Chris Bumstead (5x Mr. Olympia): “I Started to CRY”! How Your SHAME is Tied to Your CHILDHOOD!

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:11you often go into therapy because of a problem in front of you or a stress about this or you know i want to be better mr olympia i want to enjoy it more i want to enjoy the journey be more present and not be so stressed out about it and it always almost brings you back to your childhood and i'm sure you've you've done therapy i know you've experienced that everybody who's done real therapy with a good therapist you know it all goes back to your childhood and i did a really cool podcast with some navy seals like you talk about masculine like the biggest gangsters on the planet like these were like tier one navy navy seals and they were talking about how they've done some work as well and almost all the navy seals they spoke to when they're going through their stuff they expect it to be all their trauma from the war and losing their brothers and all these things like that which obviously hurt them greatly but a lot of their wounds come from their childhood too and that be able to heal those allows them to move forward through all the other stuff they lived during their life too so i started to notice that as well and it plays into every aspect of your life your relationship your relationship with yourself everything so we started performance based trying to be better at olympia and it slowly went back to my childhood and i was like i had the perfect childhood my parents are still together i was happy i was good i was good i was great and they were like all right sure let's try and unravel some things the more i unraveled i was like you know i still didn't have anything like horrible happened to me which i think a lot of people think you didn't have a big teacher exactly just because you didn't get hit in the face with a bat doesn't mean your head doesn't hurt you know like it's hard to kind of tell people that because they think nothing ever happened to me which is exactly how i felt yeah you had loving parents yeah you know a good home and a safe environment and encouragement and all those things right yeah but what was the big wound or a little wound that became big over time that you never addressed?

1:53A big one for me was feeling not seen and not truly like not fully like important and valued and I kind of felt like a little bit on the back burner because my parents tried their best and they did amazing but there was a lot going on in life sometimes and you know my sister was going through a lot who was older than me and then I was the kid who was like good at sports doing this and that so I was all good like don't worry about Chris he's got it all together he's got it figured out he's good you know don't worry attention on on your sister yeah or on a sister, on this, on that, on everything else, because he's got it together.

2:25And I saw that. So I was like, okay, well, I'm good at all this stuff. And I don't want to add stress to my family. So I'm just going to hold it and handle it on myself and kind of bottle it all down, compartmentalize and do my own thing. And, you know, I wasn't thinking that clearly like that when I was younger, but it's just naturally how you cope. You know, you build defense mechanisms depending on your environment when you're young. So that was one of the ones I kind of did when I was younger. And to me, it was just normal. You know, I handle myself on my own. I don't really need a lot of connection.

2:51I don't really need a lot of intimacy. I'm just very independent and I can do things by myself. And then older and older I got, I started to realize partly in the Olympia, I bring a lot of stuff back because the Olympia has taught me so many things. But when I won my first Olympia, all I felt was relief that it was over. I didn't really feel joy and happiness and all these things because there was a lot of stress around the Olympia that I was just suppressing. And then my big story or lesson that I tried to share with people this year was that if you numb the bad you numb the good so as you numb your emotions everything kind of gets dulled down so i've tried to process all that move through it and i'd realize that as i compartmentalize everything in my life i compartmentalize all the good too now it's kind of just suppressing all these feelings and then you get older and stuff just starts to feel dim and like sad and alone and all these things you don't understand why and it's because i've created this environment where i don't let people help me or i don't ask for anything i need i'm just like i'll help everyone before myself and then I'm good on the side and it leaves you kind of alone because everybody needs connection.

3:52So what was life like for you in your teens early 20s and mid 20s until you started to dive into therapy? Was it always lonely and sad and depressing or were there good moments too? There were definitely good moments and it's almost hard for me to like communicate this sometimes but I really try to because I know I'm not the only one who didn't have like this depressing childhood but I also expect a lot of like myself I don't want to just be like well I'm good you know I want to be great I want to feel love and connection out and closeness and everything I don't want to like drift apart from my wife in difficult times and all these things I want to like understand and grasp and be the best relational person that I can be so while I didn't really feel depressed or anything when I was young I also didn't really feel like I had anyone that I could go out to and reach out to in hard times.

4:44And if I was scared or sad about something, there was someone who I could lean on or talk to. I just felt like it was normal for me to hold that in myself. The reason it was tricky for me is because I knew that my parents did love me so much and I did have people who love me. And if I were to share with them, they would be there for me, but I just felt like it'd be better to just hold it on myself because that's just the way, that's just the way I operate. Isn't that interesting? So you knew your parents loved you. You knew they would show up for if you needed something. But you didn't want to be a burden.

5:12You didn't want to stress them out. So you didn't want to show them that you needed support or help, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny because we have about a 12-year age gap, I think. And so I grew up in the 80s and 90s. And I was never allowed to show emotion, cry, say that I was having a hard day without being made fun of or picked on or bullied or, you know, what other guys kind of just like picking on you and making fun of you. I was never really allowed to do that. So it took me until I was 30 years old until I started to do more emotional healing and reflecting on kind of these traumas, little traumas, big traumas, everything.

5:48And started to really release my emotions and heal them. And it's been a journey. But I love that you openly cry, you openly talk about your feelings, your emotions, and conversations like therapy because we just didn't have that. you know, 10, 12 years before you, that wasn't available. Now it's becoming more available. And I'm just so happy that guys like you are using their platform to express this. Yes, you're showing that you're like the most jacked human in the world, but you're also saying, hey, listen, I'm willing to continue to improve on all areas of my life. And I really think of the ultimate man being someone who is emotionally evolved, not just holding their feelings in constantly and saying, I've got it figured out, mentally, constantly growing, spiritually growing, and relationally growing.

6:38And it sounds to me like you're making an importance to value all of those things.

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7:40Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.