The avatar secret that's healing trauma survivors

Nicole Borgi's voice wasn't always this strong. In today's Rise from the Ashes episode, she reveals how domestic violence survivors and women afraid to be seen are finding their power through avatar technology.

Her story hits hard. COVID lockdowns destroyed her Vegas security career. Her relationship with a law enforcement partner shattered. Family rifts cost her connection with her daughter. Rock bottom became her starting point.

But Nicole didn't disappear. She built something revolutionary—a virtual healing space where avatars let trauma survivors practice presence without fear. No cameras. No judgment. Just safe space to rebuild.

Her raw truth will shake you: You don't need to be visible to be powerful. But you do need to start somewhere.

This isn't your typical trauma recovery story. It's about innovation, resilience, and how one woman turned her darkest moments into light for others.

Perfect for women ready to heal, find their voice, or discover how technology can create psychological safety in unexpected ways.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Nicole Borgi
• 1:46 Creating Safe Platforms for Voices
• 4:16 From Law Enforcement to Coaching
• 7:15 Simplifying Healing and Coaching Approaches
• 10:25 Personal Crisis During COVID-19
• 13:52 Episode Closing and Next Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Rise. I'm your host, baz Porter, and I'm joined today by a remarkable soul bit of a legend where she goes. Her name is Nicola. I'm terrible with the names and names. Nicole, please tell everybody who you are, what you do and you know who you serve.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Thank you. It's Nicole Borgi and it's I know who I am, so I'm OK. However you say my name, I won't have an identity crisis, I promise, but thank you for having me here. It's an honor to be here and I serve the community of speakers and coaches and healers to get seen and get heard so they can grab a mic, get on the stage and share their goods and wares, and I also serve with Confronting Domestic Violence. As the chairwoman, I serve domestic violence victims and survivors and I also share with them how to utilize their voice and their stage to develop their worth and who they are to success, for financial freedom and sharing things like social media platforms where they can be seen and heard at a simple cause and that is through for-a-cause marketing to share with them those types of businesses.

Speaker 1: 1:16

So what you do is very valuable in the world of mental health, personal health and also allowing people the space and safety to actually have that voice, because there's a lot of people go through the best domestic violence, other challenges in life that don't have that platform, are still affected by that trauma. Why do you do it? What was this spark in going? Going back a few years ago, a few months?

Speaker 2: 1:46

whatever it was what encouraged you to do and allow to do what you're doing today and allow that platform for others as an event strategist, realized part of it was as a coach or as a consultant and I started to work as a solopreneur and entrepreneur that I needed to grab a mic, I needed to talk about my services, I needed to network and develop a community. So for the business portion of it, I had to get on a stage. And what a better way to do it. But get on your own stage and develop a strategy and a structure, and I like to use the acronym KISS. I like to keep it simple. Keep it simple. Stupid for everybody to say let's make this easy. I don't like hard. People don't sell if they're confused. So why do it? On the other half of it, when we talk about summits for caring summits and workshops and healers and coaches really having to have a safe space where they can be seen and heard, how do they do that? Into the virtual reality space or on Zoom or on a LinkedIn Live or YouTube Live? And in order to do that, they need to have a voice and that's part of it. So what could I do for the community? And this served two platforms. I was working in a small business and sharing with them how to onboard into the virtual reality space and to utilize Zoom in networking and when we're doing trainings and calls. We needed to use a platform that could be global and we could talk to each other, and so in doing that and teaching them that I thought shoot, this is such an easy platform to share onboarding with people that aren't ready to come on the camera.

Speaker 2: 3:25

We have avatars now. How cool is that? We don't have to worry about our hair, we don't have to worry about our clothes, and if we're having a moment, especially for people who are a little bit scared or worried to get on this stage and they haven't found their bearings, maybe they're no longer in that fear space when they're finding their bearings. It's easier to mess up when you're looking at an avatar, because it's funny when you're watching it move back and forth, and so now you can have a little fun.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Now you can have a little fantasy, if you like to, and play around without costly equipment, without having to show up when you're not ready to show out and shine, and it's just a little step here and there where we can create a soft lockdown space so nobody gets docked and it's a little place to play. What do you really want to be seen as, and when you don't have your voice or your worth, you're not quite ready to be seen just yet. There's always an excuse when you get on camera and you beat yourself up. If you have an avatar, you can make the avatar, whoever, whatever. You can come in as a panda or a kitty, cat, whatever you want to be. You can be that, and then it's easier to have a conversation.

Speaker 1: 4:34

When you talk about avatars. I like it because there's many different advancements in artificial intelligence in video platforms now. Going back a few years ago, there wasn't this. How did you get started in this role and how did you overcome some of the challenges in the coaching world back in the day?

Speaker 2: 4:59

A lot of it from a teaching background or a field training officer coming to share with people. It's not moving past that place where it's not all fear, porn and crazy. It is more the how and so understanding the how and working forward. When I was going to networking events, I was so used to in law enforcement and security throwing people out I didn't know how to let them in and all of a sudden I'm thrown and go to a networking, get to know and trust people. What do we talk about? I'm just, I've got a 16 year old sense of humor. I don't want to crack up on stuff or hey it things differently in that role, and when it's time to allow people to come in, I'm a straight shooter. I want to get down to business so I can understand. So I got to break it all down and get down to the nitty gritty to really understand what's going on. Everybody else wants to. You know it's got to be sunny and warm and it's that false positivity. Right, people aren't really that way. They're passionate, they're loving beings, they can be angry, they can be happy. How do I do this in the place and where do I fit? And all of a sudden, now I have to adapt to a different place and it was just so weird going. It wasn't scary, it was just weird. What do I do here? And so, developing that, I was having a hard time in conversation talking to people. What did they like? So I started coming out from 20 plus years of that into working with energy and healing and Reiki and my thought was let's just do this quickly.

Speaker 2: 6:38

I studied Marcel Vogel. I met him back in the day, the Vogel crystal. He was an IBM scientist. He was part and parcel of it, very integral in getting the crystal into the phone, our LCD screens, that we have it all the time we don't think about it now. So when you take science and theory and you put this all together, things can be quick and simple. When you get into it. It shouldn't be hard and difficult. Back to keeping it simple.

Speaker 2: 7:06

So when I got into coaching, it was always long and drawn out. Nobody was getting healed and in the last few years it seems like everybody has to be broken. I don't know why. I don't think everybody's broken and I don't think I want to keep them there and I don't want to be a partner in pain. So I feel that I was more doing not necessarily harm, but I was just doing a disservice and I didn't feel appropriate with it. It didn't resonate with it and I really needed to change my messaging and who I was because I worked better behind the scenes. But I'm going to clean it up, I'm going to get quick and we're going to GSD and get over this.

Speaker 2: 7:47

There's no reason for all that. There's a time and a place. But if it's all the time, it's very emotionally draining. And then you deal with people like I did, whether I was on the street or in security. It can be very violent and heated when people don't understand their own emotions and that just all blows up 50,000, 100,000, a million people in one spot and someone's having an emotional time because they have not developed as an adult or a human yet. They can be really messy. So how do I turn that around?

Speaker 1: 8:20

But what you've done here, nicole, which is what I love, because you've changed it from a narrative, like you said earlier, a base and a part of the challenge that you saw, and you've recognized that within yourself and gone okay. Where do I perform the best? What do I really love doing? It isn't on the forefront. I did 20 years in security networking and saw a lot of stuff in the world, good and bad but you've taken that expertise and gone okay. Now that I've lived through that pathway, how can I apply this in a chaotic world in a civilian form? And you've managed to come from the chaos of corporate that security side of things and level it out into something that you really enjoy.

Speaker 2: 9:14

Absolutely, and I love how you look at that and dissect it. It is really what did I enjoy before and what do I enjoy now? And how does that develop? How does that mirror each other? So I always I read people's bodies. I read their body language, their voice, their tonality and their energy and it's the same as a healer. So my human lie detector goes off and I'm like wait a second, this isn't going to work. It starts beep, but it's the fan that. What I love right now is that we have this capability to bring this forward with this technology and use it for good, like Star Trek and the holodeck, and bring energy workers into this space and engage a one-on-one with it. And I wouldn't be what we wouldn't be talking without it.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Oh, 100%. So, before we go into the sort of what you're doing now, what was the sparing moment for you to go? I don't need to be a part of a problem now. What was that situation and the transition for you like? Because there was obviously a rock bottom moment for you that was like oh, I can't do this now.

Speaker 2: 10:25

Transitioning from the security side of things is very hands-on in a casino, which people, a lot of people, don't realize. But the casinos went corporate. So, going from that and the realization of hey, covid hit, oops, it all fell apart, and then so did my relationships and being stuck at home with people that you don't see for long periods of time. My ex was law enforcement and security and a manager. We saw each other at the gym or we'd see each other for dinner and then all of a sudden we'd have conversations and we work together.

Speaker 2: 10:56

But when it was like real time, when you're stuck in that situation where you feel like I need to get out and for me I would have I had no problem going out, going camping, go to the mountain. I was in Vegas. I was ready to go to Mount Charleston. He wanted to hide in the house and I'm like you can't be the hero under your bed and it doesn't work that way. So that was a blow up. Vegas shut down, that was another blow up. The streets were just. It was like a ghost town. It was like the zombie apocalypse had actually come to life and it was really a breakdown of people that didn't want to support each other anymore. They didn't want that. And then my daughter was sick. So it was like and I'm going through all this at the time where I started getting back into healing I started it as a young age as a psychic. We used to go ghostbusting houses with my mom. Only there was no protection.

Speaker 2: 11:49

So that was just something would always come home. I needed more structure and more understanding. So, anyway, fast forward back to 2020, it was just a huge cluster. It was nasty. It was just mentally unwell. I experienced it. I experienced a lot of health issues as a child. So 2020 brought back that another scare of what I was going through, on a human experience, with people around me trying to force me to do things and put drugs and stuff into my body. That I was like, no, what happened? I'm not going to do this. I know who I am. I'm not going to do this. So it caused a lot of riff in the family and I lost my daughter over it. It was just. It's just these last five years. It was a huge mess and very torturous and tormenting. A huge mess and very torturous and tormenting, and then just wanting to walk away and just go to the woods and just hide out in the mountains somewhere.

Speaker 1: 12:46

And, yeah, thank you. And that's why I love having these conversations with people like you, because they're real lives and everybody gets a version of that person. That isn't shown a lot of the time, but it makes up who you are. You can have as much ai as you like, but people like to know who they're working with and the person behind it. What you're speaking into now. Millions of people experienced into now. Millions of people experienced I've done the stats on this and research, because that's what I do for over 46 percent of the American population registered depressed or anxiety and I think it was 43 percent.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Divorce rates went up during COVID and shortly afterwards because of something you're speaking into now. So, to meet somebody who I didn't experience, it thankfully but to actually hear from someone who did and went through that journey. Other people can relate to this, but there's light at the end of the tunnel and that's what we're going to go into next in part two. So if you're listening to this and my subscribers, the listeners, thank you very much. Please share and subscribe. Leave a little review if you wish. If you don't like it, please don't leave one. But if you do, please leave your thoughts From myself and Nicole. I will see you in the next episode and I hope you have an amazing day. See you soon.