When The Soul Brain Takes Over with Stephanie Arnold

Not all things can be explained by science. It’s unexplainable why the soul brains takes over when there isn’t any data to process. Stephanie Arnold knew she would die for all of 37 seconds when her son Jacob would come. She had numerous premonitions, but only one doctor took her seriously and had the crash cart standing by. Being a producer, she decided to film a session of her therapy that proved that her sense of foreboding was on point.

We have Stephanie Arnold. She has such an interesting story. When I first got a message about her story, I’m thinking, “I don’t think this fits my show because it was more of a real life story where she had a health problem and it caused her to die for 37 seconds.” I was wondering if she was going to be a psychic or something that didn’t fit. As I looked into her story and I started to find out more about her, I became more and more interested in her because this is a very serious individual that had great background. She was a producer and directed TV shows. She’s a very interesting woman. She had an unexplainable thing happened to her and she wants to share that story. She wrote a book about it and we’re going to talk to her about it because you’ll find it fascinating.

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When The Soul Brain Takes Over with Stephanie Arnold

I am with Stephanie Arnold who was a TV producer who spent 27 years creating and directing TV shows, music videos and documentaries. She left the business in 2008 after meeting the love of her life. From that point on, the only thing she wanted was to produce a family. It was during the birth of her second child that Stephanie suffered a rare but often fatal condition called Amniotic Fluid Embolism, AFE, and died on the operating table for 37 seconds. Everything she’s done is a direct result of her survival. She’s here to tell her story. It’s so nice to have you here, Stephanie.

Thank you so much for having me.

First of all, you were a TV producer and you decided to leave that. How did that come about?

I used to produce a lot of reality shows from Deal or No Deal in Spanish. I ran a company for Endemol which produces Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Fear Factor and a bunch of other shows. I loved the thrill and the pressure of the industry. At one point I realized, “I had all this success with work, but I didn’t have the success with love.”Ultimately when I met my husband, my soul mate, my perfect match for me, I was like, “Whatever I need to do in order to make this work, I will.” I relocated to Chicago from Los Angeles. That pretty much put a pin in whatever career I had because the TV industry wasn’t in Chicago. I had run television shows. I had produced them. I created sizzle reel, which is basically sales tapes to sell to television networks. I was in and out of network offices pitching constantly and creating content. At one point, Jonathan and I had decided we’re going to start a family. It wasn’t the easiest. After three rounds of IVF, I had our first child. Do you understand from experience or from IVF?

Yes. I have friends. They give you the hormones and it’s brutal, I’ve heard.

If you think you were crazy before, then you definitely were after. Anybody that tells you that the hormones aren’t real, just inject them with some of those and then you see it happens.

I’ve seen my friends go through it. It’s brutal. I didn’t personally. I was fortunate I got pregnant very easily when I was young. That’s a tough thing to go through. You had your first one without any problems?

No issue. After 41 weeks, I gave birth. The only issue I had was she was too big, so I ended up needing a C-section. I was back up around eight days later, so that wasn’t an issue. The second one came at round seven of IVF. I was pregnant with our second child, pregnant with a boy. My husband accepted a job as the Chief Economist for the New York Attorney General’s office. My husband’s a PhD Economist from the University of Chicago. He’s very grounded and very linear in his thinking. He’s an expert economic witness in major federal cases. He relocated us to New York. I had no issue with this pregnancy. In fact, it was great. I had no Charley horses, no acid reflux or anything.

I was like, “I could get pregnant with boys all the time.” My first one was a girl. I’m in my New York OB-GYN’s office and I do the twenty-week ultrasound. They check the spine and they check for all the different things and tests and everything. They come back and they say, “You have a placenta previa.”At that point, I didn’t know anything about it. I have a rare blood typing, O negative, and something hit me in the pit of my stomach. I said to my husband, “I don’t know what this placenta previa is but I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”In his logical mind he says, “Sweetheart, let’s not worry about it until we know more. Right now let’s listen to what everybody has to say.”

I was going back and forth to Chicago a lot. We were looking at selling our house and moving to New York permanently. I had my OB in Chicago as well. On one of my trips to Chicago, my doctor was like, “This is nothing to joke about. The placenta previa is basically when the placenta growing on top of the cervix. If it doesn’t move out of the way, as you get bigger and floats away from where the cervix is, you’ll need a C-section.” I wasn’t concerned about that. I had a C-section before. I’d had a baby before. Something sat with me, deep in my stomach. When I got home the first time when the doctor told me this, I started Googling everything. Placenta previa is not too uncommon. It’s a 1 in 200 risk. You might need a C-section. I kept looking and it said placenta previa can turn into an accreta, which is what Kim Kardashian had, which is basically when the placenta marries itself to the uterus. In the event that happens, you might need a hysterectomy. If you need a hysterectomy, it can cause hemorrhage. If there’s a hemorrhage, there could be an issue with baby and mom’s mortality. At that moment, I sat back and I had tears in my eyes. I said to my husband, “This is going to happen to me.”

What made you think that?

There’s a knowing. You just know something is it. You see it. You feel it in your body. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. You know that this is going to happen. I felt it with every cell in my body that this was going to happen.

I had a similar feeling when I had meningitis. You have this sense that you know you better get to the hospital. I can relate to a little bit of that, but not having impending doom. Mine was more like you feel sick and you know it’s bad. You didn’t feel sick, right?

Yes. If you hadn’t feel sick at all, if you didn’t get to the hospital with that first feeling and it kept coming, resonating in your head, you would’ve gotten sick. You would have had that impending doom. Meningitis is nothing to joke about. By sitting back and ignoring that inner voice. Whatever one wants to call it, I believe it’s a sixth sense and we don’t have it. By ignoring it, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. I tell my husband this. As the analytical data driven man that he is, he’s like, “What you’re afraid of happening is less than a half of a half of a half of a half a percent chance of happening. Besides, this is the worst case scenario.” I said, “I can appreciate that but I’m telling you this is going to happen.”

As a former producer, I go into action. I don’t shut up. I tell everybody. I’m not shy. I’m like, “This is going to happen.” I go to my doctor. My doctor was like, “Why would you say that?” I’m like, “I just know this is going to happen.” They’re like, “Stephanie, you need to relax. Maybe you’re stressed out. Maybe you have too much testosterone in your body.” I said, “No.”Every ultrasound was normal. Every nurse visit, every doctor visit was normal. At one point, I call a friend of ours who’s a fellow at the time. He was fellow gynecological oncologist and I say, “This is going to happen to me.” He’s like, “Stephanie, it’s not.” I said, “Entertain me. In the event I need a hysterectomy when I deliver this child, what happens?”

He’s like, “OB-GYN will deliver it but then if there’s an emergency, you’ll be passed on to maternal fetal medicine. You wouldn’t want that. You would want a GynOnc to do the procedure because they deal with high-risk reproductive organ surgery. Especially when blood supply is going to uterus, 20% of that is going straight there. You want a GynOnc to do the procedure. Try to make an appointment with the head of GynOnc at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago when you are seven months pregnant. There was no indication there is an issue and this man is busy saving lives.”It wasn’t easy but at the end of the day I got into appointment. Jonathan went with me to every single appointment. We’re sitting in the consultation room with him in his residence and he’s like, “How can I help you, Mrs. Arnold?”

I said, “I’m going to need a hysterectomy.” I go through the whole thing. He sat back and he’s like, “Have you been on the internet?” I said, “Yes, I have. This is going to happen.”He said, “Why don’t we have an MRI? If there is a marriage between the placenta and the uterus, then I’ll schedule myself for your mandatory C-section and we’ll do the hysterectomy then.” I felt better because now I had a homework assignment to do. I did the MRI. The MRI is negative for an accreta. My husband said, “You should feel better.” I said, “I don’t feel better. I feel worse because I’m running out of people to tell my crazy foreboding story to.”If you would’ve seen me at Starbucks and pregnant, you would have been like, “How’s your pregnancy going?”I would’ve said, “I’m going to die.”

Is there any way your mental state could’ve pushed you into it, if you had told yourself, “This wouldn’t happen?” Have you ever thought about that?

Yes. I’ve had people tell me, “Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if you would’ve thought positively.”There’s a difference with thinking positively and manifesting a potential job offer versus causing your organs to combine and having blood hemorrhage. In my opinion, I was responding to something physiologically happening in my body. I was responding psychologically to it in a way that I was hoping it. Whatever you believe spiritually or scientifically, there was something going on that I could sense and nobody else could and the data wasn’t saying it.

It’s hard to measure some of these things. When doctors can’t measure something or it’s not in the book, they just assume it doesn’t happen sometimes. That’s frustrating when you’re the sick one or the one that feels like there’s something wrong.

At the end of the day, I’m an outlier. Most of the time women are neurotic when it comes to pregnancy. Maybe you’re afraid of the unknown, I’m like, “I don’t think you are listening.” At some point, my doctor in Chicago had suggested that I have a consultation with anesthesia. I made that phone call. She told me, “This is what would happen with the epidural,” where I’d recover. I said, “That’s great. What happens in the event that this X, Y, Z happens?” She was startled by it. She later told me that she had never had a patient speak so clearly about what was going to happen, had had a baby before, had had a C-section before, had sought out specialist to save her life. In that one phone call, she ended up flagging my file and incorporating extra blood in a crash cart, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t know that she was listening.

I’m now out of people to talk to so I take to Facebook. I’d say, “If anybody has my blood type, I’m going to need it. I’m going to hemorrhage.” I sent out goodbye letters. I wrote goodbye letters. I told people exactly what was going to happen when I’d give birth to my son. Then it was a wait and see game. Imagine that you’re at twenty weeks that you’re feeling this. Your mandatory C-section is at 37 weeks. All this time, day, night, during the day, you’re feeling like there’s a loaded gun in front of your head and that somebody’s finger is on the trigger. The only thing I know is that the day I give birth is the day I’m going to die. An anesthesiologist once said to me, “If you were my patient, I wouldn’t do the procedure,” because they take foreboding seriously. I said, “Yes, except I was going to have this baby no matter what.”

36 weeks to the day, my husband’s still in New York, I’m in Chicago. I bleed all over the kitchen floor. I tell my friends, I tell my daughter who is under two years old at the time, “Let’s get in the car and go to the hospital.” My friend gets in the driver’s seat to drive us. She’ll be panicked and I said, “You need to get out of the driver’s seat. I’m going to drive.” She’s like, “You can’t drive.” I said, “I’ve had lots of premonitions, dying in a car accident was not one of them.” She moves over. I drive myself and a baby and I’m ready to the hospital. My husband’s on a plane coming here. Then I get triaged and I’m in labor and delivery. I’m on Skype chat with my husband and he’s like, “I’ll make it. I’ll be there in three hours.” He’s on the plane. My doctor comes in and she says, “Because the ORs are quiet, we should go ahead and take the baby. Then you’ll see everybody later.” You just feel your heart then in your throat. You know that it’s coming. “D-day is here, it’s my delivery day but it’s also my doomsday.” It’s so palatable at this point. I was so disconnected to any conversation other than trying to absorb the last moments of my life.

I don’t want my daughter to see me crying and fearful. I don’t want the last moments of her vision, if she can ever remember me, to be of me crying. Then I have this baby that I haven’t connected with because I’m fearful of what’s about to happen. Then I have a husband who is not with me. I’m texting him and I’m like, “Please know that you’ve made me the happiest woman in the world. Please love this child and take care of our children.” He’s still not getting it. He’s like, “Where do I meet you?” I said, “Eight floor recovery, hopefully.” That was the end of our conversation. I go in. They wheel me out and as soon as they wheel me out to take me down to the OR, I breakdown crying. My doctor who’s a friend of mine says, “Stephanie, I know you’re nervous because Jonathan’s not here.” I knew it was the last time I was going to see anybody. I said to her one more time, “Julie, there’s something wrong with me. You need to put me under general anesthesia.” She said, “Stephanie, I’m not going to put you under general anesthesia. That’ll put the baby to sleep. You’re fine. I know you’re nervous because Jonathan is not here,” and that was it. What am I going to do? There’s no running away from what’s about to happen. They turn me and when you’re having a baby it’s like you feel like this whale on this gurney. I don’t know if you had an epidural or if you were numb.

I had very big babies.

They put the epidural before I deliver way before. You’re a beached whale but you can’t feel your legs. Then when you have a C-section, the curtain is a bit put in front of your face so you don’t see the blood, the cutting and everything else. I’m lying down. They’re putting up the curtain. They’re getting me prepared. The room is turning ice cold. It’s cold anyway but it’s getting colder. They’re trying to comfort me but at that point I was completely disconnected. I was waiting for the minutes to come down. The minute that they delivered Jacob, I was sure that this was it. It’s these last few minutes. I don’t even know what they asked. They start delivering Jacob. They delivered Jacob and three seconds later I’m dead.

You saw him before this happened?

No.

Was it like going to sleep? Did it just all of a sudden lights out?

It was lights out in a sense. When people talk about being scared to death, I literally scared myself out. Separated out of the trauma, the pain, whatever it was. I feel like I separated out of my body to not see what was about to happen. When people talk about like who were there in the OR, they said, “You were catatonic. You didn’t answer any questions. We were talking to you whenever you were gazing out into space.” I’m not put to sleep. I’m not under any other anesthetic other than the epidural. For me, I was just completely disconnected. When people say you’re scared to death, I feel that I was absolutely scared out of my mind and I was not present. I completely flat lined. I’m clinically dead. They have a crash cart at their fingertips. They resuscitate me. They intubate me then put me under general anesthesia. At that point, they get me back up 37 seconds later and then I’m somewhat stable. What I ended up having was an amniotic fluid embolism, which is a very rare 1 in 40,000 risk where amniotic cells get into the mother’s bloodstream. If you happen to be allergic to it, your body goes into somewhat of an anaphylactic shock. In most cases, the women don’t make it. The first phase of it is cardiac arrest. You have lung issues and you can’t breathe. It’s ananaphylactic reaction to it. Then the second phase starts.

I remember my niece had an O positive blood and she had a problem with her baby. I always thought it was just negative Rhesus monkey thing that have to worry about. Was it because that you’re O positive thing or is that everybody have to worry about that?

No. Everybody has to worry about it unfortunately. I’m O negative. It doesn’t matter your blood type. It doesn’t matter your age. It doesn’t matter if you had IVF. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a C-section or if you delivered the baby naturally. It is completely unpredictable and unpreventable. If you are not prepared for it, you will in fact have severe neurological deficit and potentially lose your life. It’s horrific. It’s one of the leading causes of maternal death in the United States even though it’s rare. Most everyone on my case has never seen one in person, they’ve only read about it in textbook. The AFE Foundation is doing a lot in the research and developing certain safety protocols.

What happened in my case is definitely one of those things where we say, “If you have this on hand, you can potentially survive the catastrophic ultimate ending.”Your body has twenty units of blood. When my body started to hemorrhage, which is the second phase of AFE called DIC, it’s a form where your body has an inability to clot blood. I was given 60 units of blood and blood product to save my life. The only reason I’m alive outside of me speaking up for myself is one doctor took my premonition seriously and flagged my file. That flagging of the file had the crash cart right there with the ability to get me back up and the extra blood on hands because without it, there’s no way I could have made it.

Do you remember anything of those 37 seconds or not any of it?

I did later. I had kidney failure. I had a long recovery. I had a month in the hospital. I was lucky obviously to have survived and the baby was perfect. When I came out of it and started to tell the story, I was on a talk show and the host says to me, “Did you see the lights?” I said, “I don’t know. They gave me a lot of drugs.” I wasn’t afraid of saying there was or there wasn’t, but I felt that I couldn’t remember at that time. What I ended up doing is once the physical recovery was done, the mental recovery started, which was, “How did I know?” What I didn’t tell you is that as I crashed and then I was put into the surgical ICU and on life support for six days. The first day on life support, my husband comes in obviously reacting to, “What do you mean this all happened?”

Several of my premonitions had come true. I hemorrhaged. I was put under general anesthesia. I had flat-lined. The baby was fine. I had all of that written down months before that all this was going to happen. My uterus was intact. When my husband was in the ICU, he told the anesthesiologist, “If she needs a hysterectomy, this is the doctor we met with two months before.” She said, “That’s great to know but she’s stable right now. I don’t know whether she’ll survive another surgery, but for right now I’ll take note of it.” Seven hours later, they realized I’m still hemorrhaging and they call in that doctor to perform the hysterectomy. They do the hysterectomy. The pathology on the uterus shows that it was positive for an accreta. It was just microscopic and hadn’t been detected by the MRI months before.

[Tweet “In seeing something, it’s one thing but physically reacting to it is a different thing.”]

It flipped a lot of my doctors and a lot of the people who witnessed the case for months into a tailspin. It was like, “How did you know?” It’s one thing to have a sense of foreboding before it’s well-documented. “We’ll document that you’re going to have a heart attack maybe ten minutes before, maybe a day before you feel this foreboding.” To know months before exactly what was going to happen, it had everybody scratching their heads. I needed answers. I went to my therapist and what have you. Nobody can answer the question. I ended up going to a regression therapist. Regression uses hypnotherapy to take you back into the moments of trauma. It’s basically giving you an outside perspective of what’s already happened to you. It won’t feel as painful, but you’ll be able to see it as an observer. Maybe it was my producer background or my Type A personality, but I videotaped my therapy.

I don’t want anyone to tamper with my mind. I’ve never been hypnotized before. I didn’t know if one is hypnotized, are you going to remember it? It’s better to have it on tape than not. She thought it was weird I was taping it, but I just want it done. In one of my sessions, you see my body go through the convulsions, sees, experience, and then say everything that I saw in the operating room after I flat-lined. Remember, my eyes are taped shut. I’m intubated. There’s no way I could see anything. Maybe I could hear things, but I most certainly couldn’t see. I see that the first attempt at the crash cart didn’t work, but the second did. I saw who hit the button for the code. I saw which nurse jumped on my chest to give me CPR and broke my ribs.

I saw that my anesthesiologist was down by my feet instead of at my head. There were details in the waiting room, in the back hallways of labor and delivery that as a patient one would never see. I could tell where the map was, where the nurse’s break room was, where there was a nurses’ station, where there were flowers on her desk and what kind they were, what my husband was wearing when he got out of the airport, what my daughter was doing in the labor and delivery room waiting for me.

You’re describing these things on the video that’s playing. Do you remember this later or do you just remember because you’ve seen it on the video?

I see it on the video. I see very clearly. I finished the tape and I feel better. I’ve unburdened myself. My husband with his mind says, “How do you know this isn’t a recalled episode of Grey’s Anatomy in your head?” After I was done calling him a lot of names I said, “It’s a fair point.” I said to my therapist, “How do you know I’m telling the truth?” She says, “Sometimes the only validation we get is the patient feels better.” I said, “That’s not good enough for me. I have witnesses.” I go back to the hospital and I take the tapes. I play it for the doctors who were present. With tears in their eyes they said, “I don’t know how you know any of this. I didn’t go to medical school for this. It’s accurate down to where standing, what we were doing.”

I saw the nurse who introduced herself to me at the hospital and she said, “Mrs. Arnold, you probably don’t remember me.” I said, “You’re the nurse that broke my ribs.” She ran back to her office crying because she couldn’t believe it. It defies things that they would have been taught or would have understood. I said one thing to my husband, “Our doctor didn’t deliver the baby.” He had said, “How do you know that?” I said, “I saw it in the video in my head in regression. He’s like, “Okay.” I go to my doctor I said, “First of all, when I flat-lined, did you keep saying, ‘This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening?’” She said, “I did but in my head.” I said, “Did you deliver the baby?” She said, “Why?” I said, “I saw something in my therapy that shows you did not.” She said, “I didn’t deliver the baby.” I said, “Did this resident who had a consultation with me in the GynOnc’s office, there was a resident present taking notes, did she deliver the baby?” Jonathan’s interjecting himself into the conversation saying, “It’s not possible. She was on GynOnc rotation. Why would she be back there? Why would she deliver the baby?” My doctor looks at me and she said, “How do you know this?” At that point I had my answers. I was like, “Science can’t explain it. I have the witnesses. I have everybody documenting. There’s something else going on here.” That propelled this whole new way of thinking for me.

People will share things even on Facebook or whatever, “Can you read this?” Letters are missing and people fill in. Your brain fills in if things are missing. Have you looked into any of those aspects of how you could have filled? Like listening to certain things, up until the 37 seconds if you’re dead? Do you think you could have filled in some of the things from that point? If you see part of a picture but parts missing, you ought to directly see the whole picture. If you have letters missing in a paragraph, you could still read it because you know what it should have said. There are certain things that your brain will automatically fill in for you is what I’ve heard at least.

In seeing something, it’s one thing. Physically reacting to it is a different thing. What resonated with me is that this is going to happen. These six things are definitely going to happen to me. Maybe I read it and then it hit a nerve. It’s never happened in my body before. I don’t know what any of that feels like. The only thing I had to go on with was this is going to happen. This is what needs to happen in order to save my life. I firmly believed I wasn’t coming back. I do not believe filling in the picture would have created the blood hemorrhage.

I don’t mean for that. I mean more like who’s standing where, who’s doing what in certain things that went on because you didn’t hear it. You got part of the picture from hearing it.

I could hear something. I couldn’t speak. I know that my anesthesiologist was down by my feet and running up and screaming. Maybe I could hear, “Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie.” I don’t remember that, but I didn’t see the crash cart not working. I couldn’t see which nurse jumped on my chest after I flat-lined. I couldn’t see the doctor who delivered the baby because there was a curtain there. Even if I could hear, there’s no way I could’ve known the voices because she didn’t know who she was operating on. She knew who she was operating on after the hysterectomy. She had to go tell my husband the grave news that they don’t know whether I’m going to make it. When she saw my husband, she just about threw up because she was like, “This woman was in my office.”

[Tweet “We are human beings. We have this soul being inside of us”]

What do you think is the reason you know what happened during that time when you were out?

I believe that we are human beings. We have this soul being inside of us. I believe that the sixth sense comes from a very soulful place. Just as much as you have a sixth sense when it comes to your child’s playing a little too close to the street. It’s time to take them back in, whether something’s going to happen. Something is processing that energy to say, “I need to bring them back in.”That, to me, comes from a very deep spiritual place. I believe that there’s this soul brain and the human brain. When the human brain is cut off, doesn’t mean that the soul brain or consciousness doesn’t exist.

I had a friend who died for almost three minutes. First thing I asked him was, “Did you see the light?”He said he didn’t see anything. He didn’t remember anything. Nothing happened. Why do you think that he didn’t have that and you did?

It was me going back into the fire. When anesthesiologists will tell you they give you a lot of great drugs but not remember, it doesn’t mean that information isn’t stored in your body somewhere. What I’m told about consciousness is that they store themselves these memories like filmstrips in your brains. When you access them, you can remember them. If your friend decided regression might be an option for him or her, he would be enlightened by that information if he trusts the process to open up. It’s a very scary thing to go back and say, “I want to go back to that moment,” because it took me many hours of therapy to go back there finally.

From a psychological aspect, I didn’t want that information to be transferred later into how I behave towards my children, how I behave in my relationship. There was just the psychological aspect of saying, “Let me unburden myself of the fear of going back to the hospital, the fear of an operating room, a fear of whatever it is, and maybe I can get some information.” I wasn’t fully optimistic it was going to work and give me more information than I wanted. I definitely went in with a very clear head of saying, “I want to unburden myself from the cells of my body remembering the trauma.”

You’ve told this story on other very big shows. Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, Steve Harvey, Good Day LA. It’s something that people are interested in. I took a course in college that was all about Edgar Cayce and regression. I remember studying that when I was young. It’s fascinating because his work was more what I think reincarnation that he was looking at. Were you religious before this? Did it change your opinion of what you believed in? How did that come to be?

It’s a constant question I’m asking. The premonitions, the visions, and the intuitive nature, as a kid, I had it. I compare it to like I was on low voltage as a child. Then I go a systolic, which means no electricity running through your body. Now I’m on high voltage. I see things and experience things from people that I cannot explain. I need an explanation because I need to stand on solid ground. I keep asking. I have conversation with an astronaut who specializes in quantum entanglement. I’m like, “Give me a scientific explanation as to how I can experience this other person this way and why I know it.”A perfect example is I’m going back into television and I met a woman, who you probably know, in her office. I was pitching her. She’s iconic in the television industry. She is like, “Stephanie, I’m aware of your story but I’m a skeptical person.” I said, “That’s cool. I’m not here to prove anything to you. I’m just here to pitch you a show.”

I am sitting with ten people in her office, not knowing anybody. In the middle of the meeting, I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack. I know it’s not mine. I have two choices. I can either shut up and not blow the pitch or speak up and I’m the crazy person in the room. I can’t breathe, so I have no choice. I stopped the meeting and said, “I’m sorry. Somebody’s trying to tell me something. Someone has a male family member who just had a heart attack.” Everybody’s looking at me like, “No.” The woman that owns the company was like, “My mother had a hard attack years ago, but she’s fine.” I said, “That’s not it,” but as she’s talking, it’s getting stronger and stronger. I know it’s coming from her direction.

At that point, I had no more information. I say, “Let’s just keep going. Let me finish.” Now it’s completely tense in the meeting. I’m like, “Let’s get Stephanie out of the office.” I leave. My girlfriend who brought me into the office said, “What’s with the theatrics?” I said, “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s what I felt.” As soon as I walk out the front door, it releases. I get a phone call four days later from the CFO or CEO of the company and he said, “We figured out what the heart attack was.” I was like, “What?” He says, “Everybody thought it was strange, but she went back to her office. She got a phone call from her sister in New York. Her father had a heart attack at the moment you were feeling it.”

Are you getting this often or is that a one-time thing? Do you think that all through this experience, now you’re somehow tied into being more intuitive?

Now I have no choice. When I was younger, something happened to people that I would see before it happened. I got scared because inevitably somebody was affected by it. I thought I was willing it to happen. Now, because it saved my life, the intuitive side, I can no longer ignore it. Now I’m seeing it everywhere. I’m not as extreme every single time and not necessarily when I see somebody. I’m not a psychic and medium or anything. That’s not anything about what I do. I’m realizing that the sixth sense we have, just because it doesn’t fit into the other five sense category hardly means it doesn’t exist.

When you talk to somebody like me, do you feel anything from talking to me? You can tell something has happened to me?

Sometimes, sometimes not. I went into this interview learning about protecting myself so that I could focus on the interview. If I don’t, then noise comes in. I don’t know what I’m supposed to listen to. If there was something painful coming in, I would be the first to say, “Hold on. We need stop. Let’s talk off camera.”This woman, I was blowing my pitch to make mention of something. Ultimately, her father was okay. She’s freaked out by the whole thing but she bought my life right. She is like, “Forget this. I don’t know who you are but there’s something here.” I said, “I don’t know. Let’s explore it together.”

You asked a question regarding religion. I’m Jewish. We’re Jewish and my rabbi was like, “We do believe that people can see things, but just because you can sense it doesn’t mean you need to say it.”My argument with it is I believe that we all sense these things. There’s a stigma attached to things that are not as tangible or logical. You’d get fixed by it. If I’m going to be the one to put myself out there, I’m going to say it when I sense it. I’m trying to encourage others to do the same thing. The worst case scenario is what if you’re wrong? The bottom line is what if your right?

I have a sense when I’m sick, like I said with meningitis or when I had my appendix burst. You know when you’re sick and you know you need to go to the hospital. I’m never around somebody where I think, “Somebody’s going to have a heart attack or something.” I don’t have that sense at all.

If you’re around somebody and you feel an energy, this person’s not who they say they are. You’re walking down the street, you always walked out and for whatever reason you’re like, “I don’t have a good feeling about walking down the street today.” That is an intuitive side that we don’t take seriously sometimes. I’m sure there have been times in your life because there’s definitely been times in my life where I dated somebody I knew I shouldn’t have.

I’m a Myers-Briggs instructor. I’m curious if you’ve ever taken your Myers-Briggs type? You’re either intuitive or a sensor. I’m curious what you came out at if you can even remember.

I don’t, but I’m happy to take it again. It’s been many years.

With Myers-Briggs, they give you your dichotomies. You can be an introvert, extrovert, sensing, or intuitive. I’m not very high on the intuitives. I’m more on the sensing side. I’m curious if you had taken it. This is all fascinating to me because I’m writing about curiosity and you had mentioned being curious. You’re a very curious person. You want to know why from all this. Does this make you more curious about things?

It does. It doesn’t make me more religious. What it does do though is make me more spiritual. I sense energy differently and I respect it. I am curious. It’s not like a new party trick I’m doing, but I do caution myself when I meet somebody. I say something and I’m like, “I don’t mean to offend you or anything like that, but I feel this.”The person’s like, “I had been experiencing that for awhile.”“You might want to go to the doctor to check this out.” I feel like I am curious. I am curious in a sense of wanting to find soonest. I’ve been proven time and time again now over the last few years because my child is four. After the last few years, I’ve been proven that I’ve been right.

I’m not going out there and say, “I’m 100% right that this is going to happen every single time.” I caution myself. I’m also curious about how it happens, which is why I ask a ton of questions. I’m honestly waiting for science to catch up. It would be so much more comfortable to sit there and say, “Science told me to save my life.” The idea that I acted upon my own imagination, that these things were going to happen and ultimately I am alive because of it, that is a daunting feeling that you have that much capacity energetically to save your life.

What do you hope to do with this? Are you going to write a book? Are you telling a movie? You were talking about pitching this. What’s next with this story?

I wrote a book. I had 37 Seconds that came out. It became Top 100, so that’s all great. It was telling a good story. When I went out to market, I had an idea of telling other people near-death experience stories and wanting to understand their healing process at that time. Right now, we’re working on scripted series based on what initially happened to me and currently what continues to happen, and my questioning everything especially with an analytical brain. You’ll hear more about that.

The next phase for me is what I’m realizing with all the emails I’m getting and the outreach. People need to be empowered, specifically women, but men as well. They need to be empowered and validated that their inner voice is strong. Just because it doesn’t make logical sense doesn’t mean they shouldn’t speak up, especially with the #MeToo Movement and women. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. I’ve experienced silencing our voices because it wasn’t the right time or the right place. Now is the right time where we need to validate each other, grow stronger. Your intuition is one that will never disappoint you. You won’t regret speaking up, but you will regret not doing it.

You mentioned your book and I think it’s important to note that her book 37 Seconds has won multiple awards and become a best-seller. You’ve been invited by some of the most prestigious universities and media outlets to speak about this. It’s a very interesting story. I’m sure a lot of people would want to reach you to find out more about it. Can you just share those sites?

You can reach in to website as StephanieArnold.net. On Facebook, it’s @StephArnold37 and the same with Instagram and Twitter.

I’m sure you get a lot of people that want to talk to you because I’m sure it’s a very compelling story. It was very interesting. I’m glad that it all worked out though and that your son was okay, that you’re okay. I am glad that you came on the show and shared it. It was fascinating. I’m glad it all worked out in the end.

I appreciate the platform. The outreach that you’re doing and the education you’re doing is incredible and I just am happy that you had me on.

[Tweet “They need to be empowered and validated that their inner voice is strong.”]

It was fun having you here and I’m looking forward to following your progress with everything that you do. Maybe this will be a movie some day. I wouldn’t be surprised.

I want to thank Stephanie for being my guest. What an interesting story, a very strange thing. You never know some of these stories if we’ll ever understand why things happened. I get so many fascinating stories. I’ve had a few people on my show who have shared interesting things that have happened to them. Some of them have been horrible things but they’ve led to opening the door to other experiences. It sounds like this has opened up the door for Stephanie. If you missed some of these past stories, some of my guests, some of them are fascinating, from this one to the story behind the movie Breach. I’ve had the man that found the worst spy in US history. He has been on my show and Eric was an excellent storyteller.

Some of the stories are fascinating to help us understand other things that maybe you’re more business related as far as what motivates us and drive different things. This ties into some of the other topics on the show. If you’ve missed any of our past episodes, you can go to DrDianeHamilton.com or Dr. Diane Hamilton Radio to go directly to the radio part on the show. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you join us for the next episode of Take The Lead Radio.

 

About Stephanie Arnold

Stephanie Arnold, was a TV producer who spent 27 years creating and directing TV shows, music videos and documentaries. She left the “business” in 2008 after meeting the love of her life. From that point on, the only thing she wanted to produce was a family. It was during the birth of your second child that Stephanie suffered a rare, but often fatal, condition called amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) and died on the operating table for 37 seconds. Everything she does now is a direct result of her survival.

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• 37 Seconds
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• @StephArnold37 Facebook
• Stephanie’s Instagram
• Stephanie’s Twitter

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