Calling In The One With Katherine Woodward Thomas

Today's show is all about love and finding "the one" and/or improving your current relationship. So, whether you are in a relationship or not, you will benefit from this show. Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of Calling in the One and Conscious Uncoupling, shares with us some beautiful ideas on how we get ourselves healthy to be able to create the relationship we have been longing for.

Transcript

Welcome to the Adult Share Podcast with Michelle Chalfant,

A place to delve into who we are,

How we got that way,

And explore what it takes to be a healthy grownup.

With an extensive toolbox and guests with varied expertise,

Michelle will lead us on a journey to learn what it's like to live authentically and to love ourselves just the way we are.

And now here's Michelle.

Hello everybody and happy Valentine's Day today.

It is Michelle Chalfant.

I really like that new intro,

That little jingle I have.

I hope you all are enjoying it as much as I am.

I have a wonderful show today.

Today we are talking to Catherine Woodward Thomas about love and calling in the one.

But before we get to Catherine,

I have a pretty big announcement.

You all have been waiting for this very,

Very patiently,

I might add,

And I have to add,

I've been very patient too.

It has been a very tricky last seven months for me as I have been creating this.

And it's finally here and it is the Adult Share Membership Group.

I'm telling you,

I cried when it was done because it has been,

I think I've said to you years in the making of ideas and thoughts that I've had,

Like how can I help take people deeper into the Adult Share?

How can I help people learn that maybe can't come to the workshops or that don't have sessions?

So this is something big that I have been working on and it's finally launching.

And I thought how perfect today we'll do it on Valentine's Day.

So it's a wonderful way,

As you know,

The Adult Share is all about self love.

So it's a wonderful way to learn not only how to live authentically,

But really how to love yourself.

So go check it out,

Theadultshare.

Com forward slash membership.

So many of you have been asking about this because I thought it was going to launch,

Yes,

In November.

So it has been definitely a practice of patience on my end and I'm not going to bore you with all the details.

And they were,

Some of them very tricky for as far as my team goes,

But we did get it done and it's launched and it's here for you today.

And it's again,

A way for people to learn the Adult Share and we dive deep on a different topic every single month.

You get an exclusive only podcast and a meditation,

Journaling prompts,

Affirmations,

And me going into a Facebook group doing live streams and teachings all based on a monthly theme and a Q&A every single month.

And if you don't like Facebook,

You don't want to be in Facebook,

It's okay because all those videos are going to be uploaded right into that monthly theme.

And this month we're doing the Inner Child.

So if you want to learn how to connect with the Inner Child,

Which is a key component to the Adult Share,

It's all about the Inner Child or the Child Share and you will learn how to connect to that Inner Child part,

How to communicate what you do with the Inner Child.

We're talking all about the Inner Child this whole month.

So come join us,

Come check it out,

Theadultshare.

Com forward slash membership.

I look forward to seeing you there.

All right.

Today,

Whether you are in a relationship or not,

This is going to be the podcast for you on this Valentine's Day.

Today we have the fabulous Catherine Woodward Thomas on again,

She was on back in September podcast number 124 and we talked about conscious uncoupling.

Well today we're talking about calling in the one.

And again,

Even if you're in a relationship,

But you want to improve that relationship,

Her teachings are phenomenal because it will help you to turn your current relationship around.

But if you are single and you want to call in the one,

This is the podcast for you because she teaches us just how to do that.

So Catherine Woodward Thomas is the author of the New York Times bestseller,

Conscious Uncoupling,

Five Steps to Living Happily Even After,

As well as the national bestseller,

Calling in the One,

Seven Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life.

She's also a licensed marriage and family therapist.

She's the originator of Conscious Uncoupling Process,

Made famous by Queneth Paltrow and Chris Martin of Coldplay,

As well as the creator of Calling in the One,

49 Days to Love an Online Course.

And to date,

Catherine has trained and credentialed hundreds of people as certified Conscious Uncoupling coaches and as certified Calling in the One coaches.

I love having Catherine on because I really feel like everything that she talks about,

Whether it be uncouples or uncoupling or love,

It is directly in line with the adult chair model.

So we had a beautiful,

Beautiful conversation on calling in the one,

And I'm going to jump right to that conversation right now.

Here we go.

Well hello again,

Catherine Woodward Thomas.

We are delighted to have you on the adult chair podcast today.

Thank you,

Michelle.

It's great to be with you again.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day to you.

When you and I talked many months ago when you were on the show in September,

We thought this would be so great to have you on because this other book that you've written is just as fabulous as Conscious Uncoupling.

So I would love for you to share with us a little bit about Calling in the One and what inspired you to create this book.

Well,

I'm a licensed therapist and I have all of that training,

But I think the thing that really qualifies us to speak about anything truthfully is that we've overcome something ourselves.

So true.

Yeah.

So Calling in the One really is a book that I wrote to kind of pay forward a miracle that I created for myself.

I'd had challenging relationship patterns,

I would say for decades,

Really.

All of my adult life,

I was in my early 40s.

I'd been kind of in and out of relationships.

I'd had my heart broken a lot.

My particular pattern in relationships was unavailable people.

So I was a magnet for married men.

I was a magnet for alcoholics.

I was a magnet for long distance relationships,

Just kind of any size,

Shape or form of an impossible love.

And that's what found its way to my doorstep.

And I just really so rarely ever met a truly viable candidate for life partnership that it was just off my radar.

And I was a person who had been developing myself for many years.

I was,

As I said,

I'm a licensed therapist.

I was helping other people have pretty great love lives.

I was,

I've been spiritual practitioner since the age of 14.

Wow.

I was not a newbie,

Really,

To working on myself.

And yet,

And a lot in my life was really working.

I had,

I was doing some meaningful things.

I was a professional singer.

I had founded a nonprofit in the arts that worked with people who were homeless,

Like really meaningful things.

As I said,

I had gone back to graduate school to become a therapist.

So my life was really rich in a lot of ways,

But I still kept coming home alone at the end of the day in my little apartment with my kitty cat Clover.

It felt unfair.

It felt stubborn and tenacious and confusing.

So what happened is in my early 40s,

I started to really learn about setting intentions and this act of what I'm going to call deliberate creation,

Like actually standing for a future that is pretty improbable and then organizing around that future,

Getting into integrity with that future and playing full out for that future,

Whether or not you know if it's going to happen or not.

So I joined this group and we were all kind of playing with this idea.

And some people,

Most of the group were professionals.

So they're focused on like,

Why I'm going to double my income or I'm going to grow my business or I'm going to get these five new accounts.

I'm going to buy a house.

Like people were really focused on financial success.

The area that was suffering the most for me was relationships.

So on the tail end of yet like another disastrous failed love affair with a man whose wife had passed a couple of years before.

So I thought,

OK,

Well,

There's no wife in the picture.

This time.

But then he told me that he was just,

You know,

In it for the transition.

And I was his transitional person and he was getting used to being he wanted to be single again.

So it was such a disappointment that I brought it to the group.

And I said,

I know this is kind of crazy,

But I'm going to set an intention to be engaged by my 42nd birthday.

And that was eight months out.

I had no prospects for a husband,

Let alone like a great husband.

But a dear friend of mine in that circle said something that really changed my life.

She said,

Catherine,

I'm going to hold that intention with you and for you if you give me permission to hold you accountable for being the woman that you would need to be on your 42nd birthday in order to be engaged.

And that kind of stopped me in my tracks because,

You know,

I was conscious at this point.

I just was really,

Michelle,

Assuming that because I wanted this,

That I was actually available to receive it.

But I heard her when she said that.

And what it did is it shifted my focus from running out to try and find love or make something happen to getting very quiet and to going within to really look very,

Very sincerely for all of the inner barriers that I may have built against love,

Things that were outside of my conscious awareness.

And so every day I began with some meditation and I did the things,

The law of attraction,

Things that many of us now know to do,

Which is you imagine to the best of your ability what it feels like to have the fulfillment of your desire and to try that future on and stretch your capacity to receive it internally.

But then I ended with two questions at the end of the meditation.

What did I give up to get here?

And what did I cultivate and or become to get here?

Those are big questions.

They are so,

I know.

And you know what,

Whenever we ask life these kinds of questions sincerely and sit in the emptiness to hear what our own deeper knowing says or what the whisperings of our soul are,

Information will flood in.

And it wasn't until I started to ask those questions that I really started to see the very subtle ways that I was internally incongruent with that future.

And you know,

As I said,

I've done tons of development already,

But there was something about really getting that clear and being that willing.

So I looked at old agreements,

Places where I was still being loyal to promises made long ago.

I looked at places I still felt victimized and resentful of past relationships,

Which meant that I really hadn't taken responsibility for my part,

Which meant that I didn't really trust myself to not do that again.

I also looked at ways that I did my own internal beliefs that I the conclusions I came to about myself when I was very,

Very young,

Were kind of playing out in ways that I would show up.

I would actually begin to kind of enroll people into that story.

I saw also that I had certain ways of showing up with people where I would give away my power because I would be anxious that they'd leave.

So I never really felt safe to not give too much away in relationships.

So all of these things started to be revealed one by one.

I mean,

And then there were some very practical things,

Too,

Like the day that I got up and I realized I looked at all the artwork on my walls and I realized,

Oh,

My gosh,

They're all pictures of single women looking nobly off into space.

Oh,

Wow,

That's interesting.

So just taking the photos down,

Making room in my closet,

All of these very proactive things.

And the thing is,

Is that also when I saw things about myself,

Like,

For example,

One of the agreements I saw was this man back in high school,

Right?

I'm in my early 40s.

I'm still holding on to my high school boyfriend.

We were really bonded and close.

And then when we were 18 or he was 21 or something,

But I was 18 and it was time to go to college.

And then he went into his family business and he wanted to get married and he didn't want me to go to college.

So,

You know,

All that drama later,

But we split up.

But what I said to him,

I was so distraught at the time.

I said,

Well,

You go your way now and I'll go my way.

But when we're in our 60s,

We'll get back together again and then we'll marry then.

And of course,

He married somebody the next year.

So he didn't listen at all to that.

But on some level that lodged in me,

You know,

Because he was so wonderful and we had we were really bonded.

We were already pledged to each other.

We were secretly buying living room furniture.

You know,

Like we really were in that future.

So it was such a trauma to lose him that there was a part of me still holding on to that.

So so when I say that,

You know,

When I saw these things,

I let them go.

I didn't want to pick up the phone and call him 20 something years later and say,

Hey,

By the way,

Remember that promise I made back then?

But I did bring him into meditation.

And even though I hadn't seen him in all that time,

I imagined him sitting in front of me and I had a heart to heart conversation with him about why I was not going to keep that agreement with him.

You know,

And these things really matter because when I got up off the floor from that meditation,

I felt so free,

Michelle.

It was like lifted from my shoulders.

So all of these things that I'm doing and then the development part where I said,

Who would I need to become?

Well,

I realized I'd actually have to become much more open because one of the things I saw that I was doing is that if your pattern is unavailability,

Like mine was,

You have to ask yourself the obvious question.

OK,

What part of me is not really able to have this?

And inside that question,

What became clear to me is that when I was a child,

I've got my heart kind of broken actually by my father's choices.

And I think that back then outside of conscious awareness,

I just made a decision that no one was ever going to hurt me like that again.

So you see these things and you recognize that when we made these decisions when we were young,

It was almost like setting an intention back then.

Of course.

Right?

We're creating our lives.

So if you make a decision,

No one will ever hurt me like this again.

I will never be available for this kind of heartbreak again.

We're kind of informing the universe on what's possible and what's not possible for us.

So when I saw that that was just this little vulnerable,

Hurt 10 year old part of me,

I could,

Of course,

Go back and have a conversation with that tender part of me and say,

You know what,

You have a lot of more resources now and you can risk having your heart hurt.

You can risk disappointment.

I mean,

You know,

There's a lot of us are afraid to set an intention because we're afraid of disappointment.

But if you've gotten this far in life and you've lived with the disappointment of being unfulfilled in the area of love,

I say you have a PhD in disappointment.

That is not something you should be afraid of.

You will handle it.

Exactly.

Right?

Yeah.

Right.

You're already really good at that.

So don't worry about that part.

So in other words,

I really began to show up differently.

So that meant that I was unguarded.

I was actually available for the first time.

And you know,

It's really interesting that shift.

I had not had a marriage proposal since my high school boyfriend or actually one other person when I was 18.

But that was it.

And I'm 41 now.

Right.

The next guy that I was dating asked me to marry him.

It was really inside of just becoming available.

Now I turned him down because he wasn't the right man for me.

He didn't want children and I wanted children.

So I knew that that wasn't the right relationship.

But I think,

You know,

But to me it was evidence like,

OK,

This is really shifting.

Like who I'm being from the inside out is shifting.

And I saw that as evidence.

And then,

Of course,

The next man that came in,

OK,

This is my manifestation miracle.

So this is I'm telling you a story that's almost 20 years old now because I'm 61.

So back then,

41,

And my friend from this group,

She says to me,

OK,

Catherine,

You need to get on the Internet.

And now this sounds normal to us,

But 20 years ago it was just starting.

Nobody even had their pictures online because it was I mean,

It was just the technology wasn't created.

There was one dating site which doesn't even exist anymore.

I was just going to say,

Were there dating sites?

I don't know,

One,

One,

One,

One,

And it had a quarter of a million people from all over America.

Oh,

Wow.

I put in my little stats and maybe 80 potential matches come up.

You know,

Long story short,

I ended up anonymously responding to one person,

No picture,

No name,

Just location.

And it ended up being a man that I had dated six years earlier who I thought of as the one that got away.

No way.

And we were engaged two months later.

I did wait another year to marry him,

But we gave birth to our daughter when I was 43.

So that's actually what it came into being.

That's amazing.

This could not just be a personal miracle.

And then in fact,

You know,

I wrote I wrote a book about it and it's gone on to help hundreds of thousands of people and I get letters all the time.

It's written as a 49 day course because that's basically what I did.

Every day I took a piece of it.

I love that you looked in the mirror at what was going on with you and didn't look outside of yourself to find answers,

Blaming from the past or blaming boyfriends.

You know,

You really looked inside.

You looked at the patterns that were happening and the men that were so unavailable and you went inside.

Having someone hold us accountable.

I mean,

What a game changer.

All of a sudden it makes it so real,

Right?

Well,

You know,

It's a very different.

So this is great because we're two therapists and we're going to have this conversation.

I think in our profession,

Michelle,

We have taken empathy a little to the extreme.

A lot of what my training was,

And I can't speak to yours,

But a lot of my training was really empathizing with what some people are creating safety and affinity for that person.

And I think that that is a necessity when someone is sitting before us and they're sharing their heart and soul.

We definitely want to create that safe space.

But part of that safe space has to be being a trustworthy mirror.

Yes,

Incongruent and where they are.

They themselves are the source of what's actually happening.

And I think that where we are collectively in our development is that we tend to see we tend to project blame outside of ourselves.

It's the other person.

It's our culture.

It's the dating sites.

It's the you know,

It's it's my partner.

Right.

Or it's my unconscious.

Exactly.

That's an interesting one where we get victimized even by our own consciousness.

Yeah.

Somehow got set up in childhood and now we keep duplicating patterns and we get frustrated with ourselves,

But we're in a kind of victimized relationship with it.

What I have seen and I have now the privilege of working with tens of thousands of people who've been through my programs and what I've seen over and over again is that to the extent that we are willing to take personal responsibility without moving into blame and shame,

But really taking stock of who we're being,

How we're showing up,

The choices we're making,

The actions we're taking when we really step into that level of self responsibility.

That's when life can really radically change.

And it doesn't until we do that.

I agree.

We have to look at our stuff.

And I love that.

It's so true.

What I would call is when we really live in our adult and we embrace our lives,

We really become aware of what are these patterns?

Why am I attracting in all these unavailable men?

Why do I keep getting cheated on?

And it's not self blame.

I like what you just said.

And it's not shaming.

It's just what happened to me?

What got set up for me?

What got programmed?

And I need to look at my internal programs and make some changes and take responsibility.

Yeah,

And I think a lot of us have a hard time doing it because we do move it into shame.

And shame is the ego's trick to stay the same because if you go into shame,

It actually stops your growth.

You change when you go into shame.

Yeah.

So like quicksand.

It just doesn't,

It doesn't go anywhere.

And actually,

I use that capacity for self reflection to monitor or to assess how healthy we are.

Wow.

Our ability to self reflect accurately,

Both on our strengths and our weaknesses are what we got right,

What we did well,

What we were off on,

What we need to do better next time,

What we can take ownership of and our motivation for things.

I mean,

If you really want to get sophisticated about self reflection,

You have to really be authentic about your motivation.

And part of the problem in our culture right now is we're also psychologically sophisticated that we'll say things like,

Well,

You know,

I'm super controlling because my sister dominated me or my mother was this way or my dad was this way.

So we'll kind of take semi responsibility,

But we're kind of still blaming our circumstances when we were young,

As opposed to really standing in our adult selves and saying,

Well,

The truth is,

Is that I don't want to be dominated by you.

Right.

Period.

Period.

There's nothing else to say.

That's just it.

And I'm doing everything I can to avoid that.

Right.

Period,

And I'm responsible for that behavior and what that's generating between us.

Like own the reality,

Own it.

It does really set us free.

So let me ask you a question.

How then for listeners of the show,

As they listen to the show,

Some people are probably thinking,

Oh my gosh,

I have all this childhood wounding.

How will I ever move forward?

I really do want to own my reality.

Can you give our listeners some tools or advice on how do we begin to look internally and take responsibility?

Like what's that like for people in your experience?

Well,

It is the ticket to freedom and liberation.

You know,

I mean,

Not to get too Christian on all of us,

But I did study spiritual text and I love spiritual text,

But you know,

The truth shall set you free is what Jesus had purportedly said.

And I think that it's true when we really own the complexity of the truth and our own motives and what's really going on for us and how we created that we become free because what it does is it opens up the power of choice and we can do it differently moving forward.

So the place where we have to really slow down is when you ask yourself the question,

You know,

How might I be the source of this?

Well,

One of the tricks I do with people,

Because it's hard for us when we're really upset because other people behave badly and usually other people,

If we're upset with them for behaving badly,

They probably did.

So it's not like we're letting them off the hook for that.

But where you're going to find leverage is in your side of the story.

And usually that's more subtle and covert in nature.

So I like to say even if it was 97%,

The other person,

You want to look at your 3%.

Because that 3% is where you then get to make an amends to yourself by promising that you will never show up like that again or you will always from this moment forward behave this way in a situation that's similar in a way that restores trust to yourself and helps you to really learn from that experience.

So I think it's really looking at the kind of covert subtle ways that we throw ourselves under the bus.

So I tend to be simple,

Like I turned away from my own inner knowing,

Or I minimized the red flags,

Or I didn't speak up because I didn't want to rock the boat,

Or I was overgiving to try and prove to someone that I was worth loving.

All of these kind of subtle things that we do.

So if you tell the story on the surface,

It looks like this other person was wrong and this other person did this horrible thing to you.

I mean,

You've been in enough sessions with people who've had horrible people cheat on them or steal from them or somehow use and abuse them in some way.

And there's always something that the person in front of us did,

Whether they devalued themselves or minimized their contribution or overgave.

There's some way that there's a collusion with that dynamic.

And our job,

I think,

As therapists or coaches or even a good friend is to help that person really see that clearly.

And that's a delicate thing to do because it doesn't invalidate what they've been through and how wrong they've been,

But it does restore power back into our own hands.

I have a question around this.

This is a great point you just brought up because I'm sure you've had clients like this because I get these clients that come in.

And when we do talk about like a magnetic universe or that we're creating our reality,

People will say to me,

And this is where I think I'm guessing you've heard this statement when people say,

Why the hell would I create,

You know,

My husband cheating on me?

What are you trying to say that I create cheaters in my life or they are taking responsibility for the cheating and that's off?

That's not quite right.

So what would you say to someone like that?

Why would I create him or her cheating and these patterns are so negative?

Why would you say that I'm doing that?

I think sometimes our role,

I see myself sometimes as a pied piper.

I have to seduce people a little bit into the conversation.

So I would never come at someone pretty square off like that.

Like,

Well,

We're creating our own reality.

I think that there's a certain harshness to that that's not reflective of the actual lived experience of the person in front of us.

And it's not that black and white.

That's the thing.

But people will come in and say that.

Okay,

Let's see if we can reflect on your 3%.

So the 97.

3 tends to work.

First of all,

You have to just validate.

I mean,

If someone was cheated on,

It's a horrible thing.

Period.

Of course.

Of course.

Period after that.

There's just a period.

And we want this to never happen again.

And we also want you to go into your next relationship free or we want you to recreate this relationship in a way where you have confidence that this could never happen again.

Right?

So where are we going to go from here?

So usually,

I think what inspires most of us to really self reflect in this way is the future that we're committed to.

I don't think it's about sorting through the past.

I think it's about what do you want to happen in your future?

Because that's going to require that we actually take inventory on ourselves as the co-creator of that dynamic,

Even if our part was minimal.

Because look,

The people who tend to be kind of taken advantage of the most are actually the most loving people.

Are the people who are the most generous very often.

And if we don't midwife that transition into wisdom,

Where they could go is into shutting down and not being generous.

They'll go to the wrong conclusions.

We're all making conclusions of our experience anyway.

And most people come to the wrong conclusions.

They'll say,

Well,

See,

Men can't be trusted.

All men cheat.

They can't be trusted.

That's one conclusion.

Or I'm just no good in relationships.

Or I'd rather be alone than ever let anybody hurt me like that again.

These are the conclusions that people are coming to.

So all we're doing is really helping them to come to a more wholesome conclusion based on what they might actually want to happen from here.

Wouldn't it be great if you graduated from this pattern forever?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you had a breakthrough,

If this breakdown was the biggest breakthrough of your life?

Wouldn't it be great to have somebody to recreate yourself in such a way that you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that your relationships were authentic and based on honesty from this moment forward?

Right?

So I think there's a bit of an enrollment job.

I think,

I think,

All of us who work with other people,

We're all enrolling people into the possibilities of their lives.

We're just a big cheerleader enrollment.

It's so true,

Isn't it?

I want to ask you about this book and if we can apply it even to couples,

The people that are already in relationships in order to then improve their current relationships.

Because I think a lot of people do fall into these,

What do we want to call them,

Like walls or stumbling blocks.

They're like,

I'm getting a divorce,

I'm done.

And then they're reaching for your other book,

Conscious uncoupling,

But almost too soon.

Like what happens if we're in a relationship?

Can we not apply the theories in current relationships to make them even better?

That's a great question.

A lot of people write me saying that they want me to retitle the book because this book has been used in churches for the entire congregation for growth.

It's definitely transformed marriages.

I had one student once who enrolled all 11 people of her family,

Including her elderly parents into meeting once a week on the phone to unpack.

They all did calling in the one together.

Wow.

They all bonded as a family more deeply.

I love that.

Yes,

People do do it to really help their marriages because it's about living deliberately.

What I tell people is if you're floundering in your marriage,

Your marriage feels flat,

There's been some wounds you haven't been able to heal,

Your little top heavy on routine and the spark has gone out or whatever's going on.

That's the intention that you had set.

So instead of my big,

I'm going to be engaged by my 42nd birthday or the intention that people will set to find the one.

Basically the intention is to be wildly happy in love and to be lit up by your partner to be living in partnership and in truth or whatever you want to take on.

Some people,

If they're in a place where they're not sure if they want to stay together or if they want to part ways,

They might do calling in the one and say,

Wildly happy in love with this partner or someone better for me.

Then they're living into that future.

Many people will say to revive my marriage and to really bond on a more authentic level that's current and active and dynamic between us where we are inspiring each other and telling the truth and our friendship and our romance is rekindled.

So whatever future you're standing for,

It's about being consistent with that future and it's about taking responsibility for your role in how things have become how they are and being willing to change at a very deep level.

So that's a great point.

Can you give us,

You've given up some great tools or keys to calling in the one or changing relationships.

Give us some more tools.

We talked about taking responsibility.

Give us some more tools that people can use to call in the one on this lovely Valentine's Day.

One of the things that I've really been deepening and I train coaches and a lot of my coaches are really in this with me,

But we're really interested in that,

Which we call your love identity.

And in particular,

Really identifying what we call in calling in the one your false love identity in conscious uncoupling,

We might refer to your source fracture wound,

The original break in your heart,

What you made that mean about yourself.

But most of us really crafted a whole self sense when it comes to love.

And it tends to be something like I am alone or and everyone always leaves.

No one's really there for me and I can't really get my needs met or it will be I'm invisible and other people don't really care about my feelings and needs.

And it's kind of dangerous to be seen or I'm not safe and other people have ill intent and it's and love is dangerous.

So there's like these narratives that we live with that really emerged inside of the relational field that we had with our original caregivers.

And that belief system at the level of identity lives in the body.

It actually is an emotional center that's held in the field of the body.

And we will generate our relationships from that center,

Not maybe not initially when we're first falling in love,

But very often when we've had a disappointment or things get hard,

We will very often revert back to that story.

And how we show up when we are somatically centered in that story tends to duplicate evidence for the story.

It ends.

It tends to perpetuate it.

So one of the things that we work on in our community is that which we call the transformation of identity,

You know,

Really going back and holding that little three year old part of you or the six year old who made up that meaning and bringing correction to that story and not so that you're not generating your relationship from that story.

So anybody who's like,

You know,

Has a pattern where you keep getting rewounded over and over in a similar way or where your partner is rewounding you in ways that your mother wounded you or your father wounded you.

If you can try for just five minutes,

Stop,

You know,

Trying to get your partner to change and finally give you what was missing for you in childhood way back then and start to really look through this lens of self responsibility,

Like where are you centered?

What is that story exactly?

How old is that self that's inside that story?

And how are you showing up in ways that are literally pulling on the other person to validate that story?

So it gets really deep when you really get deep,

Deep,

Deep into self as source.

You know,

A lot is available to us in terms of how we can really turn things around.

This is where radical transformation happens,

Because the identity that we're centered in is actually what's really creating our lives.

We're generating life from that self sense.

And it's very important to name it and to challenge it and to wake ourselves up from that story.

What is really true?

Well,

What's really true?

I didn't come here to be alone.

I came here to love and be loved.

I have the power and the resources to learn how to have happy,

Healthy relationships that root down over time.

Right?

That is what's true.

That story is more true than the I'm alone that the three year old part of me crafted,

Because I had a negligent mother.

You know?

Yeah.

So we really in our community now,

We're really exploring this more deeply and how we can wake ourselves up out of that story.

Because look,

Our whole field,

Michelle was founded upon this question that Sigmund Freud,

You know,

Came up with,

Which was,

I wonder why we keep duplicating the hurts of our past.

And really,

For the last 120 years,

That's what we've been trying to answer and figure out and crack the code on.

And I think we're making headway.

I think we do have the power to evolve beyond those patterns such that they become a distant memory and that we stop generating lives that are kind of a duplication of those patterns and relationships that are reflecting those stories back to us,

And we start instead creating the lives that we're actually standing for,

That would reflect the highest and the best that we have to offer and support us to really become the people that we came here to be.

That is,

I love that.

And I say,

I use the same kind of language as that,

Which is we need to wake up,

You know,

It's like we walk around in dream state and just live from this very reactionary place.

We need to wake up and own our realities and take responsibility.

But do you find that when you're working with people in your community,

Do they have a hard time identifying what these root issues are or these root programs are or where they came from?

I think that there's a lot of confusion in our field in general about that.

And we've been developing a very specific,

Elegant way to kind of fast track that.

I mean,

Basically,

I'm happy to share that with you.

Just people can try it and,

You know,

Write me afterwards they can.

But that would be great because I feel like people get stuck.

What's that?

I just feel like people get stuck when they look in their past and they're like,

Well,

I don't know where that came from.

And that's because they're trying to figure out from their mind.

Yes.

You can figure it out from your mind.

It's actually when I said the beliefs are in our bodies,

They're actually based.

And they live as kind of a home based cluster of emotions that we default to when we get disappointed.

That's what we're looking for.

So when we so so what I do with people is I help them to identify their pattern.

And for some,

It's just you know,

That they have an absence of a pattern.

Nobody asked them out.

Nobody's asked them on a date for 10 years.

So aloneness is the pattern.

Or they're always with narcissistic people.

So they always just kind of get sucked dry in relationship and,

You know,

With these kind of energy vampires.

And then they're the moment that they actually have feelings and needs.

They get dumped or punished.

Or they're with people who are with other people like I was,

You know,

Impossible situations because you're with married people or people who are on their way elsewhere.

And you're kind of an afterthought.

So all of these we have these patterns.

So you're always the one who's not chosen.

Right.

All your boyfriends go and marry the next person.

Right.

That's another pattern.

So when you look at the pattern,

What I invite people to do is like really connect with the emotions that come up for you when the pattern happens again.

Like just imagine,

Close your eyes and imagine that the pattern is happening now.

It's very unpleasant.

But you want to just really feel it in your body.

And where is that pain sitting?

For most people,

It's going to be like someone is like standing on your heart or they just punched you in the gut or maybe you feel a stab in your back.

But we're looking for a somatic pain.

Okay.

And then you allow the pain in your somatic self to actually speak,

I am or I am not.

Tell me your story.

What is your story?

So that's what we're looking for.

What's the I am and then what's the inside of that I am.

I am not wanted.

What is the story about others?

Well,

Others reject me all the time.

Right.

And that life I can never have what I want.

Wow.

So that's the story.

That's a whole matrix of the story.

And then you say,

Sweetheart,

How old are you?

And the story will come immediately.

I'm four years old.

Yeah.

It's everything.

I only get the hand downs.

Nobody of my older sisters want to go play.

They don't want me coming along.

And that's where the story was born.

Right.

So then we have to then what we do now we have access to the story.

It's so amazing to me that we can hear something one time as a child once and create a whole story around it that turns into a program that then we live off of the rest of our lives.

It doesn't even have to be that it's been repeated 50 times.

It's like a sibling,

A parent can say something to us once and it goes in so deep.

It can I don't want to use the word ruin,

But really sabotage our relationships moving forward because of something we heard once or something we interpreted and gave meaning to one time.

And none of the things that happened to us when we were children were our fault.

I think it's important that self-assertive,

But it is our responsibility to evolve.

Right.

Yeah.

And look at it.

To wake ourselves up.

And look at it through the lens of an adult eye instead of the child.

Yeah.

And transform.

So amazing.

Catherine,

This is good stuff.

Really,

Really,

Really good stuff.

It's going to be so helpful for people either wanting again to improve their current relationship or go find the one.

I love it.

Thank you for today.

This was really amazing.

You're so welcome.

It's always so wonderful to speak with you.

You're such a bright light.

I love your work so much.

Oh,

Thank you.

And I love your work as well.

So if you could tell us where can people find you,

If they want to learn more about what you do,

And please let us know if there's any special offers you might have that are coming up.

Well,

Thank you.

I have actually on Catherine Woodward Thomas dot com,

I have a few things.

There's three different things.

One is if you're interested in calling in the one,

You can click on the calling in the one tab there.

And then I have a free starter kit,

Which has a bunch of resources for you to get you started.

I also have the same thing for conscious uncoupling.

And then in general,

I'm all about growing our capacity to love and be loved so people can sign up to receive the LOL Daily Love Out Loud Daily.

And I send several out a week and they're just they're just teachings that are about helping us all to really grow and develop ourselves in order to have great,

Loving,

Happy,

Healthy love.

That is it.

I love every single offering and I will put this all in the show notes as well as your website and these three beautiful offerings.

I love them.

I like that LOL Daily.

I'm like,

Laugh out loud.

No,

That's awesome.

Thank you so much.

And we so appreciate you coming back again for the second time in the adult share.

We are very grateful for you and thank you for all the beautiful,

Beautiful work that you're doing in this world.

We need you.

No doubt about that.

So keep bringing us all this beautiful work.

Well,

That was wonderful.

Like I said,

She's right in line with the adult chair model.

I love her,

Her concepts and her ideas about love and again,

Conscious uncoupling.

So I hope that you all enjoyed that.

Do not forget if you want to come learn and take a deep dive with me into the child chair or what we call again,

That's the inner child,

Come check out the new membership.

It is at the adult chair.

Com forward slash membership.

I look forward to seeing you there and I will see you all next week.

Have a beautiful rest of your Valentine's day and a beautiful rest of your week.

And I thank you all for listening and sharing this show.

I love you all so much and I'll see you seated right here next week,

Firmly in the adult chair.

Reviews

Amazing ! as in every single podcast you share. Lots of valuable, empirically gathered information.
Thank you so much for your generosity and that of your guests.
Sending love
🙏🏼

That was so insightful and full of usable ideas. Thank you so much Michelle and Katherine for sharing your wisdom and amazing knowledge 💜x

Wow! I learned so much from this podcast. It has motivated me into being more proactive in my search for The One. 💖💕💖💕 Ordering the book now! 😁

Thank you so much 🙏🏼💐✨🇦🇺

Awesome info! I needed this as I’m trying to figure out where I am in a relationship & being a widow for nearly 4 yrs. Bookmarked to listen again later. 🙏🏼🌈🙏🏼

Very nice thank you and Namaste

Brilliant. Really great information. I loved this so much.