Healing Through Difficult Relationships - Insight Timer Live

In this intimate talk and embodied shadow work practice, you'll learn how to see the most challenging people in your life as guides that reveal your most forgotten wounds, and what they need to heal. Through this powerful lens, we become able to stay in our centers as we navigate relational storms, holding our most vulnerable parts with radical love, while setting firm boundaries when needed. Gentle and trauma-informed.

Meditation music by Jamiel Conlon.

Transcript

Hello everybody!

It's the holiday season as I record this and we are sitting with difficult relationships.

Many of us,

Many of us during this season of the year spend time with people who we otherwise don't spend time with,

Family members for example,

And they bring up all kinds of stuff and because we're on the healing path we're like,

Have I just gotten into a time machine?

Because my nervous system feels like it's 15 years old again.

What is happening?

I've been doing so much work.

I know that's the experience of many who go home for the holidays or otherwise have contact and so I'm doing this live right now in this season to address that reality but if that's not your reality right now there's going to be so much for you here too because if you think about it we're here on the planet to have relationships.

It's what human life is about and it's where our wounding happens,

Our wounds happen in relationship and so our healing has to happen in relationship and with regard to our perspective on other people and developing self-awareness as to why we are triggered,

Why we are hooked by certain people,

Why we keep being pulled back into that nervous system time machine again and even though of course we live and need to live as human beings in family groups,

In small affinity groups,

There are some relationships in our life that we have more choice and freedom about who to associate with,

How we set boundaries there.

There are some relationships such as family relationships where that's much more challenging or even impossible and I want to name um caregivers of elderly parents and caregivers and parents,

Parents of young children,

Parents of grown children particularly those kinds of relationships we don't we need to be in close proximity often to those people.

In other relationships as we go further out the concentric circles of intimacy we have more and more choice about how much contact and how little contact to have but amidst all of that there is this reality that Carl Jung talked about so much that we don't see the world or other people as they are,

We see them as we are and that means that when we see another person we're seeing them through this thick filter of our own beliefs,

Conditioning and needs,

Unmet needs and that's not them,

Right?

So what this talk and practice is about today is how do we become exquisitely self-aware of our own projections onto other people so that we can find inner peace at least some of the time at least more often even when or I should say when we need to be around difficult people,

Family,

Friends,

Co-workers,

Anyone,

Right?

So we're going to be doing that through a shadow work practice today a gentle trauma-informed shadow work practice and if you know my work you know what I'm talking about if you're new to shadow work or new to my work just know that how I define shadow work is bringing to the light of our conscious minds the forces that have been unconsciously driving us so in relationship to other people it's about becoming aware bringing to the light of consciousness the forces within us that the perspective the lens through which we are seeing that make us triggered,

Hooked,

Obsessed,

Disturbed by other people so we're going to be practicing how to become aware of our lens in order to have more peace because the beautiful thing and this is true about shadow work in general the beautiful thing is that when we give those shadows those unconscious forces light when we see them hear them realize what they truly are they don't have power over us anymore and this will become clear in the personal story I'm about to share that's quite recent and the only other thing I want to mention before I get into my story is that I really want to be careful that all of you know that when I say you know something like we need to change how we are to make these relationships better for us I am in absolutely no way shape or form condoning harm I'm in no way saying that you should tolerate abuse tolerate harm toward yourself or other people and I'm in no way saying that you should be in contact with people who are not worthy of your energy or voice or presence so just know that these are for the people who we want to be in touch with who we do find ourselves disturbed by or triggered or hooked by for example into an old pattern today is about how we make that how we stay connected to ourselves the self who we really want to be during those interactions and I hope that's totally clear because if you're here if if you're drawn to my work I probably know a couple things about you most people who are our empaths highly sensitive people a lot of neurodivergent folks love my work you're likely relating to some of that you might be a woman or a femme or an otherwise marginalized person and one thing about those of us who share some of these identities is that we tend to do this thing in relationships that is we take on the burden of healing we tend to be the metabolizer of the crap in our families and in our relationships and there's part of that that's beautiful and being a cycle breaker right like if you have an identity as a cycle breaker you're changing things in your family you know me too and that's beautiful but do you feel the difference between having an identity as a cycle breaker and a healer for your lineage versus being someone who takes on the burden and metabolizes and makes excuses for people who are causing harm as someone who was once in a relationship with a narcissist that's what I did you know I was the strong one the one who could who had the tools who could heal and I over functioned doing my own healing while he did nothing you know like he didn't do his own work and I somehow did mental gymnastics to make that okay when it wasn't okay so I am not talking today about that kind of thing at all if someone's causing harm set boundaries get out of there and if you need help setting boundaries with which all of us empaths do please please listen to I have two free talks on insight timer about boundaries so I'm not going to be able to get into the details of that but I have a ton to say about boundaries that I've said many times so look for those on insight timer yeah that's that and also if you're coming here today specifically wanting to learn more about parental difficult relationships mother wound or father wound know I have specific talks and practices on insight timer about each of those healing the mother wound and healing the father wound those are extremely complex and layered and so I will direct you lovingly to those if you in addition to this if you want more on that okay here's the juicy story you've been waiting for so it was Thanksgiving and it was a big Thanksgiving at my mom's house which is the house I grew up in and there were 13 of us were milling around crowded into my mom's my childhood kitchen right this this small kitchen waiting for food and in comes and I'm going to make up names for them for privacy so in comes a young female relative of mine and her even younger male partner and I'll call her Sarah and I'll call him Mike Mike walks in and I totally hate his guts the minute I hear him open his mouth I hate his guts he's loud he's obnoxious he has this stupid laugh sort of like a stupid loud snorty laugh and I don't mean to offend if you have a snorty laugh but his was like it's not that it's snorty it was that it was it contained this huge amount of insecurity that he was blowing at people the whole night with completely exaggerated brags about accomplishments that I don't think were true and I just found myself completely distracted and disturbed by this guy you know and so that lasted for days afterwards after after this Thanksgiving dinner I like I couldn't he would just flash in front of my mind and I would just hate it so much every time and this is rare for me you know rare rare rare and so as someone who knows shadow work of course in my head I was like what's going on this has to have something to do with me this has to have something to do with an old pattern because when I know that when I have an overblown reaction like this to a person or to a circumstance or anything it's because what's happening is something about that person or thing is reminding my psyche of unseen unfelt pain from the past pain that was not witnessed you know Peter Levine says something like trauma isn't what happens to us it's what's inside us in the absence it's what remains within us in the absence of an empathetic witness so trauma isn't what happens to us it's what remains inside in the absence of an empathetic witness I'm not saying that exactly right if you know the exact quote please put it in the chat but anyway that's Peter Levine and what it means is that we have this imprint in our systems when the pain we had way back when was not seen with love was not witnessed by someone who could really hold space for us so I knew this in my head you know but we can know a lot in our head and that doesn't mean that we're not going to have the reaction in our bodies and that's completely okay right because healing isn't about controlling or fixing it's about awareness and it's about love so you know as many of you know I am the mother of a two-year-old and a six-year-old and I am a full-time mom that's what I do all day every day except for these small snippets when I get to come on here and so I don't have the time that I want to sit and process but when I finally got the time late at night to sit and feel and do a process like I'm going to lead you through today with this guy Mike what I did is I imagined him in front of me and immediately I felt full body repulsion just nausea repulsion oof and I took deep breaths I stayed with it I stayed with the body sensation and I fell and sensed and saw myself as the beautiful elder wise elder version of me the mother version who has a wide soft lap who can hold everything and I asked my psyche to show me when have I felt this feeling before what is this about why you know and I spent a lot of time with it and what came up was this that the feelings of worthlessness that he felt that he was unconscious of you know those feelings of worthlessness that were so deep and so dark and so ingrained for him were a mirror of my own feelings of worthlessness that I have covered up my whole life in extremely different ways than him so we look very different right very very different but the root was the same the feelings of worthlessness and I realized that these feelings that like that that his presence was a gift to me because in my experience of inner work seeing him feeling the repulsion and eventually the more I sat with it I saw the one inside me who I call the orphan self the worthless one it was curled up and dark and emaciated and just felt like she should really frankly rather she should probably just die than take up space that's how I used to feel and I saw her and the amazing thing was that even though I've worked with this part of myself a lot over the last 20 years the gift was that I have never been able to hold her with the immediate quantity of love that I had for her that day there was no second guessing there was no additional part that was judging the situation or wanted to fix or control her there was just the pure interaction of my wise mother grandmother self and her and she was able to look at me as my wise self which had very rarely happened and I was able to meet her need being seen being loved and what that means is like to a child that means I'm worthy you know if someone is taking the time to see me with love that's a visceral sense that I am worthy I am worthy of this of this love and she was able to receive it and she changed in my mind you know she changed from being curled up and emaciated to full and joyful this was all just within a matter of minutes and I was so proud of myself I was so proud of myself again because I've been working with this part for a long time and seeing Mike at Thanksgiving and having that gigantic reaction called me into myself to bear witness to just how much love I have for myself now because remember that when we grow in our self-love which I call radical love you know love for all the parts all the feelings no matter what when we grow in our self-love it's not that we don't get triggered anymore it's not that we don't feel repulsion at people it's no we feel all of that what's different is that we're able to become even if it's just for a moment at a time the large true self our strongest and most loving adult self who can hold it all and it's a muscle that we build over time this toggling back this switching back to this version of ourselves who can radically love it all who can radically love those parts of ourselves that still have pain that need to be seen so again it's not that these parts never take the wheel it's not that these parts never arise it's the difference is how we treat them and for those of us who struggle with control as a coping mechanism including healing as a means of control we tend to want to get rid of or heal away these really dark parts of ourselves even if we don't think that's what we're doing we're often doing that we want to get rid of them and what's really different about my work is that it's about the opposite right so we see the part of ourselves that is so in need of healing and we accept them absolutely accept them absolutely with radical love and I didn't think about him anymore after that I really didn't and whenever he would cross my mind it was just like that's Sarah's problem it's like my relative that's her partner you know it's not they'll it's their lives they're gonna figure it out it's not my business it's okay you know so I was able to let it go because I was relating to him now as my adult self not as my triggered young self who needed that pain to be to still be seen you know so I want to move into the practice but before we actually do the practice I will explain what we're doing so that you can decide for yourself if it's right for you right now so what we'll be doing is first I'll ask you to get really comfortable seated or lying down this is not a kind of meditation where I'm asking you to have a straight spine or anything like that it should be about comfort and relaxation but if you know yourself as someone who can fall asleep when you're too relaxed like that just keep yourself upright and then I'm going to invite you to bring to mind a relationship ideally a pretty recent encounter just because it's fresh you have the churning available to you but it doesn't have to be recent and it might be somebody just to make it a little easier for yourself I'm not saying you can't do this with a mother or a father or a sibling figure or a partner but I do suggest at least starting with somebody a little bit that you're a little bit removed from you know a friend a co-worker a neighbor a family member you don't see maybe in your immediate household or as often someone you're not absolutely entangled with because there are just more there's more complexity and more layers when that is the case and again I have the talk on the mother wound and I have a talk on the father wound if you're really working on that in addition to what we're doing here to take you deeper into those relationships but whatever relationship pops up for you immediately is what you should work on today and what we'll be doing is I'll invite you again to be in that to really see sense and feel yourself in that encounter in a recent ideally encounter with the person and we're going to become exquisitely aware of the body sensations that you feel around them when you're in their presence like I said with this guy Mike I said repulsion nausea even hatred but then where do you feel that like specifically what part of your body does that feel like and does it feel like heat does it feel jagged does it feel smooth or slippery or frozen or collapsed you know just really putting physical names to what we experience and then what emotions are there right so we're going to pinpoint this whole constellation of feeling and body sensation around this person and then I'm going to invite you to ask the wisdom of your soul of your psyche to show you immediately an earlier time in your life where you felt something similar an earlier time ideally teenage or childhood years but don't think about it the trick with this is to really lean and trust like lean on and trust the wisdom of your body of your deep psyche to show you what is relevant to this where you felt something similar kind of a root experience and then we're going to see sense and feel ourselves as the strongest most loving version of our adult self which sometimes I call the empathic witness we're going to then as this adult self look at this young part of ourselves while the rest of the scene if there's other people involved it's kind of frozen in time we're going to do some deep witnessing loving acceptance of that younger part of ourselves so knowing what you know about what we're doing today just make that call if you want to drop in with us now or knowing that this is recorded consider doing it later if you like and there are also other record meditations I have on insight timer that are standalone versions of this very similar practice okay so if you are practicing with us today go ahead and sit or lie down now breathing in and breathing out and as you breathe notice any areas of tension in the body belly perhaps shoulders ears jaw and send your inhales as if you were sending care into these places softening without trying to fix or ease simply inviting a deeper release in these places take a few more breaths breathing in with softness and breathing out deepening release and in the stillness of your mind invite now a fairly recent encounter into your awareness where you felt a reaction to this person that seemed very over the top or very negative know that this could be a negative reaction or it could even be an infatuation whatever this reaction is just keep seeing and sensing this person in front of you as you invite these sensations to get bigger in your body the sensations of your reaction to them breathing and noticing can you name these sensations breathing and noticing where in your body are they most intense notice if your mind is spacing out getting distracted just lovingly bring your awareness back to just right here looking at this person and feeling what you feel it's so normal to not want to feel this stuff we're turning towards it and it's hard and what are the emotions that are churning can you name them as you again look at this person what emotions are here imagining now this whole collection this constellation of feeling and body sensation imagine now that the magic of your innermost wisdom is going to show you an early memory in your life in which you felt a similar combination of feeling and body sensation without thinking about the right thing just let your intuition show you that now it does not have to be a memory for most it isn't it could be a general idea of your age it could even feel made up to you that's completely okay we're trusting that what you're seeing now has deep meaning for you on a soul level so seeing in front of you perhaps a scene of you at a certain age start to breathe into your own body the witness body as if you have the energy of a queen a king or another royal kind of sovereign figure who is so deeply loving breathing into this body this adult body that is so strong that has such deep compassion for this young version of you and again your intuition will show you the version of you that is most aligned with your soul it could also be an elder version of you a wise elder whatever it is breathe into this body that is so full of love and capacity and look now at this younger version of yourself going through what they're going through knowing that at any time if you need to take a break if it feels too intense you're absolutely encouraged to do that healing never comes out of forcing healing comes from softening notice what you notice about them their body language the emotions that they're feeling and keep re-centering yourself in the seat of this loving witness self you might feel yourself being drawn into the emotional spiral of the young self and that's so natural just lovingly invite yourself back to the seat of the adult and now imagine that if there are other people with your young self or other things going on that all other activity is frozen in time now your young self is able to move and be alive and they notice you there with them now just see how they react any reaction is completely okay they could be scared and want to run or they could run to you or anything in between whatever their reaction tell them something like I'm here with you look at me I'm here with you even if they're not actually making eye contact it's okay you just want them to be aware that you're there and now ask them this question and see if they have an answer if they don't just continue lovingly validating that it's okay not to know if they have an answer you can see yourself responding in the way that is most aligned for them and the question is what do you really need what do you really need allow whatever they say to be completely true and imagine and really see and feel yourself meeting this need for them if it feels like that's what they want so take the next couple of minutes and allow that to unfold or follow the wisdom of wherever your own intuition has taken you in this encounter whatever feels healing and loving if you find that you've met their need and there's feels like there's more you can ask them again is there anything else that you need very gradually bringing this encounter to a kind of conclusion now you might ask them if there's anything else any other message they have for you anything else that needs to be seen or heard just ask them now to bring this to a close now wherever you are with them perhaps with hand on heart send this young version of you this knowing this deep knowing that even though it's going to seem like you're moving away when you come back to your reality in a they are right here right here with you as you they belong to you and really feel that they're here and that when you switch back to normal awareness they're still here and when it feels like they understand that very slowly with great gratitude for them thank you for allowing me to see you and to be with you and great love start to imagine the room that you're in around you as you open the eyes if they were closed and look around your space blinking and breathing yourself back to this place and time maybe giving yourself a hug or just patting your body to remind yourself that you're here in body you might even stand up and wiggle around make some movement just to really bring yourself right back here if you're someone who likes to write things down or journal you might grab grab a journal or write down what you experienced or just keep it in your heart and i would love to know if anyone has experiences they'd like to share from that practice or if anything felt confusing or disorienting and you'd like guidance so i'm here for the next few minutes and i'd love to hear from you yeah the more the more i become skilled at this muscle of toggling back to the adult self what i find in my daily reality is that i'm just less taken off my center by people and events i can more often stay right here and respond to my children to my husband to others as the self i truly want to be as my most loving self who has a wide perspective and who can hold the feelings that arise in a human life yeah i had the realization just sitting on the couch randomly the other night i'm like i'm like good i i'm i'm good i'm good inside i don't i'm not at war with myself anymore you know i just i feel good and i don't feel dependent on other people telling me that i'm good or meeting my needs for me because i'm meeting my needs within myself which is ultimately the only way that we can meet our deepest needs for love stephanie i'm so glad that the tears are just flowing and you don't even need a specific event yeah that's great so johanna says so when you feel you're triggered somehow by someone do you mother yourself immediately or do you do a little shadow work practice when you're alone and have time it really depends johanna i mean i follow my intuition i follow my intuition as to what feels right because and i can say that because i've been doing this for so many years um so i have you know tools and in my mind i'm drawn to one or the other um what usually happens so like at that thanksgiving dinner when i was really triggered by that guy i just kind of allowed myself to laugh in my head like at the whole situation at the absurdity of some of the things he was saying but also at myself for being triggered and just like keep it really light and i didn't let my trigger come out in meanness you know i didn't i didn't react in the moment from the trigger and i've done this work long enough that i can just you know i can separate that in the moment so i except with my kids sometimes i generally don't react out of a trigger um but uh yeah so i would just laugh so i would say like if you're in an intense situation with family do your best to just know it's there know you're being triggered use some deep breathing mindfulness just body awareness take more time in the bathroom than you actually need to get away you know and then when you're by yourself just really sit with whatever's here i frankly don't do any specific practice with myself really anymore i just i just sit with the feelings are in my body and i see what comes up and sometimes like in the story i shared you know my small self my wounded self came up sometimes it's something else but just take time to sit with yourself and if it's helpful do a guided practice or use a kind of structure like my face practice the f-a-c-e which is what we did today and is what my course on insight timer goes into great depth with so if this stuff resonated and you want to go a whole lot deeper and really understand this method of inner work which i call face f-a-c-e which stands for feel amplify connect and embrace it's how we work with these parts of ourselves and it's deeply embodied and deeply trauma-informed the course is very tender and very soft and also very informative and specific and it's helped a lot of people i think there are like 11,

200 people technically enrolled in it and it's it's apparently been really helpful so make sure that you do that course if you feel called to go deeper and also even though groups are a little bit buried in insight timer these days i do have a group called shadow work so if you want to stay in touch or ask me questions you can be part of that group you can also send me a direct message on insight timer if anything happened here that you want private guidance about or anything else and on my teacher profile if you want to know what i do beyond insight timer just go to the about section and you can read more and then of course any donation is so incredibly appreciated so thank you so much for those of you who have and thank you so much for just being here today i never ever take it for granted so and thank you so much for those of you who leave reviews ratings and written reviews on insight timer because i read every single one and i respond every single one i appreciate it so much and it really is a wonderful way to give back so maybe you can't donate but you can leave me words and that's so appreciated too because like being an online content creator is a it can be a very lonely and alienating place pouring one's heart into a seeming void and so when i when i hear your words when i hear your sharing how this impacts you it just really nourishes me and i so so appreciate it all right thank you everyone so very much take loving care of yourselves and go on and navigate those relationships with renewed intimacy and tenderness toward yourself okay bye bye everybody

Reviews

This talk has helped me to accept and learn about myself with respect to others. It also validates when I needed to leave to protect myself. This practice has helped me in my healing journey. Thank you 💖🙏

You are precious, Catherine. I love how you guide your beautiful meditations with such gentle love and heal along with us. Thank You ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹