Courage Through Neural Mastery (Part 1) With Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi

Nick McGowan (00:03.943)

Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan and today on the show I have Z. Z, how you doing?

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (00:13.888)

I’m great. Thanks so much for having me.

Nick McGowan (00:17.223)

Absolutely. I’m excited that you’re here. I think we’re gonna have a great conversation. There’s a lot of great stuff we’re gonna get into. And typically sometimes in some episodes, I’ll start just like rattling things off right now, but I’m gonna shut up and step back. Because I know there’s a lot of stuff that we’ll get into. But why don’t you kick us off? Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (00:38.92)

All right, so right now I am working as a coach, working with people on their nervous systems, understanding how their nervous systems work and understanding how to support and trust and respect their nervous system so that they can develop the skills to respond to life’s challenges rather than just react.

And I’ve been doing that since June full time and I’m trained as a speech pathologist. So I was working in public schools with kids with disabilities before that.

Nick McGowan (01:06.725)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (01:10.944)

And one of the random facts about me is that I was sworn into the US Army as a cryptolingual analyst and passed a lie detector test with a CIA agent from Langley, Virginia. So that was a pretty wild experience. I did not end up following through with that life path, as you can see. But that was a moment in my history. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (01:39.111)

Wow. I’m sure there are people that could say, yeah, I had to do that, but they were on the wrong side of it. Like they were dead to take a lie detector test because there was something crazy that happened. But I don’t even know where to start with that one specifically. Like what, why did you want to get into that? Why did you step back from it? What did you feel like in that moment?

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (01:49.032)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (01:57.376)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was a linguistics major for my undergrad.

and have always had a passion for learning languages and understanding different experiences from my own. And I think a lot of that is sort of still who I am. Much like you, I’m very interested in understanding how people get through being on this planet. I find it to be one of the most confusing and beautiful and heartbreaking and incredible,

phenomenons that were all here doing this. And so I’ve always been interested in that. And I grew up in a super fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. And one of the ways that I got to see

the variety of life on the planet was through missions work, which was really, you know, sending, my church was always sending folks to other parts of the world. And many of those missionaries were linguists, translating the Bible into other languages. So I was so fascinated by all of that when I was itty bitty and ended up getting my bachelor’s in linguistics. I was studying Arabic and 9 -11 happened. And so the army,

sent in a bunch of recruiters to our Arabic class. And I was totally naive, you know, 18 years old had been raised in this super bubble. Not 18, I was, that was not the beginning of college, 20s, early 21 maybe.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (03:42.592)

Yeah, 21 in 2001, right? That’s when 9 -11 was. So I was just had no framework for what was going on. I had been raised super like Republican, yay America, with that sort of tied in with the Christian thing. And I thought it was exciting. And they were promising us the moon and the stars, you know, they’d wipe out your student loan debt. They’d pay a hundred thousand dollar signing bonus, you know, $80 ,000 salary.

I’d get to go to the Defense Language Institute, which all linguists in the world knows one of the best language schools in the world. You get to be fully immersed and you come out sounding like you were born in a village in the middle of somewhere. And it’s just like.

primo dream come true for a linguist. So I was thinking about all that stuff. I wasn’t thinking about like basic training or that I would be involved in military endeavors. You know, I was just thinking about all the perks because I’m sure those recruiters were well trained to keep me thinking about those things. And I went through the entire recruiting process. They trained me how to pass the lie detector test because I would be the job description included like top secret military intelligence.

Nick McGowan (04:29.575)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (04:44.551)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (04:57.162)

clearance so I would have to be like a spy basically. Which again I didn’t really absorb the magnitude of it all but then that we had like a day of the swearing -in day was like a final test so it was like full day 14 hours or something of just like incrementally all these different tests and at the end of it you are signing the contract after being sworn in and the contract says

If you’ve ever been in the Peace Corps, you can’t have this job. And if you ever have had this job, you can’t be in the Peace Corps. And I was like, you know, my little such limited perspective, I was like, oh, I kind of think I’m like a Peace Corps type person. That sounds super awesome. So like, why? And they were like, well, because you’ll be an international spy, and every country will have access to that information. And so they would never let you in for humanitarian work. And I was like,

what do you mean? And they were like, you’ll be in the CIA building, translating correspondence, passing it on to the military who will then go like bomb a place. And I was like, oh, hold on pause. And because of someone was watching out for me. At that time, there were only two ways to get out of like once you’ve been sworn in. And one of them was to have a full ride to graduate school.

and I just so happened to have deferred a full ride scholarship to Princeton Theological Seminary for a Masters in Social Work, which shows you how disconnected I was from what was happening that I was like, I’ll either be a social worker with a Masters of Divinity and Social Work or I’ll go be in the army.

Nick McGowan (06:34.565)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (06:38.311)

or a spy.

Nick McGowan (06:44.431)

Jeez.

Wow. So at some point looking at that, were you like the fuck? Okay. I got to go this direction.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (06:51.506)

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve spent my whole life being like, what the fuck is actually happening? Like, who are we? What are we doing here? And how does all of this make sense? But I definitely I, I was, I am now glad that I didn’t go that path. At the time, I was really sad because I was so excited about the Defense Language Institute.

But, you know, and then my life like really unraveled after that, because I didn’t go straight to Princeton. I went to New Orleans with Teach for America, which is an AmeriCorps program. And everything fell apart and I ended up overdosing and didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about what if I would have gone in the army after that, because my life was pretty unraveled for a good decade.

Nick McGowan (07:44.519)

So go on.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (07:47.506)

Yeah, I mean, the story of my overdose, you mean?

Nick McGowan (07:52.839)

Yeah, it’s, I was just thinking to myself, like, where exactly should she, should you start with that? Like, it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s like, because I overdosed as well, I overdosed on heroin when I was 19. And it’s not as much the overdose. That’s just like the end of it. Basically, you either die or you do something different from there. It’s the path that led up to that. And then the shift after that, even like thinking about military, I had friends. I remember I was in 11th grade in 2001.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:05.088)

Okay. Yeah.

It’s the manifestation. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (08:22.759)

And I had friends that at that point, they were like, fuck yeah, I’m going to save America. I’m going to go kill all the people. And there were people that went into the military and years later, you’re I’m almost 40. I have one of my friends who I’m like, we went completely separate paths. Like, yeah, I overdosed maybe a year and a half after high school, but you were killing people because they wouldn’t get out of a truck in the middle of a fucking desert. That’s a totally different story. And then being like proud about doing that.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:25.64)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:35.264)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:39.4)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:43.23)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:48.04)

Mm. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (08:52.423)

I was proud that I didn’t die after overdosing and life changed after that. So I think that’s where we should kind of get into. Like you, you went with teach of teach for America to be able to go help and ended up overdosing. There’s a whole lot of shit that happened in between all of that, that I’m sure translates into today. So talk about that.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (08:56.232)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (09:04.296)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

for sure.

Yeah, I mean, as as we just like exemplified, I didn’t know who I was or what was going on, like what I was doing at that phase of my life. And I think a lot of that relates to being raised in an environment, a religious environment that imposed rules. And we’re going to tell you who you are. And it’s less important who you are. It’s more important what you’re doing and what you’re not doing. Right. So there wasn’t a lot of mindset development because

Because if I have the capacity to create my own mindset, then I’m able to ask questions. And if I can ask questions, then I’m threatening the authoritarian structure of the dogma of religion, right? So I was without that skill.

Nick McGowan (09:45.127)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (10:00.647)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (10:05.056)

for those developmental years. And I think that is probably the greatest reason why I overdosed because I was presented with a complex series of challenges and I didn’t have the tools or resources to get creative about solutions and possibilities related to those challenges. It just looked to me like game over, right?

because I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask some questions and get into my imagination and see what possibilities were out there, which is why a possibility is one of the most important words in my life now, because I can come back to in any given moment, anything that looks like a dead end and say, there is possibility here and I just can’t see it yet. So, you know, being raised in that.

situation, about 11 years old, I realized that I was some sort of queer at that time, the only.

framework I had was like gay or lesbian and being assigned female at birth I was like, okay, that must mean I’m a lesbian because I was noticing attraction to other girls. And now that has all morphed and developed as I’ve continued to have the ability to ask questions and now I identify as queer, meaning I just don’t do any of the prescribed rules.

Nick McGowan (11:19.175)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (11:38.464)

I am actively questioning and creating who I am in response to my, that true self, that core and in response to the feedback that I’m getting from the experiences rather than choosing a box and hopping into it and staying there. But early on I had a family member who identified as a lesbian so that was sort of a framework I was aware of. We weren’t allowed to speak with her.

Nick McGowan (11:49.445)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (11:57.763)

the

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (12:07.89)

You know, so I knew it was like a big no. I knew it was a, you know, sort of the two things that send you straight to hell are being gay or trying to kill yourself. So I was very aware of that. And around that, you know, 11, 12 age range, again, I didn’t have those tools to be like, oh, maybe there’s all sorts of possibilities. I just thought, all right, this is a not an option. So I’ll just be celibate and I’ll be a missionary.

and I’ll just cut out that thing and I’ll like suffer for Christ and it’ll be fine. I just sort of felt like, okay. And the part that was interesting, like reflecting back is that I had decided I was really into martyrs and saints when I was like itty bitty little.

Nick McGowan (12:43.015)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (12:57.509)

Okay.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (12:57.78)

Um, I loved those stories. I just thought it was like so, um, I don’t know. Now I would say it’s like almost like it was sexy to me, you know, it was like this, like these people that would go and get killed and I loved it. So I was praying for a year starting in the seventh grade to be made uncomfortable.

Nick McGowan (13:06.951)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (13:17.568)

because I had decided that these people, what made them have these spiritual awakenings was being in extremely uncomfortable situations. So I had committed to pray for a year every day to be made uncomfortable. And then I had this like, oh, okay. And so I thought God had given it to me, which maybe God did give it to me in another sense, right? Cause it is the thing that has liberated me more than anything else because it forced me to ask those questions, right?

Nick McGowan (13:27.941)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (13:42.951)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (13:48.064)

I couldn’t like get in these boxes. So I spent like 11 to 21 trying to get into the box and being like, oh, yep, no, oh, attraction to somebody, nevermind. Like, and I just became progressively suicidal as one would when you’re actively denying a part of your.

Nick McGowan (14:01.957)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (14:08.496)

essential physical nature that is evolutionarily biologically designed to request these activities of you you know sexuality is not something that we choose so

Nick McGowan (14:11.963)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (14:23.904)

So yeah, I spent that decade really trying to shut it down, praying to every, you know, praying, doing all the things. And it just kept popping up. It would not go away. And I did reach out to a psychiatrist when I was a senior in college and…

she was great. She did say to me, like, you’re okay, there’s nothing wrong with you. But she put me on antidepressants. And that was in early 2000s when they hadn’t quite realized that the antidepressants for young folks increases suicidal thinking activity, whatever. So in that state, sort of like post 911, like,

super suicidal, just turned down the army, went into New Orleans, had been in like a super, you know, rich, white, conservative evangelical bubble, and was dropped into a school where racism was just right in my face, you know, and it was like my whole, my whole story of what the world was just was shattered.

Nick McGowan (15:26.791)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (15:33.312)

And there was other, the other teachers, the other folks in the program were from a lot of liberal schools. So there was openly queer people being like, hey, the funny memory is that the first event was like a lunch. And this person walked up to me and was like, so the LGBTQ, LGBTQ historical tour of New Orleans is at four o ‘clock. And I was like, why are you telling me that?

you know? And the two people next to me was like, you’re gay, right? And I was like, no, you’re gay. Like, I was like, what? So it was so obvious, you know, I didn’t even know. So it was like all these people telling me like, oh, just be out, just be queer, just it’s great. Like, you’re good. And I was like, wait, I don’t think I’m allowed to and I had never met people who were openly queer. And I thought they just were like, you know,

Nick McGowan (16:10.375)

Ha ha!

Nick McGowan (16:23.749)

Mm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (16:31.04)

out at nightclubs like vampires or something. So these were like nice upstanding citizens who had graduated from college and were like doing good in the world and they were queer and I was so confused. So it was a mess of a time and I tried coming out to a family member and they…

Nick McGowan (16:34.535)

You

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (16:49.88)

offered out of, you know, from their limited perspective, what they thought was helpful, which was to send me to a Christian counseling center where they were doing conversion therapy, which often includes electric shock therapy. And I felt so guilty and I knew I had tried so hard to get this out of me and I knew it wouldn’t get out of me. And so I sincerely just felt like I didn’t want to destroy their system by

Nick McGowan (17:18.789)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (17:18.816)

not being able to fix myself. So that was where I was coming from on the overdose. And I love for you that you felt proud when you didn’t die, but I felt really devastated.

Nick McGowan (17:24.519)

cheese.

Nick McGowan (17:32.199)

Oh, it wasn’t instantaneous, you know, like there’s a whole fucking situation to it. But I’m so glad that we got into that because even like I said earlier, like if you tell somebody like, well, this is what happened and I graduated and then I went and did this thing then I overdosed. Some people would just be like, oh, wow, that’s crazy. Are you okay now? Yeah, I’m all right. Now this is what I’m doing. What the fuck? Like there’s so much shit that happened in between all of that and all of that that ties in. I’m so glad you actually use the word.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (17:33.418)

Eventually.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (17:54.664)

Yeah. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (18:01.607)

Of the system because it is the system. Like, um, even with religion, like that’s just such a fucked system. Um, context and the people that listen to the show, they, they know this, but I, I was Christian or I guess I’m still Christian. I, I love Christ, but not, not Christianity, not the religious side of it. Spent 10 years playing lead guitar and different church bands being all up in all of it.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:04.296)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:16.224)

Ah… Mmm… Mmm…

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:30.554)

Wow, we’ve got some shared history.

Nick McGowan (18:31.271)

and seeing a lot of the stuff. Oh, yeah, I wasn’t a PK, but you know, I was close enough to him. I also had some friends that were PKs that yeah, and they’re typically the fucking wild ones. So I learned that early and was like, well, I could be wild too. There’s so much shit that goes into it. It’s such a shame based system where you’re told you’re either this or you’re that.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:36.808)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:40.704)

Yeah, I’m a PK.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:54.654)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (18:58.752)

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Nick McGowan (18:59.175)

You’re either going to heaven or you’re going to hell. I remember I had a cousin who died by suicide and I was so upset with him because I was like, you, you just went straight to hell. Now I realized he was just fucked up. There was stuff going on. He didn’t, he couldn’t talk to his dad. He couldn’t talk to the people who are close to him because of the system that they had and the way they looked at things. And his dad is literally one of those guys like, fuck you, put dirt on it, get back in the game. Like, and he jumped off a bridge because of it.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (19:09.47)

Yeah.

Yeah. It was too hard. Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (19:19.616)

Yep. Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (19:28.128)

Yeah, of course.

Nick McGowan (19:29.383)

some of us, it’ll lead us to overdosing. And some of us get through that. Some of us don’t. You know, there are still people, I remember people that overdosed around the same time I did. They lived, but they’re still, still battling that, still working through that. And the system that ties into it, like you had even said, and I guess I need to step back a little bit. I said she earlier, and I’m sorry for that. It’s part of the…

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (19:35.488)

Yeah. Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (19:53.024)

Thanks.

Nick McGowan (19:57.029)

change of everything and understanding like even with what you’re saying like for you to be able to not step into a box and just build life the way that you want to build it. I think it’s absolutely beautiful. We as all people need to look at it that way because you are building the life that you need to build for yourself. But there’s something my partner said this different times. She said that she believes trans people are God’s gift. They’re

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (20:14.142)

Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (20:22.727)

it’s actually God’s way of showing us you can be anything and everything you want to be. And then there are the fucking religious people that are like, that’s not right. There should be a man and there should be a woman and the patriarchy says that the man should lead everything. And this is coming from a token white man. So I get it.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (20:32.096)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (20:38.432)

Well…

Your partner might love to know that historically in indigenous communities, queer people and gender nonconforming people, however you want to say it, the people who didn’t get in the boxes were the spiritual leaders. And that was acknowledged from very early on. People were really honored for having the ability to hold multiple perspectives. Because if you think about like,

Nick McGowan (20:56.293)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (21:07.328)

what maybe you and I might perceive as God, it’s this all knowingness, right? It’s the ability to come from multiple different perspectives and to be able to hold all of it and be able to say, like, where is the non -duality?

Right? Where is the oneness? And that’s the through line of every religion even, although many have gotten off track of that, but that’s the through line is that oneness. So I really love learning about that history because it really does empower me and make me feel like, okay, I have something to offer here, you know, and um,

Nick McGowan (21:26.247)

Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (21:32.037)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (21:48.64)

Taking those moments like for your friend where your friend didn’t have any options that he could figure out other than jumping off of that bridge, you know, that’s why I’m so committed to talking about these things because I want people like him and like me who was faced with this. Okay, I’m either gonna fail the system and my family and my entire community and be a black mark on them forever or my only other choice is death.

You know, like I really couldn’t see any other option. And if there’s anyone who ever hears this story and finds out that there might be another option or they might be able to even ask and start to take a moment to look at other options, that would be so meaningful to me. But, you know, religions are an effort to control. And why do we try to control?

Nick McGowan (22:41.895)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (22:43.776)

It’s because feeling out of control is so terrifying. And one of the biggest graces that I am so grateful to have received through this entire experience is to be able to notice like, wow, if I’m feeling scared, that’s when I’m violent. For me, it was towards myself, right? For others, it’s towards the people around them.

Nick McGowan (23:06.415)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (23:13.216)

And there’s innocence in fear. If you think about a little street dog who’s in an alleyway,

powering in the shadows and somebody reaches out with a sandwich, right? What’s that dog gonna do? It’s gonna bite that person’s hand off, right? Not because that dog is vicious or cruel or wrong or evil or wants to harm that person, but purely because they’re just operating off of that fear response where we don’t have access to our frontal lobe. We don’t have access to compassion or the ability to take perspectives, you know, and, and so,

Nick McGowan (23:51.591)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (23:53.062)

everything I’ve been through has given me like the more proof than I could ever have asked for that like…

Nick McGowan (24:00.773)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (24:02.944)

There’s nobody who’s wrong. There’s nobody who’s evil. We’re all doing the best we can. And the more information we can have at our fingertips, the better we can have the chance of being able to create something beautiful with this wild situation, you know, which is why things like this podcast are so meaningful, just offering that information, offering these different perspectives.

Nick McGowan (24:25.735)

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. I mean, I know there’s tons of people that are out there that just kind of talk shit. They just like talk and talk and there’s no real substance because they’re searching and they’re looking for things. And they’re the swindlers, you know, the people that are like, I’m just trying to talk about something just to get something selfish out of it. I’m hyper aware of that shit and try to…

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (24:34.848)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (24:47.175)

Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (24:52.039)

hell away from that as much as I can. So specifically with this show, these are these deep fucking conversations. And I’m glad that when things get from, oh, well this happened, I traveled here and I overdosed that we’re able to get into stuff about systems and the boxes and how to actually break out and break away from those things to be us and to be okay. And to understand there’s tough shit that we’re all going to go through. And we all know that, but it’s being able to just fucking continue on.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (24:57.17)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (25:07.008)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (25:16.128)

Yeah. Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (25:21.438)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (25:21.927)

Even if you can’t talk to somebody else, like one of the things I’ve thought about. Um, so I overdosed, I almost committed suicide three different times. One was relatively recent, 2018. And I remember I got to a point where I was like, I’m either going to jump off this condo building or I’m going to, and I was like, wait a minute, like the transition to or I’m going to, I was like, fuck this, this is nonsense. But there’s something that stepped in to be able to say, wait a minute.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (25:45.184)

Mmm… Mmm…

Nick McGowan (25:51.599)

Hold up. And I do believe that’s where God was like, hold easy there you. Yeah, he’s like, calm down. Step back, you’re gonna be okay. We’ll figure this shit out. Like just listen and keep walking. I’ve made the decision to take suicide off the table. Like it’s not a thing anymore. And there are still days where my anxiety will come up, crazy shit will happen. And I’ll think like, fuck, I don’t wanna be here. But to take that off the table and not have that as an option anymore.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (25:53.76)

Yeah, that was the divine intervention.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (25:59.38)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (26:13.632)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (26:19.451)

almost makes it easy to just go, all right, well, I just need to keep fucking moving along. And all of these are opportunities. And this may be a little bit of a sadist thing on me where I’m like, oh, cool, this is another trigger. Beautiful. Let me deal with this. Let me work through this. And for the people that listen that are going through it, it is just seeing it and just working on it. And that’s okay.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (26:24.05)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (26:36.384)

and

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (26:40.99)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, and I’m so glad that you’ve sort of had this miracle of being able to really make a decision and take it off the table. I don’t think that’s something that everybody has access to. It’s again, you know, there is one of my core beliefs is that there is something bigger than us. I don’t understand it. I disagree with it most of the time, but I don’t like the program of this video game.

Nick McGowan (26:57.927)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (27:11.104)

But since I’m in the video game, I am, and I now have a 12 year old, which is a big reason why I work as hard as I do to keep leaving off the table. But for many of us, it ends up being a daily thing. I consider myself in recovery from a lot of these characteristics, these like diagnosable mental health characteristics, right? But.

Nick McGowan (27:19.143)

Hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (27:40.256)

Just like someone who’s active in alcohol recovery or recovery from alcoholism, it’s something that I work every day. And it’s something that I often joke my part -time job is my mental health, but it’s not actually a joke. I put in at least 20 hours a week for just being able to stay on the planet and to reduce the way that I harm myself or others as much as possible.

Nick McGowan (27:57.799)

Yeah. Shit.

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (28:08.928)

But it is certainly not for the faint at heart and it’s a real commitment daily, you know, to living into that in a way that like some people don’t have to do, you know, and there can be some grief around being one of those folks that has to work this hard.

Nick McGowan (28:18.567)

Oh yeah.

Nick McGowan (28:29.095)

Yeah, yeah, there is that but I also wonder if those people really do actually need to do it, you know, like they’re it’s almost Like I think of the 1 % the sociopaths that really don’t have the Empathy to see that other people can live like they they’re just basically here to kill people I still think there’s got to be some hope for them even

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (28:46.546)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (28:55.985)

because you can’t just be like, oh, we’re your social path. So we’re just gonna lock you up. And like, that should be the end of it. That doesn’t make any sense. But there are the people that I do think we all need to work on it. And we, you and I may experience it differently than other people. And it’s like, the deeper you go into it, the deeper that you understand the deeper you need to go. Even if you think you’ve reached your deep end, you’re like, that’s cool. You’re still kind of in the kiddie pool, but you’re in the deeper side of that right now. And you,

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (29:01.192)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (29:22.792)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (29:25.831)

you get to keep moving through it.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (29:27.296)

Yeah, I don’t think everybody does it in this lifetime and I don’t think everybody has the capacity to.

Nick McGowan (29:31.399)

Yeah. Truth. Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (29:34.528)

I know lots of people who have passed, you know, deep in the victim programming. And I don’t think that’s like dangerous because right now that I’ve stepped outside of this paradigm of heaven hell, I feel like we are here to have experiences, maybe to do some sort of expansion, evolution, some sort of understanding all the faces of God kind of thing. My kid the other day said the most profound thing.

Nick McGowan (30:01.509)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (30:04.736)

He said, I have it framed over here. I can’t read it from here though. It was something like, the devil is just God’s mischievous side. And I have been really digging that lately because I don’t understand what’s happening here.

I don’t understand why some people die by suicide and others like us survive it. I don’t understand why some people kill others. I don’t understand so much of it. Why did I get born into this situation where I was inherently going to hell? I don’t understand any of that. And maybe even my ideas about like,

you should work on your mindset and heal your trauma and become an awakened soul. Like maybe even that is not actually the goal. I don’t know, you know? And so I really am enjoying, there’s someone named Byron Katie. Have you come across her? I think you might be interested. She has a form of self inquiry called The Work.

Nick McGowan (31:02.639)

Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (31:11.407)

Mm -mm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (31:19.136)

And the quote that I love of hers is, if I were believing and thinking what you were believing and thinking, I would do the exact same thing.

Nick McGowan (31:29.029)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (31:29.088)

And it brings that innocence forward in such a profound way that allows me to slowly, I still haven’t forgiven myself for everything, but it slowly is healing that shame that you mentioned when I realize at any given moment in time, both when I was, you know, leading the junior Republicans meeting to right now saying, I think it’s okay that I’m not a man or a woman, you know, like all of those iterations are

or just my best version of what I’m thinking and believing in any given moment. And everything that has been experienced from other people, what I’ve experienced other people doing in my life, all of them were also in that moment of only having access to what they were thinking and believing, and it made sense to them.

Nick McGowan (32:03.463)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (32:16.069)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (32:21.607)

I want to go with that a little bit because I think on the show we talk about traumas and we talk about the things that have happened and how you’ve dealt with it and really with self mastery. What are you doing on the daily? Like what’s your discipline? So it’s interesting to see how silver linings come from things. Like I look at things from a third party perspective because I had to detach as a little kid because shit was fucked up. But that’s a silver lining where I can look at things and when I’m in a healthy spot, I can truly look at things from all these different angles that

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (32:26.75)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (32:31.934)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (32:36.072)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (32:40.832)

Right. Yep.

Nick McGowan (32:50.503)

don’t have an interpretation or personality for me at all. But there’s stuff that happens that pulls me back into those other things. So being able to see my parents, let’s say, or friends or people you worked with or whatever, they were doing the best they can. Yes, on one hand they were. It still doesn’t make it okay that they did fucked up things or whatever. But they can both. It’s not even they can be. They are both simultaneously true. So I think.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (32:53.086)

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (33:06.654)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, 100%.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (33:16.808)

Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (33:19.437)

Specifically for the audience if you’re thinking of somebody or there’s somebody or something that came to mind as we talk about this like understand that both of those things are true they did what they did because they thought it was whatever and It was fucked up or however you believe it It’s then on us as the people to be able to do something with it So you had said earlier not everybody’s equipped to be able to do that, but everybody is given the opportunities I believe whether that’s divine or just happenstance or whatever

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (33:27.57)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (33:31.712)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (33:49.607)

something clicks at times where you go, huh, I see that and we have a choice. You can either see it and go, cool, and walk away from it, or you see it and do something with it. And I do think that divine comes in at times because he, she, whatever the fuck it is, is like, I’ve been trying to point this out to you for years now. Like one more time and you’re like, you get smacked in the face. There are times where I pray, I’m like, slam my face into a wall. Just don’t break my nose if you don’t have to, but help me get the fucking point. Like just wake me up.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (33:56.736)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (34:16.64)

Yeah, I knew someone, yeah, yeah, I knew someone who had changed their prayer to like, can you do it gently, please, because they were getting slammed into a lot of walls. But I’m really glad that you highlighted that when we acknowledge that.

Nick McGowan (34:19.399)

There never been times where I’m like, oh, okay.

Nick McGowan (34:27.045)

Ah!

Yeah.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (34:33.65)

Everyone’s doing what they have the capacity to do, that’s a form of radical acceptance, which is very powerful and gives us the capacity to move on from trauma, but it’s not radical approval. So there’s never an instance where I’m gonna say, oh, hey, person who harmed me, I understand that you were doing your best. Come on, come on over, let’s hang out again, right? I’m gonna use assertive communication, I’m gonna use boundaries, I’m gonna use all my interpersonal effectiveness tools that I’ve learned from dialectical behavioral therapy. I don’t know if you are familiar with DBT, I’m obsessed. I did the whole nine month course on repeat seven times, because I just really was like,

Nick McGowan (35:02.599)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (35:12.615)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (35:16.359)

Peace.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (35:17.482)

Really? I have these rights and possibilities. I was so excited. But yeah, radical acceptance is not radical approval. You are not saying yes to unacceptable behavior. You are giving yourself the opportunity to say, all right, this thing happened.

Nick McGowan (35:21.255)

but

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (35:34.588)

And instead of staying in the torture cycle of reliving it through hating them, through trying to change them, through trying to prove that it was wrong and unfair and whatever, once you’re able to say, okay, you did what you did and it was unacceptable, but I can accept that it has been, it happened.

and I can’t change it and I can’t change other people, how can I change myself? How can I go get the resources and supports that I deserve, that every human deserves, which is why DBT just like shocked my system. Cause I was like, I deserve to ask for what I want. I deserve to have a preference, an opinion. I deserve to say no to people when they’re harming me. Even if it’s a family member, you know, all of these things that a lot of us weren’t.

Nick McGowan (36:14.023)

Yes.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (36:27.876)

given the opportunity to learn as children. And that’s the piece that’s so important to me that I, you know, you haven’t asked me yet, but I’m going to go ahead and say it because it fits now. The one thing I want people to know is that it’s never too far gone. You’re never too far gone. You can always develop the skills to have a life worth living, no matter who you are and what you’ve been through. There’s no hopeless cases. So, yeah.

Nick McGowan (36:31.047)

Mm -hmm.

Nick McGowan (36:57.223)

Well, thank you for getting the answer out of the for the last question. I appreciate that. There’s there’s so much to all of this. I’m glad you brought up DBT. And every time I hear radical acceptance, I can’t help but think of the book. And for those of you who haven’t read the book or listen to the book, go read it. Listen, I think it’s 40, 45, 50 years old at this point. When did it come out? 70s, 80s?

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (37:14.752)

Tara Brach.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (37:20.928)

Uh, no. Yeah. I, it might’ve even been nineties. Tara Brock, radical acceptance. It’s, it’s super powerful and she’s still kicking. She’s got a YouTube channel. She’s got insight timer. She’s got, you can find, um, all that good stuff.

Nick McGowan (37:27.239)

Ah, yeah, okay. Yeah. Oh my God.

Nick McGowan (37:35.079)

Well, I use inside timer so now I’ll find her on inside timer. Same, same. There’s so many options with it though sometimes it’s just a bit overwhelming like I just want a five minute guided fucking nine billion options.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (37:40.352)

Yeah, I love Inside Timer too.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (37:49.408)

Yeah, I just use my recents. So if you find one that you like, and I just like you just go to recents, it’s gotten me through many, many, many, many nighttime hours, just, you just do one meditation after another after another after another until you’re feeling okay.

Nick McGowan (37:53.959)

Or the bookmarks. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (38:02.151)

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

As a quick side note, I have a guest that had been on the show maybe a year, year and a half ago, who actually was following on inside timer for like a solid year. And the guy would tell me to have a kick ass day for like, I don’t know a year. So I ended up reaching out to him and he was like, fuck yeah, I’d love to be on your podcast. I’m like, all right, cool.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (38:13.278)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (38:21.864)

Yeah.

That’s so cool. I reached out to my favorite person and she hasn’t responded, but maybe it just not yet. Because I also have a podcast.

Nick McGowan (38:32.167)

Not yet. Yeah. Yeah. What a cool thing. So go ahead and plug your podcast.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (38:39.616)

Okay, yeah, it’s very similar to yours. I love where you’re coming from. Basically, mine is just offering people the opportunity to share personal stories about how they’ve figured out how to be on the planet. It’s called Earth School with Z. Because I feel like, you know, if we think about it, if we give ourselves the mythology or the framework of I’m here to learn something, that for me helps me to get through some pretty impossible situations, I can say, okay.

Nick McGowan (38:49.287)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (39:02.663)

Mm -hmm.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (39:09.664)

Is there something here for me to learn? And that shifts from the why me? This is so unfair. It’s too hard. I don’t want to do it.

Nick McGowan (39:18.823)

Yeah. Awesome stuff. I really appreciate being on the show today and talking about everything. Before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (39:29.152)

Yep, so my website is…

an experiencer .com a n experiencer .com and there’s all sorts of there’s YouTube channel podcast, book coaching, work with me, we didn’t get to it. But I also use a modality called the safe and sound protocol, which works passively with people’s nervous systems, which can be really helpful for those of us that are in such chronic defense states that we can never get back up to our frontal lobe. So decades of therapy can sort of

to be not helpful because you can’t think and talk when you’re in a fight or flight. So it’s a pretty cool tool. But yeah, I’d love to meet anyone or connect with anyone.

Nick McGowan (40:14.673)

Yeah, I mean, we didn’t even really get into the nervous system really much at all, because we talked about a lot of your background and there’s a lot of stuff that goes into, again, the systems and shame and all of that, that ties into our nervous system. And I know that that can shut us down. So maybe we’ll have you back at some point. And I know that the nervous system is such an important thing that I think a lot of us just don’t even think about.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (40:29.81)

Yup.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (40:33.728)

I’d love that.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (40:40.702)

Yah!

Nick McGowan (40:40.903)

It’s like you don’t often think about your breathing because you just do it but your nervous system is there and moving you along or fucking you up because you fucked it up.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (40:47.968)

Yeah, I really drive in the bus. It’s like 80 % of what our brain decides to do is based off of what the nervous system is telling it to do. And that’s all subconscious. So if we can become more conscious and have more of a respectful relationship with it, it can really be a game changer.

Nick McGowan (40:57.189)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (41:05.735)

Hey, again, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. I appreciate your time.

Gazit Chaya “Z” Nkosi (they/m) (41:09.288)

You too.