Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast

Episode 68: Dao, Deconstructing Identity, & Sovereignty with Kat Lee

Posted on by Lindsey Lockett

This Episode’s Guest

Kat Lee is a Trauma-Informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Empowered Curiosity Podcast. She uses the tools of trauma-informed somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.

Links

Show Notes

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In this episode with Emotional Alchemist and Daoist Practitioner Kat Lee, we…

  • discuss the pull between wanting to honor ourselves as individuals while also wanting to honor the collective
  • discuss the relationship of balance between nature and our human experience through Kat’s Daoist perspective
  • talk about spirituality and healing sometimes feeling like an itch we can’t scratch
  • discuss healing as a mostly subtractive process
  • talk about discerning our sovereign, autonomous choice from the external voices of what we “should” do
  • talk about the roles we take on to survive, the Drama Triangle, and vacillating between roles
  • share why we can’t get behind “love and light”
  • discuss labels and identity markers and why they don’t matter as much as how we care for ourselves and our nervous systems within our own experience of the world

Nervous System 101

I’m also teaching my foundational workshop, Nervous System 101, on 2/1/2022. Tickets are $55, but if you need financial assistance, please send an email to hey@lindseylockett.com or DM me on Instagram (@iamlindseylockett).

In Nervous System 101, you will learn

  • what your Autonomic Nervous System is and how it works
  • Polyvagal Theory distilled down in a way that even a 5th grader can understand
  • how the Autonomic Nervous System is heavily involved in the development of many chronic and mysterious health conditions and “mental illnesses”
  • how the different branches of your nervous system behave when under threat (ie. the difference between “fight” and “freeze” from a physiological point of view)
  • what trauma really is and how it affects your brain
  • why healing is a mostly subtractive process
  • the 4 Pillars of Holistic Trauma Healing

Seats are limited to the first 100 people, so reserve your spot TODAY!

Buy a Nervous System 101 ticket. REPLAY IS SENT TO EVERYONE WHO PURCHASES A TICKET WHETHER YOU ATTEND LIVE OR NOT.

Transcript

All right, everyone. We have a longer episode in store for you today. And before we dive in to this episode, I’ve one more reminder for you. If you are thinking about attending my nervous system, 1 0 1 workshop. It is coming up in two days. So today is Sunday, January 30th. Nervous system 1 0 1 is being taught on Tuesday, February 1st at 6:00 PM. Central time on zoom.

So you have a couple of days to still get your ticket. Tickets are $55. This is my foundational, like. Workshop. This is the foundation of my coaching. This is the foundation of my own healing. This is the foundation of all of my content that I share on Instagram. It’s all about the nervous system and how trauma affects the nervous system, how trauma impairs your brain and creates inflammation in your brain. And then most importantly, what to do about it.

So this workshop is, um, this is the second time I’ve taught this workshop. Tickets sell like crazy. I only have a hundred spots available and they are going fast. So there’s just a few left. So you can get your ticket@lindsaylocket.com forward slash N S Y S 1 0 1 N says 1 0 1, just like a college class.

And I will also have that linked below. Um, if you have any questions about it, feel free to send me an email or a DM. And even more importantly, if a $55 ticket to this workshop is too much for you and you need some financial assistance. Please reach out and let me know, you don’t even have to tell me your circumstance and I will send you a link to get $20 off the cost of the ticket. So your ticket becomes $35 instead of 55. And it’s just so important to me. I believe in this information, I believe in how empowering this information is so much that I don’t want money to be an obstacle if it is.

So just let me know if you need financial assistance. And we’re just going to get straight into introducing today’s guest to you. And then this really powerful conversation. So I have on the podcast today.

Kat Lee cat is a trauma informed, emotional and somatic alchemy coach. She’s also the host of the empowered curiosity podcast and the creator of the heart lab. She guides her community to rewrite their relationship to safety, love, trust, and belongings. So they are able to cultivate conscious relationships and manifest their Dao, which has also their purpose.

And cat’s podcast. The empowered curiosity podcast is a weekly show to explore the ideas, stories, and experiences that dig deep into connecting with your true self. She discusses emotional alchemy and embodiment medicine to cultivate a conscious relationship with yourself and others. And she and her guests are committed to sharing tools, techniques, and wisdom about coming back home to the most aligned version of yourself.

And I was actually a guest on cat’s podcast back in 2021. And so I will link to that really powerful conversation in the show notes below. And also you can find show notes@lindseypocket.com forward slash podcast. This is episode 68. And I’ll be honest. We had a whole plan for this conversation, like a whole topic that we were going to talk about and we kind of dipped our toes in it. And then we took a sharp right turn and we ended up somewhere else and it just happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen. It was really magical.

Sit back relax and enjoy

Hello, Kat, welcome to the holistic trauma healing podcast. Thank you for being here. I am so excited to be here. I just released the episode that you and I did on my podcast, not that long ago, and I really listened to it and I just, I just want to be in conversation with you all the time. Can that, can we make that happen please?

Yeah, let’s just make it happen. Let’s just do it that episode on tats podcast, she has the empowered curiosity podcast and that episode is about untangling, the trauma of disconnection to reclaim resilience and autonomy. Um, you don’t have episode numbers. I do, but I don’t remember what that one is off the top of my head.

Okay. Yeah. I’m looking at Spotify right now and like trying to figure out what episode it is and I don’t see it, but, um, that’s okay. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Okay. So everybody make, go listen to that one. I listened to it as well, and you know, not to toot my own horn, but during our conversation and listening to it back, I was like, wow, we’re a couple of bad asses.

Like we re we really know what we’re talking about. It was a lot of fun to do. And it’s so, um, Validating when I get to talk with other people who are so trauma informed and understand like how trauma is stored in the body, how that plays out in our stories and all of that. So I, I appreciate when I get to have that, like back and forth banter with somebody who, who speaks my same language.

So yeah, it was really meaningful to me too. So I’m, I’m open to us having more conversations with each other, cause it really was fun. Um, so it came up a little bit in that episode, on your podcast. And I think we want to dive into it a little bit more today about the. Micro-cosmic and macro cosmic levels of trauma, like in the macro being like the collective, the micro being the individual.

We talked about that a lot on the episode that we did for your podcasts, because there’s like everybody’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off, like trying to figure out how to make the best choice for them right now, while also w things like it’s for the good of the collective being shoved down our throats.

And it’s like very hard to know, like, when is it okay for me to be sovereign in my body versus when do I need to do whatever I need to do for the collective. So I just, I want to hold space for listeners right now, who may be feeling that way. You’re not alone. You’re not the only ones. Um, so rather than like acting like, or feeling like you might be the only one, like.

Come out of the gate and say, you’re not the only one. It feels like a tearing happening within me as a person sometimes where I’m like, I want to live in my body sovereignty. I want to live as an autonomous person with agency. I want to know what yes feels like in my body. What no feels like in my body and be able to honor that.

And also. I want the collective to be, well, I want everyone to be okay. Like I want everyone to heal, you know? So it’s very hard sometimes when you feel pulled between like, what is best for me as an individual versus how does that fit into the collective? So if you have any insight on this, then I can’t wait to do this episode because I feel like I’m torn in the same way.

So do you want to dive in? Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you normalizing that for folks, because I think that. Everyone is feeling this way and we aren’t able to name it because a lot of us have traumas around this. And, you know, after we recorded our episode on, on the empowered curiosity podcast, I really sat with what I wanted to talk about with you on this podcast.

And, and in my background is in Chinese medicine and in Dallas medicine. And in that tradition, we do a lot of zooming in and zooming out of, of experiences and patterns that we find. And. Really like when it all comes down to it, we, we look at nature and Dallas medicine and look at how things are in balance in nature.

And then we zoom it into the human experience and then we can even zoom it even further into, um, the organs of the body. And, and, and then, you know, we can also zoom out all the way into the macrocosm of the collective and, and see how these imbalances are really just reflections of nature being out of balance.

And so how can we restore balance is, is really the big question. And I think that that can be answered on an individual level, which then ripples out into the collective. And so for me, I think when we talk about sovereignty, You said this really, really beautiful thing and I’m, I might butcher it. But, um, you talked about how, what we’re seeing in the collective right now, some folks are valuing freedom and some folks are valuing safety and neither is wrong.

And I think that that is really, really, really important to keep in mind, as we have these conversations about sovereignty and about trauma. And today I would like to talk a little bit about, um, relationships and the roles that we play in relationships, because I think that this concept of freedom and safety is so, so fundamental when it comes to relationships as well.

So, um, yeah, absolutely. Any thoughts on that? No, I’m just ready. I’m just ready to die it. Dive in. I don’t know anything about, um, Taoism. Um, I don’t know. What you said though, scratch the surface enough that I’m like really curious about it now. So can you, can you share more? Um, and I do really well with like practical examples, you know, when you can like, give me like practical, tangible examples.

So can you explain more about this concept of seeing the imbalances and nature and how that relates to the imbalances in ourselves? Um, and just, yeah, just explain that please. Cause that sounds really, really. Of course. So in my tradition, we use the five elements basically as archetypes. And so we use wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

And the, the most tangible example that I like to use is each of these elements have a emotion associated with them. And with these emotions we don’t. And I think I’ve heard you say this on, on either a podcast or on your Instagram page where emotions are not negative or positive. Right. We they’re just energetic movements.

They just are. Yeah, exactly. And that’s very, very in line with how we look at, at emotions in Dallas medicine. And so if we look at water as an element it’s associated with fear in our Dallas tradition and. If you really dive into the energetics of it, it feels very similar, right? Because when water is not given a container, it has this tendency to get all over the place.

It’s also a really tricky and slippery in that. Like, if there is a little bit of a vulnerability, it finds all those little nooks and crannies and can sort of widen those spaces. And so this is why roof damage is so damaging on a house is because water hits the roof and then it finds all those little nooks and crannies and gets in all these places and creates a bit of damage.

Right. And so we don’t look at water and nature and think water is bad. We need water. Right. And we need that as, as a part of the, the circle in the cycle. And, and so when we are looking at water, we look at nature and we’re like, okay. So how does nature work with Y. Right. And so if we give the banks along the river, right.

So that can be, um, made out of earth. That’s one of the elements that we use. Right? And so if you think about what a child is needing, when they are in fear, it’s like they need to be held, right. The same way that that mama earth energy can hold. You don’t have to be female to be embodying this, but you know, the same way that, that you can just hold somebody who is in fear and not take that on, not absorb that, not try to put your own story onto it, and you’re just holding space for them.

Right. That’s how we contain water. And then it gives water a way to, to move in a direction. That’s how rivers turn into oceans. Right? And so in, in this way, we, I think that if we can look at people right now who are in. Complete fear. Right? Just bringing it back to this conversation about the collective and COVID and vaccines and all that, these folks are really in fear.

Right? And so how we transmute that fear is to hold them in a space that is nonjudgmental in a space that gives them sovereignty in a space that gives them choice in a space that helps them choose a direction, the same way that earth helps us move water. Right. So I think that that is my favorite example of, of explaining what Dallas medicine means to me.

And then it’s just like every single, you know, pairing of the elements has its own little story with it too. But I think that that’s the one that, that feels most resonant to me and these days, just because I’m seeing so much fear and trauma, right. Um, that resonates with me beautifully, like, as you were describing that I got tingles in my body and that’s like, how I know.

Yes. Like, yes. I know what you say is true. Um, so fascinating. That’s so, so fascinating. You just have the energy of someone who just like, if I just like sit back and let you speak, I’m going to learn something really incredible. And I want to absorb it like a sponge. So I even like pushed my notes off to the side and I was like, no, I’m going to be completely present in this conversation.

Like I, your, your voice and your energy just like drew me into the completely present and, um, and not to need to take notes or like figure it out as I go. So let’s just, I’m just going to let you dive in to the, how, how traumas showing up in relationships, the similar patterns, um, that we’re experiencing from our childhood and how that manifests later in our life.

And, um, I love in your email to me, you said, what is our responsibility and untangling those trauma knots to cultivate a conscious relationship. I’ve used the knot metaphor a lot, particularly whenever I was deconstructing from Christianity. Um, the not metaphor was so helpful for me because I was like, there’s all these threads and Christianity, you know, with like purity culture and the literal translation of the Bible and like, like tithing and my, my role as a woman and like how I’m supposed to submit to men and what authority looks like and what patriarchy is.

And like all of that. And they were all like all of these threads that were together in a knot. And I was like, I had to pick it apart, one, one at a time. And sometimes it was a really slow, painful process as picking knots apart can be. So, yeah, I’m in a new of myself and I’m just ready. I’m just ready for what you have to say about this.

So riff on. I appreciate that. And it feels a little bit like pressure. Like I, I did not prepare my Ted talk today. Well, no pressure. You don’t have to do a spontaneous TedTalk, but I just, I don’t think that I’m going to be serving myself or our listeners very well to be interrupting you always with questions when I could just like, let you let you speak.

And if I have a question along the way I’ll I’ll ask. Yeah, please do, please, please speak up. When, when, um, you’ll have a reflection, cause I also just want to honor the wisdom that you carry as well. Um, so I think the place that I want to start is talking about the roles that we all carry as, as humans.

And so many of us come into, I think. Looking for work with you looking for work with me, trying to find some form of like aspect of spirituality, some form of alignment around healing. And to me, what I’ve found over the years is spiritual. My spirituality practice in particular is not about adding. I think that that’s how a lot of, um, things are marketed these days as in you are not good enough.

And so let’s find you the next book, let’s find you, the next guru, let’s find you the next coach, let’s find you the next workshop, whatever that looks like. And it can end up feeling a lot, like an inch that you can’t scratch. A lot of folks can get into this sort of spiritual practice and almost chase it like an addiction like that same sort of hungry ghost energy that you can have around food or alcohol or cigarettes or whatever that is.

Um, and so I had to reconcile that within myself. First before I could share it with folks. And for me, what I’ve found is that spirituality is a subtractive process. And I think that you probably experienced this in the purity culture is like, you are not good enough. Therefore we need to X, Y, and Z, like fill you in or make you good enough.

Or, you know, all those things. And really when it came down to it and when I sat with how I wanted to approach their quality, that never felt right to me. And so I think you shared on my podcast that, that your work is always about bringing people back to themselves. And to me, that is a subtractive process.

Because ever since childhood, we have taken on these layers of stories and roles and narratives and conditions. And these are things that we learned from our families, from our parents, our caregivers, our society, the culture that we live in, you know, the culture, the, um, this spiritual culture that you might be involved in.

And so what happens, I think for me is I’ve developed a curiosity around what’s underneath all of that. Because that’s really who you are right underneath that. And I promise this is going to go back to relationships because that’s what we want to talk about. But yeah, well, I actually, I actually did have something, uh, that came up for me while you were saying that.

And it was, I’m so glad that you shared that spirituality is a subtractive process. And, um, what came up for me was I’ve actually been working with a couple of clients this week who have come out of what I now call toxic wellness culture. Um, so that like constant chase for the perfect diet and the right supplement protocol and the right natural practitioner.

And like all of that and the mindset that both of my clients have noticed, or I helped them notice it, but it was. If a little bit is good, then more is better. And so like when you’re in this toxic wellness culture, it’s like if restricting a few foods is good for me, then probably restricting more foods is better.

If, if taking three supplements is good, then taking seven is better. You know? So I just want to echo, like what you’re saying about how really coming back to yourself is not a process of addition. It’s actually a process of subtraction and taking away all of the things that aren’t, you. That’s all I have to add.

Yeah. And, and I get that all the time too. Um, I’m thinking of a client in particular, who came in with a list of like 50 things that all of his different healthcare practitioners had told him he needs to do in order to maintain his quote unquote healthy lifestyle. And so part of our work was actually helping him feel safe enough and confident enough in himself so that he could pare down the list to the five things he wanted to do.

The five things that his body was saying yes to. And I think that this is also probably something that you talk about is how can we get you, so in tune with your body so that you can actually feel that fuck yes and fuck. No. So that, like, when you look at a list of 50 things that your natural path is giving you.

Then, can you look at that list and say, actually, no, I don’t want to wear a toe spacers. That’s not, that’s not, what’s making my body feel good or no, I don’t want to wear the blue light blocking glasses, but you know what? That magnesium sounds pretty good. Like that sounds like, like my body is really craving that.

And so making those choices from a sovereign and autonomous place really requires you to have this connection back to your body. And that has to come from de layering, all these conditions and layers and things that, you know, we, we live in immersed in a hustle culture, and that automatically shuts you off from the, the sensations that you’re feeling from your body.

Because if you actually let your body feel those sensations of whole hustle, it’s going to say. Right. There are going to be times where it’s like, okay, so we can stretch and we can, we can do things, um, because it’s a temporary thing and where we’re going to sprint towards the finish line and finish up a project or something.

But to stay in that state of being all the time, we’ll disconnect you from your body space and you will live from Headspace, which is what I think a lot of my clients come in really feeling is this sensation of like everything, everything in terms of decisions, in terms of sensations, in terms of like, what I meant to do is made from the space of like your shoulders on that.

And so a lot of our work is delayering. Those, those conditions and narratives, we’re releasing those roles that you may have had to play on order to survive. And then going back into your body and understanding your body and listening to her from a place of like, really deeply understanding that she’s part of your team.

She is not trying to work against you. I think a lot of folks feel like when their body is reveling, their body is trying to work against them. And so, um, something that I say all the time is that your body is the storyteller of your life. And so when we acknowledge that, she’s trying to tell us a story.

We then can look at those signs and symptoms, not as. Inconveniences and what the hell is going on and why is this happening to me and why can’t my body just cooperate. But we can look at those signs and symptoms as communication, because otherwise you wouldn’t pay attention, right? Like if you didn’t have that headache, if you didn’t have that out of balance, um, thyroid, um, levels coming up, would you actually pay attention to your body if she wasn’t screaming at you, right?

Yes. Yes. Yes. I want to add aye. Aye. Woo. This is resonating so deeply with me and I had my own, uh, come to Jesus meeting with symptoms for myself. Um, I used. Feel like symptoms were bad symptoms needed to be gotten rid of. Um, and I was a health coach in the, what I now call toxic wellness culture space. And so all of my clients came to me with like symptoms that they wanted to get rid of.

Right. And I think most of conventional medicine is also based on symptom management and not actual healing. So whether we’re managing symptoms with supplements or we’re managing symptoms with prescription medications, either way, we’re managing something better. Yeah, exactly. And so, um, I realized that my body does not speak to me in language.

It doesn’t have language, it speaks to me sensations and feelings. And sometimes those sensations and feelings are symptoms. And so I’m not actually listening to my body. Whenever I’m just like, give me a pill, give me a supplement, give me a protocol to get rid of the symptoms. And that’s not to say that it’s wrong to want to experience less pain or less discomfort, or to have more mobility in your life or whatever it is that those symptoms are keeping out of your life.

Like, it’s not to say that it’s wrong to not want to have those symptoms, but like you said, it’s like, we’re silencing our symptoms and then are we actually paying attention and we’re not. And so I tell my clients this too, like your body will whisper to you for a very, very long time. And if you don’t listen to the whispers, eventually your body has to start screaming.

And yeah, so many people get to the point of not. Taking care of themselves until the point that their body is actually screaming. And then it’s like, they have so much work to do and so much stuff to heal and all of that, that it can feel really overwhelming when if we can just teach good Lord. If we could just teach our children to start listening to the little, little things that their bodies are doing and how to meet themselves, wherever their bodies are at to take care of themselves, then their bodies won’t have to scream at them the way that so many of us have had bodies that have had to scream at us.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you bring it back to childhood because I think so much of how we parent our children. And this is how I was parented till is we weren’t given choices about our bodies. You know, whether that came from an actual big T trauma, which happened to me, but also in small T traumas in like, I don’t really want to have.

Creepy uncle Johnny, you know, or maybe he’s not even creepy. I just don’t want to right now, and not being given the choice to not hug people or to not interact with people in a way that you don’t want to, you know, it w it comes down to, again, my body is saying no, Or my body is saying yes, and not being given the sovereign choice to make that decision.

And so over time, what happens is we start suppressing those science from our bodies. Right. I also come from a background of toxic wellness culture. And one of the things that I noticed this year is I don’t have a connection to my hunger signals. And so when I’m hungry, I really don’t feel it until the, I get to a point where I’m like hangry now.

And I’ve been talking with my boyfriend, we just moved in together. And, um, one of the things that I’ve had to explain to him is like, if. I seem cranky. Like the first question that we need to ask is when’s the last time you ate. And, you know, it’s sort of funny to us to frame it that way, but that comes from a history of me.

Um, limiting a lot of foods, me craving things and not giving myself permission to eat them, me, um, basically cutting off what my desires and connections and needs were in order to maintain this idea of health and fitness and wellness. And so as I’m starting to regain that connection back with my body, what I’m finding is that my hunger signals are starting to come back.

And I think that that is something that, um, you know, that came to me in my like young adult and adult life. But, um, That also happens with children right there. They’re being asked to potty train at a much younger age. Now they’re being put into schools where they may not have choices around their food, or, you know, they’re feeling a lot of pressure from, from different systems.

And so what happens in, in, in situations like that is we take on roles to survive. We take on these survival patterns to survive, and a lot of those survival patterns play out in our romantic relationships as we grow up. And so if you had to be a good girl to survive in your family, meaning that you had to be compliant and you had to, um, give up your sovereignty to find acceptance and love and trust and belonging in your family or in your culture, then you end up playing that pattern out in, in your relationship as you grow up.

And that can look like you not being able to state your needs and wants and desires in a relationship because you were never asked to. Right. And, and just bringing it back to the body again, your body’s going to say something about that. It might show up as insomnia. It might show up as agitation. It might show up as anxiety.

It might show up as overeating. It’s going to show up in some way. And, um, and I think that a lot of, of my work around relationships and, and, and trauma healing and inner child work and ego work is really about. Um, working with these patterns that are showing up and asking with curiosity, like why, you know, like the curiosity of a child, I want to be really clear that like the, Y doesn’t come from like a judgemental, like, why is this happening sort of place?

But like, you know, like the curiosity of that, like a three-year-old has about the universe and the world, like that same sort of energy of curiosity. And from that place, then we can actually look at these core emotions so that we can alchemize them. So that’s yes, yes, yes. Um, so can you talk more about, um, how we, or what our responsibility is?

And in untangling those trauma knots, like I, I mean, I say all the time, like self-responsibility is, is the only way forward, you know, is taking responsibility for yourself because that leads to trust in yourself. That leads to being able to set boundaries, that leads to being able to live authentically, being able to live sovereign, that leads, leads to you.

Being able to listen to your intuition to know what fuck. Yes. And fuck. No in your body feels like, like it has to start from a place of one awareness and then to responsibility. So what do you have to say about the role of self-responsibility in untangling those knots and getting out of that stuff?

Yeah. So I’ve been working with a tool that. Just recently learned about, um, called the drama triangle. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. Um, yeah, actually, yes, I’m nodding, I’m an episode nine of my podcast with Evelyn Hale. Um, we, she talked about the trauma triangle. Awesome. So, um, I just interviewed my dear, dear friend, Chris Miller on my podcast, and we talk about the drama triangle.

Um, and I’ve really been loving that as a tool just because it’s in language. That makes sense for folks like you don’t need to have like a degree in psychology to understand this. Like you can sort of like put yourself into this drama triangle and, and understand where you might sit. Right? So essentially the drama triangle is three roles.

There’s the rescuer, there’s the bully and there’s the victim. And anytime there is drama happening in your life, right? Your at least now that I have this framework, what I’ve been doing is, is asking myself, okay, so where am I in this drama triangle right now? Right. And. When we put ourselves into the drama triangle, it’s, it’s often because it’s not coming from like a, a place where you’re doing this on purpose, or, you know, you’re wanting to create drama in your life.

A lot of times it comes from childhood and how you’ve received love, love, trust, and belonging and childhood. And so when we are little love is a necessary need, right? And if love wasn’t given freely and acceptance, wasn’t given freely, then it creates a conditional and transactional relationship with the people that you want to receive love from.

And that’s essentially what the drama triangle is all about is it’s a transactional relationship. So how are you getting your needs met? Right? And, and so if you put in the framework of, okay, so where am I on this drama triangle? Am I being a rescuer? Am I being a bully? Am I being. Right. And to really, I mean, there’s, we could talk about the drama triangle for ages and ages, but like, just to really simplify it, it’s like, okay.

So if you, if you can identify which part of the drama triangle you’re in, then how do you take accountability for that? Right. So if you are in the rescuer role, a lot of times people put themselves in the rescue role because they find that if I am useful, then I am needed and therefore I feel loved.

Right. And so to, to, to transform that role, What is helpful is to offer that love for yourself, right? And to come up with ways to practice self-love so that you aren’t looking for that kind of validation from the people around you. And so when they offer a lot of it comes from this free place where it’s not this like needy sort of Cravey, I need to prove my worth sort of energy.

It comes from a place of like, ah, there’s a beautiful, just beautiful balance between us instead of it being a transactional relationship. Right. And if you’re in the bully role, a lot of times people are bullies to themselves. This is what I find most often is the voice in your head. So like, what is that voice in your head saying?

And part of that work is to recognize and sit back and, and, and listen to that voice. I think a lot of times. From the spiritual and healing communities. There’s this idea of like, love and light that I just can’t fucking get behind. I just, I can’t handle it. Um, because what love and light does is it fractures those parts of you that are needing to be witnessed and acknowledged.

And so if that bully is speaking up, then how can we listen to her without identifying with her? You know, like, what is she saying right now? And it could be your own voice. It could actually, you can listen to that voice and be like, oh shit, that’s my mom or, oh shit. Like, that’s the childhood bully that I never really fully like integrated when I was little, you know?

And so can we then ask that, that part of you, because there are still a part of you, right? Like we don’t want to fracture any part of you. Um, can we ask that part of you? Hey, Like you’re sitting in the driver’s seat right now. Um, it’s, I’m going to take the wheel, like, you’re welcome to sit in the passenger seat and you’re welcome to chat and, and say all the things that you need to say, but you don’t get to drive the bus anymore.

Right. And, and so I think that that is where we can take that responsibility for transforming that bully role. And then when it comes to the victim role, we have to, that’s a bit more of a tricky one. Um, because we have to ask like, what are you getting out of that role? And I think that that’s a hard one for people, um, because it can sound a bit victim blaming.

And so I’m not talking about folks who are actually experiencing like real, like abusive relationships, but when you lower yourself or make yourself weaker than you are, like, how is that role. Creating a transactional relationship with perhaps a rescuer in your life, you know, or perhaps you’re getting that validation from, from being bullied.

Because a lot of times people who grew up in and childhoods where attention was not given even negative attention feels good. Right? And so in all of these really in all of these roles where we’re getting something out of it. And so to ask ourselves and have that deep and honest inquiry, which quite honestly is fucking hard to do without a coach or without somebody who’s holding space for you.

To honestly, ask yourself, what am I getting out of these roles and what can I do to transform myself out of these, um, these roles that actually have served me. I think that that’s important to name too, is that a lot of times these roles have played a purpose in your life and have needed to be there for you to survive a particular time in your life.

A lot of times it goes back to childhood. It doesn’t always have to go back to childhood, but how, like what did that role serve and how can we then allow you to step into a different. So I think that that is what I mean, but that’s like the most long-winded explanation of like taking responsibility that I’ve ever done on the podcast.

But no, it’s great. I’m really glad that you elaborated on that more. Um, and I just want to echo what you said about how we are often our own worst bullies and that inner critic, inner voice inside of us can often be like the loudest voice. And the only one that we hear and what I noticed in myself is that I can be very, very self-critical.

Um, I’m still healing from like perfectionism. I’m still healing from a lot of control, um, issues, because I have this limiting belief that the only way I can be safe is to control my environment and the people in it. So I definitely still have the bullying. And my ear being very loud and obnoxious, but then what I notice about myself anyway, is that my inner voice may be bullying me.

But if somebody like my partner or a friend or someone, um, mirrors that back to me, then I, then no, I don’t feel like they’re the bully. I then feel like I’m the victim. And so I like vacillate back and forth between I’m a fully to myself, but I see myself as a victim when interacting with other people.

Does that make sense? Yes, it does. And I’m so glad that you named that because that does happen. Right. We tend to vacillate between these roles and it’s not like, you know, once I identify myself as a rescuer, like that’s the only role I play. It’s like, you know, like anytime there’s a trauma in your life, you might be taking on, on any one of these roles.

And so I think that the step of identifying which part of the triangle you’re occupying in that moment is really important. Um, and, um, and it can happen. I mean, it’s easiest when we like look at it as like a three person with like three actual different humans on a triangle. But for me, like this happens just by myself, like all alone, like I can bully, like I want to just like say amen to the like bullying myself situation.

I too am a recovering perfectionist and, and, you know, controller of, of all the things in the universe. And, um, And it’s, it’s, it’s so tricky, that voice. Right. And it gets so slippery. And there are times when I feel like I have done so much work and I feel like I’ve integrated this and I don’t have to carry that role on anymore.

And I, and I’ve got this and then something new will happen and I will slip right back into that pattern. And it’s so easy to beat yourself up. You know, when you get into that situation of like, God, I thought I had done this work already. Right. Look around you and be like, w like, who am I, why am I like, why is this happening?

And I think as I’ve been reflecting on this actually recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work around purpose with my clients, helping them really understand what their purpose is. And so we talked a bit about like, what happens when you D layer and unshaven and get rid of all those stories and narratives.

And when I get down to that core, true self with folks, we’re all born with a Dow and Dow, it’s really hard to translate the word Dao. Um, but the closest approximation that I’ve come up with is like purpose or path and alignment. And we all come into this world with a Dow and along the way, We’re pulled away from it.

And I find that a lot of these core ones are directly related to our Dao. And, um, and so it’s almost like they’re two sides of the same coin. And so, you know, we’ve, I think we talked about control on my, on my podcast, but like control is a big one for me, because actually, like when I did a meditation, I went really, really deep with myself this year for my birthday and, um, took some psilocybin, um, and, and really like, wanted to find out what, what all these threads where we’re tying me into and what it came down to.

It is. Like, I am constantly looking for ways that I can surrender and release control and be in alignment and be in flow. And a lot of that looks very, very different from the life that like people telling me I should live. Right. And, and so of course then when I, when I see that surrender is my dad, then the flip side of that is control.

Right? And so, so many of these, these woundings that I’m finding with people and, and I, and I lead people through a meditation. Um, when they’re my clients is I help them find out what their core doubt is, so that we can actually understand that these, these traumas, these, these deep ones that they’ve been carrying have had a purpose all along.

And a lot of that purpose has been to help you actually go back to that true self and to help you find what your doubt is. And. For me when I, Hmm.

When it comes to these, these, this work, this overall work of healing and this overall work of like, like what we are meant to do, um, it’s like we can talk so much about all these different tools, like the drama triangle and, you know, nervous system regulation and cold plunges and cold showers and, and, and all the tools.

Right. But ultimately it’s all about going back to who you are. Like before you came into this world and you coming in actually with a purpose and you needing to realize that purpose, hopefully in this lifetime, maybe in the next one, but, um, it’s, it’s these wounds that, that we just sort of get caught up into over and over and over again.

And I’m sure that you felt that in your own life of like these patterns of like, and to me, what it feels like is like, I get trapped in the same Eddy, you know, like I’m paddling along on the stream of life. And then I like, I’m like, oh shit, I’m in this Eddy again. And the thing I have to remember every single time that I get there.

You know, the first time I was there, I didn’t have a boat. I was just in the stream and just like flailing about, and maybe the next time I have a boat. And the next time after that, I have an, or, and the next time after that I have two oars. And so it’s like these tools that we use are so fundamental to help us get out of these eddies quicker and with a little bit more perspective and with like a different understanding each time we’re there.

And so there’s no need to beat yourself up if you’re in that Eddy of like, control again, because then you can look at like your toolbox and be like, like I’ve got some shit that’s going to help me out of this. Right. And it all comes down to, and. Um, I think that you talk about this a lot is the nervous system regulation piece is every time you get into an Eddy, how can you regulate your nervous system so that you aren’t just sitting there and just trapped in that swirling vortex of water?

Like how, like what tools do you have to help you move out of this space a little bit faster with a little bit more tolerance with a little bit more resilience. And I think that that’s ultimately what we’re all here to do. Hmm. Whew. Okay. Mike, Mike drop. Yeah. That’s so it’s so crazy. The way you described that, because I feel like you described something that I have also felt deeply within myself.

I hadn’t ever thought of the Eddy metaphor. Literally the perfect metaphor, honestly, but the way that I sort of see it for myself as it’s like, um, the, the deeper you go with the letting go, letting go of everything that isn’t you, right? The deeper you go with that. I mean, a without those nervous system regulating tools, you’re not going to get anywhere, you know, because going deep into uncovering and excavating and removing everything that isn’t, you is going to be a disregulating process in and of itself.

So a hundred percent, you’ve got to have the nervous system regulating tools, um, and the way that I sort of see it as. You have these nervous system regulating tools. And you’re like, okay, I know how to breathe, and I know how to be in my body. And I know how to embody emotions and move things out. I know how to do cold plunges.

I know how to seek the help of a therapist or coach, like whatever your tools in your toolbox are. Great. You’ve got these tools in the toolbox and then. You know, I, I wish it was nice and neat where it’s like, okay, I have my tools in my toolbox and now I’m ready to dig. You know, I wish it was nice and neat like that, but we often, or never, I mean, it’s never been that way for me.

It’s like, you’re in the middle of digging and you’re like, shit, I need some tools, you know? And then, and then you like have to pause, you’re digging and you have to go learn some tools and then you can come back to the digging. Right? Yeah. And, and yeah, but I like the Eddy and the like sometimes, maybe the first time, like I’m flailing about maybe the next time I go back, I have a life jacket.

Maybe next time I go back, I have a boat. Maybe next time I have an or, and it’s like, and I also talked about this on my Instagram stories yesterday, actually. And I think it ties in really well right here is that, um, I hear from clients and random people and in people’s Instagram stories and whatever, all the time of like, um, God.

I thought I already unpacked this. I thought I already dealt with this. Like, oh, how many times, how many times do I have to talk to my therapist about the same thing over and over again, it just keeps coming up. And, and then there’s this element of like, um, it’s just taking me so long to heal. It’s taking so long, it’s just taking forever.

And it’s like, we, we feel like we failed when it AE takes longer than we think it should. And then B whenever we have to deal with the same thing over and over and over again, and like what I’m hearing you saying about your Dow, like your purpose in this lifetime, and it’s so fucking crazy that you brought this up and you say this because, um, several years ago I learned through like numerology that I’m a life path, number nine.

And the life path nine, the purpose, if your life path is a nine is letting go. And so my Dow has also surrender. And so like every, almost every hurdle that I’ve had to cross during my life has required some degree of letting go of a little bit more letting go of a little bit more. And of course, when it comes to control, like, but isn’t it it’s like, it’s like, you’re, if you’re, uh, if you’re Superman and you’re like surrendering, then it’s like re re trying to grasp onto control is your, um, Shit.

What’s the thing that takes Superman down. What’s it called? Kryptonite kryptonite. That’s it? I, I, shit. You not, I kept wanting to say like, cradle, is it cradle? But I’m like, no, it doesn’t do crazy. But yeah. So it’s like, when you’re like in Superman, you’re letting go, you’re letting go. You’re letting go. And your kryptonite is trying to pick that control back up again.

And you will try to pick it back up again, like you will, you’re not going to stop trying to pick it up. You may try to pick it up less. You may like, you know, pick it up, you know, less often, or, or to a lesser degree, like the degree of control, maybe less intense or something like that. But you still pick it back up again.

And I know for you, and I, we’ve just discovered that we have a similar Dow and it’s surrender, and I think that’s really beautiful, but for other people listening, like your Dow, your purpose, maybe something else, and it’s always, you can figure out what it is. By looking at what you do when you’re activated.

What do you constantly go back to for me? I always go back to control. I want to control my myself. I want to control everyone else. I want to control my environment. I want to control my schedule. I want to control control, control, control. That’s what I always go back to. Some people always go back to like anger.

Some people always go back to like, whatever it is. And I mean, I hate to put things into binaries here because I’m really like, not about binaries, but I think there are some things it’s like the opposite of control is surrender. You know? So when I am living in flow in my life, when I am aligned in my purpose, I am surrendering.

When I come back into my pain body and I’m in my ego and I’m not living in flow. That’s when I’ve picked control back up again. So like, look at what you do. If you can take a, an unbiased look at what you do when you’re activated again. Then what is the opposite of that thing? Because that’s probably your purpose.

Yeah. Your Dal. Yeah. And since I’ve had this framework now, like it’s helped me expand my curiosity when I do go back to that survival mechanism of control and I call it survival mechanism on purpose, because that is, you know, when you’re saying your activated nervous system, you know, it really is how your activated nervous system has learned how to survive.

And so for me and my family control me needing to control all the pieces, like was really, really important. And I grew up with a brother who was suicidal. And so me controlling all the things meant that he was going to live. And, and, and so I, again, like, it’s that piece of it. I don’t want to love and light this away.

Like I don’t want to fracture that part of me that needed to take control in such certain situations, because it literally helped me survive. It helped my brother survive. And so I can’t shame that part of me. And when we pick that, that control piece back up, you know, now that I have this framework of my dowel being surrender, I have the capacity to be a little bit more curious about where that control is coming from.

Because to me now that control has a purpose, you know, it’s, it’s like that idea of the signs and symptoms pointing you back to communication from your body. You know, we have these emotional ways of coping and dealing with things. And so like when we look at these signs and symptoms, not just from our body, but from our behaviors and what we do and how we are in the world, like, what’s that storytelling.

You know, and what part of me is not feeling safe. And what part of me is needing to, to go back to old tools that worked for me when I didn’t have any tools. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely control is the tool that I would pick up over and over and over, because I didn’t have any other tools. And, um, I do want to go back to the drama triangle.

I think I called it trauma triangle earlier. Not sure drama, trauma, same difference. Um, but I want to go back to the drama triangle because there’s, so there’s these three roles, the victim, the rescuer, um, you call it a bully. I think on episode nine, Evelyn called it the perpetrator role. So victim rescuer, bully slash perpetrator.

Um, what if we didn’t play any of those roles? Like what if we experienced drama in our lives? And we didn’t adopt or try to fit into any of those roles. We weren’t the victim, we weren’t the rescuer. And we weren’t the bully that, I mean, is there an opt-out, is there like a, I’m not participating in this drama triangle anymore?

I’m not going to be the victim. I’m not going to be the rescuer. I’m not going to be the bully. Yeah. What then is our role? What are we, what do we do when we’re outside of the drama triangle framework? Yeah. So the way that my colleague Chris explains it on the podcast is when you are in the rescuer role and you can step outside of that rescuer role, you can transform that into like more of a coaching role.

So instead of I’m going to fix everything about you, and now I feel validated because I fixed everything about you. Like you can sit back and hold a more rooted seat and be more of a coach. You know, holding space, helping them see things that they may not be able to see, um, asking questions that help like inspire curiosity.

And when you are in the bully framework, like that energy can be like transform into like advocating energy. Right. It’s like similar energy of like, like a bit of anger. Right. But like when you do that work, that that role transforms into, into being an advocate. And then with the victim, like when you do that work, it’s like think he called it thriver, like being able to own your story.

Like the, actually, I, I think about the story that you shared about your, um, uh, preterm contractions that were happening and being able to look at that story. And that was a really, really traumatic experience for you. Being able to look at that story and contextualize it in the context of your life. And now you can share that story from a thriving place where you have learned some really, really deep and authentic lessons, and you’re applying them to things not just around birth, but like looking at the themes that are showing up in that and applying it to so many aspects of, of your life and to the lives of your clients.

And I think that that’s where the victim energy can be transformed. I would say that even beyond the step of, um, coach or advocate or thriver is really just a line. Like it’s so simple, but it’s really just about lining back to your true self where you aren’t playing any of these roles. Are you just showing up just as yourself and you’re allowing life to flow through you and with you instead of needing to take on an identity?

So I would say that the next step beyond, um, once you’ve transformed the roles of coach and advocate and thriver is, is really just aligning with your true self really, and aligning with that dial, that you come into this life knowing and wanting to express and embody, and that part of you does not need an identity or a role to play.

It just knows to show up as you and knows that you showing up as you is fully integrated and whole. And you know, I think that it’s so much of, of my life’s work is really just identifying like where I’m holding onto to roles and seeing how I can release them. Yeah, well, we can do a whole nother episode on identity and all the little ways that our egos like try to latch onto these different identity markers.

And, um, I actually just did a post on Instagram yesterday, where I was talking about identity and it was inspired by my latest podcast episode. But, um, like identity is literally just a, a descriptor for like, you know, where you’re at and how you experienced the world. And when you find other people who have that same identity marker as you, then you feel like you’ve found people who understand you, you know, and it’s, it’s just a label for how you experience the world.

And. Um, the label or the identity doesn’t matter, like the, what doesn’t matter as much as how you’re caring for yourself within that experience of the world. So like, you know, like for people who, for example, a really common identity marker is like, I’m an empath, you know, I’m an, I’m an empath and I feel everyone else’s feelings and that can be really uncomfortable.

And there’s all these things that I can’t do because I’m an empath or whatever, and like, okay. So, so you know this about yourself. What are you doing to take care of yourself within that experience of the world? Like, because if you’re, I think in the victim role, and I certainly did this myself, which is why I feel comfortable sharing about it.

It’s like when you’re in the victim role as an empath or a highly sensitive person who feels everything on like a grander scale and you tend to get more overwhelmed and more overstimulated easily. And, you know, there are things that you have to alter about your life in order to, to feel like you can function and thrive in the world.

But when I was in the victim role of that identity, the way that I quote unquote took care of myself was I expected other people to change and modify themselves to make me more comfortable. So like, if I’m getting overstimulated in an environment where there’s like a lot of. For example, this happens all the time, actually, where, like I have two teenagers, I have a husband, I have two dogs very often.

We’ll be like in the kitchen together. The kids that have like the TV on my husband wants to play music on the speaker. The dogs are playing. So they’re barking. The ups guy shows up. So the doorbell’s ringing like, and I’m trying to cook in the middle of all of that. And I feel very overwhelmed and overstimulated and I have had a tendency in the past to be like, okay, everybody stop.

Just turn off the TV, turn off the music, make the dog shut up. Like, just stop, you know, Yeah, where I’m like, like blinging all of this energy onto the people in my family who are literally just living their lives. Right. They’re just being people in our house the same as me, but I get overwhelmed by the noise.

And so when I was like a victim, the expectation was that it was everyone else’s job to, turn the TV down, turn the music off, make the dogs be quiet, to make this environment where I feel. Okay. And now that I have this awareness, it’s not their job actually to change what they’re doing to make me more comfortable.

And it’s okay for me to make a request like, Hey, do you mind turning the TV down? Do you mind turning the music off while the TV’s on? Do you mind? It’s okay for me to make those requests. Right. But that for me is the difference between. So, so I guess living in the label of I’m a highly sensitive person, I’m an impasse.

Like if I don’t feel empowered or if I feel like I’m not able to care for myself within that experience of my world, then I can make my discomfort other people’s problem, and I can make it something that they have to change or modify in order to make me more comfortable. Whereas when I don’t live by the label and it’s not like, well, because I’m a highly sensitive person, you should know better than to turn the TV up so loud, or you should know not to try to play music and have the TV going at the same time.

Like that’s making my comfort and my wellbeing dependent on other people. And like outsourcing my power and outsourcing my agency and outsourcing, I mean, quite frankly, outsourcing like my existence to other people, because then my existence depends on what other people are doing. So like sure. Knowing that I’m an empath or that I’m a highly sensitive person can not be helpful in helping me articulate how I experienced the world.

Sure. Can it be helpful in finding other people who experienced the world similarly to me? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, that label is not serving a purpose other than to describe how I experienced the world. But if I latch onto it, then I’m not living in a way that honors who I am and how I experience the world.

I’m expecting other people to live in a way that honors who I am and how I experienced the world, according to my definition. So, I mean, Knowing that I’m a highly sensitive person is helpful, but it’s still on me to take care of my nervous system. It’s still on me to set my boundaries. It’s still on me to notice how I interact with others and make whatever changes I need to make.

And, um, what I shared on Instagram was that having a label for how you experience the world, won’t change how you experience the world. And it can often lead to latching onto an identity that boxes you in, and doesn’t allow for the possibility of caring for yourself in a way that creates a more positive experience of your world.

So I love that. I mean, I, I know it had something to do with what you said, and I talked so much now that I don’t remember how.

Yeah, no, I love that because I, I think. Labels and identifying patterns is really helpful when it helps normalize your experience. You know, I’m thinking of a client in particular and, you know, she had gone for years feeling like she didn’t fit into the school system. She never, her brain worked differently.

And as an adult, she got diagnosed with OCD and to her, like having that label helped her normalize, like, Hey, other people experience this too. I’m not a weirdo. I’m not afraid. Right. But then the work beyond that was okay. So now that I have this understanding about myself, what can I do to. Empower myself to live within the context of this.

And a lot of the, the work that she and I did was, um, if you look at the, the overlap between OCD symptoms and ADHD symptoms, there’s a huge overlap between that and trauma. And so like helping her identify what parts of this was actually how her brain is wired and who she uniquely is. And what parts of this is a trauma response was hugely impactful because the label helped her get there.

But she had to do the work beyond that, you know, so that she, again, like your story, didn’t take on the label of victim as well as the label of OCD, you know? Yeah. And so I think that it’s important. To use labels as tools, um, because it can help normalize things that you’ve been experiencing your whole life that have felt not right or not good enough or shameful for you.

And so if that’s what that label does for you, then, like that’s a great step. And I don’t want to minimize that. Yeah. But if that label becomes the excuse for why you can’t do certain things or why you shouldn’t be expected to do certain things, then it can become more of a victim consciousness. Yeah. Um, okay.

Well, we got off on a little bit of a tangent about identity there, but I love it. I really love it. And I want to circle all the way back to the very beginning of our chat whenever you were talking about, um, I’m really fascinated by this like Dow concept. So I really, I would love to know more about the, um, What you were saying about the imbalances in nature and how they show up in the imbalances of like what we’re experiencing, if you can share specifically related to the current collective fear state.

Um, is that something that you feel like you can talk about? Let me just sit with that for a moment.

This is going to be like totally off the cuff. Um, cool. Let me, let me draw out my, um, my five elements chart. So we talked a little bit about water and being fear, right? And how we need earth to help contain water as fear when fear becomes unchecked. So the, the five element system runs in a, in a, in a cycle.

And so it’s what fire earth, metal and water. And so at the bottom of that cycle, before it goes all the way around, again is water. And so if water is fear, then we aren’t able to feed the next element on the cycle, which is wood and wood is embodied by anger. And so what we’re seeing a lot in the collective right now is so much fear that we are creating an imbalance in an anger, which then turns into fire.

Right? And so for me, what I am seeing is this. Lack of,

I want to say accountability. I don’t know if that’s exactly the right word, but this lack of accountability to take ownership over your own fear. Because I think that like, again, this idea of you’re making me feel uncomfortable. You’re making me feel afraid. So I need you to do something differently so that I feel comfortable is coming up in the collective instead of holding space for your own fear.

And being like, okay, so why is this so threatening to my nervous system? Why is, you know, my aunt who is refusing to get vaccinated, why is that so threatening to my nervous system? And what is that bringing up in terms of my own traumas and my own, you know, discomforts about the world. Because I think that really, if you did that work, you would see that you don’t have control over what your aunt says and does and wants to do with her body, you know, and you might even have a little bit of an opening to be curious about why she doesn’t want to get the vaccine, you know?

And, and so I think that there’s like when it comes to, to, to the Taoist elements, it’s like, what I’m seeing a lot of is, is water being transformed into anger. So fear of being transformed into anger, essentially. And, um, and the next element above would is fire. And so what we’re seeing right now is fire being completely out of control because it’s gone beyond anger and it’s gone into passion.

Right. And when people get really passionate about certain ideologies, certain belief systems, it’s like, you can’t really see the forest for the trees. And, and so what we’re seeing right now is this like, like this interesting flow of like, again, I hadn’t put this together until just now, but it’s like with the imbalance of water, it’s like the, the, the trees aren’t being fed enough.

And so then there’s like a brittleness that happens with the trees. There’s a dryness, right. And with that dryness and brittleness, it’s so easy for fire to catch. Right. And I think that, that’s what we’re seeing in the collective of like, like how did these things happen so quickly? And, and it goes back to people not taking accountability for their own fears and, and quite frankly, like, I think that the work that’s needed right now these days.

And I’m so grateful that there’s so many of us emerging from this is trauma work is, is if we can, if we can address the traumas that are underneath, you know, essentially what you were talking about earlier of like, like how is your nervous system responding to the concept of lack of freedom or lack of safety?

If we can all just do that minute work. I think we’d be looking at a really, really different collective landscape. Yeah. I mean, the way you just described that with the water, the wood and the fire was like such an easily understandable. Metaphor for me, especially when you talked about the brittleness and the dryness of the wood, like that was such a powerful metaphor for me.

And I felt like I understood the collective on a different level just from you explaining that. So thank you. Um, and I also think it ties in perfectly to what I was describing about, you know, my experience as an empath or a highly sensitive person expecting other people around me to change themselves, to make me more comfortable, you know, it’s that like?

It’s the, um, I have an episode coming out this week. It’s actually the one-year anniversary episode of my podcast. So by the time this publishes it’ll have been out for a long time. Thank you. Um, but I’m talking about triggers and that episode I’m like taking on the topic of triggers. And I think whenever you said the word, like you don’t, you’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want to use the word accountability or whatever.

I mean, really the only accountability there is a self accountability. And I think accountability for yourself falls underneath what we were talking about earlier, which it goes back to self responsibility. Right? And so what I was describing about like, feeling a lot of discomfort in my body, when there’s so much noise going around on that, I feel really overstimulated.

And then if I’m in a victim role, I can make that somebody else’s problem. And I can expect that they will change themselves or what they’re doing in order to calm me down. Um, just like you were saying, It would calm everybody down. Who’s in a fear state. If everyone would just do what they think they should do, which is to go get vaccinated and we’re not talking pro or anti-vax and, and you’re vaccinated cat, and I am not.

And we discussed that on your podcast, which will be linked in the show notes. So if people are like wondering what our own personal likes status is, as far as vaccination goes, like it shouldn’t matter, but we did talk about it in your episode. Um, but anyway, so how this ties into triggers is that I see people having this like avoidance mindset when it comes to triggers and everyone wants there to be a trigger warning on everything, because people like should know if something is going to be potentially triggering to them.

And what I talk about in the episode is like, if you’re triggered by something, that’s not other person’s. Fault. And it’s not their fault because they didn’t put a trigger warning on it. Like, and what we see online is like people in, in dysregulated nervous systems are online and they’re scrolling and they come across something that’s potentially triggering to them.

And rather than being able to sit with it and be curious, as we were saying, they like spew all over the person who posted the content. Like you need to take this down and you need to apologize. Here’s how, what you’re saying is IST or phobic of some sort like, and there’s all of this, like hold yourself accountable kind of nonsense when really.

That person is basically just making it someone else’s responsibility to help them come back to a place of safety and comfort. Right. You know? And so I think it all, it ties in with like triggers with victim mindset, with what you’re talking about with the elements, with the, I mean, it all is connected.

And ultimately if you’re feeling uncomfortable or if you’re in a fear state, it’s not anyone else’s responsibility to get you out of that state.

And in making it be someone else’s responsibility, like maybe you’re in a trauma response of like fight flight freeze because of the collective, because of the pandemic, because of fear, the virus, the vaccine, whatever. Maybe you are in a trauma response because of that. When you ask other people to change and modify themselves to make you more comfortable.

So you can get out of that trauma response, you’re essentially asking them to go into their own trauma response, which would be fawning. Yeah. So you’re like I’m in this very uncomfortable fight flight freeze response. And because I don’t know how to take responsibility for myself. I expect you to fond to make me more comfortable.

Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yes, so many thoughts. Um, I love how you, how you contextualize that and made it so simple. Um, and I think the pieces that I would add to that is I think about triggers as being invitational in nature. And, and so if you think about triggers as being invitational, it takes the responsibility out of somebody else’s hands to do that work for you.

It’s invitational for you to do that work. Right? And, and we are all wholly responsible for our own stories and for someone to put themselves out there and share an opinion to share a belief that may not align with yours. Like we can’t. Account for everybody’s triggers and everybody is, you know, like the stories, like I hate banana.

So like if you posted something about that,

but like if somebody posted something, I mean, this obviously doesn’t happen because I’ve, you know, contextualized my hatred for bananas, but like, um, But if somebody were to post something about bananas, like just on a whim, not thinking that, you know, there’s somebody out there who hates bananas and I were to go on their page and say like, how could you possibly post something about bananas and, you know, just jump down their throat.

Like there’s no accounting for what people are going to be triggered by. This does not mean be an asshole for the sake of being an asshole, like be conscious and be aware and know that sometimes the things that you say might be activating for people’s nervous systems and, and you know, how do you take care of yourself in that moment?

And how can you offer support in a healthy and boundaried way in that moment, I think is important, but like to, to say, just because I am triggered and to put it. You know that responsibility on somebody else instead of using that as an opportunity to get, to get even more curious about why you are in this Eddy again, you know, I think that that is an important part of this healing work that we’re all here to do.

Yeah. Well said, well said, well, I want to be really honoring of your time. Um, and so is there anything else that you wanted to come through in today’s conversation that hasn’t yet that you want to share? No. I think that we meandered really beautifully every day.

We did. My favorite conversations is, you know, like I get to just wake up and have my cup of coffee. And I think that I’m going to hop on and talk about relationships, but like there was something else that wanted to come through. So. This is perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Kat, and for everyone listening, I’ll have the links for everything in this episode, linked in the show notes. So thank you for being here. Katz, thank you so much for having me. This was such a lovely conversation and I really appreciate the space that you hold here.

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