The Emotional Alchemy Podcast
Welcome to the Emotional Alchemy Podcast where safety is medicine, connection is never automated and everything is relational.
The Emotional Alchemy Podcast
124. WEBS OF TRUTH: Defining Trust Dynamics in Coaching Practice with Lindsey Lockett
Webs of Truth is a monthly sub-podcast of The Rooted Business Podcast with Spiritual Business Mentor Kat HoSoo Lee and the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast with Holistic Trauma Educator Lindsey Lockett.
In this conversation, Spiritual Business Mentor Kat HoSoo Lee and Holistic Trauma Educator Lindsey Lockett explore the concept of responsibility from both the perspective of coach and client by examining the emotional wounds our clients have carried from past coaching experiences. This is a nuanced discussion that asks us to intentionally dissect how we hold space, invite questions and uphold boundaries to create transparency and safety for our clients.
As trauma-informed coaches ourselves, we firmly believe in empowering clients to see the coach’s role as a guide, not an authority figure. You’ll hear us drawing upon examples from our own experiences as practitioners to share how we embody this energy of guide. We hope to inspire you to think about how you too can create a similar culture of trust that your clients can sink into.
Resources:
- Kat raves about her new accountant Rocco Tundo who will be teaching in her Energetics of Money for Spiritual Entrepreneurs course in 2024.
Lindsey Lockett is a trauma educator and coach who specializes in working with the autonomic nervous system. Through private and group coaching and one-of-a-kind workshop experiences, Lindsey guides her clients and students toward building trusting relationships with their bodies. She is the host of the Holistic Trauma Healing podcast and lives on the North Shore of Lake Superior on her 5-acre homestead with her husband, 2 teenagers, 2 dogs, and 10 chickens.
Connect with Lindsey:
Kat HoSoo Lee is an Emotional Alchemy Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Emotional Alchemy Podcast.
She loves playing in the space where science and spirituality converge because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. In her work, she educates space-holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so they can deepen their practices of listening and presence which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for others.
As a Spiritual Business Mentor, she guides soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. The work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, relational marketing and purposeful service.
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:It's like that. My recording was like not working. Yeah, we're all good now. Hello and welcome to our second episode of Webs of Truth.
Speaker 2:If y'all are catching us right here, my dear friend Lindsay and I have decided to do a sub podcast, and it really just comes from a semi selfish desire to just continue to have conversations with Lindsay, and we'll just record them and share them with y'all because I just love picking her brain and I think that we have a lot of fun together.
Speaker 2:So today's conversation is a bit inspired by some coaching client interactions I've been having.
Speaker 2:I'm finding that several not all of my clients are coming in with coaching wounds, and what I mean by that is, by the time they get to me they've probably gone through a few coaches and inadvertently I don't think that the coaches are doing this on purpose, but inadvertently they bring something to the table, whether it's an emotional thing or a tactical thing, and the coach is not able to hold space for them, and it happens to just like slam on the like not good enough, too much wound, and so I want to talk about what that looks like in the coaching industry.
Speaker 2:I know that you've got a lot in the like medical industry part, and I think that we can sort of jam on that a little bit as well, because I think that they're very, very similar. It essentially comes down to practitioners not doing the work to be able to hold a safe space for folks. And how can we as practitioners because most of the folks who are listening from my realm, I think, some of the folks from your realm but how can we as practitioners do better for our clients? And then, from the client perspective, if that shows up, what is some of the languaging support that you can reach for so that you don't end up carrying a wound as well? So yeah, that's kind of the framework that I wanted to throw out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good stuff. I love it. I'm thinking of one client in particular that I had earlier this year. She and I started working together and she was honestly one of my favorite clients. Like she was such a dream to work with. She was so open, so willing to try anything. She stayed in touch with me on Boxer. Like I loved, loved working with this woman and she was a coach herself. So I don't it never came up that she had had any negative experiences with other coaches, but she had had a really traumatizing medical experience, like not in the sense of like a neglectful doctor or like medical malpractice or something like that but she went to the emergency room and was having a panic attack but didn't know she was having a panic attack, because most people who are with a panic attack think they're having a heart attack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:So she didn't know that she wasn't having a heart attack, she was just having a panic attack. But she went to the ER. And what do you do whenever you're having a panic attack? Like, physiologically, your heart rate is really really fast and your breathing is really really shallow and you're super, super anxious and sometimes there's even pain in your chest Right, like I've had panic attacks where I thought this is it, I'm dying of heart attack. And the doctor in the ER said something to her that I'm sure to him it was like he's trying to be a good doctor and like warn her about her health. But the way that it landed in her body was so like terrifying for her, because all he said was you know, it's really not good for your heart rate to get that high, okay, and she took that to mean my heart rate can never get high ever again, because if it does, it's it's bad, it means there's something wrong.
Speaker 3:And so while we were working together, we were exploring like perfectionism and healing from perfectionism through pleasure and play and through just doing something new and not being good at it, not being perfect at it, and just enjoying yourself while you do it. So she decided that she wanted to do some a dance class with her husband and she wanted to play pickleball. And so she found a pickleball league, joined it, found a dance class, joined it, started going and, like, the next day, sent me a boxer message. I don't know, I had so much fun at pickleball, but I noticed that my heart rate got really, really high and, like it just maybe it's just not for me because it's just making my heart rate get too high. And so something happened with the dance class. Yeah, I did this dance class, it was fun, we had fun, but my heart rate got high and I'm just afraid that this, this means I'm going to have to go back to the ER and the doctor told me not to let my heart rate get this high and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:And I was like, client, are you open to the possibility that when you are doing more strenuous physical activities, your body requires more oxygen and more blood to flow in order to give you the energy you need to do these higher cardiovascular output activities? And that means that your breathing is going to get more shallow and fast and your heart rate is going to increase, like and that doesn't mean that anything is wrong. It means that everything is right because your body is doing what it needs to do to increase oxygen and blood flow. And that had never occurred to her before. Like it was like a light bulb switched on in her brain and she was like, oh my goodness, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:So that's my example of something that a medical practitioner probably said in passing as like a warning or something, but in that tender state she held onto it and made it mean so much and carried it with her. This was in the 80s that this happened, so 40 years she had carried this belief. I can never let my heart rate get high because of what that doctor said and like, yes, that's irresponsible. I also don't think the doctor meant anything like nefarious or malicious by it, you know. So that's just one example of like how the slightest thing said that may not have any meaning to the person who's saying it can land in someone's body and it can have this huge meaning and take this like important place in their lives for a really, really long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think what I observed is similar because I worked as an acupuncturist and I worked in the fertility field and I worked alongside Western doctors for several years, I think, in particular when it comes to medical wounding if I could just like umbrella statement it a little bit For a lot of doctors and I'll put myself into this category as well, because I wasn't always the most, I'm going to say, compassionate practitioner before I had done a lot of the work that I've done Like your job becomes your job, you know, and so the things that you see 20 times a day, we don't really recognize that that's actually the first time, that that person is encountering it for the very first time. And so there's and then, especially with the medical industry, being like you have to get you know, clients in and out the door, like there's not a lot of time, there's not a lot of space to like sit in, the, like discomfort of this person hearing something for the first time and I feel like that's where a lot of the wounding comes in is like when you can't put yourself into that client, that patient's perspective and recognize that like hey, this is the first time in my industry, it would have been like this is the first time they're hearing that, like, despite the medical interventions, they didn't get enough eggs this cycle. You know, because I worked alongside a lot of IVF patients. Maybe this is the first time they're hearing that their hormones are off, you know, and that there's not an easy just like here, just take this pill, sort of an answer. And so I think that a lot of if we can sort of step outside of the framework of this is a mechanical thing and step more into someone else's experience, you know, I think that that goes such a long way, and this isn't just for, like medical and coaching industry. Like I'm actually sitting on a harshly worded letter right now to my real estate agent.
Speaker 2:My husband and I purchased this property. At the time that we purchased it, it had no well, it had no septic. It just had a barn on it. And you know, our real estate agent was like, oh yeah, like I have a ton of experience with land and land purchases, and when we asked like what sort of inspections should we do, she told us, oh, I wouldn't even, you know, worry about getting a septic inspection done. And she was like there's tons of people around here who have septic tanks. It shouldn't be a problem. And as I started, like you know, asking my friends, asking you like, is this a smart decision? Everyone was like no, go get the septic inspection done please. That's the smart thing to do.
Speaker 2:And you know, when I sort of brought it up later and was like hey, I feel kind of uncomfortable that you recommended that we didn't get the septic inspection done, and her response was well, really honestly, they only come back like there's like a 10% chance that you wouldn't have been able to put a septic there.
Speaker 2:And in my mind I'm thinking this is my entire life savings, my husband and I's entire life savings. And what if we had been? I mean, thank God the septic came back fine, but like what if we had gone into this land purchase? We can't put a septic here, which means we can't put a house here, which means that you know, out of my own ethics I would want to disclose that to any future buyers if we wanted to sell this place. So you know, I think that again, it's that situation where it's like like it was just a job for her and not recognizing that this is actually like a pretty massive decision for us. You know, same thing happens in the medical industry, where it's like if people aren't given all the information so that they can make a sovereign choice for themselves, that runs into a whole lot of stickiness, and so I think that, like for me, it's have compassion for the other person's experience and also give them as much information as you can so that they can make a sovereign and autonomous choice for themselves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, coming up is like. Sorry to interrupt, but like no go ahead. I'm just feeling really defensive on your behalf, Like I want to just like give me her phone numbers. Like, listen, bitch, I know you, like I've probably been sitting on this property for a while and you really want to sell it. But, like encouraging people not to gather as much necessary information as they need to feel good about this purchase is not the way that you need to go about selling this. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it sounds like a you know in the back of her head. She's like I just want to sell this property, like oh my. God, I've been. It's been for sale forever. I just want to sell this property. So I'm going to tell these people don't worry about a subject, inspection it's fine, you know, like?
Speaker 3:because that means that she's more likely to sell the property and she wants it off of her hands and she wants to get her check and she wants to walk away from it and go on to the next property. And like similarly different, but also similarly, I think, with medical practitioners, they seem to you know, with their like white coat attitude of like I know everything. You just need to listen to me and trust what I say. Like, don't ask questions, I don't have time for this. I have 15 minutes with you and that's all you get and I don't have time to answer your questions. And oh, you're one of those that Googles everything. Okay, right, like, just, it's like I'm the expert, so trust me and don't ask questions. And like I don't follow any coaches who do this, but I used to follow a lot more people on Instagram than I do now and I noticed coaches sort of doing the same thing. Like I have the answers.
Speaker 3:If you just go through my $10,000 program, I'm going to give you everything you need. You won't need anything else after this. We're going to fix these things. You're going to make tons of money. You're going to heal your nervous system. You're going to da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da da. And then like offering this like certainty to people of like I'm the expert, you can trust me, and then not allowing for people to ask questions, or like poke holes in that or be curious about that, or like at the end of the program, when it's over and the thing isn't fixed, like they're still struggling or whatever. Then the coach is like, oh well, you just didn't do the work, like that's real shitty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've heard that also, as you're never going to have the results that you want until you integrate. I've heard that I mean to me. When I hear that aspect of the medical industry, the coaching industry, I think that what comes up is we are just slamming on people's not enough loans.
Speaker 3:Totally.
Speaker 2:You know, and instead of doing the hard work as a practitioner, let's say in the medical space, like, why aren't my patients Googling these answers? You know, maybe it's because I'm not educating them enough and so like, if I trust my practitioner, if I trust the professional that I've hired like right now we are in the process of getting the septic dug. I love my contractor, like he has between the contractor and the soil scientists, like they both have answered all of my seemingly stupid questions, been super patient with me. I've even, like part of the process ended up being a whole lot more expensive than I was anticipating. And on the phone I remember being like fuck with my contractor and he was like okay, so that's the word of the day. And you know, what can I do to help you feel better about this? My contractor has better bedside manner than a lot of the doctors that I've worked with.
Speaker 3:And better than your realtor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Right. And so it's like if we can stop looking at these roles in our culture doctor, coach, therapist, whatever it is as being like authority figures, because also that's how we're taught to market ourselves, is like position yourself as an authority is something I've heard a lot and instead, if we can really just get down not even get down, because again that implies some sort of hierarchy but like be at the same level of our clients and say like hey, like I'm going to walk you through this and I've done this a lot of times, but you are a unique story, You're a unique person in my world, you have a unique business, and so there's likely going to be some tweaks and amendments that we have to make along the way, but like I can walk beside you as you do this work, you know, and to me, like this is how we empower our people to make their own decisions. Like, like I hate that we take decision making away from our patients and clients. I think that that is a fucking travesty and you know, the original definition of doctor is teacher.
Speaker 2:Like where did we get away from the concept of we have to teach our clients, we have to teach our patients in such a way that they feel empowered to make decisions about their own life and their own livelihood. That's going to have like pretty significant ripples in their life. You know, I don't want that responsibility. I, frankly, and it would be unfair of me to take that responsibility away from them just because they have a not enough wound. And I think that that's what we're preying on when we say I'm the authority, you have to listen to me. I have all this experience and so you, you just have to trust what I have to say, you know. So, yeah, I'll pause there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, as before you even said, the way that we position people as authority that's exactly what was coming up for me is like, as a culture, we have this really fucked up relationship where there's like hierarchies of everything. And you know, I certainly as a person like outside of being a coach, I as a person, have definitely like looked to experts and authority figures for what I should do, everything from what I should eat, to what I should wear, to what I should have in my home, to what I should consume, to like I have outsourced that a lot because you know marketing people with, with air quotes, good marketing skills, which I would say is unethical marketing skills. They position themselves as this shiny, like oh, I'm this expert and I figured it all out, so all you have to do is follow my magic formula and you're gonna, you're gonna be fine. And if I've learned anything as a coach, it is that there is no fucking magic formula. Like there is no way that I could take the process that I do with one individual and apply it over another individual without making some sort of tweak or adjustment or change, whether that's like the amount of time that it takes someone to get from point a to point B, or if it's the the way that I deliver it, like I have to have a softer delivery with some clients than I do with other clients, if it's the way that I can challenge them, like that's different from person to person.
Speaker 3:Some people are really open to challenging feedback and some people get really really upset and they feel threatened by it. And I mean this is a big reason why I don't follow a lot of coaches on the internet is because I see people using this, you know form of marketing, of positioning themselves as an authority, and their landing pages and their Instagram and their bios and all of this stuff is like this glowing resume for what an amazing coach they are and how they can fix any problem you have. But I don't, I don't think that that's real. I really just don't think it's real.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it's. It's interesting that you bring that up because I've been doing a lot of my own sort of digging into sales pages and other coaches, like landing pages and home pages and things like that, and partially that's because I'm I'm redoing my website and it's been a slow process, much slower than I think Andre would want it to be.
Speaker 3:Kind of like living on land and homesteading. Everything takes longer and costs more than you think it should.
Speaker 2:So, but I started looking at other people's sales pages and being like scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, like I just like I was astounded by how long these sales pages have gotten and, and as I'm reading through the copy, I can't help but see the like will you please understand me? Will you please get me? Will you please get the thing that I'm trying to sell? Will you please like, like it's coming from a place of please choose me. Kind of energy versus like hey, these are the nuts and bolts of what I have to offer. These are the intentions. This is what I can realistically promise.
Speaker 2:And here are some stories about other people who have gone through the program. Like my sales page for BAM, I literally, I think, cut it in half To like what it used to be, because I started noticing in my own sales copy I was, I was holding a little bit of that energy as well, and so if I want to be inviting people in with a sense of like, solidity and stability, then that needs to be shown through my copy and ultimately it begins from the internal work that gets expressed outward into a sales page. But to me again, it always goes back to how can we empower our clients and I think that that's another form of I want to call it like overriding people's sovereignty is by like giving them like a fucking fire hose of information, thinking that that is, you know, going to be the valuable thing that helps them land.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what's coming up for me is my feel without fear sales page. It's really long and the energy of please see me, please value me. Let me like explicitly explain every single thing on here that I possibly can, without giving anything that's behind the paywall away, so that you can make the decision to join this program and like I don't think that my. So one of the things that I did whenever I first started this business and marketing stuff was poking at people's pain points. Yeah, I don't feel like I do that anymore.
Speaker 3:Sometimes there is mentioning of people's pain points but and I don't think we can get away from that Like I think people need to know I understand and I see you in your pain, right, like that's just being an empathetic human. But poking at people's pain points is like here's your pain point, here's how I'm going to fix it, and that's not something that I want to participate in at all. So I don't feel like my long sales page is that. But, as we talked about in our last webs of truth episode, like I did not realize, with my feel without fear marketing this time around, how much good girl energy was going into that in terms of like I'm just going to keep creating more content and explaining this more and like trying to reach people more and please see how good this free stuff is that I'm giving. Can you even imagine how valuable the stuff behind the paywall is like? Please value me, please say that I'm worthy, please, please, please. It was this very like desperate energy and you know I over explaining as a trauma response for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And when I look at my feel without fear landing page now, I don't see pain point marketing, but I see over explaining. And so before I open it again in the spring of next year, I'm going to redo the whole thing because I don't want it to come from this lens of. I'm just going to over explain this so much so that you can see how valuable it is, so that it can answer every single question you have, so that you have the opportunity you need to hit by now. You know like, yeah, if I'm totally honest, it was still really vulnerable, to admit.
Speaker 3:If I'm totally honest, I want the people who hit the buy now button and they don't have all their questions answered, like they just trust the poll that they have and that can be enough. Or they trust the dire they have yeah, and that can be enough. Like you can feel the energy of a program or of a course of bam, like you can feel the energy of it with very little explanation. You can feel the energy behind it and that that would be enough to go by now, not because there's 50 paragraphs of over explaining. And here's why this is so valuable and here's why you want to pay for this and here's what you're going to get, and here's what you're going to learn and here's why I'm qualified to teach this and like yeah, so I have to redo a sales page in the next few months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, thank you so much for sharing that, because I know that that's something that you're like in process with right now, and I remember when you showed it to me, like that was the one piece of feedback that I had for you, as I was like it's pretty long, you know, and, and I think that a it's so important for us to talk about these things oh gosh, I have to sneeze. Nope, maybe not. I think it's so important for us to like model that like we don't have our shit figured out 100% either, you know Just like now.
Speaker 2:And that that's actually not something to like pull away from, that's actually something to like lean into.
Speaker 2:And we're always going to be in process.
Speaker 2:And I think that there's this thing within healing communities where there's this nebulous place that we get to, where we never get triggered again, we never have to feel these scary emotions again, like we're sort of in this like Zen state.
Speaker 2:And then I know that I've had people reflect to me like how can you stay so calm in like stressful situations? It's like oh honey, like like that's because you don't see, because you're not within my inner circle. You don't see me crying face down in the bed, you know, because I didn't get the thing that I wanted and so like deeply desired. You don't see me picking fights with my husband because I have some sort of like unintegrated wound around relationships, like these are all things that I do and integrate and process and like I take responsibility for within the confines of my own inner circle, but like it's not something that I feel like everyone is entitled to see and absolutely have access to. So I think it's so important that we like share that, like being human is actually moving through a lot of these things and actually, as a spiritual entrepreneur. The lessons never fucking stop.
Speaker 3:No, what's coming up for me is you know, it was not that long ago and I'm not going to divulge too much here, but it was not that long ago that David and I were having a massive whopper of a fight and you, I called you and we stayed on the phone for hours and, like that is not something that I really I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable talking about that publicly, like because it's it's not the world's privilege to get to see that yeah, and it was. I mean, I even remember, as I was talking to you, I had this fear of like is she thinking that I'm unqualified to do what I do? Is she thinking that I have an unhealthy marriage? Is she thinking that David and I are bad people? Like all that fear was coming up for me in the middle of that was happening on my side.
Speaker 3:But yeah, like what you know and that was just a few months ago, you know, like that was recent. So that's the first thing that I always want to dispel is like any idea that people think that I have achieved or attained some level of like enlightenment or whatever. I'm not still having a very human experience, because I am still having a very, very, very human experience. Yeah, and I think that's what turns me off about a lot of the coaches and practitioners that I see online. It's not that I don't think they're talented or that they're not an expert like I do. I totally believe that they're experts. It's not that I don't think they can't help people, but when all I see is branding, but I don't see vulnerability and authenticity, that's like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:When it's just like my program will fix this for you and you'll never have to deal with this again and you can make 10 K and one week, and like all of that kind of stuff, I'm just like but show me when you didn't make 10 K and a week and show me how you handled that, because that's going to happen for me and I need to know that you know what to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Show me that you've had a fight with your husband and that you've repaired, and that way, when I'm working with you and I have a relationship issue, I know I can trust you to teach me how to repair. But if you never show me that, then you know, and sure the consumer has a responsibility, for sure to not look at someone's Instagram page and see it through this filter of oh, they have everything figured out. Like that's not fair either, right? So I'm saying again, like this is a reciprocity thing, I feel like is it's?
Speaker 3:like yes, it's on the part of the consumer to not make judgments about a practitioner based on what they're posting on Instagram. For sure that's unfair. That is a fragment of their life, of their humanness. And also it is the responsibility of the practitioner to really show the vulnerable, authentic part of themselves and not the part that's pretty, impolished and branded. And all of that so that the consumer can make a more informed choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it absolutely does. I feel like we're transitioning from talking about the not enough wound to the I'm too much wound, and this is something that I've had happen several times now, which is I've now started to. I can kind of pick out the clients who are going to go down this rabbit hole. But when somebody feels safe with me, with you, and they see like, oh, like we've been able to work through some of these like medium level sort of woundings, for them it might actually even be like the deepest they've gone through into their woundings Ultimately what happens is they feel safe enough to like revert back to a much, much younger version of themselves that felt like oh, my God, I'm too much and I'm having these like really big feelings and I really want to throw a temper tantrum.
Speaker 2:But I can't throw a temper tantrum because mom, dad, caregivers aren't going to accept me and I'm going to lose my sense of belonging. If I throw a temper tantrum here and this is where I've heard this phrase so many times I'm not coachable. Because they get to a place that feels really sort of stuck in, stubborn, and in order for them to move through it if we talk about, like the poly bagel letter that you love talking about. They have to move through like a mobilization phase.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they do.
Speaker 2:And that mobilization phase often looks like lashing out, looks like a temper tantrum, looks like a big fiery ball of feelings, of sadness, of grief, whatever it is that they've been so scared to like really touch in with themselves.
Speaker 2:And me as a practitioner, it's this really really fine balance between I have to hold my boundaries and I also have to like not take things personally as it comes up, and and I've had clients who have shown me the parts of themselves that they deemed to be the most disgusting I'm using words that people have actually said to me this is the most disgusting, this is the most shameful parts of me. These are the parts that I can't show anybody, because if I show them this, they'll see how ugly I am, and my job as a practitioner is to sit there and hold them and love them through that, because they didn't get that, that experience when they were growing up. They got a much different experience and, without giving away specifics, you know, I remember, at the very end of our call, I remember asking you like well, what if the reason why David and I love you is because you're so big? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And like having that be a disconfirming experience of like, oh, I get to be big and people love me still.
Speaker 2:Yeah is such an important one that I think that coaches and clients are really scared to get into. And my clients, who have been able to get to that place with me, like I look at them now and like they are embracing their bigness, they are loving their bigness, like they are loud and so beautiful and the ways that they're meant to be loud and beautiful and like ways that, like their inner three year old has always wanted to be, and I don't know like it brings tears to my eyes because, like I'm so proud of them, but also like they're so proud of themselves, which I think is more important. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you think that? Because I had an interesting thing happen. Our first Feel Without Fear group call for this cohort was earlier this week and it was really beautiful, because people are just this container they're instantly vulnerable. I'm not having to like wait and you know, be patient and like create it and all that. It's like the safety is there and they're instantly vulnerable. Yeah, and this one person in the group she had a really big movement of anger on the group call was screaming.
Speaker 3:I'm so angry, I'm so fucking angry, just screaming, screaming, and I was like keeping an eye on her mostly, and then every once in a while I would see something come up in the chat, so I'd like glance over and look at the chat and then I'd look back at her and in the chat people were saying like we're here, we're holding space for your sacred rage. This is beautiful, keep going, you're safe. Like that's what they're saying in the chat. I wasn't saying any of that. I was just making sure she's okay and letting her have this process, because she didn't need any interference in the process. She just needed to have this explosion. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I was telling my Feel Without Fear alumni yesterday I was explaining the same situation that happened and one of them was actually on that call. And then she came to the call yesterday, which was a totally separate call, and she said, lindsay, I wasn't, I wasn't even watching the person who was having the big anger thing. She said I was watching you and taking notes on you as a practitioner and how you held that space and you were so not threatened by what she was doing. And I was like I think, to the extent that I've gotten more comfortable and less afraid of my own big feelings, the more I'm able to hold space for other people in theirs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Like it just doesn't scare me when a lot of practitioners, I think would you know, and certainly therapists, would see an outburst like that and it would be like diagnosed as something you know, like that is so unacceptable, that's so big, it's so severe that like we have to label that as something Holy shit. And so I wonder if a lot of these people who think they're uncoachable, like, have they just not had space held for them by practitioners who aren't threatened by them being in that emotional state? Yeah, have they been working? Are these practitioners?
Speaker 3:This is not a judgment on practitioners, but at the same time it's me feeling like the old lady, seasoned practitioner. I'm like, okay, listen to here, you young ins. You know, like like you have to go as far down into that pit in yourself as you possibly can to be able to guide someone and hold space for them while they go and excavate that pit themselves. And like I wonder if a lot of these coaching wounds are you know they're not inflicted on purpose, it's just inflicted because that practitioner wasn't able to hold that space for that person, because they can't hold it for themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are and I think that you've just made explicit like what I've been trying to say. So like, thank you for putting it into words. But I had a turning point in my career. I went to a fertility symposium and got to listen to a practitioner who I'd been really looking up to for for many years In her lecture her name is Randine Anderson and she's, you know, we'll say, big in the fertility acupuncture world air quotes In her lecture. It was so different from everyone else's lecture because everyone else went into like well, these are the points you go into, these are the protocols, these are the things. And she was like like this quote was the crossroads for me as a practitioner is the best thing that you can do for your clients is to do the inner work for yourself so that when these big things come up because fertility is a big thing for people like you can hold space for whatever is coming up for them.
Speaker 2:And I think previous to that I had sort of deemed my own self development, my own sort of like curiosities, and at the time I think I was like just getting into Brené Brown and like I totally was like a brand new name for me and, you know, almost feeling guilty for doing this stuff on the side. And when she said that, I like something clicked in me and I was like, oh, that stuff that I'm actually curious about is ultimately going to serve my clients, even if it's not like a specific point protocol. And to me, this is the place that I think we fall short in our Western consumerist sort of society is. We have a tendency to like, want to like, cling to protocol, like, show me the coaching technique that you're using, give me the program that that this came from. And while I do honor lineage, I think that lineage is important.
Speaker 2:There is something about just sitting with somebody when they're having a big feeling that you can't teach from a certification or from a book.
Speaker 2:That comes from you, having the lived experience of, like, getting into your own sacred rage and being like, oh, I didn't die from that, and that opens up your capacity to hold other people sacred rage and I think, in particular, it helps you not take it personally.
Speaker 2:I think that a younger version of me, that that thing that you're describing a younger version of me like 10 years ago, would have been like she's pushing up on my boundaries. This isn't okay, because I hadn't at that point, accessed anger and like felt into my own anger Versus you know, like if something like that happened in one of my groups now I think that we hold space in similar but different ways, but it's just like okay, like let's just be here with it and have it, have it be okay, and then that gets to be a disconfirming experience for that person, because now their anger is acceptable and isn't something that's going to get them ostracized from the group. And if anything in a group like feel without fear, it's actually going to be inspiring for the people in there because they're all there to do really vulnerable work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it totally was. There were people in the chat were saying like this inspires me to be more present with my own anger. And yeah, I think you know a version of me two years ago. I probably would not have known what to do in that situation. Like if I had had someone show up and have that big of a movement, you know, I would have been like, oh my God, are they having a breakdown? Like, are they okay? And I mean this person is like over in the UK. So if, if, if.
Speaker 3:I was afraid of what she was doing and I had those stories of like, oh my gosh, is she okay? Is she having a break? Is she like, oh my God, what it like? Is she suicidal? Is she like so massively flooded and triggered that there's nothing that I can say or do to help? Like I think two years ago version of me would have been like that. Yeah, because the truth is is like on a zoom call, whether they're in the UK or they're, like you know, in the next state over, there's literally nothing I can do except hold that space and like that's all I can do. And it would have freaked me out because I would have thought did I do something wrong? Like, did the teaching trigger her in this way? Like, was it unsafe? You know, and so you know, I think that that's the grace of the universe that I didn't have someone in the container two years ago who had a big movement like that, because I couldn't have handled it.
Speaker 3:You know, like when she was all done, she was just like taking big breaths and she was like I feel so much better. I feel so much better, I feel so good, Like I don't feel frozen anymore, I feel alive. And I told everyone in the group. I said I want you all to know this is so normal, Like this is not a problem, this is not too big, this is not too much, this is so normal. And if some part of you is like, oh, that's not, that's not normal, there's something wrong with her, it's only because you've never seen it. Yeah, yeah, and myself, as a practitioner, two or three years ago, I had not even allowed myself to see myself having a movement like that.
Speaker 3:So of course it wasn't normal to me, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that as practitioners, we're taught that we have to fix these things for people rather than just so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, be with them, with people you know. Yeah, and you know I see this with. I feel like I'm going to have a horse story every single time we talk now, but I see this, yeah, I see this with my cold cocoa. I've only had him. I don't think I've even had him for a week now. But his story is that he was adopted out by my friend, suzanne, who runs a really lovely rescue. She trusted the person that she adopted him out to and that person ended up starving him.
Speaker 2:Like when I first met him, he was skin and bones. She had just gotten him back, she had just repowed him. Two days before I saw him and he was just the skinniest, like you could see every rib on his body. And now when I feed him he has rage, like he has a scarcity wound around food. And so the first day he tried to bite me when I gave him his grain for the night and you know Suzanne's never done anything mean or horrible to him, but I think that he had.
Speaker 2:He bit me and then looked at me like what are you gonna do? And I was just like I get it, like it's totally understandable that you're mad. I'm gonna hold this boundary now and you can't come near me again until I put the food down. But like I'm not gonna be angry at you, I'm not upset, like it's totally understandable that you're angry around food and he hasn't bit me since and you know, I think that that's where, like just when we hold space for the thing that is understandable. Like I don't know what your client story is, but I imagine that there's something back there that is understandable and connected to her anger.
Speaker 3:Oh, 100 percent. Her anger makes so much sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so the moment that we say that makes sense you know, as a practitioner or even just as yourself, like working with your own ones, if you can get to a place where you can look at that story whether it's your client or yourself and say you know what that totally makes sense, then we can just release the shame around it. Yeah, you know, because we all have good girl, good boy programming that tells us that we have to be kind, we have to be soft, we have to be gentle, we have to, you know, like not express ourselves because it might scare somebody. And the moment, yeah, the moment that we can release that story and and oftentimes it is this big flash, it's scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah but on the other side of it, like your client was saying, oh, I feel so much better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have three things that I say. I mean, I have a lot of things that I say. My audience at this point is like they're asking for Lindsay Lockett merch. They're like we need a t-shirt that says isn't it interesting? Because I say that so much. That's like one of my signature phrases. You know, anybody that comes as soon as I spot it as a story. I just isn't that interesting, that's so interesting. I wonder why that is to just like create some curiosity and some space around it. You know, but when people are having those big moments and big movements of anger or grief or or even shutting down, like even totally shutting down and going blank or going nonverbal or something, um, I have three things that I say and I'll say like, depending on what's appropriate at that moment, I'll say like that makes so much sense that you feel that way. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I also will say I believe you, and I say I believe this is hard for you. So that immediately tears down any self-judgment that they have for themselves. It attunes to them because so many of their parents growing up were like there's nothing wrong with you, you're fine you need to get over it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so for them to have a big emotion now and someone, an adult, is across the screen from them, going, I believe you, I believe this is hard for you, yeah, like it softens them and it opens them so that they can become that channel for that emotion to flow through, instead of it getting stuck and lodged in the body and then it becomes a pattern that they have to adapt around and then they develop adaptive survival patterns so that they don't feel that and, you know, the layers start stacking on top of it again.
Speaker 3:And you know, I'm not like trying to toot my own horn, I definitely. I mean, coaching is a practice, right, it's not like I'm never going to get to the point where I have it all figured out. Just like awareness is a practice, business is a practice. Like we're practicing every day, we're learning new things every single day, things, the ideas that I had about myself and about my business even six months ago. They're different now. Right, because it's a practice. And so I think that practitioners who are in spaces of like they can't hold a client's big feelings or their marketing is hitting on pain points and super long sales pages. And please buy for me, please see my worth. Please see my value.
Speaker 3:Like all of that, it's not that they're a bad practitioner, like they're probably a great practitioner for some people and so I think, in the same vein as, like any practitioners who might be listening to this episode, like what I would hope you take away from it is that, whether you ever get another client or not, your work is to continue holding that space for yourself, with complete acceptance and non-judgment, and, to the extent that you're able to do that, you are able to do that for other people.
Speaker 3:But then for people who aren't practitioners, who may be looking to hire a coach or a therapist or a new doctor or somebody in the future, is it's like now that you have this language like notice their ability to hold space, are they able to do that? Feel what that feels like in your body? Um, are they willing to answer your questions or do they just like pass through it, like you have too much doubt and uncertainty? If you have questions, you know like stuff like that, like really feel into it and I think our clients or potential clients, whether they find us on social media or google searches or whatever, like feel into your discernment about people yeah yeah, and I think that that's the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's the case for, like any professional that you hire, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm even thinking about like I have. I will full on admit I have an accountant wound because I had an accountant a couple years ago who made some really big mistakes and I saw the mistakes happening but I felt stupid for asking the questions and and it cost me a lot of money. The IRS still has not paid me back and you know the the, the feeling that I had in my body when I was around her is I need to prove myself like and I need to prove that like I'm worthy of of hiring her and so I'm not going to ask these questions that I think are super basic. And one of the questions that I think was super basic was like hey, I think I see a mistake here. Can we look at it together? And I am.
Speaker 2:I just hired a new accountant. I love him. I had I he hasn't even done any work for me and I love him like on the connection call, he was just so sensitive, so attuned, like, like when I was sort of sharing my experience with this other account, he was like that's totally understandable, I'm so sorry that happened to you. Um, his name is Rocco Tundo, by the way and um, he's gonna come teach in one of my. He's gonna teach, he's gonna come teach in BAM for me as well. Um, but like, I think that, and like the contractor, like my contractor is amazing, like so, like you know it, it's not just about like therapists and coaches and and people that you like classically think of as like holding space, but like there's real world applications for plumbers and accountants and bookkeepers and like feeling into your body, how you feel when you're around them matters a lot, because your body has so much more wisdom than I think we all give ourselves credit for and is give you information about whether this person is safe or not.
Speaker 2:You know, when I think back on that interaction that with that first accountant, my body didn't feel safe around her and I knew it and I overwrote it because I was like she's a professional, she's got a shit ton of instagram followers, she's, you know, worked for x, y and z companies and so, like she has to know her shit and ultimately that ended up costing me and, um, I just had this really lovely back and forth with one of my my past coaching clients and she's looking for a therapist right now and, um, so she's like doing the due diligence of like going through her insurance and like meeting with you know, having a first session with therapists and being like, okay, so do I like this person or not?
Speaker 2:And she messaged me last week and she was like thank you so much for the space that you've helped for me, because I've just met with this therapist and I realized that, like we aren't going to be able to get to the depths that I really need to go to with her because she doesn't feel that safe to me. And then she messaged me this week and she was like I found somebody and I was able to like recognize that she was a safe person because she feels really similar to you and so my body knows what safe feels like and so I'm going to go with this practitioner. And I loved hearing that because, like, if we as coaches, can become a benchmark for safety for our clients, like how, like, how fucking empowering is that for our clients?
Speaker 2:yeah because now that applies anywhere they go, whether that is a potential romantic partner, a friendship, a contractor, a new therapist like they now know what a tunement feels like because their body has picked up that information. Yeah, and particularly for folks who haven't had a tunement in their lives before, like that's massive, yeah, that's really huge.
Speaker 3:I got full body chills when you were when you said that, but like it just resonated so much to be like wow, like what an honor to be someone's benchmark for like this is what safety feels like and I won't settle for anything less than this anymore. Yeah, and I'm not going to override that intuitive, discerning feeling that something might not be right.
Speaker 3:Like that's really, really huge yeah, yeah yeah, and I think the worst way oh my god, the worst way that I could ever be insulted as a practitioner I mean it would be really hurtful is for a client to tell me like you weren't safe for me, like that would be like a knife to my heart because like that, literally, is my only goal. It's like if I am nothing else to you, I will be safe. So if I was ever like not safe for someone, that would be devastating on the flip side.
Speaker 2:That's like the deepest compliment that anyone can give me as you're not sure, or that they that I am safe yes, oh, absolutely yes, deepest compliment yeah also worst thing to hear if someone were to tell me I wasn't safe for them yeah which go ahead. I was gonna say like, can we, can we poke into that a little bit?
Speaker 3:yeah I was actually gonna bring up. So the client that I talked about at the beginning of this episode, that I loved, who's doctor told her don't let your heart rate get too high. Um, we had I think we had three sessions left in her six-month package and she needed to reschedule something. And I totally made some assumptions and judgments that weren't accurate, because this is my fault I had so much on my calendar that week that any change or move or needing to reschedule felt really abrasive and like frustrating for me. I don't often have weeks like that.
Speaker 3:Um, this week and next week I have those weeks because we're getting ready to go on vacation, so, like my calendar looks a lot more full than it normally does, and at this time my calendar was a lot more full than it normally was, and so she was like I need to reschedule this and this because of this and this.
Speaker 3:And I got a little snappy about it because I was frustrated and annoyed and we figured it out, but she ended up firing me and it's the first and only time I've ever been fired and you know I'm not gonna like make projections at her or whatever but my sort of summarization of what happened afterwards was like, yes, I fucked up in the way that I reacted about the rescheduling thing and I was more frustrated than I then was actually appropriate for the situation, because she was giving me plenty of time and notice and all of that, um, but what wounded her and like I felt like okay, is this really real? Like really, it's kind of how I felt about it. It's still how I feel about it actually, and this was like five months ago, so I've had a while to sit with it and digest it and I still feel this way about it.
Speaker 3:But she said that, because of the scheduling snafu, that she no longer felt safe to be vulnerable with me and you know, I tried asking into that, I tried being like, okay, like I totally acknowledged that I fucked up, I've apologized that I fucked up, I've rescheduled you for the time that you want, but you're keeping the appointment, but you don't feel safe to be vulnerable with me, like I don't understand, you know. So that is, I have been told I don't feel safe to be vulnerable with you and that felt like a knife to the heart and so, even though I don't quite understand the connection between the two, I mean this, this client, you know, one of the patterns that we were working on was perfectionism and she had health anxiety, so she had a lot of perfectionism about her body and that was the whole thing where we were trying to show her body that you can do new things and not be perfect at it and still be okay. Yeah, and what I felt like as the coach, like I can acknowledge, I fucked up with the scheduling.
Speaker 3:I was abrasive and didn't need to be. I got frustrated and I took it out on her and that wasn't fair of me, um, but I also sort of felt like her perfectionism was being projected on to me. Yeah, like I made one mistake in six months of working with someone. I made one mistake, I owned it, I apologized for it, I made it right and she still fired me and, like, she gets to do whatever she needs to do to feel safe and if not working with me anymore is what makes her feel safe. I accept that and, like I did, I refunded her for the three sessions that she wasn't going to to have and, uh, and we parted ways. I would have liked to have parted in a more friendly way but, um, you know we don't always get what we want, so, whoo, that feels really vulnerable to share. I noticed that I'm like, oh, my god, the thousands of people who might listen to this are probably really judging me right now.
Speaker 2:But like, it's okay, I can be transparent about this because it really happened yeah, and you know, to me what that brings up is like this question I've been really like sitting with like in like deep reverence for the last couple of months is what is your responsibility and what's not your responsibility? You know, I'm hearing that you took responsibility.
Speaker 2:I did and you can't force somebody to.
Speaker 2:Then also, because I think that you know there is a level of perfectionism that she projected on to you and if she's looking for perfect in order to feel safe, she's gonna balance from practitioner to practitioner until she starts learning that there's a common thread here, yeah, and that common denominator is her and perhaps her perfectionism. Yeah, you know, yeah, and you know, I think, because you've been really vulnerable, it's inspired me to share that, like the one time that I've been fired was, you know, similar sort of situation. And so, like we had finished out a six month container at the very last session, this client was going through a breakup and she asked me you know, what would it look like to continue working with you? And you know, we sort of discussed it and then afterwards I sent her a link to like the information, like my package information, so that she could, like you know, sit with it a little bit longer. And then I got sick, like I don't know if you remember, lindsay, but like last, year you were sick forever.
Speaker 2:I was sick, like I literally could not leave my bed for like two weeks and then I had a cough that like lasted for like three months or something like that. It was ridiculous. And in the middle of that, I was launching BAM and I like luckily I had set everything up before I got sick and basically Andre and Alicia who was my assistant at the time like handled the launch, like I did nothing for the launch. I wrote all the copy and we sent it off to them like beforehand, and they did everything, which I'm super grateful for. And this client wrote me a very, very angry text message saying I just shared something incredibly vulnerable with you on our very last call and you had the nerve to just send me a link to your you know, basically like your sales page and you never checked in with me. How could you like, you know, basically just like ignore me and like now I just feel like a number in abandoned, yeah, yeah, which again is the thing that we've been working on Like she's got a band and trauma, yeah, she's got abandonment trauma. And so you know, I explained, I apologized, I was like that is completely out of my norm and you know I'm so sorry that, like I didn't follow up with you. You know like we've spent. I think I want to say we had spent almost a year together. And so, again, like you, this is the first time I've kind of messed up in the relational wound aspect and it happened to be that, like one relational wound that like she just like was having such a hard time getting over and integrating and and she ended up well, it's not exactly a firing because she never ended up like signing up to work with me again, but she was very angry and she even pointed to like well, you're posting all these things on Instagram about bam and how you hold safe space. So how can, how dare you post things like that when you've not been a safe space for me? And again, like this is sort of where that like that line, in that boundary of like I cannot make this better for you.
Speaker 2:What I can do is I can take accountability and responsibility for the part that I played in it and I'm not using my sickness as like an excuse. But the reality is like I had no brain cells for like a month, like like I canceled all of my client calls for like two weeks and just was like I think I watched the entirety of oh gosh, what is that? Medical show. I'm not going to remember the name of the show, but I watched like an entire, like, like five or six seasons of a show, like, and like was just in bed, you know, and and so I think that, like, we can do our part.
Speaker 2:Our responsibility is to do our part and to do our own inner work so that we can hold safe space for people, and then when we mess up because we're human beings who are going to mess up it is our responsibility to then do our best to repair that rupture. But the other person also has to be willing to come to the table and to like look at their part of it in it too, and to look at what? Like look at it with like a certain sense of neutrality of like oh, this person is like a human being and like it's kind of understandable that you know. You know, in your case you're feeling overbooked and threatened by your schedule. In my case I was feeling sick and like had no brain cells and and and I think for both of those client examples there's a level of a younger version of themselves that like really, really needed that need met. Yeah, and couldn't get that need met and it's really hard and frustrating and scary when that need isn't met.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also it doesn't make you an unsafe person. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and same deal, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, that was I. I felt like I had a lot of clarity after that and I was just like you know, like I'm a human and my schedule is overbooked and it's. You know, it wasn't my fault that my schedule was overbooked. That's just what needed to happen that week. It wasn't her fault that my schedule was overbooked and in someone who didn't have this big perfectionism wound, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal. Yeah, you know, like if it had happened with another client, it probably would not have been a big deal. Yeah, just like this thing with your client. If that had happened with a different client who didn't have that abandonment wound, yeah, it probably would have been a different conversation. Should have been like oh oh, I totally understand. You were sick. Your team was posting all that stuff on Instagram for you. You weren't the one doing it. Yeah, like you've been in bed watching Grey's Anatomy or whatever it was. You were watching God, what is that show? The Good Doctor.
Speaker 2:No, new Amsterdam. I watched like the entirety.
Speaker 3:I haven't watched that one, it's only okay.
Speaker 2:It's okay, yeah, it's a bit woke.
Speaker 3:Okay, I probably won't watch them. Yeah, I agree, and like I don't know how to reconcile that as a coach with a client, because it's like if the client has made up their mind that I am the villain in their story, then there's nothing that I can do to change that and personally I think it would be an ethical of me to try to talk them out of that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so there has to be this acceptance of like okay, you need me to be the villain in your story and I can accept that. And how do I need to like close this relationship in a way that, when I look back from this six months or a year or five years from now, I'm not going to still feel icky about like yeah, so that's why I refunded her, that's why, like, I tried to talk her through, like you know, I'm sorry that I wasn't perfect for you and I've you know. I tried to say like there's all these times over here where I have been safe for you and then there's one time where I haven't been, and I feel like you're judging me and the entirety of our relationship based on this one thing and forgetting all of this stuff over here. That proves I am a safe space for you to be vulnerable. But I accept it, I'm going to refund you and I hope you find what you're looking for. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so, like when I feel hesitation about sharing the story, it's not because I still feel bad about the story or because there's still like loose ends hanging out that feel raw. It's just because I know that people listening sometimes have a tendency to judge, and especially if they see me as an expert and they're like oh, you weren't a safe person for that one time. You know like it means this about you.
Speaker 2:And I think if that's coming up in your mind. It's time to maybe check your own perfectionist one.
Speaker 3:If totally yeah, because like any person you hire, even even if they're like a medical doctor from Harvard, like they're going to make mistakes because they are human, like there's no therapist, there's no coach, there's no practitioner, there's no contractor, there's no realtor, there's no plumber, there's no nobody who doesn't still make mistakes. And like mistakes don't make you a harmful, unsafe person. And like speaking of wokeness, I feel like that's what wokeness is starting to try to establish is that humans making human mistakes makes people inherently unsafe and harmful, and that's such bullshit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel today is just like the day for vulnerable talks. I feel like this is something that feels a little bit unprocessed and something that I'm like sitting with and trying to decide, like how I want to move forward with it. So, israel, palestine, is happening. I've been how do I say this? I've been called in for not saying anything. People feel that because I have I mean, I don't even feel like I've got a big platform, but like people feel that I should be saying something about it.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And I am sitting with what I want to say, how I want to say.
Speaker 3:Do you want to say?
Speaker 2:So this is where I feel like A. I'm not an expert on the Middle East. I have been watching a lot more things on not mainstream media because I want to learn more. Honestly I do. I've been having a lot of conversations with Andre, who is very actively like in learner mode, and I trust him because he has a tendency to like he's like such a researcher, he's a one line in human design and so like he does a lot of the research, and then it's like hey, this is something that I think you'd be interested in. Like he's really good at distilling down information. For me and I. It's such a nuanced issue and because my platform is a place where I teach, I don't feel comfortable teaching about this particular social issue Because I'm not. I am very like like I am a geopolitical war expert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like, I'm like Middle East 101.
Speaker 3:How dare you not be a geopolitical war expert?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just I don't want to add to the noise because I think that there are a lot of people who are experts and who are actively being affected by this in the world right now, and for me to like just re-share things or take up space on my own platform and like say something about it feels not quite right.
Speaker 3:Performative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the place where I can speak on is talking about sacred rage. Like, to me, like that does not matter which side I fall on. It does not matter like what my like specific thoughts are on this. What I do see happening in that particular instance, and also with, like several social things that have come up in the last, well, two or three years, is like this aspect of sacred rage being necessary, and I think that the violence that we're seeing is because we haven't been able to set down real boundaries with our sacred rage and now it's mutated and turned into something really like really, really scary. And so, if I say something, I feel like that's where I want to speak on, because I do feel like I am an expert on emotions. I'm not an expert on the Middle East, yeah, and you know, I'm really intentional about what I share in my space and and, yeah, it does feel performative to me to like be like, hey, you know, I now want to talk about this thing that I am just learning about. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah. I don't know, I don't know if you have thoughts about that.
Speaker 3:I mean, my thoughts are like I'm so surprised you have such a smaller audience than I have and for you to be called out about that and I literally haven't heard a single word. Literally none of my followers are like why aren't you talking about this?
Speaker 2:in the last week I've had 10 messages.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, that's nuts. Yeah. And I've had none. Literally nobody has been like why aren't you talking about this as a trauma informed educator? Bloody, bloody, blood you should.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's that's how it's. Yeah, that's how it's.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like, honestly, cat, like here's my sacred rage. Fuck, really, really, because I'm fine in it. Like, first of all, it is, it's okay to be disturbed by disturbing things, and what's happening in the Middle East is a disturbing thing, right, I'm not a person who watches the news so same. I am so uneducated. I'm so uneducated about what's happening. My very surface level understanding is that you know, there are these Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip and Israel has basically like blocked it off, kept it from escaping and is dropping bombs on them, and the United States because the US is a supporter of Israel is like involved in that. And so now the US and Canada are like committing genocide along with Israel. Like that is my very surface level understanding about. Why do I need to say that on the internet? Like why, like sure, is genocide wrong? Of course it is. Is war bad?
Speaker 3:Yeah, obviously, like I'm very anti-war, I'm very anti-military, like I'm not a patriotic American and probably be canceled over that now, but like there is nothing that I as a single person can do to affect any sort of positive change in the Middle East. And I understand people who do watch the news and they feel so sad or rageful about what's going on over there, and I get that they feel powerless, like they desperately want to do something to help and there's nothing that they can do nothing. So, like I joked on someone else's podcast the other day about this very issue, I was like all I can keep doing is focusing on myself and my little web in the world. And maybe somebody who's high up in the US government, in the military, is on Instagram and they come across my page, just maybe, and they see something that makes them come into awareness about like is that? What purpose does it serve for me to want to drop a bomb on Palestinian children, right and like, get into awareness about that and then decide like this is not who I authentically am and they quit their job in the military or whatever.
Speaker 3:Like, I know this is such a hypothetical, but but that's the level of like I can do nothing and me posting about it doesn't change what's happening, yeah, and so it would just be performative for me to try to stick my nose in this. It's not on message like yes, is trauma being caused over there? Absolutely it is. What can I do about it? How do I need to educate people? I don't, and I feel like this is like in their hopelessness, people feel voiceless and then they look at someone like me or someone like you who has a voice, and they're like I'm voiceless and powerless, but you should be using your voice about this, because you're not powerless and that's.
Speaker 2:I just don't think that's real yeah, I mean I think that again, it goes back to this like concept of like what's my responsibility and what's not my responsibility. I mean, I'm not like for me. I think you and I have very different experiences with Instagram just because of numbers and like to me it's not like a fuck them sort of a situation, like I hear genuine concern in in the messages and and my responsibility I don't know that I've ever liked to still sit down like this, but like my responsibility is to help people come into nervous system regulation, optimize their emotions so that they can then go do the work that they're meant to do in the world. If somebody in my realm again sort of like what you were saying if there's somebody in my web who, like that is their work is to and I'm not saying work like like this is your career, but like this is this is your purpose in life, is to be a voice for the travesties that are happening in the world right now, then I can support you in that. It is not my work to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and I felt very similarly when I, when we were going through um, some of the instances that were happening back in 2020 with, like George Floyd's murder, things like that.
Speaker 2:Like I felt like I had a responsibility to hold space for people, um, and right now I am actually holding space for folks who are, like, being affected by stuff that's happening in israel and Palestine, but it's not, it's not my I hate to say it like this, because I feel like this is this makes me sound like I'm callous, but I'm not. Like there's a certain amount of responsibility that I hold and and it's not my fight and I would be taking up space in a place that's actually not mine to take up. So I'm okay being in the background and help people like alchemize their emotions, and that's where I'm like, oh, I can talk about this, but like, from the framework of, like, let's embrace sacred rage because, like, we really need to like understand that as part of our emotional landscape. But, like, when it comes to like the history of the Middle East, like it's like there's so much there that I can't possibly be the like one voice that's going to like change people's lives right.
Speaker 2:I think that, to add to what you were saying about, like people feel voiceless in this, and they see and again, like I don't have a big following I have like less than 4,000 followers on Instagram, you know but they see someone like me or you as having a voice and therefore perhaps having a bit more power than they do. But I also see people being like, like are you on my team, you know? And I don't think that this is something that like, like war is horrible, like there are things being committed on both sides that are really horrible, and I don't really want to take a side in such a way that it it forgives what the other side is doing as being okay yeah you know and so, and, and I also like, not that it's like like I have to stay on brand, like obviously, like I don't really care that much about branding, but like I think that hmm, when I am sharing something that I don't feel fully integrated about.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm being unethical, totally, and so to me, to be somebody who is approaching this thing as an ethical person means that I have the privilege to respond rather than react, and and so for me to be just reactive and like, be like, hey, like I'm going to repost all these things, and this is how I feel about it, because x, y and z, like, like I have not everybody has that privilege, right, and so, like, if I want to say something, I want to say it from a regulated place or as regulated as I think as I can be about it.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that's happening that's real, man, that's so real and and I'm still, I'm so shocked that you've had that many people being like you need to say something about this, and I've literally had none. But I think that if people can't look at your work or my work and see how it can generally be applied to pretty much anything and it is a message of awareness and love and curiosity and openness and getting underneath story and like feeling your feelings and all of that, like that can be enough. So it's like I am saying something about it, because I'm saying something about pain, because I'm saying something about healing, because I'm saying something about trauma, because I'm saying something about emotions, these are experiences that every human has. So, whether it's the pain and trauma of abuse and abandonment from childhood, or it's the pain and trauma of two countries at war and children dying in the Middle East, or it's the pain and trauma of our planet being, you know, milked for resources, or it's the pain and trauma of racism, or the pain like it literally applies to all of it. Yeah, so it's like just because I'm not speaking to this specific issue doesn't mean that I don't care, or or that like I'm, um, you know, not interested or whatever, like I'm doing my work in the world, which is to point people back to curiosity and love. So I can't fix this conflict in the Middle East, you know, just like I can't fix racism, or I can't fix pipelines, like I can't fix any of those things.
Speaker 3:And I personally, my purpose in this life is not to be an activist. Like helping people heal trauma is the only form of activism I know. Yeah, um, but like I'm not a protester, I'm not gonna go sit on a pipeline and, you know, block equipment from building that pipeline. I know people who do and I admire them for what they do, but they're not shaming me because I'm not doing that, you know, because not everyone can do that. You're not called to that. I'm not called to that. We're doing activism in the way that we do activism and other people are like more on the ground and more there in real time, and that's fine too, um, and I'm really sorry if people are putting you in a position of making you for really awkward or self-conscious about, like, what you're sharing and what you know, because that sucks um, I mean, I think had this happened a year ago, I would have felt a lot more like awkward and self-conscious about it, like to me, like I see they're wounding in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're asking you know, do we still belong together? And if the only way that we belong together is if I'm an activist in the ways that they're an activist, then we don't belong together and that's okay and that's okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like anything that I would post specifically about literally any world issue would come from a place of ignorance and being uninformed, and you know, and, like you, I don't think that's ethical. I don't think I need to be able to speak to everything, because I'm not a geopolitical expert. Yeah, and I'm not trying to be you know, and that doesn't mean I don't care, right, right.
Speaker 2:I think that that's the piece. There is like I care very much I'm. I care enough to like educate myself and I care enough to like go out of my like right now very busy day to like learn more.
Speaker 3:But me not like me taking the time to integrate before I share anything does not mean that I don't care and even if you share nothing, it doesn't mean you don't care yeah, yeah, that too I mean, I totally posted a black square on my Instagram feed the day that George Floyd was killed, and I did that from a place of ignorance and people pleasing and performance, and it's the only thing I've ever posted on Instagram that I like feel gross about. You know, and it's not because I'm I don't care about racism, of course I do, you know, but it it came from this unintegrated place of just like, well, this is what everyone else is doing, so I guess this is what I'm supposed to do too. You know, it's like being part of the crowd and following what other people are doing in a performative way, that, really, what did that black square do? What impact did that make? Did that change anything? No, it didn't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so then, what? What purpose did it serve? Like that's my question that I ask what purpose does this serve? Well, one it serves the purpose of giving me the illusion that I'm doing something, but I'm not actually doing something. It serves the purpose of making me feel like I'm part of something meaningful, but I'm really not. I'm just watching it happen. I'm not actually part of it. It gives the illusion that I'm educated and informed about this thing, that I'm actually not educated and informed about like no part of that came from an authentic, grounded, integrated place and I promised myself from that point forward, like I mean, I've had people reach out after school shootings and being like why aren't you talking about this? Yeah, it's like because I don't know enough about it to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I'm not going to perform talking about it because it makes me look good and it makes you feel better right and I think that it kind of goes back to what, like the, the concept around our conversation has been is like it's okay as a practitioner actually it's not just okay like this is the work that you need and should be doing as a practitioner to like allow the integration to happen before you go out there and share stuff yeah, and it takes as long as it takes yeah like.
Speaker 3:That's the thing we don't get to rush that integration process. Sometimes it happens really quickly. Sometimes it takes a year or more yeah and when you jump into something before you're ready and it's not integrated, you're more likely to go back into those unconscious survival patterns that you've been working to heal from to begin with absolutely yeah, so deep conversation today. Lots of stuff, lots of sticky stuff, yeah well, thank you for being a safe person to have these conversations with yeah, and likewise.
Speaker 3:And if we get canceled, we get canceled we're living like we're already canceled dude, so I dare them to come after us, yeah, yeah okay.
Speaker 2:Well, let's wrap it up for today. Thank you so much for being here, and we're gonna be doing these once a month for folks who are wanting to hear our voice on on controversial and sticky and juicy topics so that means our next one will be in January.
Speaker 3:New year 2024.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so this one's gonna come out first week of December and we'll see you guys next month. All right, bye, bye, bye.