It takes a second, and we're alive. Hey guys, Drew here at thatanxietyguide.com. I have a special guest tonight I'm really excited about, my new friend Monique Coven. Monique is a trauma PTSD recovery resiliency. Resilience Coven. Resilience, gosh. No problem. Monique and I have been talking for a little while about how we want to start to address an issue that comes up all the time, especially in the discussion group. If you're not in it, you should be in it. I will put a link in the description wherever you're watching. Monique is in the group. She's been contributing. It's been awesome. Monique's background is trauma PTSD recovery, resiliency, those sort of things. Social work background. Give us the read as digest version of how you got to where you are now. You were a social worker for many years, right? Yeah. I mean, I was working in social work, my whole career up until last year. Yeah. And I worked primarily with Holocaust survivors. So I really learned a lot about resilience. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. And then the reason why I got into trauma certification as a certified trauma recovery coach, was because of my own diagnosis and history with, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. And I was very educated in all kinds. I mean, I've done all kinds of trainings and really it was for myself because I wanted to get better. And I had spent decades, decades, decades looking for the right modality, trying. I wrote 15 different therapeutic modalities, always hoping that that one would fix me. And I was always disappointed, yeah.   So the reason why I've asked Monique to get involved is because you have that good combination. That sounds terrible. It's not a good combination, but you have a combination of trauma, PTSD and the anxiety thing. So people who are listening to the podcast, watching the video in the group comes up all the time. I'm not terribly versed in trauma and PTSD. So that's something to get you involved. So before we get into it, I have to make a little, I have to acknowledge that anybody who has followed me for any period of time understands that I'm not big on coaching. Like I kind of dump all over the coaches, but it's important to understand that when I'm dumping all over coaches, the anxiety coaches, the life coaches, that's a different thing. And you're gonna see, like I say all the time, nobody needs a coach because we have what we need inside us already and Monique is probably gonna say that 10 times in the next 40 minutes or so. So we aren't on the same page with that. But when you're dealing with trauma and PTSD, those are actual real things. That's not just life coaching. That is a specific thing that needs to be addressed that is outside the realm, a little bit of the things that I talk about all the time. So for those of you who are wondering, Drew, how could you have a coach on? Like this is different. Monique is not gonna tell you to eat avocados and meditate to get better. This is a real thing that we're gonna address, the specifics of trauma and PTSD. And I also wanna say, which is really different from a lot of coaches that you may go to, they haven't recovered. I have recovered. That's true. I'm symptom-free from post-traumatic stress disorder after having it for decades. And I'm recovered from chronic anxiety, which would have been a dream for me. I no longer have it. That's something that, to work with someone that has been there and knows exactly what you're talking about and has come out of it. Right. Yeah, that's very different. That's why I have you on. And I think I also wanna say specifically, like I have seen Monique stuff, her and I have spoken before, trust me, for the next 30 minutes, you're not gonna hear about some miracle cure. Her and I are very much on the same page in the way you go about this. So this is not some special magic black box that Monique has come up with to cure your PTSD. It's just smart. It's just smart. And it follows very similar things that I talk about all the time. So that being said, we're not here to necessarily sell coaching, but we'll talk about how you can contact Monique afterwards at the end, if you do want to. Totally reasonable thing to do. So let's talk about, you know, I deal primarily in people who are dealing with things like agoraphobia and panic disorder. But people bring up all the time, well, what if I had PTSD or what if I've been through some past trauma? How does that fit into this? So let's talk about the difference. So you have either had, we've all had been through some crappy stuff in our past, but some things might be categorized specifically as trauma. And what's the difference between trauma and actually PTSD? Well, I mean. They kind of get used into changing things. Yes, yes.   And then, you know, if you've ticked off all the boxes in terms of, you know, you have the behaviors, then that's what you're diagnosed with. But so there is a difference between post-traumatic stress and anxiety in that with post-traumatic stress disorder, you've gone through a completely overwhelming experience, overwhelming to the point where you feel completely powerless, you feel terrorized, helpless. It's just, it's a completely overwhelming, it's overwhelming for the system. Okay. And what happens is again, there's different kinds of trauma. There's childhood trauma where it was ongoing and repetitive.  But what happens is that it's an overwhelming experience on the body and on the mind. And it's, what happens if people don't get help right away is you start to develop certain symptoms that stay with you. Okay. You know, and these could be reoccurring memories or flashbacks. You could have the emotional, they call it an emotional flashback. So you have the exact same feelings, but you may not have a picture of the scene. Okay. You have, of course, anxiety comes with it. Yep. So there's flashbacks. I kind of want to follow that up a little bit. The anxiety that comes with it. Sure, sure. So, again, why don't you finish first? You kind of run through. Disassociation is a big one. There's different levels of disassociation. Mine was like. Epersonalization and derealization, those types of, right? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. And disassociation, there are people that I know who will miss hours out of time. They'll just miss hours. Whereas in my case, it was mild in that mild. It wasn't mild. I could not stay present. Right. I couldn't. And that was because my childhood was so, it was like a war zone and so out of control. And there was a lot of abuse going on.  So my, the neuro pathways were really formed because I would just, I would just go. Yeah. So when I became an adult and there was no more trauma, I mean, I'm grown up, I couldn't understand for the life of me why I couldn't stay present. And I didn't know about disassociation. I didn't know what was going on. And then you start to think something's wrong with you. Right. And later on, I recognized that it was just because the neuro pathway was really formed. And I was so used to doing that. Yeah. And so that was a pattern for me, which again, I don't have anymore. Yay, which is great. So, so let's, let's talk about that a little bit because there's, there is so much overlap. And I think people start to get a little confused. So let's talk about the dissociation thing. So you're talking about a much more extreme form of dissociation where you are literally unable to stay in the present. And when you're talking about people who literally lose hours at a time, you're talking about chunks of time where it's just out of their memory. They are not exactly sure what they did or where they don't. Is that what you're actually talking about? Some of that. Yeah, some of that. Yeah, some people will know what they're, you know, they'll kind of like be there, but hazy. I mean, there's different, different levels. You know, everybody experiences a little bit different. Okay. But I had battles with trying to stay, battles with trying to stay present. Okay. And I think with the people that I tend to interact with most who follow the podcast and the videos and stuff are, they do experience those dissociative states, but they're probably milder. It's that just sort of, I don't feel real. I'm outside of myself that depersonalization, de-realization.  I have a hard time staying present. And it usually comes up for them. When first they get anxious, then they get that feeling. So, you know, it's kind of an anxiety symptom as opposed to, you know, that escape mechanism that you develop based on trauma. So it's so interesting to hear. I bet that you probably, and then your clients and people who've gone through trauma have PTSD diagnosis, probably a very similar physical sensations, but I'm usually dealing in a situation where it's much more of a, it's, these are the non-specific phobias, but they're simpler anyway, because it's, the person had, somebody had a panic attack while they were driving and therefore became phobic of driving, then had a panic attack and the supermarket became phobic of being in the supermarket, like get smaller and smaller, they become agoraphobic. But the reason for that panic attack has become decoupled. It doesn't matter what it was, they're now afraid of how they feel. So that's different than what you had gone through. Because the reason for those symptoms is staying with you. It has not become decoupled. Yeah. It's interesting because, and I used to have a fear of driving far and my reason for fear of driving far, if you went, you know, through the rabbit hole, okay, why are you afraid to drive? It used to be because I thought I would go somewhere and there would be no help. Common. Yeah. My people, my people feel the same way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. But what was the help that you were looking for? The help because what if I need medical attention or that just general help that maybe you needed way back when? Look at that. Yeah. That's a different feeling, right?  It was always in an experience where I would, you know, go into the fight and flight. I'm talking about in my childhood. Yeah. Go into the fight and flight. And then, you know, wanting to God help and there be none. So I think there was some similarity to that. Okay. Yeah. And I think people who are not dealing with trauma or this PTSD diagnosis, they get, it's that same thing. I'm afraid to go into the supermarket or I'm afraid to drive far, get on the highway, be trapped in the drive through. What if I can't get help? But for them, it's I truly believe that there's something medically, physically wrong with me and I need help as opposed to so, so, so similar. But yeah, it's good that we can bring out the similarities and maybe the little bit of the differences. So I'm guessing that people who are dealing with reliving past traumas in the way that you are experience many of the same symptoms that somebody who just develops panic disorder or agoraphobia has. Yeah. But the reason for them is different. Yes. There's a reason for them. It's still with you. Yes, yes. Maybe you don't understand it, but that's really why it's there, I guess. I'm trying to remember, I heard someone explain something about that. What did they say? They said something like, is it trauma, is afraid of what's already happened and anxiety is afraid of what's happened. That is genius. Yeah. That is absolutely genius. I love that. I love that. And that sounds crazily accurate to me, to be honest with you. I wouldn't mind if I'm an architect turned technology guy. So no, that's great. I think that's really great. So I think what we can agree on, like some people are always confused. Like, you know, I've had trauma. Is this because of my trauma? Is this because they're not sure if they have PTSD? And sometimes if you're not sure, maybe this conversation is gonna help a little bit or you gotta reach out and try and find out for real what's going on. Well, let's talk about the thing that really like, really lit me up when I watched your video that you did with Jill Whalen. And you talked about that mechanism of... Yeah. So for people, the people who follow me and have that say panic response to a place that they don't wanna be in, right? I really wanna go out and drive to wherever, but I can't, I have a panic attack. I don't wanna go because I'm afraid to panic. They're just afraid of how they're gonna feel in that situation. And that's fine. They're afraid of how they feel. That's different. So the mechanism that you described to me, where maybe for you, you had a memory of some kind, then you have a feeling, then you have a thought which becomes an actual physical feeling. Talk about how like thoughts become physical feelings. So, okay. So I suffered as I said for decades. Once I got this understanding, I got it on a really deep level and it changed everything for me. It was an understanding. And it was an understanding about how our design as human beings, how our psychology works, how it really works. And so what it is, is that when we have a thought, so a thought comes into our head, I don't know, let's say it's, I'm afraid to drive, but on the highway. As soon as I have that thought, consciousness or awareness, it's how it works, brings that feeling to life. It brings it to life. And then we have a sensory experience of it. So we're gonna feel like a wave of fear, maybe nausea, maybe butterflies, lightheadedness, as soon as we have that thought. So, oh, I'm afraid to drive. We feel it, you know, and we're totally scared. Yes. And what happens is that when we don't understand that the system works perfectly, there's nothing wrong, there's nothing going on. That's supposed to happen. Yes, it is just a feeling, a thought that is coming to life. And what is a thought? A thought is actually just energy. And energy in itself is made to move. It's made to pass and it will pass. We never get stuck in a feeling. Right. But, you know, what often happens in cases like this is so I'm scared to drive or I'm scared to do the presentation tomorrow. I'll poof, you know, I'll feel it fully. And then the second thing happens. We start to panic over the feeling we just had. Yeah. And we start thinking, oh my gosh, what's wrong? I have to do something about it. You know, maybe I need to change it. Maybe I need to manipulate my thought, reframe it, you know, process it. And what we're doing in those situations is we're magnifying it and we're keeping in place instead of just naturally letting it pass. And, you know, you think about how many thoughts you have during the day. You have between 50,000 to 100,000 thoughts a day. What am I gonna have for breakfast? You know, I think I like this. I like that shirt. You know, they just pass. They pass. They naturally change. But, and it's a scary one or a compelling one. Yeah. We're on it. Yeah, exactly. And I think that speaks so much.  Just kind of let it go. Just let it go. Let it come and let it go. And I think one of the big mistakes, and I think we kind of talked about that in our initial conversation. We'll talk about it in a minute here. But one of the mistakes that people who are dealing with just the anxiety disorders do, panic disorder, agoraphobia is they don't understand that process. You have a thought and then it becomes a physical feeling. Every bit is, it's a physical feeling. It's a real feeling. Yeah. Your heart is racing. You are sweaty. You are dizzy.  Those are real. To an external cause. Yes. So in other words, like the super, if I go to the supermarket, I'm going to like, the supermarket is going to panic. But that's not true. So in the trauma thing, you may be thinking, you know, maybe it's the trauma that caused it. It's your thought about it, I'm guessing. We are so on the, and that is the freedom.  Thank you. Because what happens is, is that we think we have an outside in understanding of life. Right. When it actually really works inside of us. And so we think that the highway is going to instill a feeling in me of fear. Right. You know, the presentation is going to instill fear in me. It doesn't work that way. I'm having a thought about the, I'm having a thought about the presentation. I'm having a fearful thought about driving and that's creating that feeling. It has nothing to do with the highway. It doesn't. And I've said it, I've said it thousands of times. I'm so happy to see someone else on the other side of the screen saying that. Like it doesn't have anything to do with the highway.  Going down the block to pick up your kids from school is the same thing as flying to China and being all alone in the middle of like the Mongolian desert. You're the same exact person and there's no, there's nothing that could happen to you in the supermarket, the school or the Mongolian desert that is causing the problem. It's happening here. And so it doesn't matter. And they have to, now for us, I always say the only way to understand that is first to accept that and second to actually let it happen and learn that, see this is where we probably are slightly different. Yeah, you're right. For us, I'm gonna say us.  The way out of that is I'm gonna go into that situation that where I get anxious and I'm going to react the opposite that I used to. I'm gonna relax my body. I'm gonna put my brain in neutral, trying to learn my skills to do that. Let it calm, let it go, let it feel as bad as it will feel so that my brain actually learns from experience that I'm not in danger. So they desensitize themselves to those things. They acclimate to those things and they start to be unafraid of how they feel anymore. So that's a little different. When you're dealing with panic disorder and agoraphobia, that's how you gotta deal with that. But if your problem is traumatic in nature, now what do you do with that? So you have that understanding of that inside out process. You can't expose yourself to your trauma again. That's not a practical thing. So how do you deal with that? How did you get past that? Well, it's actually the same thing. In fact, it's all the same thing. It really is. Okay, so really it's what really helped me with the trauma, with the anxiety, with everything. With understanding, first of all, that our system, like I said, and I repeat it so many times, it works perfectly and it makes sense. And it's reliable and it's constant and it doesn't change. We have a thought, we feel the thought. We physically feel it. But when you know that it's not coming from out there, there's just like a safety. You start to breathe and realize, oh, I don't have to control all those things out there. It's coming from here. You just start to feel safer. Now, I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I have this snow globe next to me, which I said, I have to show this. Okay, let's see. I believe that people don't need to be fixed. That they already have, they already have, yes. In eight well-being, they already have resilience. And what happens is, is that, which I'm gonna show you with my snow globe, this is our mind, can you see? Just slide it into, you gotta slide it one way or the other, that way. Okay, this is our mind. Now, when we shake up the snow globe. That's legit. You see all the thoughts all over the place? That's what happens. These are all over the place. But if we leave them alone, look what's happening. They naturally settle down. This is so good. This is so good. That is such a good visual representation. We are speaking the same exact language. Just so you can, you know. And the beautiful thing is, I'm not showing you like a little metaphor. This is truth. I live this, I live this. Yeah, well, let me, for those, and Monique doesn't really know my story, but I lived it too. I lived it with panic disorder and agoraphobia.  If you just chill for lots of a better word, chill is complicated, it will settle. And then the end of that story is, and I was okay. And so the memory you make for your brain is, I had a panic attack, it lasted eight minutes, and I was okay. So I care if I have another one ever again. I might not, couldn't care less. So that's where I'm trying to get people. That's the message I'm constantly. And I love when you say that we all have what we need already, no one needs to be fixed. You come, we talked about this. I always say all the time, I'm nobody special. You're nobody special. We all- And we come from the same factory. Yes, we do. And I, so I don't use the same factory. I like yours better. I always say you came from the factory with all the stuff you need baked in. I say that. I love that. Yeah, but I like yours. And we all come from the same factory. So I will tell you that one of the things we encounter, my little fidget spinner here, I never had one. I got one yesterday and now I'm using it, it's crazy. But anyway, so one of the things that I encounter is that argument that like, well, exposure, all, you know, people will say it about the things you're talking about too. Maybe that worked for someone, but it doesn't work for me because everybody's different, but no, they're not. Like I always say our brains work the same way unless you're an alien. Your brain works exactly like mine and yours does. For the most part, there's variations of course, but, and I think a lot of the time it's just because people are often afraid to go into those scary places, whether it be emotionally or mentally or physically, the supermarket, whatever. And so they feel like, I can't, I don't have that in me to do it. And I think, yeah, you do. You were born with it. You just have to believe that you had it. So I don't, so that's my take on that. And when you say we all come from the same factory, I mean, it seemed, how did that help you? That realization was just part of that freedom of like, I'm supposed to be like this.  And when you feel like this, you feel completely out of control. Life doesn't feel safe. You want to just cocoon in your little. Yes. When you start to see the safety and the freedom and the predictability of our design. Yeah. You just, there's just so much hope there that you can trust the design, you know, that you work perfectly. And so, yeah, I was, when I got this understanding and I was experimenting with it, a lot of thinking just dropped. Because first of all, I knew that if I would engage with my stressful thinking or my fearful thinking, I knew what was going to happen. Yeah, it's going to just, you shake in the globe. Yeah. Which is before I didn't, I didn't know that. I just did it and I didn't know that. Yeah. But now that I have that knowledge, I don't do it. Now, sometimes I forget and yeah, you know, they're all human. Yeah, yeah. But for the most part, I know how it works and I don't want to feel that way. And so I don't. And you end up being more present. You feel more lighter. Life feels much more joyful. It's a really nice way to live. There's a level, I talk about sometimes, a level of competency. And I think competency is a good word because when you build those skills, you accept that inside out thing. You accept that it's not external. It's coming from inside you. My people have a different step to take because it's physical, not that it's a physical, it's not a thing. They express themselves physically in these feelings. Yeah. But they have to put themselves in what they feel is physical danger.  So I understand that. It's difficult to go past that fear. But once you do, you build a level of competency. You feel competent in every situation. So you just get more. I don't want to use the word bulletproof. I do, but it's not a good word because it's probably not. You just feel there's a strength and a competency and a confidence that goes with you. So like when you're going through these journeys, whether it's trauma or whatever, there's good stuff being forged in those fires. And when you come at the end, you don't realize it, but you're gonna bring a lot of good stuff with you, I think, on the other side. Yeah. I remember when, before I even had this understanding, I was still in anxiety. And as a matter of fact, I had the fear of driving far. I was gonna go attend a week conference on trauma. And it was seven hours away from my house. Seven! I wanted to go so badly. Native Long Islander, by the way, right there. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna do it anyway. And I went and I, you know, I pushed through and it was fine, but you're right. Because after that experience, I no longer had a fear of driving far. Exactly. And I have to acknowledge, and this is in no way minimizing this. I'm sure you understand that. I have to acknowledge that the fear of driving far in your situation was not the same as the phobia that some people develop. They can't just push through seven hours. They gotta build seven hours over a few months. But in the end, the result is the same. You did it and that trip helped you get over that fear quickly. Whereas for somebody else, it might take them a few months to do that, but they're gonna get the same place you are. Yeah. So how do we, what was the deal that gets, so there's still trauma in your past, right? You don't get to forget, it doesn't go away. So what's the difference now? When those memories happen, when those triggers come, what happens? Yeah. Okay, so that's a really great question. Because in the past, when they would come, I would like freak out and like I think I've mentioned to you before, they would come, I used to run out the door. Oh my gosh, I tried to process them. I need to make an appointment with my therapist. I would cry, blah, blah, blah. Processed. They'd come and I would be petrified of them because they felt like they did back then. And I didn't wanna be back there. But when I understood how the system works and what was actually happening, was I was having a memory, which was a thought. It was coming to life in my body. I was experiencing it. And then because I knew what it was now, I knew that it wasn't happening now. I was experiencing full fledged memory. Okay. And it was part of how the design works. I just felt a whole lot safer. Whereas in the past, I would do the next step. I would feel it, I'd be frightened by it. I'd be thinking about it the next few hours. Okay, which therapy am I gonna try now? Oh my gosh, this is so bad. Why is it coming up all the time? And of course the more I thought about it, the more it would come up. And I thought about it all the time. Now, if I spend time thinking about trauma, I'm gonna feel bad because that's just how we work. Right, right. So I don't go there anymore. The thoughts don't come to me. The flashbacks don't come to me anymore. And I don't go there either. And I feel amazing. I bet, you could see when you talk about it that you feel amazing about this. And I think we need to address an issue. And I'm sure you understand where I'm gonna go with this. So you have taken a very cognitive, I know we talked a little about CBT and how that wasn't really your thing. But what you're talking about is really you're relying on like our pretty well-established models of cognition and learning, right? So it's just great and it's worked for you. But when you say I just don't think about it anymore, I'm sure there are people listening who are gonna say, how on God's green earth can I not think about that horrible thing that happened to me? So you have learned to not be afraid of those thoughts. They don't now control you when they come. If they come, they come. If they don't, they don't. How do you address that thing that says, and I say it all the time, first get back on your feet like you have, then if you feel the need to, and I sound like I'm minimizing, I'm really not, there is value in this. If you feel the need to process it in quotes, I don't know what that means necessarily and deal with those emotions and resentment or anger or whatever you feel. I think you gotta deal with those two somehow, don't you? It's not just learning to like let the thoughts go and never think about them again. So how do you fit that in? Okay, so first of all, that's a very good question. I believe, I mean trauma, trauma what I've learned in my certification and in my own personal having trauma therapy. I worked with the trauma therapist for a year. Okay. I felt what was really important, it is important to, because often people who have had trauma, they had no voice. They were not allowed to speak. Okay. So it was completely ignored, minimized, whatever.   You said that, yeah. Yeah, where you meet with someone, be it a therapist, a coach, a good friend, where you are able to share and the person really listens. I mean, really listens. And acknowledges and you get some validation. And I know that for me was huge. The actual therapy that we did didn't take away the flashback, didn't take away the anxiety, didn't, but what helped was that she listened. And that part of my heart was closed. Good. So yeah, so when I work with clients, I start where they're at. And if they want to talk about some of that, I'm here as a compassionate witness and validate and all of that. But then as they're ready, that's when we start moving towards, moving forward and we do that. So it's both. So like you said, just sitting and having that compassionate witness, talking it through, talking about it didn't take away the crippling aspects of it, it sounds like. In my case, I can't speak for other people. Other people maybe. That's very realistic. Yeah. That's so realistic and genuine to say that too, by the way. Like in your case, that was the deal. But I mean, there's probably some combination of all those things that have to happen.  And I always say that. Like first, I call it stopping the bleeding. If you cannot function, you cannot hold a job. You had to drop out of school. You're not involved in family life. You're making excuses. You're locking yourself in the cocoon.  Like, so first we got to stop the bleeding and using the tools you've talked about, you can stop the bleeding and then you can work on. Yes. Processing. Yeah. Well, maybe at the same time, but you got to do both. You got to do both. Oh, absolutely. I mean. And it's funny. Processing doesn't necessarily work by itself. In the case of anxiety disorders, you had a therapist who actually said that. Like the research shows us that CBT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think it's great that you have both of those in there. That's awesome. Yeah, because I mean, I remember, it was important to me back then that they would acknowledge, you know, I needed to, I needed to have a space where I could speak. Yeah. And that was really important. And I think that it's extremely important for trauma survivors to be validated, to know that they matter. And that what happened to them happened to them. And, you know, to get validation. It's a big deal. Yeah. I think it's a big deal. I agree with you 100%. So I am, I cannot tell you how I think valuable this is and how much I've enjoyed doing this. So, you know, I can't, I actually can't wait to get it now and put it up. So we can see it. Cause it's gonna be great.  It's going to be great. So let's talk about, you know, again, even so good.  But I think if somebody feels that they, you know, and again, let me say again, yes, I'm not a fan of coaches and programs and buying that sort of stuff. But if you have been in that trauma space where Monique has been, it's a real thing. And if you feel like you need some help with that, I think it's perfect. That's a real thing. This is a specific thing that you were working on. How does somebody find you? Okay. So they can find me on Facebook. I have a business page, Monique Coven Coaching. Okay. And then they can also find me on my website, which is www.moniquecovencoaching.com. And I have a lot of, if anybody's interested, I have a podcast where I talk about different trauma issues. Yeah. Yeah. And it's on my website. Very good. I will link your stuff in the video description on YouTube and in Facebook and all the stuff. And we interact in the Facebook group, you know, my Facebook group, which is great. And I think we should do more of these as we go. I would like to work with you on this stuff. It's really good. So we'll wrap it up in about 35 minutes. That's great. Thank you, Monique, so much. It was so, so helpful. Oh, it was a pleasure. We'll do it again real soon. Great. All right. Bye. Bye, bye. Let me stop the recording. This is...


Hello everybody! In today's video, I'll explain how to fix your mic if it doesn't work in Windows 11. Just as any other operating system, Windows 11 may encounter issues with the microphone. Most of the time, mic issues are caused by hardware problems that include loss of contact, damaged cables, or jacks, or connecting the mic to the wrong output. Also, there may be errors due to incompatible driver or wrong settings. Within a few minutes, I'll show you some possible solutions to help you fix mic issues. Method 1. Check the mic connection. The first step to take is to check if the microphone works with enough device. Very often, bad contact, damaged cable, or broken microphone turn out to be the actual root of the problem. Examine the cable and plug for any possible damage, and connect the mic to another PC or multimedia device to check if the mic works with them. If it works fine with other devices, try to plug it again into the computer where it refused to work. Check the female jack where the mic is connected, and make sure that the plug sits tight in the jack. Also, remember to plug the mic into the proper jack. Usually, it is marked with the corresponding color or with a microphone symbol. Method 2. Change privacy settings for the mic. Now that you know that the mic is not broken, you can deal with the settings of your operating system. The new version of this operating system features a privacy option that lets you control how apps access the mic. To fix privacy issues in Windows 11, open Start, Settings, Privacy and Security, Microphone. Set the slider next to Microphone Access to the On position, and enable Let apps access your microphone. If you have mic issues in a particular app, find it on this list and enable access. Also, we recommend to enable access for a desktop app web viewer. If modifying these settings didn't solve your problem, go to System, Sound, check your input devices, your mic should be selected. If your mic is missing from this list, look below to find all sound devices, and click this button. Allow apps and Windows to use this device for audio. If you can't find the mic on the list, make sure it is enabled in the device manager. To open it, right-click on the Start menu and choose Device Manager. Expand the section Audio Inputs and Outputs, and check if your mic is displayed here. If the mic is listed, but there is a yellow exclamatory mark next to it, try right-clicking on the device, selecting the option Uninstall, confirming this action, and then clicking Scan for hardware changes. If the mic is displayed with a gray arrow, right-click on the device and select Enable from the Contacts menu. If the exclamatory mark is still there, try updating the driver. To do it, right-click on the device and select Update Driver from the Contacts menu. If the operating system fails to find a suitable driver, you'll have to download the sound driver from the official website of your motherboard manufacturer and install it manually. If your computer is a laptop, the microphone can be disabled in its BIOS settings. In that case, find this option in BIOS and enable the mic. Hello, friends! If you need to recover deleted data, view or restore removed browser history, Hetman Software products will help you. Follow the link in the description, download the necessary program for free, install it and analyze the disk. The utility will show you the data you can recover, so you will be able to view it or get it back. In our channel and blog, you will find solutions to any problem, from installing an operating system or configuring it to fixing possible bugs and errors or optimizing mobile gadgets. Our specialists will answer any questions you ask in your comments, under the videos or articles. Another reason why your mic may not work is that it's not selected as the default device in your system settings. If you connected other recording devices to the computer before, your operating system may have switched to a cell device. To change it, open Settings, Sound, More Sound Settings and jump to the tab Recording. If you see two or more microphones on the list, and some of them are marked green, click on the microphone which you need for all your needs and select the option Set as default device or Set as default communication device. This will put the green mark only on the necessary microphone and the operating system will use it for all tasks, including recording and communication. After that, click Apply and OK to save the changes. Method 5. Make sure that the mic is disabled. If you change the volume level or try to turn the sound off in the settings before you realize the mic doesn't work, it's time to check if the mic is disabled in the system settings. Right-click on the speaker symbol in the system tray and open Sound Settings. More Sound Settings. Then jump to the Recording tab, select the microphone and click to open properties. In the window that opens, find the tab Levels and check if the mic is disabled. There should be no red signs saying that the mic is off. Set the volume level to 90 or 100%, click Apply and OK to save this setting. If this doesn't help, try disabling the Exclusive Mode which you can find in the Advanced tab. Uncheck the box for Give Exclusive Mode Application Priority and the second option will be turned off as well. After that, check the mic again. Method 6. Run the troubleshooter. As Windows has got its own integrated tools and troubleshooters, you can try using them to fix the problem with the microphone. Open Settings, System, Sound, More Sound Settings and click on the option Troubleshoot common sound problems for input devices. If a problem is detected, the utility will suggest some directions and solutions. Just follow them. Alternatively, you can run the tool called Troubleshoot and prevent computer problems. To do it, open the Run window and type this command. When the scan is over, the utility will show you the devices on your computer that have issues. Select the microphone from the list and click Next. Select to Apply repairs automatically and then click to Apply this fix. When the process is complete, restart the computer. Method 7. Restunt the Windows Audio Service. If there is no sound yet, check if Windows Audio Service is working. The devices allow applications to run and they also manage various system resources, that is, they perform the same functions as the settings. Use the search feature to find and open services. Look for Windows Audio and make sure that it is enabled. Right-click on it and select Restunt. In some situations, it can help you fix the microphone problem. Method 8. Check microphone settings in your programs. In addition to system configurations, some programs have their own mic options, which are typically located in the sound settings. These settings may be different from those configured in your Windows, and they sometimes can be reset to defaults. So if your mic doesn't work in a particular program or game, try to find the corresponding setting and select the proper microphone. Also, don't forget to enable access to microphone for such program. Method 9. Install updates for Windows 11. Check if there are any new updates available for your operating system. Microsoft provides regular updates for its operating systems and they usually contain latest modifications, integrated tools and lots of features. It is recommended to install every update to ensure your Windows runs properly. Together latest updates, Open Start, Settings, Windows Update. If there is an update waiting for you, click to download and install it. And if there is nothing to see, click to check for updates. Windows will start searching for updates, install the ones that the operating system has found, restart the computer and check if the microphone problem is still there. If you use front panel connectors for your microphone, it makes sense to check if it works with the back panel connectors. Another possible scenario is when you are connecting a new headset that has a combined jack plugged for microphone and headphones to a new desktop computer or laptop. Without the case, you should remember that old sound cards may not be able to support the mic and headphones at the same time when the combo jack is used. However, this problem can be fixed by using various adapters and you can see some of them on the screen. The steps described in this video should solve the problem in most situations. Still, if the problem persists even when you connect another microphone, it is most likely to be caused by some Windows errors or hardware issues with the sound equipment in your computer. One of the things you can try is to reset Windows or add a new sound card to your PC. And that is all for now. Hopefully this video was useful. Remember to click the like button and subscribe to our channel. Leave comments to ask questions. Thank you for watching. Good luck. While you are watching this video, civilians in Ukraine are dying from attacks in bombardments of the Russian Federation. Putin's insane regime has attacked a peaceful country in the very heart of Europe. Save the Ukrainian army by making a contribution to the font Come Back Alive. Use the QR code or the link below the video to transfer any amount of money that will boost Ukrainian resistance and help it counter Russia's designable invasion.


Okay. I'll begin to talk a little in advance. Just take the two extra minute where I'd like to introduce myself. So I'm Jean-François Guignet. I work at booking.com as a system engineer. I landed when I joined booking in the DBA team. I never touched my sequel before, so it was kind of a strange or assignment or strange place to land, but I really enjoy my time there. It's been over three years now, and I will talk to you about a war story that happened at booking, and I think it's interesting to share war stories. Not necessary to say, hey, like something bad happened, and we're bad if this is not the idea. Like, it's this really happened. It's production. It's the real world, and the mistake that we're done here, I think, is our learnings, and so I hope that you can take away some things from what happened. And one thing is that something happened at booking, and it was caused by automation. So automation is supposed to give us less work, not to break things and needs human to fix stuff. So I think there's a few interesting things there. So I will start by that. Well, we all know that saying, like, human make errors, but to really, really mess things up, you need a computer. Or in our case, a script, an automation script. So we'll come back to what happened. So a little about booking. So we sell hotel room on the internet. We're quite big, more than a million properties on the website, so there's more than a million hotels that you can book on booking.com. When I joined three years ago, people were celebrating 400,000 hotels. So now in three years, we did almost like we tripled that number. So it's quite an amazing place to be. And we're still growing. We use MySQL. We have thousands of MySQL server, and we use replication. And this is a story about one of our replication deployment. So this is what I'm going to talk about. You can all read or continue. So this is a typical replication set up at booking. We have a master where we write. We have slaves where we read. And a synchronous replication happens in the middle. We have intermediate master either for replication fan out or for being the point of contact of slaves on a remote data center. And we sometimes have slaves directly connected to the master. Quite a simple setup. Sometimes we have very small deployment, one local slave, two remote servers, and sometimes we have very big deployments. And this is an example of a medium deployment using Orchestrator. So Shlomi is not with us, but Shlomi also developed Orchestrator. And so we have our master. We have three intermediate master. Two of them are in remote data center. Dashline here meaning remote data center. And each of those intermediate master have 40 slaves. So there is about 120 servers in that deployment. I would call that a medium deployment for booking. We have, well, medium large. It's not a huge one. We have some that are bigger than that. But it's one of the respectable deployment we have. So we use Orchestrator. And Orchestrator allows us to visualize our replication deployment. It allows us to move slaves from one intermediate master to another one. And it also do some automation. It can automatically replace an intermediate master if it fails. So if we have that node that is failing, and at that point all the slaves there stop receiving rights, Orchestrator will see that and it will fix things. It will point the slaves back to other intermediate master or it will promote a new intermediate master. And also Orchestrator automatically replace a master when the master fails. So if, in our example, if the master fails, one of those, one of its slaves will be promoted as a new master. Which is quite interesting because when you deploy that as a DBA, you're not paged at two in the morning to fix things. Things get fixed by themselves. And that's good, right? It's automation. But Orchestrator cannot do that by itself. Orchestrator is good at repointing slaves, at moving, understand MySQL, but Orchestrator doesn't understand the way we use MySQL at booking. And the way we use MySQL at booking might be different as the way MySQL is used at GitHub. At booking, we use DNS for knowing to which server we need to write as a master. Orchestrator doesn't know which server we use DNS. So Orchestrator, when it does a failover, call a script, which is one of our script at booking, to repoint DNS. When it does that at GitHub or at your deployment, it will call your script that will tell your application where to find a new master. And this is the script that was a problem. So before looking into the problem, we will look at the deployment where we had a problem. So it's a very simple deployment. There is four database server, A as the master, B as the local slave, X as a remote data center intermediate master, and Y as a remote slave. So this is a small deployment at booking. The DNS of the master is pointing on A and reads are happening on B and Y. So at that point, everything goes well. And now we have the first event, the first failure that happened is that both A and B failed at the same time. So I will explain how this happened later. But at this point, we are not able to write to the master anymore and reads on B are failing. Sorry. But orchestrator is there, right? So orchestrator fix things. At this point, it doesn't have to do a lot of things. It doesn't need to repoint slave. It just needs to call the script that repoints DNS. So at that point, we can write again and to fix the read that were happening on B. So that was actually done manually. But this is not such a big, as a big problem as not being able to write to the master. So now we're back in a working situation. Writes happened on X, reads happened on Y, and everything is fine. So the day ends, we go back home and something happened during the night. And I wake up to this. So that was Saturday morning, a very, very bad morning. You wake up, you check what's happening, and you realize writes are happening on B. Okay. What happened? Let's keep looking at things. Reads are happening on Y. So we are not reading what we're writing. So a very, very bad position to be in. So that's obviously not good. So B has outdated data. So all the write that happened on X didn't reach B. So if we're reading from the master, we are not seeing that data. And all the new writes that happened on B do not reach Y. So when we read on Y, we are not reading the data we have written. So it's really, really bad. It's not a split brain. Not a split brain as itself, like there were not two active master at the same time, but there was half data on the left and half data on the right. So I will explain how we fix that later. But now let's see about what actually happened. So after the failure of both A and B, a second failure was detected by orchestrator. And I know that because I have the logs of orchestrator. So I now understand that after everything was fixed during the night, A and B were back up. So they resuscitated in a way. And at that point something made A fail. And when A failed, something pointed DNS to B. And it's the failover script that when A failed, the failover script stole the DNS entry from a very valid server X and pointed it to B. So now we know how that happened. But why did A fail? So when they came back up A and B, they had outdated data. So my initial idea, because I was there when A and B failed, was to bring B back up first and then to slave B under X. And that would have been fine. But because A came back up, it made that impossible because A inserted pseudo-GTID, heard B events and things like that. And so B now had data that is not on X. So at that point, I decided to recover from that and then to put A and B back under X by cloning them using extra backup. But if I would have cloned B, there wouldn't have been any problem. But I chose to clone A because at that point B, I was still using my previous plan of pointing back B under X and I was planning to delete A at that time. But I didn't take into account that things changed. So that's the first human error and it's my mistake. I will not do that again. But it's not the only thing that caused this problem. When I did that, that was in the evening before I wake up the next morning on that disaster. And at that time, everything was working. I was still looking at things and there were no problem. So B was actually promoted as a new master from A. So orchestrator detected the failure of A hours later. And this is because I only downtime A for four hours. When I reclone A, it's okay, I don't want anybody to be paged on that. I downtimeed the box for four hours, which was a mistake. I should have downtimeed that for a week. And so this is human error number two. And still description should have realized that that failover, well, that DNS repointing shouldn't happen. So orchestrator has some mechanism to avoid flapping. And it will not fail over a second time the same chain in a short amount of time. And I think this is also human error number zero, which is not mine. It's debatable if it's a mistake or not, because orchestrator needs you to acknowledge a failover before another failover will happen. So if A and B are not recloned, is it good or bad to acknowledge? Well, it was acknowledged in that case. So maybe it shouldn't have there's argument both for acknowledging and against acknowledging. And so there are actually seven things that cause this problem. Two servers failing, human error number zero, an edge case recovery, A and B coming back, me recloning the wrong server, me not downtimeing that server enough. Orchestrator probably failing over something that it shouldn't have, because a human would never have triggered that failover. And the DNS script that stole the DNS entry from B. So in all those instances, I think there's a takeaway. I'll list that later, but you can already think about that. What could be done differently to avoid each of those seven problems? So let's talk about our fancy failure. So two servers failing at the same time is very unlikely. So was it a deployment error and B in the same rack? Or were we very unlucky? And actually it's both. But on that day, in about less than two hours, 10 to 20 servers failing at the same time in the data center. And so this is because there were human operation in the data center that people were racking new servers. And because of a very sensitive hardware, there was a low probability when you were racking a new server in the same rack that it was shutting it down another server. So my point here is double failure happen. Don't necessarily automate for them, but be ready for them to happen because 10 servers failing in half an hour is possible. So how do we fix that? So once we're in that situation where we have data on X that is not on B and data on B that is not on X, either you declare part of that data lost, which we did in that case because that wasn't really valuable data, or you have to replay the data. So replaying the data needs understanding what data is there. So DBAs do not necessarily, DBAs and booking were a small team, 10 people serving 600 developers. We cannot know all the data they're putting in the database. So we are not able by ourselves to recover that data. We need the developer to understand that data. And so it was easier here to chose the way to just drop that data. Replication, we could have used replication. So replicate X, like we could have slaved, we could have put replication here. This would be a master to this and send the data back there. But at that point we got auto increment in our way because when we failed over, so some auto increment were consumed on X, and when the DNS was point back to B, the same auto increments were allocated to rows. So we had conflicting auto increment. And that made me think, okay, we use auto increment all the time, but is this a good thing? Shouldn't we use another type of ID? So those are my takeaways from that. It's like really twisted situation happened. Like automation is not simple. There should be no shortcut in an automation script. If you write an automation script, like test every precondition, like okay, it looks stupid to do that test, but maybe it's a good thing to test that you are actually moving a DNS entry from the right server. Like is that DNS entry really pointing to A at that point? No, it was pointing to X. Stop, I need a human to think that through. Premature acknowledgement, be mindful about that. Two takeaways from myself. Down time more than less. And shutdown slave first. And something that will take more time is maybe rethink the way we use auto increment and maybe using UUIDs. So it's UUIDs are usually generated randomly. There's some tricks and there's some algorithm to generate UUIDs to make sure they are generated in order. So you end up still inserting in primary key order. And you should use those tricks if you want to keep the performance of inserting your table. Maybe there's also something in Orchestrator because I'm pretty sure humans wouldn't have failed A in that case. So Orchestrator should probably do something about those kind of failures. It's still the one percent. So I'm not sure it's worth a lot of time. But so we have to think maybe a little more about how to detect those things. And if you have thought maybe open an issue or come discuss it with me after the talk. So some links. And I have three minutes for questions. Yes. Yes. So in that case. Yes. So the question was why should we stop slave first. So when we were in that situation here I decided to stop A and reclone A from extra backup here. I did a backup from Y and I reclone A from Y. But at that point I shut down a master. And so this box was known as a master for Orchestrator. So I should have shut down B first. Not A.  Yes. Yes. But which one is it. Like so the question was after failing over should you kill the box. Well in that case Orchestrator detected a failover of A. That's fine. Killing A wouldn't have solved the problem. It's the problem was that the DNS repointing script took that DNS that wasn't belonging to A and made it point to B. And a solution could have been to kill X at that point. But it's also at that point if your script is detecting that it's failing over something that is not belonging to the box that actually failed there's something here. But it's not what you mean. Yes. Well actually at that point those box were dead. Their uptime after was like a few minutes. Like those two box rebooted. So it's like basically you can think of that as like the power cable was pulled from them and it was plugged back. So like it's at that point it's really hard to definitively kill A and B. Unless you make sure that you cut the network cable or you have an out of band ways of shutting down the switchboard which could be a good solution. Like that could be something else we could do in automation. I'm not sure it's the best thing to do but somebody that is paranoid about those things. I usually think of myself as paranoid and that's not an idea I would have. So it looks like you're more paranoid than me. So the question was I got a call. So on Saturday morning I just logged in and because I knew there was cloning on the way I checked things. At that point I wasn't called. There was a log of the orchestrator failover at midnight. At that time I was sleeping. So Saturday morning was detected because of my curiosity. Not because anybody was paid. Actually it's a good thing that I was curious because the longer we would have waited the longer the more data we would have lost. So thank you very much. If you have more questions I'll be around. I'll be at the community dinner. So grab me and thanks Frederick for organizing things.