Heal Trauma, End Self-Abandonment With Dr. Nima Rahmany

Today, we're diving into the world of trauma healing and emotional regulation with the insightful Dr. Nima Rahmany. If you've ever found yourself caught in the web of people-pleasing or feeling like you're stuck in a cycle of self-abandonment, this episode is your golden ticket to understanding why. Dr. Nima shares his journey from a successful chiropractic career to becoming a trauma healing guru.

Please note: This track includes some explicit language.

Transcript

Welcome to the Michelle Chalfant Show,

The next evolution of the Adult Share Podcast.

I am Michelle Chalfant,

And my goal is to help you to awaken to your true self.

Together we will break through your barriers so you can find your purpose and live a soul aligned life.

Each week,

I'll bring you powerful conversations with thought leaders,

Spiritual teachers,

Healers,

And change makers,

Along with actionable insights to help you to transform your life from the inside out.

Welcome to the Michelle Chalfant Show.

Hello,

Hello,

Everybody,

And welcome to the Michelle Chalfant Show.

It is wonderful to be here with you again today in March,

Already in March.

I just got back from a writing trip with my friend,

Which was absolutely lovely.

It was really nice.

I have to say,

We do this annually.

Nothing like being with someone that really knows you,

Knows your mission and your purpose and aligns with you and is able to contribute to some deep brainstorming sessions.

Let's talk about Dr.

Nima.

He was on the show today,

And boy,

Oh boy,

This show you're going to love.

We deeply got into so many incredible things.

He is someone that had a total career change from being a chiropractor and shifted gears because he found that the root of his patients' illnesses,

And when he was adjusting them and listening to them and all their problems,

Was emotional.

Gosh,

He and I spoke the same language.

I just got to tell you guys are going to love them.

He talks all about shadow work on today's episode as well as codependency.

How do you become trigger-proof and where do these triggers come from?

He got into it.

He broke it down.

He's big time into shadow work.

I'm telling you,

You're going to love it.

Let me tell you a little bit about Dr.

Nima and we will get right to the show.

So Dr.

Nima Rahmani is a leading expert in shadow work,

Emotional regulation and healing attachment wounds.

After a successful career as a chiropractor,

He left the profession to deep dive into the realm of trauma healing and relationship transformation.

Driven by his own journey of overcoming toxic patterns and becoming trigger-proof,

Dr.

Nima now helps people break free from the cycles of codependency and self-abandonment.

Through his signature program,

The Overview Experience,

And his expertise in somatic attachment healing,

Nervous system regulation,

And shadow work,

Dr.

Nima empowers clients to stop reacting on autopilot and start creating lives and relationships filled with authenticity,

Connection,

And purpose.

Here we go with Dr.

Nima.

So welcome to the Michelle Chalfant Show,

Dr.

Nima.

It's so good to have you.

So great to be here.

We were just chatting about all we have in common.

I love it.

I'm excited to jump right in.

I love that you were a chiropractor,

But then shifted gears,

Shifted careers.

Talk to us a little bit about that and why you decided to retire from chiropractic medicine.

Yeah.

People are coming to see me with primarily stress-related disorders.

After 10 years,

Ask any chiropractor,

Any massage therapist,

Physiotherapist,

Any body worker,

Or any very highly attuned even medical doctor who's really into getting to the root of the cause,

Root of the matter,

That most chronic problems I would notice as I got to know my patients,

They were dealing with some sort of an attachment rupture.

Like when did this problem start,

Mrs.

Jones?

Oh,

20 years ago.

What happened 20 years ago?

I went through the loss of somebody,

The death of somebody.

There was some sort of trauma that instigated this downward spiral in their health.

And so I started to see a very intricate link between health issues and chronic stress.

And so as I kind of like did my own personal growth work through my relationship challenges,

I went through a divorce in 2012,

A series of failed relationships later,

Not really understanding my attachment style or just looking for that validation externally and going through that journey myself,

I kind of put pieces together in my own life and thought,

Hey,

Wouldn't it be neat to be able to merge my healing work with people with the stuff that I was learning to help myself in several kind of perception,

Changing your thoughts and perception to be able to change kind of like the perception of your traumas from your past.

So lo and behold,

I started noticing these patterns with people with chronic illness is that they were very similar type of personality.

There was relational attachment ruptures.

There was codependency and this type of a personality that would emerge from these people with chronic health issues that had to do that were very aligned with their traumas and their personalities,

Like,

For example,

Fawning and people pleasing.

And so this weird pattern that I would see,

I really wasn't able to put it all together until I went through my last breakup and I started studying attachment theory,

Polyvagal theory,

Shadow work and started going,

Holy crap,

I'm an avoidant attached and I'm in a codependent relationship and understanding the concept of trauma bonds and like,

Holy cow,

Like,

What the heck?

And so as I put these pieces together in my own life,

I was able to transform the quality of my self-worth and relationships and I just thought,

These people coming to see me with health issues,

Am I really getting to the root if I'm just adjusting their spine?

It's really helpful to have a chiropractor adjust your spine to help produce a level of safety within the nervous system when you have misaligned vertebrae,

But how about teaching people how to become their own medicine and to regulate their own nervous system?

So it was just a natural kind of leap into the world of becoming an attachment trauma specialist.

I started to study somatic experiencing and learning how to get into my body and learn how to feel,

Learn how to move past these unresolved woundings and teach people how to become their own medicine and delegate the chiropractic work to my colleagues.

And then just I just love teaching people how to become their own medicine.

Wow.

Wow.

So you had a,

You did a hard right turn in your career for sure.

But I love that you were seeing that even as a chiropractor,

You were starting,

You were seeing what was coming up with people as you were a chiropractor.

Every chiropractor,

Every body worker,

Talk to somebody who's been working in the field for more than 10 years and they will tell you the same thing.

There's an emotional component to most health issues.

There's no training for chiropractors or medical doctors to be able to address it.

And so it wasn't until I had to address my own through healing with the younger parts of myself and my shadows that I was like,

Oh my gosh,

Like how do you learn this and then not share this with other people?

You get it.

Oh,

I get it.

I just I said my parents thought I was crazy,

But I just gave up my license and I haven't looked back.

And it actually it wasn't until I my last relationship that ended up being abusive,

Where we were abusive to one another.

And I actually became physical and I had to go,

How did this happen?

And in the entire process,

I was like,

How did I miss this in my own life?

Learning how to integrate when like I was very smart,

Very intelligent.

I could heal past trauma.

But in a moment when I get activated,

When I get triggered,

I would lose consciousness and become a different person.

So I had to learn how to mitigate that.

And the concept of becoming trigger proof was born.

So now I teach people how to expand that space between stimulus and response so that their adult self,

Adult chair,

Can come online and they can show up in relationships as the functional adult rather than the wounded child or the adapted adolescent.

Wow,

I love this.

So you were able to realize why you were having such a quick reaction because it was out of left field.

It's not conscious when you get triggered.

You're not you're like,

OK,

I won't do that again.

I won't let that bother me so much.

But when it happens,

It's not conscious you get when you get triggered,

No matter how many times you go,

You know,

Let's do I even tried anger management.

It's like it doesn't work because it doesn't resolve the root cause of the shame that we're trying to avoid feeling the moment that we get triggered.

So until until I went and found those shameful parts of me and brought compassion to those parts,

Those activations didn't have the same power over me.

So do you think the root of trauma or excuse me,

Of triggers is shame all the time or is it different?

No,

The root of triggers,

When I when you really look at it,

We go through life,

Younger parts,

You know,

We're in raised in environments with parents who really don't understand the nervous system,

Who haven't healed at their own woundings,

And they react to whatever,

Right?

You know,

They react like,

For example,

What example can I give you?

I have a four year old son and he sometimes if I tell him,

OK,

You got to turn off the Paw Patrol,

He then turns around and gets really reactive because his dopamine is going off.

And then I tell him,

All right,

Bud,

Bedtime,

Turn off the screens.

Time for time for bed.

Let's turn off the Paw Patrol.

And then he turns to me and goes,

I don't love you.

OK,

Now,

As a parent,

That hurts to hear,

Right,

Because it feels like rejection.

But when you hear that from your child,

What happens is that feeling of rejection didn't come from the child.

There's a younger you got triggered.

There is it's a regression.

Every time we are reactive,

There's a wound.

Every time there's a reactivity,

There's a wound.

And that wound is a younger version of yourself that was had to feel in that moment.

An experience happened and they ended up abandoning.

We ended up abandoning ourselves.

So when you were hit by your kid or your parent or you were neglected or whatever,

We then made it mean we created a meaning and an interpretation.

And that interpretation is I'm not enough.

I'm not good enough.

I'm not worthy.

And so what happened with our parent wasn't the primary wound.

The primary wound was the meaning that we made out of it,

Which was self abandonment.

What I realized is that every time we get triggered,

We replay that self abandonment,

The I'm not worthy.

So we regress to a younger part of us that didn't feel worthy.

And so becoming trigger proof is noticing that and then repairing with the younger part of yourself that you abandoned.

And once you do that,

You bring your adult self back online,

Your prefrontal cortex comes back online.

And now you can dissolve the conflict because you've dealt with the primary self abandonment first.

So every time we get triggered,

We abandon ourselves.

Oh,

I love that.

I love how you broke that down.

I've also definitely worked with people over the years that have said,

Oh yeah,

I'm just going to just,

I'll just work on that.

Or let me just,

You know,

Mentally or consciously,

Yeah,

I'm going to work on myself or let me consciously try to go ahead and stop that.

And that's why I'm a huge fan.

I don't do traditional parts work.

Some of what I do is similar,

But I love working with the parts because I think that's the key.

We've got to go into that unconscious mind and find out what the heck is in there because that's what's triggering us.

Those unconscious parts are,

You know,

Making us go into that trigger and it's all protection.

It's all trying to protect us in some way.

And so the work,

Instead of running away from them or trying to avoid them,

It's like really going and going,

Okay,

So how are you,

How are you trying to protect me?

What is it that you're,

What's the message here?

There's a part of us that needs love and compassion.

So once you become that compassion to that part,

You become the adult self,

Right?

So it's,

It's,

It's a very spiritual kind of journey of,

Of becoming Christ consciousness,

So to speak.

Oh,

I love that.

You talk about fawning.

You said you saw a lot of that.

Talk about that for a minute.

What is fawning?

How would someone know that they're fawning and all that?

Yeah.

Everybody talks about fight and flight,

Right?

The nervous system gets dysregulated.

Fewer people know about the freeze response,

Which is part of the cranial nerve 10,

The vagus nerve.

It's kind of like this when fighting or running wasn't safe.

Let's say you had a,

You know,

A predator and running away wasn't safe because then it would get you hurt or fighting back definitely wasn't.

The natural protective response is to freeze and play dead.

Hopefully the predator kind of like moves away,

Saves your life.

You can leave.

And that,

That's been very useful for many people.

The next one is when a predator or somebody,

The,

The,

The person or a parent,

For example,

You have to take on an identity of an appeaser in order to calm the nervous system down of the parent or the predator,

Like Stockholm syndrome,

When you kind of show love or whatever to your captor,

That is a fawn response.

It's when the greatest example I can give is when my four year old,

My wife was out at girls night and then we were play fighting and we were wrestling and you know,

We were just having boys night at home and then all of a sudden I become the monster and then I start chasing him.

He loves that game.

And sometimes I go her and then I make this face and he literally gets scared.

Like I can see him get scared.

And the last time we did this,

He turned and he goes,

Oh,

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Like he started running.

He was scared.

And then he turns and then he's like,

I love you.

I love you.

And then he knows that when he says,

I love you,

I then calm down.

I go,

Oh,

That's so sweet.

And I was just like,

Oh my gosh,

He's fawning.

Right.

And we were doing it with plate,

But he instinctively knew that if he were to turn and go,

I love you against his attacker,

Which I was being the monster at the moment,

He was like running and we were playing this game.

And then he literally freaked out and turned and goes,

I love you.

I love you.

And I was like,

And then I hugged him and I realized,

Oh my gosh,

That's how we learned to fawn.

So fawning is a reflexive pattern of people-pleasing of abandoning ourselves for the sake of attachment.

It is saying yes when you mean no,

Because you don't want to upset the person in front of you.

It is fawning.

A great example is every time you go to hospitality and service industry,

Waiting tables,

People who work in the service industry are fawning all the time.

And it's the most insidious of the trauma responses because we don't know we're doing it.

We just think we're being in good mannered.

It's so much embedded in our culture and our society that is actually seen as like a good thing.

And it's rewarded.

In my culture,

In Persian culture,

We have this concept called taruf.

Have you ever heard of it?

No.

Okay.

Anyone who's Persian will understand taruf is a cultural fawn response where I don't tell you the truth of what I'm feeling just to be polite,

Where I come over to your house and you offer me all this food,

But I'm starving,

But I say no thank you because I want to seem polite or I don't have any money,

But I give it to you because culturally it's what's acceptable.

So it's a cultural imposed self-abandonment.

It's part of my culture.

And what happens is when we fawn,

We perform.

It's a performative engagement when we don't really mean it.

And it's so embedded.

It's like if you've ever faked an orgasm,

You're fawning.

It's sexual fawning becomes is when you say yes to sleeping with somebody because you don't want to upset them or you want them to like you.

It is so deeply embedded.

We actually develop into it.

And the problem with fawning is that you cannot fawn and abandon yourself without simultaneously creating a resentment and that resentment turns inward.

So if I say yes to you,

So this is the classic and codependent,

The codependent who can't say no,

They say yes and they people please and deep down there's a hidden resentment that happens each time.

There's first a resentment towards you because now I'm pissed off that I now have to come and help you move when I was the one that said yes,

Even though I have a back injury and I said yes,

I'll help you move and I'm now I'm resentful towards you.

But the worst of it is I'm now actually resentful towards myself.

So the so the characteristic of a fawner and a codependent is a deeply buried resentment.

You're living in resentment that builds and builds over time,

But you're not addressing it.

And so what happens is because you don't have that boundary,

Your symptoms,

Your signs and symptoms become your boundary when you don't want it.

You don't know how to say no.

You basically go,

Oh,

Now my back is sore or now I have chronic inflammatory Crohn's disease.

I have a Crohn's disease flare up.

I have a thyroid issue,

So I can't know.

I can't come and have people over.

No,

I can't host Christmas.

I can't host Christmas this this holiday season because of my flare up.

So the flare up,

The autoimmune issues,

The digestive issues become your boundary when you don't know how to voice them yourself because you're a chronic fawner because it's something that you developed into.

And that blew my mind.

And I was like,

I got to leave chiropractic and I got to teach people how to heal.

And one of my clients was having Crohn's disease and she was going to get an ostomy bag.

And she was like,

I'm scared.

I said,

Jump in and let's do the work.

She got through her resistance and her fear.

She jumps in,

Does the work and heals that chronic fawn response,

Heals the traumas that had her constantly abandoning herself,

Heals the guilt and shame for how she hurt her past partner,

Which is a lot of guilt and shame that she was holding on to,

Learned how to say no.

And then within six months,

She's like,

I'm in spontaneous remission,

Right?

Because she learned how to rewire that chronic fawn response.

Fawning,

I believe,

Is responsible for a huge chronic health epidemic and people aren't talking about it.

And I want to address it.

Oh my gosh,

I couldn't agree with you more.

I think that our physical health is so linked to our emotional health.

How could it not be?

I mean,

You can't walk around,

Whether it be angry all the time or fawning all the time or whatever.

Like if we sit and we are angry constantly and we don't want to let go,

We don't want to forgive,

We don't want to move on,

It hurts us.

What's that saying?

It's like when you're mad at somebody,

It's like opening up the poison,

But you drink the poison or something.

Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Yes,

Exactly.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

Even worse,

Michelle,

Is people who are holding on to resentment towards others and the blind spot in their shadow is that the real resentment is they're mad at themselves for abandoning themselves.

What I've noticed in working with people who are holding on to resentment is the resentment and the victim story about the other person is a cover up for the anger and resentment they felt towards themselves for staying in so long and abandoning themselves.

And so the trick becomes to rewire your own self-abandonment and get to compassionate understanding for the parts of you that didn't know any better and could only relate by abandoning yourself.

And once you resolve that self-abandonment,

The resentment towards your own self-abandonment,

All of a sudden your resentment towards the other person fades because most people's anger is a surface emotion that's blocking the root anger,

Which is towards themselves for choosing that scenario.

And it's safer to be mad there rather than to take on the shame of your own responsibility for the self-abandonment.

Oh,

Beautifully said,

Beautifully said.

It's tricky.

It's tricky,

But it is,

It always comes back to us,

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

Responsibility is the enemy of our victim stories,

Right?

We love to,

We unconsciously just kind of like fall into this victim narrative of feeling hurt and feeling hard done by.

And the journey then,

You know,

We,

We,

We blame them.

And then the journey then once you start to see your part in it,

You're like,

Oh my gosh.

And then the next part is the shame of like,

Oh my God,

It is my fault.

And then the next level of kind of spiritual evolution is for us to realize really there's no one to blame.

I mean,

It's their fault.

My fault.

It's like we were just unconsciously living according to our conditioning and the higher level of,

Of our journey of healing gets to the place where you see the innocence in all of it.

You can,

You're able to see the pattern,

You see why you were the perfect person for them at that time.

And they were the perfect person for you at that time,

Given your wounding and it's nobody's fault.

There's nobody to blame,

Only to understand.

And understanding is higher than forgiveness.

We can go,

You know,

This whole,

Oh,

Let's forgive myself and forgive them.

We just had a training and in our community and it was like,

You know,

Understanding is even a higher level than forgiveness.

Once you really get to understand the innocence of the choice of our unconscious choices,

There's no one to blame.

There's no fault.

There's just understanding.

And so that's our adult self online.

Where would someone even begin though,

If somebody is carrying around a lot of blame or resentment or guilt or where,

Where do you,

Where would you direct someone,

Someone listening right now?

Where,

What do they do?

Like,

Okay,

I get these questions all the time.

This is when I created my event,

It's called the overview experience where we literally we address this.

And it's like,

Where do we begin?

I don't even know where we begin.

And I literally break it down for your entire,

Like life in,

In terms of how you got here.

And where I begin with people is where do you begin?

Where do you begin the healing process?

Where do you begin to take a look at?

In my methodology,

What,

What I do is I get people to write down their story,

Just write it out.

Just write out your story from the narrative of your hurt,

Your pain.

And the first question that I get people to ask is,

All right,

You're in this relational dynamic.

You're in a should I stay or go scenario.

You are feeling dysregulated.

You're feeling abandoned.

You're feeling not seen,

Misunderstood,

Whatever,

All this stuff.

What are you making it mean about you?

What we're going to do is we're going to extract the,

The,

The,

The meaning underneath all of your partner's behavior,

The,

The conflict that you're in.

When people start,

They'll say,

I'm making it mean that they don't love me,

That they're rude to me,

That he's being an asshole,

You know,

All that stuff.

And I,

I invite them to go deeper.

Yeah.

But what are you making that mean about you?

I'm unlovable.

It's like,

Ah,

Okay.

And how old does that part of you feel?

And so now this is when the tear,

You've worked with people in this,

This is when the tears start to come.

So the beginning,

Where do we begin is this methodology I created called the overview method is a cognitive and a somatic approach to finding the root of the trigger,

The root of the narrative of the story that you have of suffering.

The root always comes back to the insulting self-abandonment.

I'm not lovable.

I'm not worthy.

And what we do is we take them to those core memories and we help them rewire for them to see that they were lovable the whole time.

Let me give you an example.

We did this last night on a training was really cool.

There's this really powerful entrepreneur,

Six figure entrepreneur,

Real estate,

Single mother,

And she's doing the work in our community.

And she recalled this experience is,

You know,

My ex back in my twenties,

He was abusive.

He was violent and he kept minimizing me and calling me a piece of shit and saying that I can't,

You know,

I'll never amount to anything.

And he was super duper rich and he was a millionaire.

And he just beat me down.

And so she's like in tears over all of this.

And so we all held spaces.

She shared that.

And I was like,

Do you want to be liberated from this?

And she's like,

Yeah.

And I said,

All right.

So what did you make that mean that he was saying that?

And she's like,

Well,

That I'm unworthy because I was,

You know,

He's rich and I was just white trash at the time.

That's,

That was her.

That's what she said.

I said,

Okay,

That's interesting.

Okay.

So let's go back there.

So I took her back there and everybody was watching this on our group call,

Took her back there and she felt the unworthiness and I had her sit and feel into the unworthiness for a moment.

You probably relate to this because this is the same.

So she sat and she felt the unworthiness and we did it for a few minutes.

And this is the part many people skip because when we do talk therapies,

Cognitive therapies,

Oftentimes it's a,

It's an effort.

We say,

Where do you begin?

Let me go to a therapist or a counselor and tell my story.

Oftentimes it's a convenient way of avoiding those feelings.

And what I had her do was to do what she didn't want to do was to go and feel that unworthiness for a few moments while I held the space and witness,

She witnessed her unworthiness.

And after she did that,

We did a thing called pendulation where we said,

All right,

Let's put that unworthy part aside and let's look and see where did you have a sense of worthiness at that time?

Because a funny thing happens with this duality,

This spiritual nature of reality is that there's always a balancing equilibrium,

Equilibrating force in everything,

Right?

If you have two kids,

You know,

You notice when you have two children,

One is super duper like crazy and the other one's like grounded,

There's a duality,

Right?

They're chill.

Or if you have three kids,

There's one that's the artsy,

One that's the super duper engineer and one that's kind of in the middle.

There's this inherent balance within the universe.

There's a yin and yang that's happening.

Me and my wife,

We're complete opposites because there's an equilibrium within the system.

And I love teaching about like really finding the equilibrium in a chaotic system because it's always there.

There's this weird universal force that's kind of driving everything.

And it's on us to kind of see the duality in it.

Like I have a picture of the earth right behind me here.

And every moment,

Half of this earth is bathed in light and the other half is bathed in darkness.

Duality,

Right?

It's there in all of us.

So healing our traumas with the overview method is really getting people into feeling the unworthiness.

And in that moment,

I asked her,

Where was your worthiness in that exact moment?

She said,

Okay,

I had it from,

You know,

My mother.

I had,

You know,

People,

My friends were there and I said,

Okay,

Can you want to stretch yourself a little?

She said,

Yeah.

Can you feel the worthiness in his minimizing you?

And she's like,

I can't see it.

I said,

Let's look,

Let's stretch,

Let's get out of the story and look and go,

You know,

Why was he minimizing,

You know,

Where was his fear?

Because every,

Every,

Every behavior is an unconscious attempt to regulate ourselves.

Even when he's minimizing her,

Every behavior,

Even when we take drugs,

Even when we're avoidant and running away,

When we're chasing after somebody in our anxious attachment,

Every human behavior is protective,

Is trying to get us to regulate.

Even murdering somebody is that person who murders is their,

Their feeling of I have to kill this person so that I can be safe,

Right?

This is,

This is the underlying motive behind all behavior unconsciously is a perception that I'm is safety.

So then I said,

All right,

Let's look at that.

Why was he doing that?

And then it hit her.

She's like,

Oh my God,

He was afraid that I would leave.

I go,

Tell me more because he was really insecure.

He didn't like how other men looked at me.

And so he was afraid that I was going to like outgrow him and leave him.

So can you see that he was minimizing you because deep down he was afraid of losing you.

She goes,

Oh my God.

She starts crying.

I said,

Take a moment and feel the worthiness of that.

And she just sat there.

I'm going to,

I'm going to cry.

I got goosebumps in a puddle of tears.

She go,

Oh my God,

Oh my God.

And she just starts crying.

She says,

I was worthy the whole time.

And she was able to move through that unworthiness shadow and see that it was only half true.

And then she realized,

Oh my God,

I developed this entire go,

Go,

Go,

Hustle,

Hustle,

Hustle to prove that asshole wrong because I eventually finally left.

And now I went from white and she wrote a book called from white trash to worthy.

And she's now a six figure entrepreneur because that asshole minimized her.

And she was just like,

Oh my gosh.

She goes,

I abandoned her.

I made her mean that she was white trash.

It wasn't him.

He was afraid of losing me.

That's what I think is that emoji with the brain blow.

Yeah.

She texts me last night.

She goes,

This has just changed my,

Like for the last 20 years I've been hustling to try to prove something that was just not true.

I've been worthy all along.

I can stop hustling now.

And she just was like,

Whoa.

And so where would you begin?

I'm like,

Oh my God,

Come to the event.

Let me show you how to,

Let me show you how to become your own medicine.

And so she now is developing a relationship with the younger part.

Where do you begin?

You develop,

You learn how to develop a relationship with the younger parts of you that you abandoned because of the meaning that you made out of those events from your past that simply are not true.

You rewire the meaning to see that you've been worthy all along the whole time.

So where do you begin?

You begin in the body.

You begin with getting,

Finding a really a guide because there's no way she would have been able to kind of come up with that on her own without somebody holding space.

You find a guide that you trust and you kind of follow the path towards healing within the younger parts and learning skills rather than having the guide do the work for you,

Learning the skills to self-regulate.

You learn by mastering,

Becoming the master of your own operating nervous system.

Wow.

That was well said right there.

No one's coming to save you.

It's you.

It is us.

The answer is right inside,

Right?

We are the answer to our prayers.

We are the answer to our prayers.

No one can do it for us,

But kind of in duality sake,

We can't do it alone.

We learn how to love ourselves.

We didn't have parents when we didn't have parents that could meet our needs emotionally.

We have to learn how to meet those needs ourselves,

But we have to be taught how to do that.

So finding guides that can help us guide us back to ourselves,

Like the work,

The lovely work that you do as well.

Yeah.

Thank you.

What do you say to somebody that,

Again,

They just can't flip their mind on the blame or lack of forgiveness?

Some people are,

And I've heard from some of the people when I post something like about our parents and that we choose our parents,

We go,

Absolutely not,

But I've chosen these parents and they did not do the best they could and all of these things.

What would you say to someone that says that?

Because when I hear that,

It makes me sad because I know they're hurting themselves.

They're keeping themselves stuck.

And I know there was some horrific story.

I mean,

I've encountered them in my own practice.

I have some friends,

Like horrific stories from childhood.

I'm not saying it was easy.

I don't condone it.

None of it.

However,

As an adult,

What do you say to these people?

Well,

Before I say anything,

I realize that who am I speaking to?

And there's certain,

You're talking about a certain portion of the population who is stuck in that victim identity.

And there is a hidden agenda that they're not even aware of,

Of staying there,

Right?

And so I wouldn't help them see another perspective unless they were experiencing life with enough pain that they needed to change it,

Right?

Because every time,

Because you've done the work,

I've done the work,

We do the work as part of our lifestyles.

So when we hear somebody,

When I hear somebody that's so committed to staying stuck in that victim narrative,

We feel sad for them,

Right?

I feel like,

Oh my gosh,

Like,

Can't you just see,

You don't have to live with that.

And then,

Then I get to,

And then,

Then I notice how they respond.

I'm like,

Are you open to resolving this?

And they're like,

No,

I'm not.

And then,

Then I get to look and go,

Why do I need them to see it?

Why can't I,

Why can't I meet them where they're at and say,

That must have been really hard for you.

I,

Nobody's taking away your right to feel hurt by that.

I do wish you healing,

You know,

And just be able to see somebody and there's several stages of healing.

And we all start at the victim until the,

The,

The,

The,

The burden of being the victim becomes so hard that we are just enough.

I'm tired of my story and not everybody's tired of their story.

I love,

I test people.

I'm like,

I only want to work with people who have been through the shitty things and it's horrible that you have,

And I'm sorry that you have,

But you're now ready to unburden yourself from that identity.

Not everybody's ready.

And so I tend to kind of leave those people alone and I don't need to have to convince them of anything when they're convinced that they're,

They're the good ones,

They're right.

And they don't want to take any responsibility.

Most people don't.

And I,

I see that.

And it's hard for somebody in our position to look and listen and go,

Oh,

But why do you think there is such an aversion to taking responsibility?

That's a better question.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

You're reminding me of one of my own stories,

Which was to blame my parents for my codependency.

If they had not have leaned so heavily on me all my life,

The therapy that I gave them in my early twenties and even my teens,

I became their quote unquote best friends.

So they would come to me independently and talk about their marital issues.

You were a parentified child,

A surrogate parent.

One at the age of six,

I remember just nurturing and then helping them.

And that was my earliest memory.

But I would then have that story.

And I would say,

Well,

You know,

Cause people would laugh at me,

How codependent I was.

Oh,

Look at you.

You're tired again.

That's because you're always doing everything for everybody.

You're always fixing everybody.

And I would then come back with,

In my defense,

Well,

If my parents didn't lean on me so heavily,

Then I wouldn't be so codependent and I'd be pissed.

I was like,

Don't tell me that.

But there was also this part of me that was like,

Yeah,

That's the reason.

And I'm sticking to it.

And I remember the day,

I can tell you,

I was standing,

I was standing in my sister's kitchen and my cousin was there and they were making fun of me again.

They go,

There you are with your codependency again,

Helping everybody out.

And I said,

That's because mom and dad,

You know,

And my sister goes,

Are you ever going to drop that story?

And when she said that to me,

It was like my reality went poof.

And I said,

Whoa.

And in that moment,

I said,

Wow,

I am carrying around what I call,

This is my term that I made up,

Like the biggest cement suitcase,

Because that story is a cement suitcase.

I was dragging that thing around.

Yeah.

Oh,

I dragged it around everywhere and I was in some strange way proud of it.

Oh yeah.

Here's my codependency badge and it's not my fault,

It's their fault.

And I was not taking responsibility,

But in that moment I did.

There's something that felt,

I think,

Unconsciously good about it.

But when my sister said it that day,

I was like,

Whoa,

Something happened.

And it was like this balloon popped.

And I said,

Oh,

I'm done with that story.

Yeah.

I'm done.

And I think I just kind of like I'm extracting that there's a feeling of shame that you had to be willing to feel.

And those that are stuck in a victim story that are committed to it,

They don't want to feel the necessary shame of their own self-abandonment in the responsibility of it.

To heal,

You must first integrate shame and guilt.

And our narcissistic parts will not want to do that.

The narcissistic parts of us just want to be the victim,

Just want to blame the others,

Feel morally superior and grandiose and entitled.

And to heal,

We have to kind of go dip into the shame.

So when your sister said it,

That pang you're experiencing was shame.

And so the shame you instead of avoiding it,

You actually took it for a moment and it was painful.

But then it was like,

Oh,

But that's what purified you.

So why do people why do so?

This answers your question.

We kind of went around about it was such a beautiful thing as is some people want to stay victim because to take ownership and responsibility.

They would have to be making contact with shame.

And that's just not that.

And shame and guilt and the shame and guilt is so unbearable that we hide of the self-abandonment of the responsibility of me being an active participant here.

So unbearable.

I'm going to protect myself with my anger and my victim story.

So the work that I do,

You have to get to a place where you're tired of lugging around your cement suitcase.

But unless you're tired of it,

There's a hidden agenda to keep holding on,

Which is to avoid the guilt and shame.

God,

I love,

God,

I love shadow work.

God,

I love looking.

I love making,

I believe this one skill that if we can all really start to practice and start to get good at and refine is the instrument,

Playing the instrument,

Making skillful in how to make our unconscious conscious,

How to extract and it's hard because we can't see it because it's not conscious.

So we do need others,

Somebody who's done their work and is able to see their own hidden agendas so that they can artfully call it out.

Because it's like when you asked me the question,

When you asked me the question,

You know,

Why do people like to hold on to their victim story?

The way that I got to the answer is by asking,

Where do I like,

It's kind of like what you did.

Where did I hold on to a victim story and why did I do that?

Oh,

Because I didn't want to feel the shame and responsibility of my part in it.

I didn't want to own my part because I'd have to feel ashamed.

And the biggest threat to my ego is being seen as bad,

Being the bad guy.

And so that's why I call breaking free from codependency,

Healing from trauma bonds.

I call it a villain's journey.

It's not the hero's journey.

It's a villain's journey.

It's the willingness to be seen as the bad guy in another person's story.

Expanding your capacity to be seen as the bad guy for choosing yourself,

For being seen as self.

How dare you choose yourself?

You're supposed to take care of,

Take care of us like,

Like look at after all we've done for you,

For you.

So guilt is the price of,

Guilt and shame is the price of admission for breaking free from these intergenerational kind of complexes that we're stuck in,

Being the bad guy,

Expanding your capacity to be seen as a villain in somebody else's journey.

That's freedom.

That's becoming true.

And the thing is,

Is when we do dip into our shame and our guilt,

We think it's going to kill us.

I mean,

I remember going through a lot of that work.

I was like,

I'm going to die if I have to feel this.

And we,

It doesn't kill us.

In fact.

Yeah,

It purifies us.

You become so bad,

You become a much more cooler person if you can sit there in a relationship and go,

Oh my gosh,

Michelle,

Because like right now I was five minutes late for our appointment and I feel so embarrassed about it and I feel so bad and tell me what that was like for you.

If I can sit in the shame of it,

I become a much more safer person to be in a relationship with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

Yes.

Yeah.

Who knew that freedom was on the other side of expanding our capacity to be with the difficult sensations of being a human rather than trying to spend our entire lives creating identities,

Trying to avoid them.

Reviews

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