Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast

Episode 9: Uncovering Hidden Programming, Victim Mentality, Giving the Body a Voice, & The Trauma Triangle with Shelbi Dubord

Posted on by Lindsey Lockett
trauma coach and inituitive evelyn hale

lindsey lockett sitting in a patch of wild leeks Trauma coach Shelbi Dubord and I focus heavily on the hidden programming that is within each of us as a result of trauma. When we are operating under our hidden programming (on “autopilot”), we are ignorant of the awesome power of choice: that we get to choose to be who we are and how we respond to any situation. Shelbi shares her journey of going from a place of chronic illness and an inability to work to surrendering, quitting her corporate job, healing herself, and starting her work as a trauma coach.

Show Notestrauma coach and inituitive shelbi dubord

Shelbi Dubord is a master healer trauma expert, and intuitive with a rich background in psychology and personal transformation. She works with women who have experienced childhood trauma and teaches them how to safely go back inside their bodies and find their own source of peace and wellbeing, which was taken from them early on.

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In this episode, Shelbi and I…

  • talk about victim mentality as a hurdle to healing and the one thing our inner child needs most when we are acting as victims
  • explain the connection between victim mentality and perfectionism
  • explain “wokeness” comparison and the ego in the spiritual and personal development spaces
  • reveal Shelbi’s perspective on where our hidden programming actually lives (hint: it’s not in our heads)
  • discuss The Drama Triangle, how each of us cycles through each of its points, and how to get out
  • talk about giving the body a voice using a simple but profound journaling technique
  • explore how to get into the body to listen and discern what it’s trying to tell you
  • discern how to know what your body sounds like vs. the brain manufacturing answers
  • discuss using imagination to connect with your body

Links

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC] This is episode nine.

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In this episode I interview trauma coach Shelbi Dubord . I didn’t even know trauma coach was a thing until I met Shelbi. We talk about how we can get to the root of hidden programming in each of our lives that has been put there by trauma. We also discussed the victim mentality and opportunities for compassion towards self. And shall be revealed a really ingenious journaling method that helps us to create a script between ourselves and our bodies, so that we are actually giving our bodies of voice. We explore how to get into the body and how to listen to what it’s trying to tell us, discerning between how the body speaks to us versus how the brain manufacturers answers. And we even talk about using the imagination to connect with the body. I really think you’re going to enjoy this interview with Shelbi Dubord. Shelby is a master healer trauma expert, and intuitive with a rich background in psychology and personal transformation. She works with women who have experienced childhood trauma and teaches them how to safely go back inside their bodies and find their own source of peace and wellbeing, which was taken from them early on. Enjoy this interview with Shelbi Dubord. LINDSEY: Hello, Shelbi. Welcome to the holistic trauma healing podcast. I’m so happy that you’re here today. SHELBI: Hi Lindsey. Thank you for having me. LINDSEY: All right. Well, I just want to let people know how we met. We found each other on Instagram. I don’t remember if I found you first or if you found me first, but as soon as I saw your bio, I saw that you were a trauma coach. And I was like, Holy shit. Like, I didn’t even know this kind of a person existed. And, I just felt this energetic connection to you. I don’t know any other way to explain it cause we’ve never met before today. And, I’d love it if you would just share what a trauma coach is and how you help people. SHELBI: Yeah. Cool. I definitely felt that connection with you as well. So I’m glad you reached out. So a trauma coach, and this is not an industry that I think exists, but the reason that I use the word trauma coach is because I work with primarily women who have experienced childhood trauma and I help them change their mindset. Their literal neuropathways and I work with them on many different levels, which I’m sure we’ll get into, but I, I take kind of a physiological biological approach as well as a mental approach and a spiritual approach. So what I do is not therapy. I’m not a trained social worker, counselor, psychologist any of that, although I’ve studied and read psychology for my whole life. It’s not talk therapy. My clients, sometimes get stuck in their minds and they want to treat it like talk therapy, where they’ll want to vent, but that’s just the mind. So my role is to bring them back and draw them back into their source of truth, which is this combination of what’s in the body. What’s in the mind, what’s in the spirit. So, and I don’t know if anyone else out there that calls themselves a trauma coach works that way. So I’m only speaking for myself in terms of what I do as a trauma coach. Okay. So there’s not like a, here’s what it looks like. Here’s the official industry standard of a trauma coach that doesn’t exist yet. Not that I’m aware of. And I have encountered a couple of other people that call themselves a trauma coach, but I haven’t discussed their methods with them. My impression from just the coaching industry in general is that coaches kind of help you meet certain milestones by pushing you, helping you be accountable. That’s really not what I’m doing. I’m not pushing. I’m drawing out, what’s already inside of you and I’m helping you come back into yourself and find that home, that safe place for yourself to feel what it is that needs to come out of you. So it’s more of like an excavation than anything. LINDSEY: Oh, my gosh. That’s so crazy that you used the word excavation because I’ve recently started using the phrase excavate trauma and, which is just such a cool synchronicity. I feel like because that’s not a phrase I’ve ever read or heard of before. The other day, I was just posting a paragraph on my Instagram feed and a friend of mine commented on that post. And she was like, I love the phrase, excavate trauma. And I was like, wow, thanks. I didn’t even realize that that was a cool phrase or whatever, but you’ve just used the word excavation with trauma. And I also love that you talked about taking a physical approach and the biological physiological approach, also with the, the brain and then the neurons and the neuroplasticity, but then you do the spiritual, mental approach as well. And the holistic trauma healing podcast. What I’m all about is healing trauma on the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral levels. So that’s what I see as being. I call it the trauma healing web. So I, I don’t want to date this to incriminate myself, but I was on an LSD trip and the day that I was on the trip, I kept seeing spiderwebs everywhere, like everywhere. In fact, the morning of the trip, I walked down into my office to water my plants. And we don’t have a lot of spiders in Minnesota because it’s very, very cold, but there was this big Wolf spider on the wall. It’s probably the biggest spider that I’ve ever seen since we’ve lived here for five years. And I just noticed him that I was like, that seems significant. And I just left the spider there. Like I just let it stay there. And then through the rest of the day, I was on the LSD and I was tripping and I was walking through the woods and I just kept seeing spiderwebs. I was on this path and there were a webs that were connecting one side of the path to the other side. And then they were kind of shimmering and rainbow and the light. And then I came across, a big spider web, but didn’t have a spider in it, but it had a dragonfly that was caught in the web and the dragon fly was already dead. But I just, I bent down and I just stared at this dragon fly for forever. And my husband was there with me and I started bawling and I just said, this is how I feel sometimes. Like caught in a web and you could tell this dragon fly had really fought cause it was a big dragon fly. I mean, it was not a little insect. So this web had to have been really, really strong. So, but I was like, this is how I feel sometimes. And I know that this dragon fly, fought really hard to get out of this web, but it got more stuck the harder it fought. I made that connection with myself of the harder I fight against, all the things that come up and come into my life the more stuck I get. And anyway, the rest of the day went on. And later in the day I was sitting on a blanket and the yard and I looked over and there was a spider on the blanket. Like it was all happened in one day. And at the end of the day, I was talking about this business that I want to start, or this new venture that I want to start with holistic trauma healing. And I had the phrase holistic trauma healing, but I still didn’t know what that was going to look like. I didn’t know it wasn’t going to be a website. It wasn’t going to be a course, a membership. Like, was I going to start coaching people? I didn’t know what it was going to look like, but all of a sudden, all of this, just like. Vomit. I mean, vomits a bad word because it implies negativity and gross, but like, I dunno how to say it. Other than it just started coming out of me and my husband grabbed my phone and he hit the record button on my phone and I just spewed this stuff. And what came out of that was all of the pictures of the spiders for the whole day came together. And what I saw was, why I had had so much trouble figuring out how this was going to look when I started. It was because I was trying to make it into a linear process. I was trying to be like, if you start here and you do this, this, this, and this, you know, that’s how we heal trauma. And what the spider showed me was I was trying to turn a spider web into a linear process. And so it was like the, you know, the anchor points that the web hooks onto, whether it’s a fence or a gate or a house or whatever, that those are the anchor points of our lives that make us the beings that we are. And then the spider weaves her web around and around and around and around. And then she sits and waits for nourishment to come her way. And then whenever that dragon fly or that bug or whatever gets caught in the web, like doesn’t take down the whole web. She just goes to that one part of the web. She takes care of her meal. She repairs the web, and then she goes back to living her life. And so for me, the five points of holistically healing trauma are those anchor points of the web of like the spiritual, the mental, the emotional, the physical, and the ancestral. And we as people are the spiders and we get to weave our webs of life. And then whenever, if we’ve addressed each of those areas holistically, not just focused on one or the other, then when something does come, our way that it’s hard, it hurts. Like it doesn’t have to take down our whole lives the way that crisis used to take down our whole lives. You know, I was planning on doing an entire podcast episode devoted to the trauma healing web, and I just like explained it all. I was saying all of that to say, what you’re saying resonates so much with me. And I feel like there’s such a synchronicity in that because it affirms and validates where I’m at. And it also is just like, yeah, I am on the right track. SHELBI: Absolutely. I love that story for so many reasons. And I, I was thinking of it as you were describing it as being the dragon fly. And I think it’s funny when you go into a story, you relate to certain parts of the story. I saw myself as the dragon fly and I see a lot of us as getting caught in webs. And how do we, how do we handle that? There’s this book, that I, I love, it’s a children’s book and I’ve been reading it to my son for the past couple of years. I think it’s called the hug who got stuck. And in that book, he, the hug. Who’s this little creature, he gets stuck in this sticky web of feelings and thoughts and how to get him out is to breathe and to surrender. And I think oftentimes when we get caught in those webs, those are the moments that transform us because there’s nothing we can do. The more we fight, the more we get stuck and. It’s not until we get to that point of we’ve fought and fought and fought. And we were exhausted that we surrender. And I think those are the moments of, of deep grace, where we actually find our freedom and we can release ourselves. so it sounds like you got to that point and that everything came through you and poured out of you. And I feel like missions, like your mission. I think they choose you. I think it chose you and you surrendered to it and you just allowed it to come out of you. There was no striving. It just came through you. LINDSEY: Yeah. Do you feel like, working with people with trauma and trauma coaching chose you? A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I have a long story on that. So I don’t know if you want the long version or the short version, and I want whatever version feels like you need to share. Okay. Yeah. It’s, it was a very long, in some ways, along, in some ways, not long, but it, you know, when you kind of trace back your life, You can see that the seeds were planted much further back than you initially thought. So, I mean, the seeds for what I’m doing now have been planted since I was born probably before I was born. So, I guess without getting into my entire childhood story, I experienced, all aspects of trauma from sexual trauma to physical, to emotional, psychological, and. When I started healing in my twenties, I started going to therapy and I, I spent 10 years in talk therapy and it was really helpful. And I think talk therapy can be really helpful because it helps you realize that there’s more to, your experience than just your automatic responses. So, you know, we go through life and we have these, we have these reactions and we think that. There’s no other choice. We almost think like, Oh, that person made me do that. You made me say that you made me have that reaction and what I took away, I mean, it took a lot of things away, but I think the biggest thing I took away from talk therapy was the ability to see that I have choice. I don’t have to be this, person who just responds automatically to things. So, so that, that was a 10 year journey. And then from there I left, I just had it had a knowing that it was time to leave. And right around that time, I was healing from my own health problems. And I know you shared a little bit with me before this, about some of the things you’ve been through and. I have an autoimmune disease and my autoimmune disease was already diagnosed, but, I had a real bad flare up of my symptoms where I couldn’t get help. I was trying to do different diet changes. And my, the traditional medical system was not supportive of that. And every time I brought it up, I was like, can I do diet change? They were like, Nope, it’s not going to help just take the medication. So I spiraled downward and I was in a really bad place. And I actually ended up out of work for a month. I took a leave of absence. My son was maybe two and I couldn’t take care of him. My husband was taking care of both of us and I wasn’t working. And I didn’t really think I was going to make it, you know, I wasn’t in a physical state of it wasn’t like cancer or something like that, but I just didn’t feel like I was going to be able to survive. It was so debilitating and. And that moment I prayed. And I, so my background is I very, unlike you, very polar opposite of you. I wasn’t raised with any religion and I didn’t believe in God. And based on what I experienced in childhood, I believed that if there was a God, he wouldn’t let, what happened to me happened to me. So I was an atheist and I’m very dogmatic atheist in my twenties. So, the fact that I got to this point where I prayed, I think says a lot about how broken I was, how caught in that web I was. So I was literally the dragon fly and I had fought and fought and fought and I was completely depleted without options. So I just kind of looked up and I was like, Hey God, which sounds weird if you’re out there, like I really, I need some help. I don’t know what else to do. And that was the moment that everything changed and I started to get help. Literally, the next day I found a naturopathic doctor who was right under my nose. I had been searching and searching and searching, and there was this amazing woman who was. Literally right under my nose in the town I live and I never found her before and suddenly she popped right up and I went to see her and she, started being on supplements and helped me so, so much. So from there physically felt better. I got my strength back. I went back to work and that was in late 2017, early 2018. And I. Steadily started following these breadcrumbs of faith where I was like, okay there is something, I don’t know what that thing is. I don’t know if it is God or what I could call it, but something helped me. And I believe that there is more to me and more to this than I could have ever fathomed. And so more and more things started happening, synchronicities that are just. You, you have to experience them to believe them. And I think anybody who is on a spiritual path knows that it’s not intellectual. It’s like a full body experience where you just know. And so it kept happening, kept happening until I was drawn to take a Reiki class and I started to study reiki and energy healing. And I sort of felt like I was activated. I felt like my gifts were activated this ability to work with energy. I ended up in Sedona, Arizona. It was like a call. I heard it in a meditation. I heard the word Sedona. That point, I didn’t even know where it was. I thought Sedona was maybe in New Mexico or I didn’t know where it was. I heard the word Sedona and then I was booking. I was booking a trip. So I, I ended up in Sedona. I ended up getting an an aura reading . And she was like, you’re a master healer, like. Okay. I don’t even know if I believe in this. This is probably bullshit. And then I got like more and more confirmation. It was like in the same span of a few days, it was like, you’re a master healer. You’re a master healer. You’re a master healer. And I’m like, okay, maybe, I don’t know. Let me just see how this plays out. So I keep doing the Reiki training. I go on and get my, a Reiki master teacher level. And then I start working with people. I just invite people over to my house for free, like, Hey, could you be my Guinea pig? Can I do some Reiki on you? And that was really life-changing to see that that it wasn’t all in my mind, the first few sessions I was like, am I doing this right? Is this actually working? And then little by little people were sharing their experiences with me. And I was receiving messages for them. Like literally I was getting messages from their loved ones from spirit. I started sharing those messages with them and they were crying and they were, they were saying, how did you know that? Like I was getting people’s grandmother’s names and they were like, how could you know that name? How was that possible? And I didn’t know, I didn’t know how it was possible. And I had to really let my ego. Just shut up and sit down because it wasn’t about me. It was just about what wanted to come through for that person. And so that led me down this path of, quitting my job quitting my corporate job, where I was, working in nonprofit. I had been working in nonprofit for a while, had a master’s degree in, I have a master’s degree in public administration. It feels like a past life. So I said like I had, I used to have, but I still have a master’s degree. I’m just not in that sector anymore. So I quit my job last summer and I decided I was going to just do it full time and trust and really follow these breadcrumbs. And that’s what led me to coaching. And so now I don’t really do, I don’t do single sessions of energy healing, but I do work, energetically that’s part of the work with my clients. LINDSEY: Wow. That’s a fantastic story. And I mean, really you let go, like you stopped fighting and you let go. And, it’s just such a beautiful picture to me of how. You know, people can call it God universe source, universal consciousness, the ancestors, whatever their preferred term is. But really whatever that thing is that entity or I call it universal consciousness. It wants us to be well, and for some of us, we have blocks in our lives where we’re not well. And most of the time in my experience, those blocks come from trauma. But the universe universal consciousness, God puts people in our path who have dealt with those blocks and who are opened up to receiving those messages. And it’s so much different than religion. But I just believe it’s because source loves us and we are all love and we are all one. And the only way that all of humanity is going to get better as for each and every one of us to individually deal with our shit and heal. Like when we start healing individually, we start healing the collective. SHELBI: I completely agree. Oh my gosh. I completely agree. No, I, I believe that that’s part of my mission. I think you and I are part of the same web that’s coming through for like, it’s it’s we were, we were chosen or maybe we chose it, but we have a mission to carry out, which is to help people heal so that we can collectively heal. LINDSEY: Yeah. And, and so that for me is why trauma is such a big. piece of the puzzle and because nothing bad, like Wars, famines, family dynamics that are weird and, and bad. even a lot of disease like would not exist if it wasn’t for trauma and like the energy that trauma injects into a person or a community or a nation or the globe, Just lowers the, the vibe of everything. Right. And so I’m curious if you can talk more about, on your, about page, you talk about the hidden programming. So I’m wondering if you could speak to the hidden programming that trauma programs into us and how we can excavate that and how we can begin to turn off the program and get off of autopilot and get into, the mode of, you know, not resisting, but letting go and just like flowing and letting the healing come through. SHELBI: Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, first I want to say about trauma that I believe that trauma is not an event. It’s how we experienced the event. And I think, I think trauma is inevitable. I don’t think there’s a way to eradicate trauma. I think that we can build resiliency and teach children teach our future generations, how to allow their, their little nervous systems to process what’s happening. And, it’s gonna take some time for us to learn how to do that with our children. but hopefully through the generations to come, we can, we can build the sense of, Understanding that painful experiences are unavoidable and what we do with them and how we honor our bodies and our whole system. How we honor that is how we heal. And we are a culture and a society that just stuffs everything down and sanitizes everything. And so I think, I just want him to say that first, because when it comes to the hidden programming We have to look at it holistically, you know, as your approach with this podcast. And I think, it starts with understanding that you’re more than your mind. And that’s what I usually say to most of my clients who I just, you know, first start working with them. I have to do a lot of education with them that you are not just here and I’m touching my head for those that are listening. You’re not just here in your head. You’re, your body has its own wisdom. It has a mind. They call it the body mind for a reason. And we have, hidden programming that lives in the body and even in the mind. And there’s so much to say, like from the standpoint of the brain, we think of the subconscious as being a part of the brain, but , from what I’ve read, I believe it’s actually in the body. Like I think our subconscious lives in the body and researchers and scientists talk about the limbic brain and how we have, you know, we have the reptilian brain, we have the lower brain and we have the upper brain. And I think that it’s important to kind of understand that some of the things that we do, these these automatic hidden programs. They’re coming from that lower brain. They’re coming from the limbic brain where we were. we ancestrally brought it in with us. It’s in our lineage, it’s literally in our DNA that we are wired to have certain behaviors. And if there’s certain, triggers for us and then. that small part, that upper brain, they say it’s like 5% or less. I think they actually say it’s less than 1%. I think, I think Joe Dispenza says it’s less than 1% of our brain that we can actually use to change our patterns. We’re relying on that to make any changes in our life. So I like to explain that to people because it takes a lot of the pressure off. Like we beat ourselves up so much and we think that we’re lazy and we have no willpower and we’re just shitty. And it’s like, no, we’re all trying so hard to fight these programs that are just ingrained in us and God to think that we’re still thriving. Those people that are, are still doing all the things that they can do to better themselves. That’s amazing. Like that’s a huge Testament to human spirit and. So I think that’s like the first thing I would say to anybody listening is if you want to uncover your hidden programming, realize that realize how pervasive that hidden programming is. And it’s not just the subconscious, it’s also the beliefs that you have. Like beliefs can be changed. Beliefs. Aren’t true. Beliefs are just things that you’ve chosen to claim to, but you can actually change your beliefs. So I’ll stop there because that was a lot. LINDSEY: But no, it was all great. Something that has been true in my own life cause I had a lot of programming too. I mean, I had, codependent behaviors and tendencies and fawning is a big, trauma response for me. For me it was like, literally every part of myself, every belief, every mindset, every, feeling everything had to be examined under a microscope. And I had to be able to look at it objectively and ask, what purpose does this serve for me? And nine times out of 10, it was like, Oh, this the purpose that this is actually serving for me is it’s keeping me stuck or it’s keeping me from moving forward in my life or it’s keeping me, mostly stuck. I mean, really stuck is the best way that I know how to say it because, you know, you On your website. It wasn’t until I learned how to release the hidden programming that was keeping me stuck on a hamster wheel. Like you say that on your website, which is interesting because I just looked down at my phone and I saw the word stuck and, I call it a carousel, but it’s just like, you go around and around and around and around. And it’s like, when do I ever get off of this? And I think that at least in my experience with me personally, and also with friends and family members is because that hidden programming is so strong and that’s, what’s coming through 99% of the time, we kind of fall into victim mode where it’s like, well, this is just how it’s always going to be bad. Things happen to me. This runs in my family. And so there there’ve been begins to be all of these you know, I mean, I’m just going say it excuses for why we put ourselves in this box and we’re like, I can’t change and get out of this box because this is just, this is just the way that it is. And you know, I’m so glad you mentioned Joe Dispenza. I love his, his teachings. And, this year, actually earlier this year, read the book, breaking the habit of being yourself and you know, how he talks about that. If you want to get unstuck and make a reality, that’s different from. The past that you have to start using that 1% of, you know, that part of you that can align with the possibility that you want and get out of alignment with. This is just going to happen to me. This is just the way things are like, if we’re in alignment with the energy of. This is just the way things are. I can’t do anything to change this, that things happen and my family, I, there’s nothing I can do then that’s the energy that we’re aligned with. And so that’s the reality we’re creating. So I’m wondering if you can speak to, and I don’t want to dance around this. Like I really want to just come out and say that that is victim mentality and it’s. It’s not a judgment. It’s not intended to make people feel bad. It’s not intended to invalidate their experiences by any means, but we cannot keep living the present way that we’re living and expect a different outcome. So I’m wondering if you could speak to, to that and how maybe in your own clients, like, do you ever get to a point where you’re like, actually what you’re operating under is a victim mentality and that we need to work on that. SHELBI: Oh my gosh all the time. And it’s funny, we all get caught in that, you know, I, I still get caught in it. And, it’s about having that awareness of the patterns. So I think the first thing that I want to say is that whenever someone is in that moment where they want to change, they don’t, they see that they’re in a victim pattern or are they, they say the phrase? Well, that’s just the way it always is. It’s always been, so that’s the way it’s always going to be. I think it’s an incredible opportunity for compassion because. I believe compassion is the only way to heal. And it’s not just compassion for someone else. It’s compassion for ourselves. It’s the hardest thing in the world to have compassion for ourselves and for what we’ve been through, because we look back in our experiences and we say, Oh, it wasn’t that bad, but it was. Yeah, it was, it really was, it really was that bad. And so what I do with my clients is when they get to that point of, and I see this a lot where, you know, we’ll be making a lot of progress and then everything will be a lot better. We’ll look back at their intake form and we’ll be like, wow, you’ve achieved all your goals in, in three months. And we have, we still have three more months. Cause I work with people for six months and they’re like, well, you know, I. I feel great. I can’t think of anything better than this, so maybe I’ll just stay here and it’s this fear of like, could it actually be better? And at that point, we often have to go back and, and literally offer more compassion to the the inner child that, felt that they were unworthy, unlovable too much, that they didn’t receive exactly what it was that they needed. And we have to really let that child mourn and grieve and kick and scream. I mean, that’s a lot of the work that I do is honoring those experiences that, that we are so afraid to let out of the box. And so it’s through that process of like holding that little child who, who needs you, who needs the adult, you to honor it, them and hold them the way that your parents didn’t. And maybe they did the best they could, but no parent is perfect. So nobody gets out unscathed and we all have to learn to be our own parents, our own, divine, masculine, divine, feminine. So. When it comes to getting out of the victim mentality, there’s this, there’s this compassion needed for ourselves because I think a lot of us in the personal development space we’re very self-critical. So we go into the space of wanting to grow because we want to perfect ourselves. And that in and of itself is a trauma response. That very self perfecting mechanism is a trauma response. And I look back at the 10 years I spent in talk therapy. And I had this this like, Oh, I’m superior. I’ve been in 10 years of talk therapy. Like, it was almost like building this protection around myself, my own psyche that I, I was, un-criticizable, nobody could criticize me because I was already working on my shit. And so the more that we kind of try to perfect and perfect and perfect, and, get off of that victim cycle. I think there’s a slippery slope that we can go down where. We, we stood up and we armor up and we’re like, I’m not a victim because look at my resume of self-development. I couldn’t possibly be a victim, but I think that it’s, it’s very subtle. And, the best framework that I’ve seen for understanding this is, it’s called the drama triangle. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Stephen Cartman. So he was a psychologist and he created this, framework and it’s called the drama triangle also known as the victim triangle. And so if you think of a triangle, there’s three points and we all, often cycle between the three points. So one of the points is victim. One of the points is persecutor and one of the points is rescuer. So those people that are in victim mode are often not seeking help. They’re they’re not seeking personal development, personal growth there they’re of the mindset that, life is hard. It is not going to get better. This is the way things are poor me. they really see themselves as powerless. They’re hopeless. and they’re looking for a rescuer. They’re looking for a savior and then. People in the rescuer standpoint, they’re the ones that are like, codependently taking care of everybody. So they’re the givers, the martyrs, yes. Raising our hands for that. and it, it makes them feel really good that they could be a caretaker. And when they don’t have someone to take care of, they don’t know what their worth is. So their worth comes from being responsible, being caretaker, being good at that. And then it cycles into persecutor where you have this kind of superiority complex of I’m. I’m above it all. Like I am not a victim. I’m also not a rescuer, but I’m unwilling to get vulnerable. I’m I’m willing to get messy and I’m going to, I’m going to stay in this little protective bubble, and I’m going to blame, I’m going to point out everybody else’s flaws and all of us can cycle through these in moments, literally in moments like we can go from, I see it a lot in myself in parenting. So for myself, with my son, I can become a persecutor. When I’ve told him to do something, I’ve asked him to do something and he doesn’t do it. And I say, well, do it. Or else. Or else, whatever, of course I would never, I would never physically hurt him, but it will be like a consequence. Do it, or else you’re not getting dessert, do it, or else I’m going to take away TV. So there’s that. And I don’t want to make anyone think that that’s necessarily like abusive. That’s not necessarily abusive, but it’s a mentality of I’m going to control. I’m going to control this by I’m the one with the power. So I’m going to control the situation and I’m not a parenting expert. I’m just saying, I noticed myself doing that and so I can have an opportunity to switch from that persecutor mentality where he doesn’t have any choice, I’m just going to tell him what he needs to do or else I’m going to take away whatever he wants. But I then have an opportunity just to relax, just to step back and say, what are the other choices? And that’s, I think how we get out of the victim triangle is when we step back, take a breath and let ourselves be open to other possibilities, like. What is possible in that space. I really don’t know, but I’m going to sit here and I’m going to wait and see. LINDSEY: Yeah. I haven’t heard of the drama triangle or the victim triangle before, but, I will link to that in the show notes of this episode so that other people can find out, I, as you were mentioning the, is it the persecutor, is that one of the points of the triangle, the persecutor. So there’s the, there’s the victim, the rescuer and the persecutor. SHELBI: Yep. LINDSEY: Okay. So as you were talking about the persecutor role, I just sort of had this like awareness of, people and, I probably have been guilty of this myself of, in the personal development space where they’re like, I, you know, I’ve worked on my shit, you know, it’s almost this like, Wokeness comparison, you know, like, like, Oh, let’s just see how woke everybody is. Let’s see if I’m more woke than you are. But then, I don’t know. It’s almost like, backhandedly kind of slapped at you, I guess is the only way I’d experienced it. And I’ve actually experienced that with somebody where I was in a relationship, just a friendship with someone and, they’d been growing and investing into themselves and whatever, and I think it is human nature too. Especially as a trauma response to compare like where I am versus where somebody else’s, especially if I’m in an intimate friendship or relationship with another person is, if they’re growing I’m using air quotes here. If they’re growing faster than I am, if they’re figuring their stuff out faster than I am, if they’re, you know, vibing higher than I am, or like, whatever. And it feels like this toxic sort of wokeness, I guess, because a lot of times I think those people do, they have the sense that they are. Further along with the process and, and they don’t, you know, it’s the ego, it’s the lower self, the lower brain, whatever, but it’s just, it again, it kind of sneaks in the back door and it even happens in the spiritual community or the woke space or whatever. I don’t know. That was a little bit rambly, but that was just kind of the first thing that came into my head, as you were talking about, the persecutors is like even, even people who are super woke. SHELBI: Yeah. And that’s, what’s so surprising about this is that I had this perception that if you’re a therapist, if you’re a spiritual leader, a healer, anything like that, that you are automatically going to be. I want to say it, that your ego won’t be driving the bus, but that’s not true. Our ego is like the worst backseat driver and it’ll reach over and it’ll grab the wheel and we have to be very vigilant and say, okay, No, it’s not time for you to drive. This is a collective, car ride where we’re all participating. And I see ourselves as human beings as being a society. so there’s this, this framework called internal family systems, and it’s all about the many parts of ourselves that are kind of all trying to protect us and keep us safe. And the ego is trying to protect ourselves and keep us safe and is trying to do the best that it can. But in its attempt to be the best most woke person. We’re actually missing the fact that we’re being driven by fear and we’re being driven by ego and I’ve been caught in that trap a lot. And I still get caught in that trap. And then I just have to go, Oh, I’m doing it again. Okay. Let me take a step back. Yeah. LINDSEY: And obviously inject compassion, compassions and situation because you can’t break that sort of thing from a place of perfectionism or judgment or condemnation or something like it really has to be done in compassion. So I’m going to go back to earlier when you were talking about that you believe, that the programming lives in the body and not in the brain. and I’m wondering, I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. so. You call it the limbic brain, the reptilian brain. I call it the autonomic nervous system, you know, just that part of our bodies that’s always scanning for danger and that activates the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the fight or flight response and all of that. And how the only way our bodies know we’re in danger is if we have a physical response to danger. So, our heart starts to race or our muscles tense up as we prepare to fight or flee or we have these physical symptoms. And so. I feel like there’s this belief that, in, in Western medicine, especially both natural and, allopathic, that symptoms are bad and that we need to try to get rid of symptoms. And so the answer is I either needed to change my diet and take a bunch of supplements to get rid of these symptoms. Or I need to take some pharmaceuticals to get rid of these symptoms, but it’s always with the end goal of Symptom management and, you know, certainly there’s nothing wrong with making things easier for yourself. But we often take these physical clues that our bodies are giving us, which are symptoms and we want to repress them down and stuff them like I need you to go on and go away so I can live my life, you know? And, I think that you stated it so well, whenever you said that the subconscious programming lives in the body and not in the brain, and I’m just wondering if you could elaborate more on, the subconscious programming being in our bodies and maybe you don’t even agree with what I said about people judging symptoms as bad or maybe you do. I don’t know. I just love to hear your thoughts about that. SHELBI: Yeah, no, I agree. I do agree. I think that we are always trying to treat the leaves of the tree, not the root of the tree. And that is a huge part of the work that you and I are doing is being like, hey guys, actually the roots the roots needs some help and the roots are the problem. So I think the metaphor that I like for the body is being an iceberg. And when you look at an iceberg, like a cross section of an iceberg, you see the tip and you’re like, wow, that’s okay. That’s the problem. Let’s work on that. But underneath the surface, it’s this huge, massive, dark shadowy place that it seems inaccessible and it seems impossible. So it’s like, well, what’s the easiest thing to do. And so what we ended up doing is we kind of, I see it as taking, a hairdryer and trying to melt the iceberg. And we’re just trying to melt the top part of it, but we’re never going to reach the deeper part. So in terms of it living in the body, what I do with people is I help them see. Not only see, but I all the senses, so, feel and know and touch and just sense all of the things that are happening in their body. And it starts with like sort of a sensory awakening, a sensory awareness because people don’t often even know that they have a body. That’s that’s usually the first problem is, we don’t identify with the body. And so that little aches and pains, we just take painkiller and go on our way. And we really don’t even give it a second thought. So for a lot of people, that’s where they need to start is like you have a body and, you know, a headache is actually telling you something, there’s something that you need to deal with here that is not just taking a pain killer. So, there’s so much to say about that, but once you’re past that point, you realize that you have a body then how to, how to deal with it. How to like, actually let it talk to you. It’s this process of, kind of feeling in the dark. I see it as like feeling around in the dark and, and noticing the textures and the sounds and the, the sensations of the body. And I love to guide people into their body, just through closing their eyes and biting them to breathe and send their breath into a place in their body that is tense or tight. And it’s literally, that’s the excavation. It’s the point at which you, you allow yourself to be still enough to hear the call inside of you. So in any given moment where, you know, if you’re listening to this right now, like I’ll invite you to close, close your eyes and take a breath and, and ask your body, what is it that I need to release in this moment? What is it that needs to be held? I see our bodies as like, a house with a hundred doors. And in any given moment in your life, there’s a room that has shit in it that needs you to, to honor it. It needs you to be brave enough to go down, to find it, open the door, walk inside and hold what’s in those boxes. And they’re often memories and they’re often things that wouldn’t even seem important or significant, but when you open that box and you see, Oh, this is a memory of, me going to the park with my grandfather. Huh? That’s interesting. Why is that the memory that needs to come up right now? Why does that need to be held right now? Well, if you sit with it long enough, you’ll discover that maybe your grandfather was the only person who ever made you feel safe and maybe your whole system is feeling really unsafe right now. So maybe you need to sit with that and let your body feel that it can be safe. It can, it can be safe. And so you’re, you’re literally giving yourself experiences through excavating these memories. And I see it as like taking, what’s been stored in the body and putting it in its proper place, not just stuffing it in the basement, but putting it in its proper place and honoring it and asking it what it needs. What do you need from me body? Like it could be in your knee, your hip, your back, your shoulders, your wrists, your hands. It could be literally anywhere, but when you actually ask it, what it needs, you’ll be so surprised. It’s like these simple. Simple shifts that we can do that will actually release so much of our physical pain. So much of our suffering. So much of our psychological, programs just in the body. I know that sounds very esoteric, but, it is the most powerful work we could do. LINDSEY: Yeah, it doesn’t sound esoteric to me. Probably just because I’ve experienced it for myself, but it took me awhile to get there because you know, like you said, most people are not living in their bodies. They’re completely disconnected from their body. And so they experienced one little sensation and rather than being curious about the sensation and being like, Oh, what are you saying body? Like, it’s just, you know, I’m going to take an Advil and keep going with my life. Cause I don’t have time for this, but I think it takes practice to get out of your head and get into your body. It’s not something that comes naturally to most of us, certainly not for me. I am your chronic over-thinker. And so I’m wondering, if you could maybe just speak to newbies or even me, I’ll ask this for myself. Like, how can I know if I’m having this pain or this sensation? And I say an, a pause and say, okay, body, like, what is it that you’re trying to tell me? Like, How do I know that what I’m hearing is my body and not my brain manufacturing, an answer. SHELBI: Yeah. Oh my gosh. That’s such a good question. I think that that goes down to trust, and being open and curious. I’ve worked with a lot of people who want to develop their intuition and they want to develop this like body connection. And, they’re, they’re living so much in the mind, but they don’t think it’s possible. So you have to overcome that first. You have to allow yourself to get curious. So I’d say the first thing to do is to get curious and tap into that sense of imagination, because it really is all imagination. You can think it’s bullshit. But if you allow yourself to play and be creative and tap into the inner child, that the part of you that can imagine just picking up a paint brush and just changing the color of your room, like literally look at the walls of the room you’re in right now and imagine them a different color. You’re doing it. You’re, you’re doing it. And if you can tap into that playfulness and that openness, then when you go into your body and you ask, you could even do a journaling exercise right now where you spend five minutes closing your eyes and breathing, just breathing, letting all the thoughts that come into your mind, letting them be okay. And not judging them and just noticing them saying, Oh, okay, well, I’m going to go back to my breath. Go back to your breath, go back to your breath. And then after five minutes, just write down, you know, dialogue say you could write your name. At the top, like you’re right writing lines of a script, you say, you know, my name’s Shelby colon. And then I asked my question, body, what, what needs to be released right now? And then you just sit and breathe with yourself and then you write the next line, you write body colon, and then you write whatever comes into your imagination. And, you could say it’s bullshit, but what would be the point of that? Yeah. What would, how would that benefit you? Can’t you just have fun with it in play, because if you allow yourself to play and be imaginative, then maybe you can relieve your suffering. And I think that’s worth it. LINDSEY: Yeah. I’ve never heard somebody describe journaling exercise like that before. I mean, really, I think that that’s really profound to just have a conversation like you’re writing a script and log back and forth between the body and, and you, and, If you haven’t already developed that into something, like, I think you’ve got a product idea right there, because that could be an amazing, you know, journaling exercise that a lot of people aren’t doing and you know, something that I do is I do a lot of body talk. And so when I feel something, like most recently I’ve been experiencing some pain in my right hip that seems to be pretty unexplainable. And, like I haven’t hurt myself or anything. It’s just there. And, I just tell my body, like, you know, thank you for talking to me. Thank you for letting me know that something is there. I’m doing everything that I can to help you right now. And whenever you’re ready to heal and be well and leave, I gave you permission to go because you’ve let me know that there’s a problem. So you, you don’t need to stick around any longer. A lot of people, I think, and for myself, I noticed this as well, very early on in my journey. I heard people talking about, Oh, you just need to let go, just let, go and accept, go with the flow, you know, whatever. And to be honest, I was just like, what the fuck does that even mean? I remember very distinctly like this. This is going to tell you how desperate I was at one point I remember Googling, what does letting go mean? Because I kept hearing all these people being like, just let go, just let go. And I’m like, I really don’t know what that even means. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know what that feels like. And so it happened little ways first, it was just like letting go of, the need to be right letting go of, controlling the conversation, letting go of plans that got waylaid, you know, just like little things. And then I began to familiarize myself with, Oh, okay. That’s what that looks like. And, so at the beginning of learning to let go and acceptance and all of that, I sort of had this ulterior motive of like, if I let go of this and accept it for what it is it’s going to go away. And that has been something that I’ve had to check myself. And also, because it’s like, no, the letting go or the accepting of what is doesn’t necessarily mean that this thing is going to go away. That can’t be the motive. The motive actually just has to be accepting it for what it is and leaving it at that. And so when I first started doing the body talk, it was like, if I talk to my body, then whatever’s wrong is going to go away because I will have acknowledged it and I will talk to it and I will loved it and whatever, and like, it can go away, but actually that might not be what happens and so it’s still continuing to stick around , and I don’t know why, but I also don’t let myself get stuck in the victim mode because my hip hurts. I wanna do whatever I can while I can, and show my body that it is safe to still move and be active and do the things that it wants to do, even if it’s painful. Like I can sit with pain and be okay. SHELBI: Yeah. That’s beautiful. I think that’s a beautiful place to start though. Like even with the motive of wanting to relieve yourself of that pain, I think that’s, that’s where we all start and we have to meet ourselves there and then allow ourselves to it’s like you have to have a two way dialogue because I, the way you described it was. So beautiful that you were so loving towards your body and saying, I honor you and I understand, and when you’re ready to go, you can go. But it’s almost like if you’re a parent or if you can imagine having the child that you’re taking care of is sick and so maybe, maybe our approach is to give chicken soup and, you know, snuggle up on the couch and give them, give them love. But if we don’t ask that child, like, how are you feeling? And what do you need then we’re assuming a lot. And it needs to be a dialogue between you and your body, where your body actually says. No, actually I would like tomato soup and I don’t want to sit on the couch. I actually want to make a fort for myself under the table. Like they’re literally just small, subtle tweaks that we need to listen and hear and give rather than it just, it feels like a one-way dialogue and it needs to be a two-way dialogue. So that’s where literally giving your body a voice by doing a script. And this is, this is a process that I do have, it’s not for sale, but it’s just a process that I use with my clients. And we literally give the body of voice and the body will say, I mean, I can’t even tell you the things that the bodies I’ve worked with have said, or my body. A lot of times the things my, my clients need are to write rage letters, honestly, rage letters are huge. They’re so healing. I have a whole process for writing rage letter, and like safely doing it and properly kind of honoring it and all of that. but through that process of like, is that what the body needs? Okay. Yes, let’s go do it. We’re going to provide the thing that body said. Boom, instantly the symptoms are gone. LINDSEY: Wow. Yeah. Okay, just need to rage. SHELBI: And that’s exactly it. They just needed to rage and is the last thing that you want to do. I’m thinking of one client in particular, who she’d been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. I kept encouraging her because her body had spoken. It was, it was, her body had said that that’s what it needed. So I was saying like, Hey, have you, have you honored your body? Have you done it? Have you written the rage letter? Hadn’t done it. Hadn’t done it. And all this all in the interim period of, I think a couple of weeks, all this stuff had happened. She got sick. There were lots of things going on in the family that she was getting, kind of distracted by. And those are things that happen as a way to distract us like these different parts of us that are trying to keep us safe are like, Ooh, that’s really scary. There’s one part of us that there’s one part of us that have spoken, let’s say, it’s the hip. And the hip says, I need a rage letter. I need a rage letter because I need to let this out. Well, there’s all these other parts of your system that are like, no, Nope. We put you there for a reason. You’re not getting out and we’re going to make you sick now and we’re going to make you distracted now. And so it’s about seeing the context of the whole landscape and honoring that there are parts of us that are scared, but there are also parts of us that are brave. And those parts of us that are brave, we need to capitalize on that. And so she finally wrote the letters and then she told me after, like, I can’t believe it. This pain is gone. And I was like, yeah, duh, like that’s what your body said it needed. So like, yeah, it happens. It’s it’s instant. And, you know, there’s always this surprise of like, I didn’t know that there was so much there. I didn’t know. I was so angry with my mother. I didn’t know that was all there. And when you allow it to come out of you, it’s, it’s clean. Like, there’s this. His book called My Grandmother’s Hands by ResmaA Mennakem. And he talks about clean pain and dirty pain and dirty pain is the kind of pain that you fight that you bypass and clean pain is where you just it’s like the taking of the sharpest knife and just cutting it directly as opposed to this dull edge serrated knife, where you’re just like hacking and sawing away. Wouldn’t it be better if you could just slice it cleanly and then let it heal and give it what it needs. That’s what it means to talk with your body and just honor it. LINDSEY: Yeah. That’s so beautiful. you know, this is third time in a week that my grandmother’s hands has come up, in my life. So I am taking that as a, that is a sign from universal consciousness that, that needs to go into my library because, it has come up a lot. Um, before we hop off, I’d love for you to tell people how they can find you, how they can work with you if they want to, what types of services or products you offer? I want to make sure that I link to everything that you mentioned in the show notes. SHELBI: Yeah. Cool. so you can find me on Instagram at inner dot light dot healing. And my website is ShelbyDubord.com. I have a four week course called embodied healing, which is a lot of what we talked about today that I run stick cyclicly. So I don’t have a date for my next cycle, but that will be coming up, in the near future I anticipate, and it’s basically about going from being a floating head and living up here in your mind to understanding what’s in the body learning how to communicate, and, and actually taking those four weeks to consciously explore in a safe container with other people. And it’s been the first round I did, was really, really powerful for the, the folks that were kind of creating their own little community and saying, Oh my gosh, I’m not alone. I’m not alone in this. So that was really beautiful. So that course embodied healing and then. My, my main work is my one-on-one coaching program, which is called the trauma transformation intensive. And, that’s actually been closed for upgrades. I call them upgrades because I’ve been getting these kinds of downloads, about how to how to bring this more into the world, how this program wants to be birthed into its next iteration. So right now it’s shut down, but I imagine in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be, re releasing it on my website. So if you’re interested in one-on-one work, where you can go really, really deep and heal a lot of your past trauma and open up those rooms and excavate, then that would be the program for you. So those are my two main programs. LINDSEY: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Shelbi. I really appreciate our conversation today. it was really nice to connect with you. and I still feel the same, like intuitive connection with you that I felt the day that I found her Instagram profile. So, I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun. SHELBI: Same. I’m so excited. I think this is going to help a lot of people and I can’t wait to hear the, all the other episodes you’ve put out. LINDSEY Are you ready to connect with your inner child and start reparenting yourself and get out of your head and into your body. I know i am. I will have links to all of the resources and Shelby’s programs that she offers on her website. In the show notes of the podcast, you can find the show notes at lindseylockett.com forward slash podcast. And this is episode eight. If you end up purchasing either her four week course or joining her for one-on-one coaching and her trauma transformation intensive make sure you let Shelbi know that Lindsey from the holistic trauma healing podcast referred you, and as always, you can find me and all the updates about the podcast on Instagram @iamlindseylockett. [OUTRO MUSIC]