The Companion Layer - Why Real Companions Stay Through Hell, Not Just Highlight Reels
Who You Grow Best Beside
Onions grow better beside certain plants and wither near others. Companion planting isn't random—it's strategic. Some relationships accelerate your growth. Others drain nutrients you need to thrive.
After 10 years, I know what real companion planting looks like. It's messy. It requires both people to show up through seasons where one needs to be carried.
The Friday Morning Anchor
In 2015, I met Dr. Goodman when I needed help and he needed a website. Fair exchange: design work for therapy and NET (neuro-emotional technique).
We set up Fridays at 9am in his home office. This was strategic—I was easily pulled into Miami's Thursday-Sunday trance back then. Friday mornings forced me to show up.
For a year, we met weekly. Business etiquette. Proper procedures. Org boards. Some days we'd talk politics and banter. Other sessions went deep—father blame, family company dynamics, verbal and physical trauma I'd never processed.
I'd leave his house and walk around his Coral Gables block just to process what came up.
The Film Frame Metaphor
NET (Neuro emotional technique) changed everything.
Picture an old film reel—frame by frame, moving fast enough to create the illusion of motion. But it's just still images passing through light.
What Dr. Goodman does with NET: We find the stuck frame—the moment where emotional pain got embedded. Maybe age 8 with my father. Maybe a specific scene that keeps replaying.
We name it. We hold space for it. Then we dissolve that single frame.
The next time the reel plays, that trigger is gone. The memory remains, but the emotional charge dissolves.
I cried through a few of these sessions. Felt the pain leaving my body. No fireworks. No instant transformation. Just... that feeling stops activating.
I wrote my first book about it: "Fridays with Goodman"—inspired by the book and movie "Tuesdays with Morrie."
The Reversal Seasons
Most people think companion planting means someone who always lifts you up.
But real companions go through seasons where THEY need you to be the strong one.
A few years in, Dr. Goodman hit a rough patch. Lost some clients. Fell into a funk—I think from medications he was on for liver and skin issues. Mood swings. Emotional regression.
I helped him. Gave advice. Coached his own wisdom back to him. His wife would joke: "I'm going to tie you to a chair and make you listen to your own advice."
It felt reciprocal. He'd helped me through my darkest moments—software updates my mind and body desperately needed. I owed it to him to show up when he needed support.
We even stopped talking for two years. Got so distant I didn't invite him to my wedding. That's how far apart we drifted.
But we reconciled. He came back. I came back.
The Father-Son Reality
A couple of years ago, he said something that named what we both knew: "The universe abhors a vacuum. I'm taking the role your father wasn't installed to give you." That confiding, that showing up consistently—that's what I wanted to hear from my dad in a subconscious way.
We talk 4-5 days a week on Zoom. I visit when I'm in Miami. His wife does a Christmas thing every year we attend. It's been 10 years of mutual growth, mutual pain, mutual support.
He's 70 now, doing great. Still practicing chiropractic. Still coaching. We're different in many ways and even religiously, but he's been a constant through a decade of massive changes.
And I'm forever grateful.
The Stuck Frame Dissolve
You hear it often: "You're the sum of your 5 closest friends. Choose wisely."
Some friends are vicinity friends—you grew up together, feel obligated by history. But if they keep you in the "golden age" frame, never evolving beyond who you were at 23, it's time to dissolve that frame.
Best friends who broke boundaries? Dissolve the frame. Acknowledge the past. Wish them well. Move forward.
The NET framework applies to relationships too: See the pattern clearly (this person consistently drains me, doesn't grow, keeps me small). Name it. Dissolve the emotional charge around letting them go. Release with gratitude for what was.
What I'm Looking For Now
I feel like a new man. New perceptions. New shift. A new legacy coming over me.
Family is my focus. But I'm also looking for new companion plants—people building something real, mentors who've walked similar paths, friends who challenge me to grow without the performance.
Dr. Goodman showed me what long-term companion planting looks like. It's not perfect symbiosis. It's commitment through seasons—when he needs me, when I need him, when we both need space, when we reconcile.
That's worth more than surface-level networking, transactional relationships, or people who only show up for your wins.
This Week's Peel
Who are your companion plants? And who are you carrying that drains nutrients you need for growth?
Real companions stay through hell, not just highlight reels. They show up when you're messy. They let you show up when THEY'RE messy. They dissolve stuck frames with you.
Some people are meant for one season. A reason or a lifetime. Some stay through transformations. Many don't —and that's ok, too. The art is knowing the difference—and having the courage to tend your garden accordingly.
Dissolve the frames. Release the vicinity friends, if they suck, you'll know. Find the companions who grow WITH you, not despite you.
This week, notice: Who in your life is a true companion plant (mutual growth, stays through seasons) vs. who's extractive (takes nutrients, stunts your development)? And what stuck frames need dissolving so you can release relationships that no longer serve your growth?
The "Being Coached" Layer: Trusting Your Process, Training Your Mind
Dr. Goodman began with the foundational advice: Trust your process; wherever you are, you are exactly supposed to be. He referenced a client struggling with inherited negativity ("glass half empty"), leading to a diagnosis and compounding despair. The core challenge is shifting a lifetime of "half-empty" input into a positive outlook when pressure hits. His client—like many—oscillated between knowing things will be okay and feeling like a complete failure, asking why anyone would choose to stay.
Dr. Goodman emphasizes that you are not broken; you are exactly where you need to be to learn the lesson of acceptance. The shift from feeling like a failure to acceptance is a decision-by-decision practice. Healing comes down to choosing the "glass half full" perspective—not as a platitude, but as a deliberate mental act. You train your brain for neuroplasticity by making one decision at a time, one hour at a time, to consciously see the positive potential. This commitment to present-moment choice is the only way to build a future better than the wreckage of the past.
Bookshelf Peeled - Learning to Trust What Sounds Impossible
Fridays with Goodman by Martin Casado (yes, that's me, I wrote a book) isn't just a book about NET—it's about finding someone who sees the stuck frames you can't see yourself. Muscle testing sounds absurd until you've held your arm up while a practitioner pinpoints the exact age, the exact emotion, the exact moment your body locked in trauma. I've cleared father wounds, business resentments, and old shame patterns this way. The process works not because it's logical, but because the body holds what the mind refuses to acknowledge. Real companion plants don't just listen to your stories—they help you dissolve the frames keeping you trapped in them.
The lesson here: companion planting requires someone willing to go beneath surface conversations into the messy, uncomfortable territory where real transformation happens. Dr. Goodman didn't just coach me on business strategy or life goals—he helped me find and release the emotional residue I'd been carrying for decades. That's what separates transactional relationships from transformational ones. Most people want companions who validate their highlight reels. But the ones who stay through your hell? They're the ones holding space while you dissolve frames you didn't even know were running.
Fridays with Goodman: A striving artist, a Good-man and the Universal Principles at Play. by Martin Casado (My book)
Design Rebel: The Maximum Evolution Equation
This week, we spotlight Dr. Goodman, my coach (you've read his section, and now here's his moment). Since visualizing the NET process was challenging, I chose a different path for the video's metaphors. Images and videos were generated by Leonardo.ai, including some clips enhanced by Veo 3.1. The voices came from ElevenLabs. The script was a joint effort between Gemini and me, and the final edit was completed using Wondershare Filmora.
Weekly Inspired Insights I liked or found useful this week:
Yes, I know the NET sounds woo-woo, but back in Season 15, Episode 22 on Grey's Anatomy, one of their writers wrote it into the show—no voodoo stuff!
P.S. If this resonates with you, share it with someone. I'm dedicated to helping fellow explorers—or anyone who found this page—uncover their authentic self with humor and insight. We're all in this together, finding the courage to truly live from our core essence (or as close as we can get!).
The Storage Layer: Preserving Energy for Future Growth (Tentative)
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