozen off.

AnnaLynne M.: 23:18

We wonder why we get diseases and we have parts of our bodies that are frozen from trauma, it’s like, two plus two equals four. So I’m feeling so much. Even I got sick because everybody’s been going through something and the way my body regenerates and heals is unbelievable now. It’s all of it. I see such a big difference.

Rock Thomas: 23:42

You practice, are you vegetarian or vegan or do you eat just whatever you want?

AnnaLynne M.: 23:47

I eat pretty much everything in moderation. I would say most of it is vegetarian. I do like my chicken sometimes, but I mean that, it’s very… I just kind of listen to my body. But yeah, I’m very kind of just keeping nothing in excess as is my, I see that, if there’s anything in excess in your life, use it as a red flag because it’s saying something to you. It’s saying, hi, something’s off-kilter.

Rock Thomas: 24:19

So the work you did from what I understand you saying is that you had experiences in your life, you had memories in your cells, and even though cognitively you were able to disassociate from it, those are still living in your system and they were starting to talk to you and they were starting to create disturbances, but you were able to take what was inside of that and release it and then create space for new light. That is about right?

AnnaLynne M.: 24:49

Absolutely, absolutely. The releasing part being obviously it requires you to do some kind of work, you know?

Rock Thomas: 25:00

Yeah, of course.

AnnaLynne M.: 25:00

It’s like, oh, I want to really spend everest here and it goes away but it tends to be in mind-body practice that you can… And you’ll release it in different ways. You might never remember whatever it is and be able to release the energy of it. Some people do that, some people use plant medicine, some people use, like I said, breathwork-

Rock Thomas: 25:21

Mushrooms.

AnnaLynne M.: 25:22

… Deep meditation, mushrooms. All of these different things that our world has available to us. We tend to diminish the cures and promote the treatment. It’s this really interesting thing about the Western world, but I’ve always been obsessed with the Eastern way of things. So I’ve oftentimes deferred to Eastern forms of treatment and that has majorly helped me in this process, and in getting fully aware where I listen, I check in with the body, which I call baby.

AnnaLynne M.: 26:00

Baby was zero to 12 before the thinking brain really starts. Baby is feeling the world through the body. So much of what the body is, is actually baby taking in the world, right?

Rock Thomas: 26:12

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

AnnaLynne M.: 26:12

So the years that I was going through this, it was just body, body, body being traumatized. So mommy is the brain and mommy checks in with baby body, like how are you feeling? And if my nervous system is dysregulated, that’s going to set everything off because it’s going to send messages through the RNS messaging system in the brain, in the body, excuse me, in the nervous system up to the brain and say, “Hey, I want to go buy something. I want to eat something. I’m going to drink something.” Not like it’s trying to regulate the nervous system. That’s what we’re doing throughout our lives is an incredible book called The Invisible Lion by a neuroscientist friend of mine, Benjamin Fry, and it basically breaks everything down in all of our lives.

AnnaLynne M.: 26:54

Little “t” trauma, big “T” trauma. That means if you get in a car accident, if you have abuse trauma, if you have natural disaster, what that is, it’ll trigger dysregulation in the nervous system and if that dysregulation energy gets frozen or trapped, that’s trauma in the body. It’s not what happens to you. It’s the fact that you were not able to utilize your survival instinct and the survival instinct got trapped.

AnnaLynne M.: 27:19

So my legs wanted to run for years and years. My legs would go numb in bed with a partner. If I like a new partner, if I didn’t feel comfortable, my legs would go completely numb all night. I’d stay awake all night. It was really an issue for my sleeping patterns, and that’s one of the things, thankfully that’s been healed as a result of doing the treatment I’ve done and in getting these memories out of my body, I don’t deal with that anymore, but people call it restless leg syndrome. They have all these different names for it.

Rock Thomas: 27:51

I have that.

AnnaLynne M.: 27:52

Yeah, a lot of it is just trapped energy and it’s trying to get out and it can’t get out until you’re fully relaxed and when do we fully relax? When we’re falling asleep, right?

Rock Thomas: 28:01

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

AnnaLynne M.: 28:02

It typically happens right in that sweet spot.

Rock Thomas: 28:06

So I don’t know if you’re aware, but I had a Goalcast video that came out two years ago that went viral and 100 million people have seen it.

AnnaLynne M.: 28:14

Holy shit.

Rock Thomas: 28:15

And it’s my story of my, no, I grew up on a farm and there was basically a lot of neglect and I had to do my chores without getting, I couldn’t eat before I did my chores, et cetera. Youngest of seven children, always trying to make my dad proud but never succeeded, and when it came out, I started to get literally tens of thousands of people reaching out. In about an hour, up to about 150 or 200 people that said they were going to commit suicide, and that when they understood that our parents label us or our caregivers label us, they say, you’re stupid, you won’t amount to much, you’re bad with numbers, you’re shy, whatever it is, and some good ones too, you’re funny, et cetera.

Rock Thomas: 29:04

That when they understood the concept. So my story is this, I had a lot of acne growing up. My brothers called me pizza face. I thought that I was terribly ugly and I couldn’t string a sentence together. So I thought I was ugly and stupid, not a combination I recommend.

AnnaLynne M.: 29:22

Yeah, fuck.

Rock Thomas: 29:23

And so I stopped going to school, I pretended I was sick and then I fell behind in school, and then I met a mentor who taught me the power of your identity statements and that you can rebrand yourself if you will. And he said, “Who’s somebody you admire and you’d like model?” And I said, “Well, Tom cruise, but I’m not as cute as Tom cruise. I’m a little bit rougher.” And I said, “Maybe Clint Eastwood.” And when I said that my face lit up and he goes, “That’s it. Say it again.”

AnnaLynne M.: 29:58

Oh, chills. I got chills.

Rock Thomas: 30:00

And so we came up with the label of ruggedly handsome.

AnnaLynne M.: 30:03

Yes.

Rock Thomas: 30:05

And so I went from pizza face to ruggedly handsome, and then I started to just say it over and over and over again, and I remember driving in my car just saying it and crying because I could feel part of me that label of pizza face or that label of shy or whatever, say everybody has a pizza face that somebody gave them. And the ability to know that you can change is what came through this message in the Goalcast video, and literally I had people that were burning themselves every day I mean, terrible. Telling me that they got a job based on that one video. So you are definitely an empath.

AnnaLynne M.: 30:44

Yes.

Rock Thomas: 30:48

So how do you take what you went through, what I went through and take the tools? What are the tools you would recommend to somebody? Because I think that in many ways, what I’ve given them is the cognitive, but there’s probably some stuff left in their physical body. So what do you recommend to people?

AnnaLynne M.: 31:06

For sure. Well, for one, thank you for sharing your story, and I suffered severe acne too. My mom had adult acne and as an actress, I had all over my face cystic. It was really, really embarrassing.

Rock Thomas: 31:21

It really tough on a teenager though.

AnnaLynne M.: 31:23

It is. Yeah. But yeah, I definitely do know that the mind will take us pretty far, but only so far, and then we do have to activate the body. So for me, the main thing that I do now is I start with kind of my inner child because that’s who was left out of my life for a long time, and in my opinion, that is also the key to freedom, right? So when we were free, we were little, before we believed in these labels, before we knew what labels were, we were just free, and when we remember freedom, we have to see ourselves as little children.

AnnaLynne M.: 32:16

So I do a little bit of inner child meditation and I’ll ask you to close your eyes and take a deep breath, and kind of do five centering breaths and then get a really clear image of yourself as a child and really see that little girl or that little boy and look him or her in the face and just take that child’s face into your hands and say, “I’m so sorry for all of your pain, I’m so sorry for all the times that you felt unseen, for all the times you felt unheard, I’m so sorry that you felt invisible, that you felt ugly, that you felt that you weren’t smart enough or pretty enough or intelligent enough or funny enough or whatever it is.” And give that validation to the body, which is baby, as I was saying.

AnnaLynne M.: 33:14

So really validate the pain, not trying to keep the narrative going. We don’t want to keep the narrative going. It’s not about that, but it is about seeing baby for the first time because the child often was never seen when that pain was there. So we see the pain and then let’s say, “Mommy’s here now, daddy’s here now, and I’m never going to leave you in that pain again. You’ll get hurt sometimes, but I will never leave you in that pain. I’ll never leave you unseen, I’ll never leave you unheard and I’ll never leave you hurting anymore.” And I check in with myself and I have that little girl in my mind at all times.

AnnaLynne M.: 33:53

It’ll pop in there and she’s got cotton candy, I don’t know where she gets cotton candy from and as long as she’s happy, she has a cotton candy in her hand. So I can literally look inside my mind and see my six-year-old self and if she’s holding cotton candy, we’re good. But I will check in, and it’s interesting because we have an entire internal world and we just don’t understand it because we haven’t proven it. It’s crazy. It’s we all can experience it. You feel it, you can’t touch the wind, right?

AnnaLynne M.: 34:22

You can’t hold it. You can’t harness it, but you feel it. Well, your hair might not blow that much but you nail it on your face, Rock. My hair will blow in the wind. But you know what I mean?

Rock Thomas: 34:38

Sure.

AnnaLynne M.: 34:39

There is this internal world and we don’t let the inner child out enough. So for me the biggest key to breaking down these labels and these things that have held us back, and releasing in the body is to, there’s a saying, “The little child will lead us.” Right? It’s actually going in and making it apparent that kind of separation. Really acknowledging that there’s a separate adult self from the child self and asking, closing your eyes, praying if you believe in prayer meditation, if you believe in meditation. They aren’t mutually exclusive even though some people think they are. But that has been a huge thing, and incorporating the breathwork actually activates DMT. The lungs are the biggest part of the body that will [inaudible 00:35:36].

Rock Thomas: 35:35

Operating system, yeah.

AnnaLynne M.: 35:37

Yeah. And that’s really profound.

Rock Thomas: 35:40

That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

AnnaLynne M.: 35:43

Yeah.

Rock Thomas: 35:43

So I have a daughter who is a model in Los Angeles and an aspiring actress, and she is 25. She got a world gig, I guess an international gig with guests. She was on every guests outlet I think last year for a fall kind of promotion.

AnnaLynne M.: 36:06

Awesome.

Rock Thomas: 36:06

And she’s now gotten to a stage though that environment she finds a little bit toxic, fake, whatever you want to use, right? There’s certain things that are required if you want to climb the corporate ladder in that world, and she’s finding that not necessarily where she wants to go anymore. So you’re in that environment, how do you take an environment that can have that pressure or those types of energies stay centered, and connected to your inner child and serve this other community of helping these girls. How do you mix all those worlds?

AnnaLynne M.: 36:47

Well, I mentioned I have multiple personality disorder, right?

Rock Thomas: 36:51

We all do. We’re the ones admitting it, that’s all.

AnnaLynne M.: 36:59

Exactly. No, I mean that was a big… Obviously she’s a beautiful soul and clearly has learned some things from her father, but she’s obviously experiencing kind of similar to what I was experiencing when I didn’t want to do 90210 and I didn’t want to be in this town anymore. And it’s, if you don’t conform, you must be an outcast, and I’m now very happy to be an outcast, but it goes against biology.

AnnaLynne M.: 37:27

We’re trained biologically to save our species, to not be the outcast. So I understand, and I think that really the thing that I do personally is I make my way of life the way that I think is normal and I put this energy out there where I’m like, oh wait, you don’t do it my way. I literally know that my way is strange. I’m like, oh wait, you guys are going to do that? No. Oh, I know. Everyone does it. That’s why I wouldn’t if I were you.

Rock Thomas: 38:03

Nice.

AnnaLynne M.: 38:03

So I have this kind of energy where I almost use the game against itself, where I’m like, oh, I mean if you’re not trend-setting then what are you really doing? You’re just copying everyone, aren’t you? And then like… So I have an element of that when I’m in those settings.

Rock Thomas: 38:22

Very clever.

AnnaLynne M.: 38:23

And I’m thankful that being homeschooled, I never understood peer pressure. So thankfully I’m not very susceptible to it, and as a result, I think that I am able to kind of flip on its head, but it is something where you’re in an industry that praises ego and diminishes you if you don’t have one. And that was what it was very hard for me in coming full circle with everything, is that if you aren’t the one who’s pushing to the front of the line because you’re more famous than someone else or whatever it is, they think that you’re not and they’ll leave you in the dust, and so then there’s this element of like, wow, I’m literally being punished for not having an ego.

AnnaLynne M.: 39:10

So in those settings, I absolutely understand, and I think that for me, what I’ve chosen is that every moment, every job, every interview, every experience in which I find myself, there is one person for whom I’m at that place at that moment in time, and there’s one reason and I always find it and it’s someone, as you were saying, I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me about suicidal and self-harming because I’ve done those things. I’ve attempted and I’ve self-harmed and all of that. And I always find someone there that I’m meant to be there for.

AnnaLynne M.: 39:52

So if your daughter does continue in that or if people are working in any industry that has these kinds of qualities, for lack of a better word, qualities, knowing that you’re leading with your purpose, right? My purpose is to love storm every moment of the rest of my life, and that means that how do I bring a storm of love into an ego filled room? And I did it actually for the first time in my entire career.

AnnaLynne M.: 40:25

I was at the Golden Globes Amazon party and from the time I arrived to the time I left, I enjoyed the entire party because I was only being in my own light and my own love, and I was smiling. I went up… So one of my friends wanted a picture with an actress and normally that’s no other actor would ask another actor because that means that you’re making them more important than you, and there’s this all these crazy, stupid little rules.

Rock Thomas: 40:53

Of course, yeah.

AnnaLynne M.: 40:53

And I was like, “My friend would love a picture with you. You’re so amazing.” And there was no… It was just nothing left. I have nothing but love here for the people on this planet and everything on this planet, and I have only compassion. The Love Storm is that. It’s a compassion meditation in 20 plus cities around the world because that’s what I was sending to the person who did the things that happened to me when I was a child.

AnnaLynne M.: 41:21

I was sending him compassion to help heal myself and then was doing this compassion meditation for him. So that’s honestly my long winded answer, but that’s finding one person or one reason for every moment.

Rock Thomas: 41:36

Nice. So let’s get to a bit more of a rapid fire section. I want to ask you just a couple of things and then talk a little bit about your future. Tony Robbins, what do you get out of that environment?

AnnaLynne M.: 41:45

Oh my gosh. I am not normally good in big massive settings like that. So it was really great to challenge myself and to see that community is actually something so important even when you’re a loner and your water. I’m like wood and then I turn into water when I need to breathe, and so community was a major thing and also I realized that my contribution in growth, which of the number, they’ve always been my top for everything. They were driven by a little bit of need for significance and I was able to release that during the week with Tony, which was awesome.

Rock Thomas: 42:23

Yeah, that’s well said. I think a lot of people don’t realize how much they use significance to get the other human needs met. So getting clear on that is very helpful. Tell me what this Love Storm? What is love to you? Because I think it’s different for everybody. So how would you characterize love?

AnnaLynne M.: 42:40

Yeah, for me love is absolute acceptance of what is. So I mean, everything is bad, is good, is okay, is love. I fully accept that I can do as much as I can do in the world and that is what I can do and I accept I am as much as I can be in the world and I accept you are what you are in the world, I accept. So it’s full acceptance without judgment. That’s love to me.

Rock Thomas: 43:12

Give me three quick practices in order to develop that part of you.

AnnaLynne M.: 43:17

Okay. Compassion, you can do the Hoʻoponono I think it’s called. I’m sorry, I love you. Please forgive me. Thank you, which I do every day. Also, the Metta meditation, which is what we’re doing with The Love Storm, which is, may I be happy, may I be at peace, may I be free from suffering, may you be happy to someone I love, someone I don’t very much like and then to the world.

AnnaLynne M.: 43:42

So that meditation is a really profound meditation to do focused compassion work and that grows that kind of love and finally do something fun. It’s my dream to create playgrounds for adults around like a chain of playgrounds for veteran companies and airports around. So that we remember to be free and children are loved. If you hang out with a dog or a cat or a kid for a period of time every week just you’ll learn what love is.

Rock Thomas: 44:16

Yeah, for sure. So what are some of your big goals now? You’ve just recently, it seems in the last 18 months or so, had some really big shifts in your life. What now is on the horizon for AnnaLynne in the next five to 10 years?

AnnaLynne M.: 44:33

Well now, and thanks to Byron Katie, I know that this narrative is nothing and everything. So it is what I want to create it to be. I truly believe I’ve found my path with this movement, with Love Storm, because my biggest desire is to engage with the youth, and young people and people in general but especially our future humans and work in prevention of slavery. So I’m fighting slavery of the body but also of the mind, and that’s the point of The Love Storm.

AnnaLynne M.: 45:17

So before those labels and chains get on our kids, I want to be a part of breaking the cycles that have created them to begin with, and we do that by inviting awareness and in consciousness and higher consciousness, and the kids today are open to everything and it is really, really nice. So I’m hoping to continue that. I want to at some point have a university that educates educators so that we really, really focus on what we’re teaching children. EQ, over IQ, including IQ, but EQ being more important.

AnnaLynne M.: 45:54

How do you navigate the world if you don’t have emotional intelligence? I don’t know. It is something that we must have and teachers are one of the biggest influences on little kids, and if they come in with a bad day and their energy is affecting baby body energy, it just becomes a spiral. So it’s a dream of mine.

Rock Thomas: 46:18

Very nice, and so if people want to support you, contribute to any of your causes, how do they go about that?

AnnaLynne M.: 46:24

They can go to Together1Heart. Actually it’s probably better if they go to thelovestorm.com because then you have the access to go to my charity or to donate to The Storm itself, to the campaign. So thelovestorm.com and that gives you kind of what we’re doing in the cities we’re going to and we’re adding cities because people keep coming up and we’re like, we have a network in this city and we want you to be here, and we’re letting it unfold. We don’t have a, we’re not attached to an outcome.

Rock Thomas: 46:59

Nice.

AnnaLynne M.: 46:59

That thing that we like to do that screws us all up. We’re not attaching the outcomes, so we don’t know what’s going to happen. Everyone’s like, “How many people are coming?” I’m like, “I don’t know. It’s a free invite.” We didn’t make people pay for it. So we can’t really… Some people register, some people don’t, somebody will show up. It’s going to be amazing. But yes. So the lovestorm.com or you can follow me @theannalynnemccord on Instagram and Facebook.

Rock Thomas: 47:24

So let’s end this call today by me asking you to share with us how you see yourself today. The words that follow, I am follow AnnaLynne McCord. So how do you when you have your inner narrative, you’ve got your baby body, you’ve got your mama, how do you talk to yourself? What labels do you give yourself that you could share with us?

AnnaLynne M.: 47:50

Well, my top two are, I am love, I am compassion, and when you meet me and talk to me, you immediately feel that because it’s really all that I focus on now and what we focus on, we become, and I am success too, and the success that I define is very different versus saying that some people are so poor, all they have is money, and I love that because I’m really, really wealthy now because it’s all just happy. I don’t just have happiness, actually I am joyful every day and that is such a huge difference in everything.

AnnaLynne M.: 48:31

I am lovable, I am deserving, I am worthy, I am cherished. These are all things that I remind my little baby self of, and they make me feel that I am acknowledging the soul inside this house for whom she really is and I’m thankful for that. So I’m grateful is another one.

Rock Thomas: 48:57

Yeah. Beautiful. I’m going to ask a bonus question for the young women that probably are following you and are inspired by you that maybe haven’t yet gotten to a place where they’re in love with their body for whatever reason, what do you tell them?

AnnaLynne M.: 49:12

Yeah, it’s hard because when you’re in that place, right? You’re also looking from the eyes of pain, right?

Rock Thomas: 49:24

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

AnnaLynne M.: 49:25

So the eyes of my pain would look at my body and think I was too little. I couldn’t keep weight on. I was always really, I felt very not feminine, I felt very kind of boyish, and if you feel you’re overweight to how that makes you feel and there’s many different things that you can say to a woman, who is dealing with that. It’s like, “Oh, there’s guys who love all types and all this stuff and it’s all externally focused.” But it’s how do you feel when you think the thought. Byron Katie asked that question and then I use it a lot because how do you feel when you think the thought that your body is not beautiful? And when you answer that question, it can’t be good, right?

Rock Thomas: 50:10

Right.

AnnaLynne M.: 50:11

It’s not good, and so then she follows that with whoa, who would you be if you could never think the thought, my body’s not beautiful? I’d be someone who doesn’t think that I’m not beautiful, right?

Rock Thomas: 50:22

Right.

AnnaLynne M.: 50:23

And it’s really profound, the effect that it’s had, but I also ask, do you want change? Do you want healing? Some people don’t, and they’ll go, of course I do, of course I do. No, no, it’s not an of course. Do you want change? Because it requires you to do something uncomfortable, It requires you to get out of your comfort zone. So if I’m here, I will support you, but if you don’t want this for yourself, I got a queue of other little ladies and gentlemen who I’d love to be a part of their journeys because they do want change.

AnnaLynne M.: 51:00

So please respect your time and respect mine. If you want to go on talking about how sad your story is, be my guest, out the door. You know what I mean?

Rock Thomas: 51:12

Yeah.

AnnaLynne M.: 51:13

I respect the work that I’ve done and I respect people who do the work. So I’m here to show up for people who are showing up for themselves. So there is an element of that too, of accountability, and so if you want that, I’ve got a list of books, I got a list of gurus, I got a list of I’m not your gurus. But yeah, I think that that narrative is a difficult one for women, but they do need to want out of it, and that’s key.

Rock Thomas: 51:42

That’s awesome. AnnaLynne I want to thank you so much for taking your valuable time. I know you’re a very, very popular young woman and you have a lot of people that you want to serve and hopefully there’s a bunch of ears that have heard you that can now follow you and know you’re a beautiful package of somebody who’s experienced a lot. I’ve worked with a lot of people and you seem to have manifested some really good ways of dealing with it, so thank you.

AnnaLynne M.: 52:12

Thank you so much. Thank you for your time and thank you for what you’re doing for our world to make this place a better place for people. I really appreciate that.

Rock Thomas: 52:20

Yeah, my pleasure. So may our paths cross one day and until then, keep up the great work and we’ll do whatever we can to support your wonderful cause.

AnnaLynne M.: 52:30

Thank you so much. Thanks Rock.

Rock Thomas: 52:32

Okay, cheers. Bye, bye.

AnnaLynne M.: 52:33

Goodbye.

Outro: 52:35

This is The #IAmMovement Podcast. To find out more about how you can join the #IAmMovement and take your life to the next level. Go to gom1.com, G-O-M-1.com.