Breaking Up with Broken

Let me ask you a question: Is there such a thing as broken people, or are there only broken moments? Your answer may vary depending on where you are in your life, what you’ve experienced, and how you’ve processed what has been. Today, you and I are taking a one-on-one deep dive into redefining the idea of broken, and I’ll hand over something most of us are not taught, which is how to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Let's shatter traditional thinking in order to move forward!

Transcript

Earlier this week,

My husband walked into my office holding a package.

And when I saw who it was from,

I smiled and I opened it immediately.

I was excited to receive something.

One of the beautiful ladies that I currently work with took the time to send me something special,

And I had to know what was inside of it.

You know that feeling.

And inside of it was a t-shirt with big,

Bold letters that says,

Not Broken.

It's a shirt that she has worn to session multiple times,

And I've commented how much I like it each time she wears it.

And here it was in my hands,

This shirt with those exact words,

Not Broken.

And I paused for a moment.

She had no idea that the reason why I love that shirt so much is because those words have defined my life and the span of my career for really the last 20 years.

Not broken.

You know,

If you've followed my work for any amount of time,

You've probably heard me say,

You're not broken,

And your life does not suck.

These words are personal mantras of mine,

And they have been for a very long time.

I get it.

Those are more negative words around a positive thought.

Not generally what I teach,

But for me,

It worked as positive motivation.

So not broken,

Even though that really does lead the mind to,

Well,

That means you must have been broken at one point.

For me,

I am not broken,

And my life doesn't suck,

Is transformative.

And I want to explain why.

And here's the other part of that.

For many women,

You know,

At least the ones that I've had the pleasure of talking to and working with,

They've had the same experience.

And so I ask you,

Has that been your experience?

And let me ask you the question that I asked in the intro once more.

Is there such a thing as a broken person or are there only broken moments?

Honestly,

What I've learned both through training and experience is there are only broken moments.

It may seem strange to you,

But it's true.

Those who feel as if they are broken are people who have owned their moments as the entirety of their identity.

They've allowed moments to compile,

Forming who they believe that they are until they learn to know different,

Until they find better,

Until living this way becomes so uncomfortable and so damn unsustainable that they're forced to break down the walls and the barriers and lean into something new.

And it's here that we discover what I just said.

The truth is that none of us are broken.

Our experiences can be broken,

But we are not.

And there are times that trauma does tell us that who we are and what is experienced in our life is our fault and our problem and our issue.

And we are broken from that.

And of course,

When others add to our emotional instability,

When hard shit happens,

We go down into the rabbit hole of brokenness.

And this is where I want to break that pattern for you.

I want you to know the truth.

And let's get something straight on the table right now.

And it is this.

Your emotions are not law.

They are not the written law that everyone in the world has to follow.

And your emotions can change.

Right.

We're not allowed that.

We're not afforded that understanding.

And we have to remember that what happens in our life does not have to define every moment that follows.

And no matter how hard you run,

You cannot out process your situations and you must do the hard work.

So that's what I want to talk about today.

The words not broken and how to shift into being uncomfortable so that you can grow.

That seems like an oxymoron.

A lot of times women will sit in front of me and they'll say,

I want to do this work.

And then they touch and taste discomfort and they say,

Never mind.

No,

Thanks.

I don't want to be this uncomfortable.

And I say to them,

As I say to you now,

The only way through anything is through it.

Period.

The only way to not feel broken is to become not broken.

Right.

So I'll ask you another question.

Are you living the life you want?

Most of us walk around with unresolved core issues,

The traumas and beliefs that keep us feeling broken and stuck.

We are so good at minimizing the impacts of our moment instead of dealing with them head on.

Another piece to this is that many of us are so good at minimizing the events of our lives through comparison.

We say,

Well,

We're not homeless,

So it can't be that bad.

Or he or she didn't hit me.

So is it really trauma or abuse?

I didn't die.

So shouldn't I just get over it?

That's one that I recently heard in session.

And I just had to stop the conversation and say,

Comparison is not only a thief of joy.

Comparison is a thief of experience.

Let that settle for just a moment.

I keep thinking about those words because I feel like they were divinely inspired in that moment with her.

You know,

It can be a thief of joy,

But it's also a thief of your experience.

Comparison does not serve you and it keeps you in broken.

Let me remind you or even tell you for the first time,

If you don't know what trauma is,

Know that it is anything for any reason that dysregulates your life.

It doesn't have to be massive.

It doesn't have to be hitting or homelessness or awful situations.

It can be small.

It can be something that just shakes you enough that you connect to that moment and you have a hard time getting out of it.

It's about the way that we connect.

I'll say it over and over again today in our time together because I want it to soak in.

Broken is about connection.

Trauma is about connection.

Your choice can be about connection.

Like I said,

I want the idea and the understanding of connection to a moment to settle.

And when it does soak in,

You may feel angry.

Right.

You may feel like,

My God,

I've done nothing but got in my own way so many times.

And I want you to remember to offer yourself grace.

We're going to talk about self-compassion in just a moment.

But I want you to remember that grace believes and understands and teaches us that we don't know what we don't know.

And so we cannot operate from a space of knowledge if we don't have that knowledge.

And so together we're building that space.

Right.

So give yourself a minute of grace and let's do some hard work.

And the first hard piece that I want us to look at is some behaviors beyond trauma or even the coping mechanism of trauma or our experiences that make us feel broken.

So these are everyday behaviors that we all fall into.

OK.

But the more we practice them,

The more broken we can feel.

And this first one may surprise you.

And it is about following the rules.

We all have this reflex to follow the rules that we were taught.

And as you grow up,

You know,

So many rules are handed over from your parents,

The teachers in your life,

Society.

They've taught us to guide our behaviors through a set of guidelines.

And if we don't,

Then obviously there's punishment and we can be viewed as irresponsible,

Bad,

Unworthy.

Right.

The host of all the negatives.

And I'm not talking about like hard crimes.

OK.

I'm talking about simple life ownership here.

Those things that we don't do because our rules and upbringing told us not to.

This can be anything from choosing the relationships that best suit you,

Whether it is a person that's forbidden or a relationship that's forbidden.

It's about staying in the job that doesn't suit you and,

You know,

Light your soul on fire because that's not what was set up for you.

Those are not the rules that your family really imposed on you.

There's so many different places where following the rules create brokenness for us.

Rules are built in can't and shouldn't.

But when they do not align with our life and what we want and we remain tied to them,

What happens?

We feel broken.

We feel unworthy of our truest desires.

We feel like what we want is wrong.

We have judgment from our family,

From our friends,

From society,

From others.

And we feel like our lives have very little purpose and value because we're caught in the space of wanting something different.

You are responsible for your life.

But are you living it as you so desire or are you living it from the rules?

If you're not,

Is this why you feel broken?

And if so,

Can you see that this behavior,

These experiences are really about something that are external and they're things that you can shift and change?

And if you can,

Can you see that you are not broken,

But instead it is the connection to the collections of moments that are so defining?

Not to take away the fact that moments define us because they do,

But it's really about are you going to stay in the moment and allow it to be everything?

The next thing that we often see that can be a tripping point for us is our definition of success.

This goes back to rules and permission,

Too.

You know,

Many allow their parents and friends and society to define what success means.

But this leads to broken,

Too.

And it also leads to unfulfilled life experiences.

Having this or that will never define your success.

Those are material things.

So what is success to you,

For you?

Are you hitting that mark each and every day?

If you're not,

What will happen?

You're going to end up feeling empty and broken.

For me,

Success is about showing up.

It's about doing what I love.

It's about serving.

It's about making sure I give 100% of myself.

Nowhere did I say that my idea of success is an end result.

You know,

That is one of the biggest things that as I began to shift out of the idea of broken or that my life sucked was that I left the outcome on the table.

If I do not attach to an outcome,

But I give the best of myself in everything that I do,

Guess what?

I feel successful.

And I have either learned or I have gained.

The question really becomes,

Is your idea of success causing you to feel empty?

Can you shift out of the idea that you have to win in order to be whole?

When you do,

When you let that go,

The payoff is unreal.

The next behavior that I want you to really think about is letting fear chain you,

Letting it enslave you in a way that kills your spirit.

Remember how I said emotions are not law?

This is so true.

And at the same time,

You and I are hardwired to feel emotions,

Especially fear.

It tells us that there's something important that we really need to look at.

It's a part of that safety factor that I talk about so often.

And in this fear,

We can allow ourselves to really decide,

How am I going to connect to this?

Am I going to push it aside and lead myself into broken?

Or am I going to do something about it?

If you are afraid to do something,

You have to do it anyway,

Right?

We have to push and pull ourselves to better sometimes,

Not hustle.

That's not what I'm talking about.

But I'm talking about actively dragging ourselves into a different state if that's what it takes.

It's so needed.

And I want you to realize,

I want you to hear me that so often it is rare to have the perfect opportunity to do everything.

How often do we look at something and go,

Oh,

My gosh,

Now is the exact moment.

It's the exact time.

It's very rare.

I also tend to believe that if you are meant to do something,

The opportunity to do it is going to come back around at some point.

So if you did miss,

Quote,

The perfect moment,

Guess what?

Another one will present itself.

If you're meant to do it,

If it's meant for you,

That doesn't change just because the time changes.

It's about how you show up.

So if you're holding yourself in a place of fear,

Ask yourself,

Is this a part of why I am not moving forward?

Is this a part of why I feel broken?

And if so,

Why am I putting off what I know will serve me?

Depending on how you answer,

I want you to ask yourself the next question,

And it is,

What can I do today that moves me into a new wholeness?

Now,

That new wholeness does not have to mean that you come up with a masterful plan to execute immediately.

No,

It can really just be that you took a moment to visualize what you need,

And that step alone is a movement out of brokenness.

You don't always have a clear path in front of you,

And it's okay not to.

Let's move to the next behavior.

And it's something that I see so often,

And this does actually come from trauma,

But oftentimes you feel broken in your body.

And what I mean by that is you actively choose to destroy your body by the things that you're doing.

You choose to deal with your trauma in a way that weighs you down,

So you bury your feelings with food,

With drugs,

With sex,

With alcohol,

Whatever your vice is.

When there's been a big trauma,

There's an attempt to keep yourself safe from the brokenness,

Right?

And we build these physical barriers around ourselves,

So gaining the weight or rapidly losing weight or trying to take in a substance to help settle the feelings.

And in all of that,

You destroy your health.

We lie to ourselves and say,

This is how we cover up the brokenness,

And it's all about control.

And this works for many of us for quite some time until we have a health scare or we get sick and tired of being sick and tired.

And all of these little small behaviors add up and attach themselves to this idea of brokenness.

Now,

As far as trauma goes,

As far as how it makes us feel broken,

Let's talk about that for just a second because we have to go back to the what of trauma.

Trauma is an emotional response to a distressing event or situation.

And here's the biggest part that I want you to hear.

It breaks your sense of security.

It sets off an alarm that triggers that fight or flight response in your mind and your body.

It heightens the state of arousal that makes it difficult for you to feel calm,

And it easily makes you feel reactive and not in control in most situations.

Trauma affects each of us differently depending on if we've experienced it once or repeatedly or over the course of time.

Some people experience the obvious forms such as PTSD,

Which causes them to revisit those intense emotions that they felt during the event.

And others have less obvious trauma response.

Your life history,

Your support system,

Your coping mechanism and skills will all alter your experience.

When I said how we connect to a moment is whether or not we feel broken,

It's right in this moment,

Right?

When we connect to our traumas,

It depends on what occurs after.

And I want to say this.

There's no right or wrong way to respond to trauma.

But how you initially respond is far less concerning than how this moment continues to influence your life.

So often we get caught up in the actual moment,

The event of the trauma,

But we don't think about how the moment continues to really roll downhill,

How it causes this avalanche of things that impact us.

And oftentimes when we do get into that avalanche,

We experience things like anxiety and confusion,

Dissociation,

Exhaustion,

Fear,

Feeling numb,

Avoidance of other situations.

Or we can even get into a more severe response.

And that is where we just cannot find any moment of calm or we have flashbacks or we avoid feeling or activities that's related to anything.

And then,

Of course,

There is severe depression.

Fear really can take us down and your life is greatly impacted.

And that's when we start saying,

I am broken.

We all know that events are going to happen.

This is the essence of life.

We are here to learn.

We are here to experience.

If everything was rainbows and sunshine,

100 percent of the times,

How would we advance?

What would we learn?

Not to say that you can't learn anything when things are good,

Because we absolutely can.

But when do you learn the most?

Right.

It's in the hard moments.

Feeling broken.

It usually means that you feel like there's something you don't know how to change.

For us to live our lives to the fullest,

The only way we can achieve this is by overcoming the challenges that life throws at us.

We have to experience the pain and the betrayal and the adversity in order to get out of broken and into being uncomfortable.

That seems so odd,

But it is so necessary.

This is a moment that I hope I can offer you something extremely powerful and even shift your perspective.

An aha,

As I often say,

It is this.

Whether it's brokenness or finding a new path,

Both are uncomfortable until you get your footing.

It's a question about whether or not you're going to lean into the discomfort of broken or the discomfort of change.

They're equal.

Right.

So which one is more important to you?

We get so complacent in life.

We lean into emotions and events connecting to them as we've been talking about in ways that do not serve us instead of moving out of them and being ready to be uncomfortable.

Now,

Please know I'm not throwing stones at you.

Right.

All of us have had moments where we've claimed our brokenness and we've learned how to semi thrive in it.

We have good days and bad days and we ride the roller coaster.

And when we're up,

We're good.

But when we're down,

We fall into the stories of victimhood and the hard days.

We justify.

And yet when we move forward,

It's just as uncomfortable,

Like I just said.

And we don't even have footing there.

But we begin to step onto a path into the unknown.

We don't have the right words,

The understanding,

The thought process.

But we are in a state of allowing ourself to let go of the chains.

Which discomfort will you choose?

What discomfort are you continually choosing?

I don't know about you,

But no one taught me how to be uncomfortable.

They taught me to feel discomfort,

But no one taught me how to sit and make it something I can use to my benefit.

So I want to challenge you now and give you some very simple practices and pieces that you can do that helps you get into that space.

And it is healthy and it is productive and it is so necessary in our lives.

We'll call it discomfort 101.

All right.

So the first step is to acknowledge that you are not broken.

You may have had hard experiences that were not right,

Not necessarily good,

Broken in many aspects.

But that will never mean that you are the sum of those experiences and the sum of the brokenness.

That's step one.

I am not my experiences.

I do not have to claim everything that comes my way.

I can take a moment.

I can break it down to just the facts.

I can extract what I need and want and let the rest go.

Period.

You have to sit.

You have to be uncomfortable.

You have to allow the discomfort to settle in order to move out of it.

The next thing I want you to do is to gauge your moments.

This is a personal practice of mine,

And it is a huge factor in letting go of the idea of brokenness.

And it is the step of sitting in it.

Right.

So when I find myself upset,

Leaning into the idea that maybe I'm not good enough.

Right.

That's a theme song that we all have.

It's the theme song of brokenness or feeling triggered or leaning into the past in ways that do not serve me.

I gauge what is happening in my experience.

You know what happened right before those thoughts occurred.

I asked myself,

What was I doing before I felt this way?

Who was in the room?

What topic was being discussed?

I break it down to the what,

Who,

How,

When and why.

And I ask myself in that moment,

Was it a person,

A thing or an experience,

A thought that took me into that discomfort?

This practice is really uncomfortable because it exposes the truth of what you do not want to face.

It's here that we have to gauge why do I feel broken in this moment and what can I do about it?

This is the way that we redefine our wholeness.

Think of it as a way to redefine the risk that you have to take in order to stop feeling broken.

You know,

Do you need to leave the relationship?

Do you need to change jobs?

What beliefs are you holding on to?

What is it that isn't resulting in positive emotional feedback for you?

Are you living in discomfort and calling it comfort?

And if so,

Is this why you feel broken?

I mean,

Probably,

Right?

You have to then move into the next step,

Which is to practice self-compassion.

If you listen to last week's episode about the plant slant,

Dr.

Challah mentioned radical compassion.

It is an idea developed by Dr.

Kristen Neff,

And it is so important in our lives.

And radical compassion means total compassion with nothing,

And I mean nothing excluded.

Radical compassion applies to this empathy that we have for ourselves.

And if you don't know what that means,

It sounds like I have felt broken long enough.

I offer myself grace and love to move forward even when it's uncomfortable.

Self-compassion matters.

These are the steps that you have to take to make yourself feel whole,

Even in the midst of the storm of fear and self-doubt.

Brokenness usually feels insurmountable when we are in the middle of it,

But feeling broken for a short time does nothing when it is compared to the long road of broken.

Broken,

If we must feel it,

Can be a temporary stop on our way to healing.

It doesn't have to be a life sentence.

So we have to acknowledge the feeling so that we can step into something better.

And then I want you to really think about the necessity to practice acceptance.

Acceptance removes broken and introduces wholeness.

For a few moments,

Allow yourself to feel something.

Right?

When we feel broken,

We only feel the negative.

We feel numb a lot of times,

Too,

And we have to allow the sadness and the fear and the doubt and whatever negative thought is coming and rising up for you to settle.

We have to say,

Is this my truth?

Remember that your feelings are not laws,

Yet they do deserve to be addressed,

Even when they are not facts.

They're trying to tell you something.

They're trying to help point you in a better direction.

If you can help yourself accept your moment,

You can actually allow yourself to break free.

And from there,

I want you to identify your strengths.

This seems like something that is very simple,

And yet it is not.

Your strength may not feel like much when you are broken,

And yet getting out of bed is a triumph.

Right?

When you can't do anything else,

This is a strength.

And we don't look at it like this.

We think,

Oh,

All I did was get out of bed today.

But when all we can do is get out of bed,

That is a moment to celebrate.

This is a strength.

We can celebrate our moments and our hard times,

And we can recognize that strength is within us.

I celebrate when I'm uncomfortable,

And in that celebration,

I say to myself,

This is the opposite of broken.

Because I'm feeling,

I'm alive,

I am doing,

I'm uncomfortable as hell,

But I'm taking the steps to my wholeness.

That is a strength.

What are you going to do?

How are you going to hold yourself up?

What is necessary to celebrate?

In all of this,

It's also necessary to explore new experiences that are uncomfortable because they are different than your norm.

If you stay in the same old,

Same old broken,

What is the opposite of it?

It is an important question.

It's an even more important action.

If you feel broken,

Try being a student of the world.

Ask discovery questions.

You've heard me talk about discovery questions over the last few months.

It's something that I am so passionate about in private session because when we ask,

We learn new things and we become exposed to new ideas.

And our idea of broken and stuck really shifts because we realize that there is so much more to life than what we have been living in.

And it helps us get comfortable with being different.

It helps us embrace standing out.

It helps us know that I can challenge my ideas and opinions and I can be myself,

Even if it is different than what others want for me,

If it's different than the rules and all of the other things that hold me back.

And inside of those discovery questions,

I want you to remember to get curious.

One of the questions I will often ask women when I'm working with them,

When they point out how broken they are,

I say,

OK,

Let's think about a moment.

And you keep saying it's broken.

What did you do in that moment?

How did you respond?

And if it didn't work for you,

What can you do now from that?

What can you do that is the opposite?

It is so imperative to realize that broken has a separate feeling to it on the other end of the ruler.

Can you get to it?

How can you get there?

How can you let go?

How can you redefine your life in a way that works?

From there,

When you have all of these other pieces in motion and you have really identified what's broken and how you want to move forward,

I want you to list five activities that push yourself.

Make a list of five things that make you uncomfortable.

Make promises to yourself to slowly go through your list and complete the task.

I asked one of my ladies to do this,

And she showed up the next week with a list of five things,

And they were very simple things.

They were simple things like eat alone in a restaurant.

She did not feel comfortable doing that.

She felt broken because her husband had passed and she had never done that before.

Eating alone at a restaurant was the movement to make her uncomfortable enough to realize that she was safe.

Number two on her list was to call people that she had pushed away in this dark,

Sad,

Broken time.

She felt uncomfortable because she had to be vulnerable to say,

I wasn't OK.

And when I asked her how she felt about that,

She said,

I think this is the only way that I change my brokenness.

And she was right.

So what are your five things?

What can you do to challenge yourself into the opposite action?

If I feel broken,

What can I do to not?

The path to wholeness is connection.

Beyond everything else that I've said,

I ask you to remember these important pieces of movement and change and wholeness.

Because once we get through broken and we get uncomfortable,

We can move into the wholeness that we all deserve to experience.

And those are things that you already know and probably already do,

But we don't think about it in our individual experiences.

So here they are for you.

I want you to remember to accept and anticipate change.

Resisting change will always fuel the negative energy that keeps you feeling broken and disengaged with your life and discouraged about your life.

And I want you to remember to embrace your power of choice.

I don't need to be broken.

I have the gift of choice to transform my life.

Maybe that's your mantra.

I'll say it again.

I don't need broken.

I have the gift of choice to transform my life.

You always have a choice.

And even when it feels like you don't,

Stop,

Ask questions,

Get down to the facts and remember,

There's always a choice.

No matter what is occurring,

There's always a choice.

The third thing I want you to remember is to ask for help.

This is not a sign of weakness.

When we're feeling so broken inside,

We have to lean into our support system.

We're connected and wired for connection.

Lean into it.

Right.

Even when it's hard,

Even when we have to tell truths that we don't want to face,

We still need to ask for help.

Number four,

Remember to be present.

One of my favorite quotes is,

Yesterday is gone.

Tomorrow has not come yet.

We only have today.

Let us begin.

That's by Mother Teresa.

It is such a beautiful reminder that the present is all we have.

And your thoughts fuel how you think about life.

Right.

And when you feel broken in your life,

Those negative thoughts dictate where we feel like we can begin.

We have to identify those thoughts.

We have to draw on the fact that the present is now.

What has been may not serve us.

What can you do today?

Then I want you to remember to focus on what brings you joy.

Broken is the opposite of joy.

Focusing on the good and what brings you joy is an important step into changing your life.

The more you focus on what's good,

The more helpful those feelings become to you.

Broken,

Negative.

Joy,

Positive.

What do you want to focus on?

And then I want you to use that joy and turn it into hope.

What can you do to be hopeful about tomorrow?

While we're focusing on today,

What can you do to help yourself move into a better tomorrow?

As much as many of us don't want to hear this,

Broken is a choice.

Being uncomfortable is a choice.

Being broken is a choice.

Being uncomfortable in change is a choice.

The question is,

Are you broken or have you had broken experiences?

Can you see why I have chased the answer to this for so long?

It is so important to know that the way we connect to our moments define everything.

How will you move forward now?

Now that you know this truth,

How will you move forward?

Can you say,

I am not broken?

Can you say,

I have never been broken?

Can you say,

If I don't move forward,

I will spend my life in this space.

If you can't make that leap,

Let me leave you with this.

Imagine that you break your arm.

You go to the doctor.

They let you know,

Yes,

It's definitely broken.

We're going to need to cast it.

You allow the discomfort of the cast and the break to heal.

But once the bone is healed and the cast comes off,

You no longer say,

My arm is broken.

Right?

You say,

My arm is healed.

Your experiences can be held in that same regard.

You fall down,

Your emotions break,

Your thoughts shifts and change.

And over a period of healing,

You are no longer broken.

If you make this shift,

If you always find a way to get into discomfort so that you can get back to a sense of whole,

You will find the space where you can say,

Like that t-shirt says,

Not broken.

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