Episode 54 (Q&A episode!): Workplace Trauma, Nit-Picking Your Partner, Shame Cycles, Can't Do Cold Plunges, & Self-Discipline vs. Self-Punishment

Welcome to the very first (of many, I hope!) Question & Answer episode of the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast!

In this Q&A episode, I’m answering these listener questions:

What are your tips on healing from workplace trauma when you continue to experience it daily?
How do I stop nit-picking my partner?
How do I break shame cycles?
What’s the next best thing if I can’t do cold plunges?
How to tell the difference between loving self-discipline vs. self-judgement and punishment

This Week’s Card:

Transcript

Welcome to holistic trauma healings, a podcast that empowers you to heal trauma in the same way. If it’s affecting you as a whole person, I am Lindsay Lockett, your host. I have discovered a profound path to healing trauma that allows us to move out of the role of victim and into the role of empowered and conscious creator of our best possible reality.

I offer hope healing insights and practical tips. As you get to the root of how trauma has affected every part of your life. And how to weave a new web of life that isn’t ruled by the past.

Hello. Hello, dear listener. Thank you so much for being here today. I actually was not going to release an episode this week because I thought with it being the long holiday weekend and maybe the last hurrah, the end of summer before everyone goes back to school. I know I know the south. Has gone back to school, but up here in the north, at least in Minnesota anyway, uh, school doesn’t start here until the day after labor day.

So we have, uh, had a little bit of a longer summer, I guess. Anyway, I wasn’t going to release an episode this week because I thought people will be busy. There’ll be outside. Nobody’s going to be listening to podcasts. I’ll take the week off. It’ll be great. And then on Wednesday afternoon, I just received a message from my highest self.

My spirit guides, my team, the cast, whatever you want to call it, received the message that I needed to release an episode. And it needed to be a Q and a episode. So this is the first Q and a episode of the holistic trauma healing podcast. Welcome to this groundbreaking event.

And now I’m ready to go into the card that I drew for you for this week.

So I went old school this week and pulled out the very first car deck I ever got. It is called the keepers of the light Oracle cards. I will link to it. Um, this is the first car deck we ever bought. And I remember feeling like such a rebel whenever I bought this deck of cards. Because as you know, I come from a fundamentalist Christian background.

So something like Oracle cards would have been witchcraft to me at one point. Like it would have been evil and satanic to me at one point. So buying this deck of cards like four years ago was a massive middle finger to. Former life as a conservative Christian. And it was also like a massive step forward in my spiritual journey as well, because now I have like six card decks and I just ordered a couple more and they’re on the way.

And I love cards. I love drawing them. I’m on Instagram every Monday, just in case I can’t believe. I’ve never mentioned this on the podcast before every Monday at 11:00 AM central time, I do an Instagram live where I draw cards. For the week for you for whoever’s watching the live. And then I saved them every week.

So, um, if you want to join me on Monday at 11:00 AM, you can, and I’ll be drawing cards, but if you don’t want to. Or if you’re just like the more the merrier, when it comes to cards, I will also continue drawing cards for the podcast. So went old school, busted out my original deck. Funny story about my original deck is that I was made aware of one of my spirit guides, who is on my spirit team through this deck of cards.

And. The crazy thing is, is that I have not drawn from this deck in quite some time. Like, it’s been a few months, I’ve never drawn from this deck for the podcast, but when I got the deck out, I shuffled it like six times and spread it on the floor, drew the card and the card I drew, I knew it was coming.

Like I knew it before I turned the card over. It’s my spirit guide card, white Eagle. So. I’m not sure if I’ve ever shared this whole story on the podcast before, but white Eagle is a card or a spirit guide who came to me during my dark night of the soul 2018 and 2019. Um, and like six times in a row, seven times in a row at different on different days.

So like, you know, days apart or weeks apart, I would shuffle the deck and draw the white Eagle card. And the first couple of times it happened, I was like, Hmm, that’s weird that I would draw the same car two times in a row or three times in a row. And then it just kept happening. And then I would actually hand the deck to my husband and I would be like, okay, you draw for me.

Like, surely if you’re drawing for me, like there’s no possible way. And then he would draw the white Eagle card for me. Crazy. Um, I mean, my friend, Jamie is like a really huge math nerd and I was like, Jamie, what are the odds that I would draw the same card, like eight, seven or eight times in a row. And it’s in a card deck of how many cards are in this deck?

I think like 44 or here, I’m going to have to look in the book now. Cause I’m curious. Um, Hmm, it doesn’t say on here, how many cards are in this deck anyway? Um, I D I drew white Eagle over and over, and I’m going to put a picture of the white Eagle card in the show notes, not on Spotify or iTunes show notes, but I’ll put it on Lindsey, locket.com forward slash pod forward slash podcast.

And this is episode 54. So if you want to see the picture of the white Eagle card, which is the card I drew for this week, um, then you can go check that out. Lindsay locket.com forward slash podcast. So anyway, I will. To you. And then I’ll tell you a little bit more about why Eagle and what he means to me.

And then we’ll get going with our Q and a today. So white Eagle. He is an ancestor spirit. White Eagle is a native American shaman who is dedicated to honoring our spiritual heritage. He is a world renowned spiritual guide who has been particularly cherished by mediums all over the world. He first spoke through a medium called Grace Cook in the early 20th century.

He is the guide who helps create clear channels and our bloodline and our spiritual journey. So we can access the heart of the creator. He also helps us move into sacred ceremony where we can hold sacred space to honor a change, transition celebration, or anything else that deserves time. He is wonderful for clearing space and we can call on him for help in forging spiritual connections.

Take some time to honor just how far you have. Recognizing through ceremony and ritual, the shifts in your awareness, healing and journey really allows you to move into a state of grace and gratitude you have, or have recently had an opportunity to heal an old family wound or pattern. It’s important to connect with your family in spirit so that you can set a new energy of love and place.

White Eagle is bringing your ancestors through to you and allowing you to know that they are happy and well, he is sounding his sacred drums to clear your spirit. So, as I said, I first drew this card seven or eight times in a row during 2018 and early 2019, when I was going through, you know, my worst dark night of the soul.

How on earth? Um, feeling like a prisoner in my own head, having constant panic attacks, uh, rapidly losing weight, um, and having the worst bout of insomnia that you can imagine. And, um, I’m so grateful that I drew this card because right before the shit hit the fan in my life in 2018, I had begun to be very interested in my ancestry.

And so I had had conversations with both my parents, just trying to ask questions about their parents and their grandparents and their great-grandparents. I was just trying to get as much information as I could from. My parents about my family, because I don’t actually know that much about my family of origin.

My parents divorced before I was two. Um, I didn’t see my biological father for many, many years. And so that part of my family was lost to me for a really long time. And I’m so grateful that my dad and I have reconnected in the last 10 years. And we have a really lovely, wonderful relationship. I’m so grateful that he’s in my life again.

And I just feel like. The restoration of our relationship was a huge healing step for both of us actually. Um, so anyway, I got this deck and I started drawing cards and then I started drawing the white Eagle card and I took it, I mean, literally like that my ancestors were coming through to me and that they were.

Letting me know that they were well and that I had the opportunity to heal ancestral family trauma. And so I went down the rabbit hole of learning about my ancestry first by talking to both my parents. And then when they weren’t able to give me enough information to satisfy my curiosity, um, I went into, um, like the websites where you can build your family tree and actually use the Mormons.

Website, which I can’t think of the name off the top of my head right now, but I will link to it in the show notes. If anyone’s interested, it’s free and the Mormons keep great records. And so I’ve actually been able to find like my grandmother’s birth certificate, like a picture of it, um, like census records from the early 19 hundreds where like my great grandparents and great, great grandpa.

We’re listed in the census with their children. Um, there’s been like draft cards. I found my grandfather’s draft card on this website. It’s been pretty freaking cool. And drawing this wide Eagle card is what sparked the, the inspiration or the message for me to start researching that. And that’s really what got me started on learning about ancestral trauma and generational healing.

And so I, um, I love the white Eagle card and every time the white Eagle card comes through to me, Another little nudge to just not forget about my ancestry, not forget that that’s part of what makes me up as a whole person. And so healing that part of myself is part of holistic trauma healing. And, um, then after 2018, you know, came and went and then 2019, I tried to attempt suicide or I did attempt suicide.

I, I did not succeed obviously. And I began putting myself back together after. Checking myself into the mental hospital and then coming out, being on psych meds. You guys know my story. Anyway, after that we started buying more car decks. And so I kind of wasn’t drawing cards from this keepers of the light deck as much.

And so white Eagle wasn’t really in my way. And then a few months ago, I was listening to Ashley Woods podcast, the line podcast. And if you remember, Ashley was a guest on this podcast, just a few episodes back, um, where we talked about our spiritual gifts and soul growth, the Akashic records and past lives and Ashley’s podcast at that time, this was, I think this was in the fall of 2020, um, that I was listening to this podcast and she was talking about her.

Spirit team, uh, who are named the pinnacle and that Jesus is part of this team and the holy spirit. And there are other entities that are all part of this team. And that got me thinking about why Eagle again. And I just thought, Hmm. I wonder who else is on my spirit team? Like I know white Eagle is, I haven’t talked to him or heard from him in a while.

Like maybe I should do that again. Like it just dropped back into my awareness after not being in my awareness for quite some time. No lie. I got to where I was going. So I was in the car when I was listening to this podcast episode, I got to Aldi to go grocery shopping. And as I was walking into all this.

A teenage boy came out of, Aldie wearing a hunter green sweatshirt with the words, white Eagle on the front of the sweatshirt. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, there is no way that’s a coincidence. Like that’s a message. That is a message to show me that me thinking about why Eagle is divine. It is something that I need to be doing right now.

This confirms it, that it’s aligned. And I got to start thinking about this. So then I was like, all right. If Ashley would, can channel her spirit team, I want to see if I can channel my spirit team. So the next day I got up and in place of my regular journaling, I started writing in my journal and I had two different colors of pens.

So I started writing in like blue or something. And. I wrote and wrote and wrote. And then I wrote a question and then I put the blue pen down and I picked up like the orange pen and what flowed through was the answer, except I could tell it was not coming from my mind. Like I could tell that it was.

Coming through me, but I wasn’t making it up like it was coming from, from, in me and out of me at the same time. I don’t know how else to explain it. And the voice identified itself as the cast C a S T. And they told me that that stood for cosmically aligned support. See, this is kind of shit you can’t make up.

So, um, they identified themselves to me as the cast and they said, Jesus and white Eagle are part of your cast. There are others, but who we are isn’t as important as the messages that we have for you. And then they just began to give me messages. And to this day I still channel the cast. And that is where I.

My spiritual guidance and messages from my highest self is also part of the cast. So it is coming from outside of me, but also at the same time, it’s not because my highest self is part of my spirit team. So anyway, I just, um, I think it’s really incredible. That I drew this white Eagle card today for you.

And maybe it was for me, maybe it’s another little nudge from white Eagle that I need to, um, you know, do some more ancestral healing, or maybe he’s just telling me that, you know, all is well in the spirit world with my ancestors. And just keep going. Maybe it’s for you. I have no idea. I’m gonna have to sit with it for a while, but.

Anyway. So that’s the six card. I’ll have a picture of it in the show notes on my website, Lindsay locket.com forward slash podcast. And this is episode 54. So with that said, let’s get into our Q and A’s. So I have some really, really good. Uh, questions for you and, um, we’ll just see how far we get. So the first question is how can I heal from workplace trauma when I continue to experience it daily?

Um, Like, as soon as I received this question on Instagram, I could feel the heaviness. Like there was a heavy energy to the question. And so whoever sent me this question, you know who you are if you’re listening, but I want to respect your privacy and not share your name on the public podcast that could be heard by millions of people.

Um, so. I could just hear like the pain and confusion in that was the energy of your questions. So I just want you to know that. I’m really sorry that you’re experiencing this. And I can’t really imagine how difficult it must be to get up and go to work day in and day out at a place that really is not supporting you is not for your highest good, um, is weighing you down and causing you to feel dysregulated and your body.

So I’m really, really sorry for that. First of all, um, So the question is how do I heal from workplace trauma when I continue to experience it daily and you probably are not going to like my answer, because my answer is you can’t, we can’t heal in the same environment that makes us sick. Like it’s not possible.

Um, and especially when we’re talking about like healing trauma, which is nervous system related. We cannot heal our nervous system. We can’t even begin to heal our nervous system until we’ve created like safety for our nervous system. Healing happens when there’s safety. And so if you are getting up every single day and going to a job and your nervous system, Activated and all over the place all day, then you’re not feeling safe in your workplace.

So of course, every day that you go to work, you’re being retraumatized because you’re around the same toxic people in the same toxic environment with the same activations, like every day and you can’t get away from it. And so my answer to you is you can’t, you can’t keep going to work every day. If it is a truly traumatic environment, which it sounds like it is you can’t go to work every day.

And expect that you’re going to be able to like heal yourself and yeah, for sure you can read all the self-help and personal development books. You can have a meditation practice, you can learn all kinds of nervous system regulating skills. You can use EFT, tapping, breath, work, cold plunges, um, you know, all the things, but the truth is, is that.

You’re in a toxic environment and, you know, take your work out of it and think of it like a relationship like you can grow personally and should grow personally inside of a relationship. Like your relationship. Doesn’t take precedence over your own personal growth, but you get to a point in your personal development and in your healing that you realize that you’re kind of at a crossroads, like it’s almost like you can hit a ceiling.

Where you’re like, okay, I’ve gotten to this, this place. I’ve made some progress. I’ve definitely done some healing, but there’s still this thing, this relationship. And as long as I’m in this relationship, I can’t heal because my partner is abusive or they talk down to me or they’re emotionally unavailable, or they’re not willing to deal with their own shit or whatever.

So the same is true for your work environment. I mean, yeah, you can, you can heal, you can meditate and do all the things and you can learn to regulate your nervous system, but you’re going to eventually reach a ceiling and maybe you already have, and that’s why you’re asking the question. You’re going to reach a ceiling where you’re like, okay, now I have to make a choice.

I can either choose to stay in this job and keep working it, knowing that it’s not good for me. It’s not serving my, my highest good. It’s not helping me grow in any way, but I’m going to choose to stay in any way and learn to just power through it, or practice more awareness or more consciousness. Um, you know, let go release, like whatever it is, but.

If I want to continue to grow and heal, then I’m going to have to find a different job or I’m going to have to leave this job and do something else. So, um, and gosh, like there’s so much complexity to this too, because. I don’t know what unemployment is like across the country, but like right now where I live, businesses are desperate to hire people.

Like our gas station is offering to pay new people that they sign on a $500 like upfront bonus, just for accepting a job with them. That’s how desperate places are for employees right now. So maybe right now in September of 2021, It’s a great time for you to think about leaving your job and going and finding something else.

Because if you live in an area like mine right now, like there are jobs to be had right now, there are lots of jobs to be had, but I know that’s probably not the case everywhere. I’m not sure if it is or not. And I know that during other times, um, there aren’t a lot of jobs available there aren’t options.

And so you do kind of have to. Stay with what you have because having a job is better than not having a job at all. So I don’t really know how to tell you what to do next, other than my intuition says that if you’re asking this question, how do I heal from workplace trauma when I’m experiencing, experiencing it every day, if that’s the question you’re asking, then something in, you already knows what you need to do.

Something in. You knows that this thing is keeping you stuck. It’s not serving your highest good. It’s a drain on you. Um, and it’s time to make a decision. And I know that that’s a really scary place to be. But I can tell you that there’s freedom for you. On the other side, whether that’s freedom from the trauma freedom from the job itself, freedom from both like there’s freedom for you on the other side and whether or not you choose to stay or go is your choice.

And I can’t answer that question for you, but I can say that you’re not going to heal in the same environment that made you sick. You can make progress. You can do a lot of good work. You can get started on the healing, but eventually you’re going to feel like you’ve reached a ceiling and you’re going to have to make a choice.

Like, do I want to keep growing and go find something else? Or do I want to stay here knowing that it’s not really supportive? So I hope that that answer supports you. And I’m so sorry that you’re in a traumatic work environment. I honestly cannot imagine having to work outside the home or work for someone besides myself in this current, uh, environment that we find ourselves in.

And so my heart really goes out to all of you who are figuring out hard job situations. I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I applaud you for the strength that you have to just keep getting up every day and doing what you gotta do to survive. So I hope that answers your question and that it was supportive.

All right. The next question is what is the next best thing for healing? If I can’t do a cold plunge. All right. So if this is your first time listening to the holistic trauma healing podcast, then I want to just tell you that I am a huge fan of cold plunges. Um, I started doing cold plunges in the summer of 2020, and I was blown away by how.

Quickly. I felt like I was building resiliency and flexibility and my nervous system. I did an episode of the podcast about cold plunges. Um, it’s episode three, I believe. Called. I am comfortable being uncomfortable. And that became my mantra whenever I was doing cold plunges, because let me tell ya, cold water is not comfortable, especially when you first get in.

It is a shock. And so I trained myself to. Stay in that cold water by focusing on my breath by remaining present in the moment, not allowing myself to panic, not allowing my body to tense up. I did a lot of focused muscle relaxation. And let me tell you something relaxing your muscles and 55 degree water or colder is very, very hard.

So it takes a lot of focused concentration. Um, but I was just amazed by not only how my body quickly began to tolerate being in the cold water for longer periods of time. But then whenever I was outside of the water, I was tolerating stress better as well. And I was able to take that feeling of empowerment.

You know, being in the water and fighting against my or not, I don’t want to say fighting overriding my body’s instinctive nervous system responses to gasp for air to shiver and shake and to have goosebumps. And to tense my muscles like cold water is stressful on your nervous system on your body. And so your nervous system kind of goes into a survival mode whenever you get in cold water.

And it’s like, fuck, this is uncomfortable. You got to get out. Like you can’t do this, but you learn to override it. And the amazing thing is is that if you can override it in 55 degree water, then you get out of that water. Miraculously magically, you encounter a stressful situation in your life. And you’re like, whoa, I can actually tolerate this better than I was able to tolerate it before.

So I’m a huge fan of cold plunges, but what do you do if you can’t do a cold punch? So you can try a cold shower or filling your bathtub up with cold water and soaking in the bathtub. Um, either one of those things will work. It doesn’t have to be a cold plunge in a wild body of water, which is what I happen to have access to.

But I also regularly, you know, take my shower and then whenever I’m done, I throw the water all the way cold and just stand under it. A minute or two. Um, so you can do cold showers or baths if you don’t have access to doing a cold plunge and like a wild body of water or a pool or something. Um, if you don’t have the ability to do anything with cold water whatsoever.

Then there are other ways that you can increase your nervous systems, flexibility, and resiliency, and basically the way that you increase your, your nervous system, flexibility and resiliency is the same way that you build muscle. Whenever you go to the gym. So whenever you go to the gym, you don’t start out, you know, bench pressing 180 pounds.

You start out, maybe ven, trusting the bar, and then. After a little while you get a little stronger and you add a little bit of weight on there, and then you get a little stronger and you add a little bit of weight on there, and then you work your way up to 180 pounds or whatever. So it’s the same thing with your nervous system.

So whatever stress can stress out your nervous system intentionally, and that you have control over. So that’s the thing with cold plunges is that you have control over how long the stress lasts. As soon as you’re ready to get out of the water, you get out of the way. Right. Like, nothing is forcing you to be there.

So if it’s 20 seconds or 20 minutes, you decide when you get out and in that way, you are intentionally stressing out your body, knowing that you have control over when the stress is over. So what else can you do that can intentionally stress out your nervous system, but incrementally, you know, don’t start with, with like 30 minutes of intense nervous system stress, like maybe start with three minutes and then you work your way up.

So what else can you do to intentionally stress out your nervous system and do it in small increments to widen your window of tolerance over time? And the more frequently you do it? The better you’ll get at it. The more tolerance you will build, you’re widening your window of tolerance. Like literally, that’s what you’re doing.

And then that translates to outside of whatever. Yeah. The thing is, so if you don’t have access to the cold water, you can try the Wim Hoff, uh, breath work. And I will link to a YouTube video that is really amazing. Um, it’s led by Wim Hoff himself. It’s free. It’s on YouTube. I use it pretty frequent. But it’s a forced hyperventilation and then breath holding.

And so that creates stress on the nervous system, but it also builds resiliency and flexibility and the nervous system. And then really, I mean, anything that. Challenges you to widen your window of tolerance. So I’m currently working with a coach and one of the issues I’m working on is control and how my need to control my environment is directly connected to the sensitivity that I have in my environment.

So what I mean by that is. Like in order for me to go to sleep, I have to create the perfect sleeping conditions. So I have to have a certain type of white noise. I have to have a ceiling fan going. I have to have blackout curtains. I can’t have any kind of like nightlight or a light coming in under the door.

It has to be completely black. I have to have an air purifier running. Um, I like to sleep with a heating pad underneath me so that during the night I can turn it on and. In increments and then it goes off automatically, but I like a cold room. So I have a window unit running in the summertime or in the winter time I’ll sleep with the window open.

Um, so all of these conditions have to be right in order for me to sleep. And I have to like maintain a lot of control over my environment in order to create these conditions. So one of the things my coach has challenged me to do is to see how I can. Incrementally in small amounts, maybe learn to go without something and still assure my nervous system that it has everything it needs to fall asleep.

The ability to fall asleep is within myself, not outside of myself and that I will be okay if I don’t have. All my ducks in a row when it’s time for me to go to bed. So could I sleep with, you know, my blackout curtains, like partially open to let in a little bit of light, could I turn the volume of my white noise down slightly?

Could I, you know, not sleep with the heating pad, like whatever it is that I am trying to control in my environment, can I test my nervous system or push my nervous system just a little bit? To see that even if it doesn’t have all its ducks in a row, that it can still sleep. So that’s going to look different for everybody.

Um, another thing that I’m doing, uh, because again, I said, I have a controller, right? Um, it is something that I am actively working on healing right now. So something else that I’m doing is noticing how often I tell my kids to do and backing off on it. So well, it’s taken a lot of awareness and it’s been really uncomfortable for me because I want things done when I want them done.

I want them done in a certain way. Like that’s what my nervous systems hidden programming says. I need to feel. Safe in my environment is to maintain a level of control over my environment, which often means the people in my environment. So what are some ways that I can take my hands off, take control off, like, and trust that even if things aren’t perfect, they’re still going to be okay.

And I will still be okay. You know, even if my kids like. Are late for something or they don’t get up on time or, you know, whatever it is that I’m trying to control them into doing. So what does that look like for you? Like what is it that you feel like, um, you know, you need for it things to be just so in order for you to sleep or function optimally at your job, or, um, you know, whatever.

What do you need or think you need and what could you let go of, even if it’s just a little bit. So that is going to widen your window of tolerance and then you let go a little bit more and you let go a little bit more and you have control over how much you let go of. Right? Like I have control still over my sleeping environment.

Like today I could choose to go back to all the blackout curtains and the cold room and the heating pad and a ceiling fan. Like I can choose to go back to all of it if I want to. So I have control just like with the cold water you have control. So what is it in your life that you could challenge yourself with just a little bit to show your nervous system that it can handle change, or maybe a certain temperature?

Like some people are really sensitive to temperatures. And so maybe you could take a sauna or take a cold shower to sort of help your body be less sensitive to changes in temperature. Um, exercise is another really good thing that you can do. Obviously, when you’re exercising, just like weightlifting, you’re having to push yourself and increments to widen your tolerance to whatever the exercise is.

So there’s a lot you can do. Cold plunges are not the only way to regulate your nervous system or to heal. Like there are so many things you can do and it really, it doesn’t. It’s not so much about what you do. It’s the methodology of how are you slowly and gently pushing the boundaries of your window of tolerance to make it bigger slowly.

Like you’re not going to, you’re not going to dive in to 40 degree water. The first time you do a cold plunge, you’re going to ease yourself in. You may only be able to stay a few seconds. Like you got to work your way up to it. What else can you do that with in your life? And only you can answer that question, but I’ve given you a couple of examples from my life.

So I hope that that answers supported you. And I hope that you figure it out. And if you’re the person who asked that question and you figure out something besides cold plunges, please reach out to me on Instagram or email me and let me know what you did and how it worked out. Okay, B next question is, how do you stop nitpicking your partner?

I know I do this and I feel shame about it. Also. What advice can you give on breaking shame cycles? So I think this is kind of a two-part question, but the same person ask it and it was asked in this way. So the shame is connected to. The nitpicking of the partner, but also the shame is its own beast. So I’ll start with the partner thing.

How do you stop nitpicking your partner? Okay. Funny question, because I have been a nitpicky partner to my partner, um, this stems back to control, as I said, which I’m working on. Um, so what I have realized. Nitpicking is for me, is that I have this belief that if I can maintain control over my environment, that I will be safe and that I am not safe.

If I don’t maintain control over mine. Oftentimes, because I live in relationship with three other people in my house. That means that I’m trying to control the people as well as the environment, because they are in my environment and they have their own brains and their own bodies and their own consciousnesses and their own stuff.

And they are their own autonomous beings. And so they’re not always going to do what I want them to do. They can’t read my mind and they have free time and the ability to choose what they do and you know, all of that. And so, um, I default sometimes to nitpicking them as a way to control. So I think the first step in stopping the pattern of nitpicking, your partner is awareness.

The awareness that you’re doing it. Can you catch yourself when you’re doing it? Then can you learn to catch yourself before you open your mouth and nitpick? And then can you learn to catch the feeling that you’re feeling in your body that causes you to open your mouth that causes you to nitpick? So you’re like reverse engineering where the nitpicking is originating and practicing awareness every step of the way.

So eventually. You can nitpick in your head, but then you don’t say it out loud, you learn to just kind of hold your tongue and be, yeah. Okay. I caught myself about to nitpick. I’m not going to do it, you know? Um, and then you can get to the point where you’re like feeling the feeling and the thought to nitpick comes and you can be like, okay, all right.

I had the urge to knit. Here’s what I was going to say. Here’s how I’m feeling about it. I wonder what else is possible? You know, how can I shift this? What is my body trying to tell me right now? What is my inner child trying to tell me right now? I realized that, um, and I realized this with the help of working with my coach, is that a lot of the control issues that I have stem way, way, way, way back to deep inner child wounds and stuff that is not healed still.

So, you know, how is your partner mirroring? Those inner child wounds back to you. And how can you now as the autonomous responsible, aware adult parent, your inner child, so that they know that they don’t need to keep throwing it away. That everything is okay. They’re taken care of now, you’ve got this and you’re grateful that they have been trying to keep you safe all this time, but their services are no longer needed.

Your inner child needs to go play and not try to run the show. So, um, you know, how can you get in touch with your inner child and see how your inner child is? You know, throwing a fit or coming up some wounds or surfacing that need to be healed. And instead of healing, it’s coming out as trying to nitpick and control your pain.

Um, another thing that I recognized for myself is that whenever I am nitpicking my partner, um, because my partner is a mirror and he is reflecting back to me, the things in myself, whether they’re healed or unhealed, he’s just a mirror, reflecting things back. He’s not making a judgment about whether I’m healed or not, but he often reflects back to me, the unhealed parts of myself.

Through his own behavior. And I’m not even saying that those are unhealed parts of him. I’m saying he’s reflecting back my own unhealed parts of me. So I don’t like that. Right. My ego doesn’t like that. My ego doesn’t want to see that I have unhealed parts. I mean, good Lord. Trauma healing podcasts and a coaching program, and a course and a membership.

Like I don’t want to be reminded that I still have unhealed parts and I certainly don’t want my partner mirroring that back to me. So it’s a lot easier for my ego to get mad at my partner and become nitpicky towards my partner than it is to sit with the discomfort that my partner is simply a mirror.

Reflecting back to me. Whatever is unhealed and myself. So that would be the next question. What is my partner? Reflecting back to me right now? So when my family doesn’t clean up after themselves, And they leave clutter and messes everywhere. They don’t put their dishes away, like which this happens all the time.

But when that happens, I have a tendency to sort of default to the nitpicky mode of light and victim hood. I do that as well. So nitpickiness and like victim consciousness for me are linked together pretty strongly. So. I might be like, why am I the only one who’s ever picking anything up? Why am I the only one who seems to know how to load the dishwasher?

This is a community space. Why are you not picking up your shit? You know, like, and I can get really kind of nitpicky that way. And now that’s not to say that there’s not a balance. I mean, It’s our home. My children live here too. Like they should be able to use the spaces and, and not have to keep everything like perfectly clean all the time because I use spaces and don’t keep everything perfectly clean all the time, you know?

So it’s finding a balance and like allowing people to occupy space and to be in the space without controlling how they do it. But sometimes. You know, your kids need to pick up their shit and they need to load the dishwasher and they need to take out the trash when it’s full. So I think it’s finding a balance too, and I can’t really tell you how to do that because I think I’m still figuring it out myself.

Um, but you know, what are they mirroring back to you? So for me, when my family is doing that, they’re mirroring back to me that I still have some unhealed controlled control issues, because if I didn’t have unhealed control issue, Then theoretically, I should be able to be in a cluttered space and be perfectly fine.

Like my ouch outward environment should not affect my internal environment. So they’re mirroring back to me that there is still unhealed parts of me that want to control my environment and need my environment to be a certain way in order to feel safe or content or a piece or happy or whatever. So what is your partner mirroring back to you?

Whatever it is that you’re nitpicking him about, that thing is going on inside of you. Your partner is a. So, what are they marrying back? What is your inner child, you know, coming up, needing to be healed or what in your inner child is coming up meetings to be healed? Sorry. It was a terribly worded sentence.

Um, and then the shame piece. So you nitpick the partner, you know, you’re doing this and you feel shame about it. So what advice do you have on breaking shame cycles? So shame, shame is it is a tricky thing because. We think that if we feel shame about something that we won’t do that thing, because we don’t want to feel shame, but it kind of works in the opposite way.

We have a tendency to feel shame about something and then the shame actually perpetuates us doing whatever that thing is. And I think it’s because the shame about the thing cement. The limiting belief or the old programming that we have about the thing. So when we’re locked in a shame cycle, we’re essentially locked into the behavior pattern, right?

So you nitpick your partner, you feel ashamed about it. Then you nitpick your partner and you feel ashamed about it. Then you nit pick your partner and you feel ashamed about it. You see what I mean? Like it they’re, they’re inextricably linked. They go together. And so to stop the shame cycle again, first, you gotta be aware.

So when you nit pick your partner, if you weren’t in awareness and unit picked your partner, and then you feel the shame coming in, you got to spring into awareness. So it’s going to be, oh, now I feel the shame. Okay. I wonder what purpose this is serving for me. And you get curious about it in the same way that you get curious about the nitpick.

What is this mirroring back to me, what unhealed parts of me are coming up, wanting to be healed? What is my inner child trying to tell me right now? This is how we stop. The shame cycles is with curiosity. So when you nit pick your partner and you notice that shame creeping in, come into awareness at any moment, you can shift from unconsciousness to consciousness at any moment.

When you shift from unconsciousness into consciousness, you are en awareness. So if you’re unconscious and experiencing shame, which is going to happen in an unconscious state, nobody consciously chooses shame. Okay. If you’re experiencing shame, then you are not in awareness. That’s not a judgment. It just is.

So be curious about it. Hm. I wonder why I’m feeling ashamed about this. What purpose is this shame serving for me? How could I shift this shame? How could it become something else? How could I alchemize it into something else? So you don’t judge yourself, you don’t keep shaming yourself. You don’t feel guilty about it.

You get curious about it, and that is awareness. So you break the shame cycle the same way you break the nitpicking and that’s through awareness and curiosity, not through judging and shaming her. So shame cements, the limiting belief shame keeps us stuck. Um, I have talked so much on social media about shame as it relates to cancel culture because the people who, who like to cancel other people are the people who think that shame is the way to get people to change.

So if someone is a racist, for example, then. You know, an Instagram canceler accountability person might come along and shame them for being racist. You know, you’re such a piece of shit, you know, you’re such a, you’re such an asshole. You are everything that is wrong with this world. Like, you know, go study the civil rights movement and, and learn about Martin Luther king, like Jesus, you racist.

Like, so there’s a lot of shaming involved. Guess what? No real or lasting change comes from a place of. So shaming a racist is not going to make them anti-racist. If anything, it’s just going to cement them further in their racist beliefs or their racist behaviors. So we have to stop using shame as a means to get people to change.

If we want to make positive changes in our lives, we can’t shame ourselves together. I mean, think about your kids. What do you want to shame your kids into cleaning their rooms or doing their chores or, you know, Doing better in math or something like is shaming them really going to accomplish the result that you want?

No, absolutely. It’s not. So if it won’t work with your kids, if it won’t work with your friends, if it won’t work with your coworkers and if it doesn’t work with people on Instagram, why do you think shaming yourself is going to work for you? It’s not, and it’s an unconscious pattern. You’ve probably been shaming yourself for so long.

You don’t even realize you’re doing it when you do it. So it comes back to awareness. You break the cycle with awareness. Okay. I’m shaming myself. I am heaping guilt on my head. What purpose is this serving for me? And I guarantee you, you will, your answer to that will be, it’s not actually serving a purpose.

It’s just keeping me stuck. So to unstuck yourself, you’ve got to quit shaming yourself, and you’ve got to acknowledge that you’re human, that you make mistakes, that you have an ego. And an inner child and a nervous system that has been dysregulated and activated for most of your life, probably. And now you are waking up to the fact that you’ve been living this way, your whole life, you didn’t know you were living this way.

You didn’t realize you were choosing it, but you were unconsciously. And so now you have the power to choose something. So you choose not to shame yourself and you do that by being curious, by being in awareness, by asking questions about it, and definitely by loving yourself and your inner child and showing up for your inner child, because your inner child was probably shamed a lot too.

So your inner child needs to have, you know, maybe an apology from you. Like I’m really sorry that I’ve been so hard on you always, I’m really sorry that I’ve shamed you. I’m going to show up differently for you. So that’s my answer for nitpicking and then feeling ashamed about it and then breaking shame cycles.

So I hope that answer was supportive for you. And thank you so much for asking the question.

Okie dokie time for the last question of this episode, which is how do you tell the difference between living in self-discipline versus self judgment or punishment? Whew. This is a. This is a very complex question or the answer to this question is very complex. So the first thing that came up for me as I was thinking about how to answer this question is, um, one of the words that I have written on my wall is self-discipline.

So every year, um, usually in December I choose a word or words that I would like to focus on as intentions or goals for the next year. It’s not really new year’s resolutions because it’s, it’s mostly. Intentions. So one of the words of the eight words that I chose for 21 are written on my wall and one of them is self-discipline.

Um, in episode 20, the seven of the podcast with Pria Laki, she tells us that self love is self-discipline. So part of loving ourselves is. Disciplining ourselves. I think the reason why so many of us don’t know the difference between self-discipline and judgment or punishment is that, uh, we grew up in environments where punishment was considered discipline.

So we’ve learned to equate punishment with discipline, you know, kind of like whenever you. Screwed up as a kid and you got a spanking and your parent would tell you, this hurts me more than it hurts you, but I have to do this to discipline you. So spanking is punishment. Um, I personally think spanking is child abuse, but spanking is ultimately punitive.

It is meant to punish, but whenever we have a parent, who’s like, I love you, but I have to hit you in order to teach you this lesson. And not as how we learn to receive discipline, then we equate punishment with discipline. So then we become adults who are trying to make good choices for our lives. We’re trying to evolve and grow as humans.

We’re trying to be healthy. We’re trying to. Do adult things and the most functional way possible. And we find ourselves unable to distinguish between loving self discipline and self punishing. So it’s interesting that before I got this question, I was on a walk in the woods last week. So the last week of August, I was on a walk in the woods and I go for walks in the woods pretty much every day.

I like to go by myself because I receive a lot of spiritual downloads and psychic nudges whenever I’m on these walks. And as I was stepping into the woods last week, as soon as my feet got onto the path, I. Deeply felt within myself, embody your highest self embody, your highest self embody, your highest self, like it just kept repeating, embody your highest self.

So. I think that that is an amazing and beautiful way to answer this question. Your highest self will not punish you. Your highest self is not judgmental and it is not punitive. Those things come from a place of ego and wounding. The root of those things is fear. I fear that I won’t be able to change.

Therefore I have to punish myself to force myself to change. Or I fear that I’m not making good choices and that’s going to have long lasting consequences on my body or my mind or my health or whatever. And so I need to, you know, punish myself by being on a really strict diet and doing all kinds of intense, crazy exercise and really shaming myself for the way that I’ve let myself go.

That’s coming from a place of ego and fear that is not coming from your highest self, your highest self will never, never be right you in that way. So how do you embody your highest self? What does that look like for you? And the embodiment of your highest self is probably going to look different than the embodiment of my highest self.

Because I am a unique individual. And so are you, and so what’s good for me. What works for me may or may not work for you. And it’s not up to me to decide that for you, that’s up to you. So how do you embody your highest self? What foods does your highest self want to eat? How do you want to nourish your body?

What ways does your highest self love to move your body? What types of media does your highest self want to consume? Does it want to consume media that is constantly driving a stress response? That’s constantly trying to other people separating into us versus them always pointing the finger, always projecting your own fears and insecurities onto other people, or is the type of media that your highest self wants to consume, you know, in the form of something like really life-giving and uplift.

Um, my husband and I used to have the Gaya channel or app or whatever on our Roku. And whenever I was going through like the beginning stages of my healing journey, I was really unable or unwilling to consume media that had like violence or, um, like a lot of sex or, you know, stuff like that in it. Like, I really want.

So sensitive to those things. And so I only wanted to put things into my mind that were life-giving and uplifting. And so I basically like didn’t touch Netflix or Hulu for like a good six months. And I only wanted to watch the shows that were on the Gaia app or channel. So I was watching a lot of stuff about, uh, channeling spirit guides and, um, Awakening.

Um, I remember watching a series about IRA Veda. Um, watching shows about people, you know, children like being able to talk about. Details from lives that they had lived in the past, like stuff like that. Like that was the stuff that I was into. And if I’m honest, let’s still the kind of media that I like to consume because I feel like I am in alignment with my highest self.

Whenever the stuff that my eyes and ears are consuming is. Aligned with me, like is in alignment with my values. Um, same reason why I’ve really shifted a lot of the music that I listened to over the past few years. Like I listened to a lot less pop culture music, and I listened to a lot more music. What I would call conscious music.

So bands like Wiki foot and cloud Colt and Trevor hall. Um, and then just a lot of like, you know, instrumental music. Like I like to listen to whale sounds and monks chanting own and stuff like that way more than I like to listen to like Taylor swift. And I don’t have anything against Taylor swift. Like I think Taylor has some conscious music as well, but that’s the kind of thing I’m saying.

Yeah. I feel in alignment with my highest self, when what is coming in my ears is something that is full of love and truth and life-giving, and you know, isn’t material isn’t materialistic, I guess like isn’t just focused on surface level love or the honeymoon phase of relationships or a broken heart or.

All the, you know, the things that a lot of music is focused on these days. So that’s how I embody my highest self, um, with, but, but sometimes it takes self discipline to do that. You know, sometimes it takes like self-discipline to turn off Netflix and instead like watch something on Gaia instead that is more life-giving sometimes it takes loving self-discipline to choose to eat.

Broccoli versus choosing to go through the drive-thru and get a burger and fries. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with eating a burger and fries. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Like food is not good or bad, it’s just food. But is that in alignment with my highest self? Like for me, McDonald’s is not in alignment with my highest self, um, funny story.

I actually, um, so when my husband was still. Working outside of our home. He’s been working from home for the last two and a half months, and it’s been amazing to have him home and he’s not even working for anyone he’s working with me. So we’re working together and he’s been doing a lot of projects around the house, but.

Before, whenever he was still working one day I went up to his office and I thought I would just surprise him and be like, Hey, do you want to go have lunch? Well, it turns out his boss was planning like a company cookout. And so his boss was like outside grilling. Those pre formed burgers that are separated by square pieces of paper.

Um, and you buy them in like a roll at Costco or something. So he was cooking these burgers on the grill and then inside there was like, You know, individual bags of like Doritos and potato chips and then like cookies. And there were the only healthy thing on the table was a container of grapes and they weren’t even washed, I wa I washed the grapes.

Um, but it was just basically like all of this, like processed junk food and white bread buns, like stuff like that. And. That is definitely not the way that I like to eat. I don’t eat that kind of food. I don’t eat white bread. I don’t eat store-bought cookies. I don’t eat Doritos. Like I don’t eat that way, but I wanted to spend time with my husband.

And this was the only way I was gonna be able to do it because he was like, I’m not going to go out and eat with you whenever I’ve already put in an order for a burger, like I’m going to stay here and I’m going to eat and you’re welcome to stay here and eat with us. And so I chose to stay there and eat.

So I ate like a prefilled. Costco burger Patty on a white bread bun with a bag of Doritos and a cookie from the store and like a handful of grapes. And afterwards I left and I didn’t feel physically bad. So like I wasn’t having like a digestive reaction where I was like having an upset stomach or stomach pains or anything like that.

But I felt so off for the rest of the afternoon, like I just felt off and I decided to meditate. And the message that came through was that I felt off because I had essentially just put capitalism inside my body. Um, and if you, if that doesn’t make sense to you, like, I’m happy to explain that further, but I don’t think that this is the right place to explain that because it’s way off topic, but essentially I felt like I had put capitalism inside my book.

And it wasn’t aligning. And so even though I wasn’t having digestive issues, my energy was just completely off. And so when you learn what feels aligned, then whenever you’re living and what isn’t aligned, you feel it, you feel off something doesn’t feel right. And so how do you embody your highest self, whatever that looks like.

Steer yourself in that direction with love. And that is self-discipline if there’s fear or shame or guilt involved, it’s not, self-disciplined, it’s not coming from a place of love. It’s coming from a place of ego and, um, you know, fear, like it’s just, it’s not embodying your highest self. So that would be my answer to that question.

And I can’t really be any more specific than that because. The embodiment of my highest self is probably going to look different than the embodiment of your highest self. And that’s okay. Um, it’s supposed to be different because we are unique individuals. So how to know the difference between self discipline and self judgment and punishment.

What’s the root of it? Is it coming from a root of fear? Guilt shame. Or is it coming from a place of love? Is it coming from a place of unconditional love and acceptance for yourself? Is it the embodiment of your highest self, whatever that is, that is your compass for what loving self-discipline feels like versus punishment or joy.

So, thank you so much. That was such a good question. And I’m sure I’m like absolutely positive that, um, that question is something that a lot of people are asking. So very much appreciate that question. And I hope that answer was supportive. So that is all I have for you this week. Next week on the podcast, I have Tammy, our resident astrologer coming to give us her astrological predictions and report for the fall Equinox.

So it’ll be. What’s going on in the sky and how it affects us from the fall Equinox to the winter solstice. And then of course, she’ll be back on the winter solstice to give us another update. So make sure you tune in next week. And then the week after that, I have another very special guest Lux. ATL is coming on the podcast to talk about having boundaries on social media.

A topic that has been requested numerous times. And I took luxes, um, social media with boundaries, workshop loved it. It’s changed my life. It’s changed the way I interact on social media and the time I spend on social media. And so I’m really excited for you to hear that interview. Um, so that’s, what’s coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Do me a favor here at the end of this episode, and just take a moment to quickly rate the podcast. If you’re listening in iTunes, you can give the podcast a star rating, and I know that you will want to give it a five-star rating, and then you can also leave a written review and it can be something long if you’ve had a good personal experience or revelation or transformation from listening to the show, or it can be something short and sweet.

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And of course, I want the message of holistic trauma healing to spread around the world. So let’s make it easier for people to find this resource and you can do that by rating the show. And I very much appreciate it. So that is all I have for you this week. Friends. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here.

I hope you’ve had a lovely holiday weekend and I will talk to you next week.

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Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast

Episode 54 (Q&A episode!): Workplace Trauma, Nit-Picking Your Partner, Shame Cycles, Can’t Do Cold Plunges, & Self-Discipline vs. Self-Punishment

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