Lessons and Realizations on my Healing Journey

Embark with me on a journey where we unravel the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and the small, powerful steps toward self-acceptance. Discover the transformative power of embracing your authentic self, and how this can armor you against the sting of criticism. Through stories of personal growth, I share how changing the narrative in our heads can lead to a deeper connection with our own spirit and improve our interactions with others.

In this episode, I reflect on moments of vulnerability and how they've informed my shift from a self-doubt-laden existence to a life brimming with self-love. Through playful energy and self-awareness, I discuss the significant impact of inner work on our daily lives, and how it can positively reshape the texture of our relationships.

In this episode, you'll learn the following:
1. Why practicing self-acceptance is important to build confidence and make positive life changes.
2. The importance of navigating and addressing insecurities to foster emotional well-being.
3. How to reconnect with your intuition to understand your true desires and goals.

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💗 Dr. Steph
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Transcript

Healing From Difficult Mother Relationships

Speaker 1 0:04

Hi , I'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother , whether she was narcissistic , emotionally immature or just plain toxic . I want you to know that you are in fact , not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out . You can break the cycle . You are a strong , capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way , and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable . Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast . Welcome back .

Speaker 1 0:48

I hope your week is off to a fantastic start . I wanted to give a random update from me , so I stopped drinking coffee November 6th . I went back and looked at the exact date and you probably heard me talk about it in a few episodes in November and why I stopped . Well , now it's been more than 12 weeks and I haven't had a sip of coffee not a sip , and that feels like a huge win . Honestly , my husband has been so surprised because I used to get coffee every single day , for it had been years , to be completely honest . So I just wanted to share that update with you and then use it as a teaching opportunity .

Speaker 1 1:38

I hope that you celebrate when you make changes in your life , even if they're incremental , because it can be so easy to say , oh , I'll celebrate when , or I'll be happy when , or I'll whatever . You fill in the blank for your own life when , but then when never comes . So the longer that I have done inner work and the more that I've increased my self-acceptance , the more that I celebrate all of these milestones , big and small along the way . It's super , super important and generally , especially if you had an emotionally mature and narcissistic or toxic mother , it's probably not something that you learned to do which makes sense and you can make that change for yourself because it is important , and I'll talk a little bit about that next . So why is it important to celebrate these wins , even when they're incremental ? Because that is one of the easiest ways to build self-acceptance , which gives you more confidence in yourself and it makes you less vulnerable to criticism . And self-acceptance is something that I focus heavily on with clients , and what I'm about to say is going to sound a little bit counterintuitive , maybe be a little bit of a paradox . However , I encourage you to consider how useful it could be for you and just to try it , because you can always go back to the way that you are today .

Speaker 1 3:16

Okay , higher self-acceptance will help you create the changes that you want in your life much easier . And if you're sitting there and you're like , huh , what , how does that work ? Well , it's okay if it sounds surprising and I have to be honest , in the beginning of my inner work journey I resisted this truth a lot , because it is basically the complete opposite of how I was raised . I wasn't raised to accept myself . I was raised to believe that acceptance meant resignation , acceptance meant giving up . Acceptance meant just like being okay with everything not being so great . And that's not what it is .

Speaker 1 4:08

Acceptance allows you to focus your energy on improvement . Think about it . If you're not accepting yourself . An example is that you beat yourself up when you make mistakes . Maybe you talk to yourself poorly , you have that critical self-talk . Well , where is your energy ? Your energy is largely in self-protection . You don't have a lot of extra energy to be focused on improvement because you're in this mode where you're in your head and you're overthinking and you're beating yourself up , and that doesn't leave resources available to do much else . But when we accept , hey , I'm human , I make mistakes . It's safe to make mistakes , it's safe to be human , and I can continue getting better . What's the next best logical step Then ? Your energy is on . The next best step is on improvement .

Speaker 1 5:06

So I wish that I understood that when I started my journey . I never I don't think I mean , maybe I'm wrong . I'm like I never had anybody explain it like that to me , but maybe I did and maybe I resisted it . It's possible , but I don't think I did . I could be so wrong . Now , in the name of what I just shared , I want to share a few more things that I wish I knew at the beginning of my healing journey , because I think it would have made all the difference if somebody had laid it out for me like this . So let's just dive into a few things . I mean I think I'll share like seven things I wish I knew , and I did an episode similar to this in the very beginning of launching my podcast . So if you look back , it might have been in late May 2023 or early June 2023 . I spoke about things that I wish I wouldn't have known when I started my journey , and I'm going to share seven other things I wish I would have known . So let's go ahead and dive in .

Speaker 1 6:10

First one the mind makes up stories constantly , for everything , everything . Your mind if you're human and I'm assuming that you are , if you're listening it has five primary roles . One is literally to make up stories , has five things that it does automatically , and so if one of the roles is to make up stories , then I'm not telling you to stop making up stories , I'm telling you to tune in to what might you be making up . Now here's the kicker , and this is where you could get mad at your mind or you could be like okay , I'm human , that's the way that it works . Our the stories that we make up , that our mind makes up on autopilot , are very often rooted in our insecurities . Okay , so I'm going to try to think of an example on this spot , because I'm just riffing here on this episode .

Speaker 1 7:16

Let me dive into this first . So what do I mean by story ? Well , if you cannot videotape something , then it's a story . So if you have a reaction and you're like that person doesn't respect me , you can't videotape respect . What you can videotape is the behavior . So let's say that I email somebody and I don't hear back from them for two weeks . The reaction could be they don't respect me , which then I would feel angry . However , when we break it down in this way , the reaction is not that they don't disrespect me , it's actually the story . So they didn't email me back .

Speaker 1 7:59

My mind made up a story that means disrespect , and then I emotionally react to the story that I just made up . You get to choose the story that you make up , and the more that you heal , the more that you overcome your insecurities , the easier that will be able to do to not personalize other people's behaviors and to not feel triggered by other people's behaviors . So I love this line what bugs me about you is really about me , and that just gives you the opportunity to tune back into yourself and to ask yourself what do I feel insecure about ? So let's just continue using this example . If someone didn't respond to me and I'm going to personalize that , then I may have an insecurity around feeling like I don't matter , and that behavior showed me that insecurity . So I could get pissed off at them and criticize them and put them down and tell other people and triangulate and do all these things , or I can simply use it as data . Look , okay , I've got some work to do around this insecurity of feeling like I don't matter .

Speaker 1 9:11

So I wanted to give you that example because I had no idea that the mind was doing that all the time and that , when not in tune with the fact that these are actually stories , you have less control , you have less choice . It just feels like life is happening to you . It just feels like sometimes this is how I was raised Everyone's against you , not true , unless you want it to be so . Tune into those stories and I would love to hear what you discover . So that was the first thing that I wish I knew . Second thing that I wish I knew is that my insecurities were driving everything , everything in ways that I didn't understand . I did not understand how much my insecurities were driving things . So behaviors around me getting defensive and either shutting down or blowing up on people , or criticizing people , or just feeling so confused after conversation about why my heart was pounding so fast . I'll give an example .

Speaker 1 10:28

There was a conversation at work in one of my old jobs where there were multiple people in the room my supervisor and other coworkers . To be honest , in this moment I can't remember what we were talking about . That didn't stick with me . But what happened to me did . We got in a disagreement and my heart started pounding and I started feeling so angry I raised my voice in that meeting . Then afterwards I walked out of there and I'm like , why am I so upset ? Why am I so upset ? When I approached that with curiosity , like okay , if I'm getting triggered , if I'm getting activated like this , this is probably tied to an insecurity that I'm not fully aware of . When I peeled back those layers , what I realized is that in that conversation I felt kind of stupid . I felt incompetent . I didn't feel like they thought I was capable .

Speaker 1 11:37

Here's the thing If you have a story in your head that somebody else thinks something about you , part of you very , very likely thinks that about yourself I want you to really sit with that for a moment . I had a story in my head that they didn't think I was capable . It's very easy for people who have not done a substantial amount of inner work to just keep on pointing the finger at the other person . They don't think I'm capable . They don't think I'm good enough to do this . They don't think I'm competent enough to do this . However , when we keep on saying they , they , they , we miss a huge opportunity to work on ourselves and to see what is actually happening . For me , this is particularly true if you have a reaction that has come up across multiple situations and across time . There were many times that I had this reaction where I thought somebody didn't think I was good enough or capable or smart enough . That , happening across different people across different time and me kind of pointing the finger at them , showed me once I was doing the inner work it's wait a second . Is it really that they don't think that , or is it actually that part of me thinks that about myself ? And so my invitation to you now , being more than a decade in this inner work journey , is for you to ask yourself is it even 1% true that part of me has this fear about myself ? And if so , that's where we do the inner work . Okay , all right . So let's move on to number three .

Shifting Self-Perception and Overcoming Catastrophic Thinking

Speaker 1 13:26

I was so wrong about who I thought I was . I remember so clearly telling people or hearing from people just be yourself , just you know , like let them see who you are , relax , like these kinds of statements and quotes , and that never sat well with me , because I was certain that if I showed people who I was , they would not like me they would not stick around . I was certain , and it's because I thought that those not so shiny parts of me were who I was , at my core . So when I would blow up on people , when I would criticize others , when I would raise my voice and yell , when I would do things like that , even shutting down , I thought that's who I am . That's who I am and what I wish I knew and I wish I heard somebody who had the same experience as me but who was further down the road . I wish I had them to tell me with great certainty , to look me in the eyes and tell me that is not who you are . All of those things are behaviors that are trying to protect you from feeling your insecurities . That's it , and you can change all of that . That's not who you are . You are love . And what I've come to realize now is it's not those behaviors , all of those not so shiny parts . Those are not who I am at my core . And it's been a wild , wild ride to be able to shift Like I'm actually getting a little bit teary-eyed in this moment to be able to shift from believing that about myself to be able to see so clearly . Oh my gosh .

Speaker 1 15:39

Now , if I get in a disagreement you know , in the beginning of my relationship with my husband , just as an example I would like lose it on him , sometimes in very big ways . Sometimes just this is a vulnerable thing for me to share . But , like at a baseball game , I like yelled at him in front of everybody after he made a comment like where have you been ? I was in line for 20 or 30 minutes trying to get food and then I came back and he's like where have you been ? And I lost it on him . And he didn't do anything wrong , like he was just kidding and I took it so personally and I had this huge defensive reaction and lost it on him and I thought that's who I am at my core . I'm this person that loses it on people and I have to hide that Like I can't let people see that . And now it's really , really beautiful .

Speaker 1 16:32

I don't know if this is going to sound weird , but when we get in disagreements now there's a playful energy between us and we catch ourselves him too . I'm so proud of him because he really listens to everything that I'm sharing about in our work and it feels so good and so rewarding and I didn't know if he would when we first got together . But that aside , okay , there's this playful energy and there's this energy where we're able to catch ourselves and not escalate in the argument , and that's not how I was raised . There was always I have to say the last word and always an escalation of anger and many times an explosive reaction not all the time . So I'm sharing that . So , if you resonate with that inner work will change the game for you . It will change the game for you Truly .

Speaker 1 17:37

Now I'm having this little voice in my head right now . That's like oh my God , steph , I can't believe that you shared that . You just shared some really vulnerable stuff . They're going to think that you're crazy . So I'm just saying that out loud . I'm just going to share that . I'm having a human reaction right now . I shared something vulnerable about myself and now part of me is scared , and it's okay , because I'm giving you little snippets of my life and , yeah , could that make it sound like things were worse than they were ? I could , and I know that there are people out there Maybe it's you listening right now that can resonate with that . Okay .

Speaker 1 18:17

So let's go on to the fourth thing that I wish I knew . I wish I knew that I wasn't a catastrophizer for no reason . So what do I mean by catastrophizer ? Basically , something happens in my mind . Jump to worst case scenario . I didn't do that for no reason .

Speaker 1 18:37

First , it was a learned behavior in my childhood home . I observed that pattern and I simply took it on as my own . I simply took it on as the way that I respond to things , and that is very common Think about the way that your family behaved , those who you were around all the time and there's different reactions . You could take it on or you could swing to the opposite reaction and try to do very , very different . But either way , the way that you're showing up unless you're being super intentional about it it's learned . So I'm just going to continue with my own example Now . It was learned behavior period .

Speaker 1 19:24

Second , it was rooted in my insecurities . Rooted in my insecurities , absolutely . So I have an example from a couple of years ago that I want to share . So before I go there hmm , yeah , okay , I'll say this I'm like , let me think , how do I want to frame this up ? So , reducing my automatic reaction of like catastrophizing was something that I was on a mission to do , and you may have heard a story from me where I did that and in 20 , I think it was 2015 or 2016, . I should share that . Actually , I don't know if I've shared it on this podcast . I've definitely in other interviews . I'm going to make a mental note here to share that with you .

Speaker 1 20:17

Okay , so I had this moment . It was an eye-opening moment for me and it shifted the way that I responded to situations , where I stopped having like this reaction to be a catastrophizer . Okay now , so that's 2015 , 2016 . We're going to fast forward years , to 2021 , and I had opened my own business and there was a lot of new things for me , a lot of new worries , because I went from having a stable salary at NASA to not having that same type of salary and trying to figure out okay , how am I going to get this business off the ground ? And I had so much to learn about sales and marketing and social media and sending out these emails that people want to read , and creating content , and the list goes on and on and on and on and on .

Speaker 1 21:19

Well , I'm just going to label that as hard . It was challenging for me , for it was just . Yeah , it was challenging , very challenging , not probably the hardest thing I've ever done is opening a business . I tell you what inner work is so important and now I so clearly understand why so many businesses fail , because it takes a boatload of inner work . When I look at my clients actually I have almost 50% of them are entrepreneurs , and I think that really speaks to just how many insecurities come up and how emotionally connected , challenging and difficult it can be . Anyway , I went a little off topic , but I just felt like saying that . So we're in 2021 .

Speaker 1 22:10

And all the trainings that I'm doing are proposing this certain way to get my program out there and what it's called is launching . If you're not , if you're not a entrepreneur , I'll try to like leave the business lingo out of it for the sake of like time and understanding . So I had done that a few times that year , launching my program and got in several women . Well , I wanted to get a lot more women into the program so I could pay my bills . To be completely honest , I'm like I got to pay these bills . So we need more women signed up and I want to change more lives , and I hired somebody who had experience with this to help me and we went into the launch . We had these big goals and close the doors and I spent more money than I made . I spent more money than I brought in and I went into all the patterns of being a catastrophizer came back and I just cried for an entire day straight , literally , and I just was saying things to myself like how am I going to ever do this ?

Speaker 1 23:31

If I can't figure this out ? How am I going to pay the bills ? I can't make enough money like this and just you know , spiraling downward , downward , just crying , crying , crying , embarrassed , humiliated , and really nobody knew but me and the person that I hired to help me . But still all those fears and all those insecurities came up . I didn't know how I was going to make it work . And I learned a very , very important lesson in that moment my job is not the how , because I kept asking myself how am I going to do this , how am I going to figure this out ? How will I ever ? You fill in the blank . And I learned my job isn't the how . I had really started down that journey you know of like letting , letting go of the how , like believing and stepping into . If I take action , I'm clear about what I want and I just experiment . It's bound to work out . I will figure this out .

Speaker 1 24:44

And something beautiful happened the next month . I got a recommendation from a client to do a retreat , host a retreat , and I was like , oh my gosh , this is like the most exciting thing that I've thought about in a long time . I felt super , super , super excited about it and it's important to pay attention to your intuition in that way and to pay attention to your energy right , like when you feel inspired by something . You're inspired for a reason . I'm just going to say that . So I went with it and I announced it to my current and past clients and everybody was so excited and I sold that retreat in less than 24 hours . I sold every spot to that retreat in less than 24 hours .

Speaker 1 25:32

And some people will listen to this and they will say , oh , that's a coincidence . And some people will know that this is evidence that I do not have to , and you do not have to know how you are going to make something happen . You simply need to be clear about what you want . You've got to take action . You know you have to do the work and then follow those inspirational hits when they come up like that , and so very quickly , then I was able to pay my bills and then I was . Then I got more clarity .

Speaker 1 26:11

Now there's a lot more details there , but what I want to highlight for you , especially if you resonate with being a catastrophizer , is that that is rooted in your insecurities and that part of you believes that you have to control the how , and you do not . You do not , and I love teaching clients how to let go of that how and really not try to control it and really step into surrender and trust . I'm going to leave it there . That was a really powerful teaching moment , and something else that's coming up , actually , that I want you to know is the story in my head . To connect back to the first thing that I shared , the story in my head could be , oh my gosh , see , like I didn't make any progress on this , like I'm still a catastrophizer and I could have beat myself up , but instead I didn't , and I recognize . No , I peeled back the layer and I healed to the extent that I needed at the time , and , becoming an entrepreneur and being in a whole new world , I need a deeper healing , and that is what that situation gave me the opportunity to do . All right , let's keep going .

Importance of Intuition and Hiring Coach

Speaker 1 27:29

I have three more things I wish I knew that I want to share with you . The fifth one is the reason I didn't know what I wanted was because I was constantly told what I should want , what I should believe , what I should do and what the right way to do things was . And as a child , I believed that . I believed there is a right way . I believed that I should want certain things , I shouldn't want other things . I should believe certain things , I shouldn't believe other things . And I know that when parents raise their children , they have most of the time , the best intentions when they create these rules for children . And the negative one of the negative . There's actually many negative outcomes of this , but one negative outcome is that it separated me from my intuition . Because when we listen to ourselves and when we tap into our intuition , then we become very clear about what we want . Okay , I'm just going to give an example .

Speaker 1 28:38

A lot of times , children will say what they want to be when they grow up and then everybody kind of like , buys into it for a while and then at a certain point then , oh well , that's not going to make you enough money , oh , you can't do that , it'll be too hard and that can cause many people to not pay attention to what they want and then , after over time , then they're not connected to what they want anymore . So for me , and if you resonate this , my advice for you is reconnect to your intuition . Reconnect to it . How do you do that ? Start paying attention to these intuitive hits , or these intuitive sweeps that pass through your mind , and honor it . It's one thing to like , oh , I had this feeling , and then you don't do anything in alignment with the feeling , and it's a whole nother thing to have the feeling and then to do it .

Speaker 1 29:33

To go back to my last example , when I had this intuition that the retreat was a fantastic idea , I could have just made excuses like , oh well , I don't have , how am I ever going to sell out the whole house ? Like , how am I going to do this ? How am I going to do that ? Or I could listen to that intuition , honor it and run with it . So if you want to know what you want , recognize a part of you already knows and you just have to get in touch with that . Okay , all right , let's dive into number six .

Speaker 1 30:11

Number six what I wish I would have known , trying to rigidly control everything was rooted in fear , routed in fear . I had this belief that I had to control it all and if I didn't , then it wouldn't work out . This is connected to the catastrophizing , you know , and then if things didn't go according to plan , then I would be upset , then I might get angry , then I might shut down , and that is just a sign that there's a fear present , that there's an insecurity present and that points to additional healing . Just a reminder your job as a human is not the how . The universe takes care of the how period , full stop . All right . Number seven Last thing that I wish I knew early on in my journey is that investing in a coach would end up being one of the best investments of my life .

Speaker 1 31:19

She was able to see my behavior so clearly and my patterns so clearly , things that I was blind to , even though I was very self-aware and I know if you're listening , you might identify as being super self-aware . That doesn't mean that you're able to see patterns that you're blind to . If you're having reactions that you don't want , if you're having feelings that you don't want , if you are having an experience that you don't want and you feel stuck , you have patterns that you are blind to , and my coach was able to so clearly see them , and she had the courage to point them out to me , and that's super important in a coach , and I model that behavior too . I'm not afraid to say the things to people that need to be said so that they can become the version of themselves that they want . So I wish I knew that earlier . I would have invested in a coach earlier than you know .

Speaker 1 32:18

It was a few years into my healing journey before I did that , and it can be so easy , as a high achiever , to think that we have to figure it out on our own , like , okay , I've got to . You know , do all these Google searches and read all these books and try to put these puzzle pieces together , listen to these podcasts and look at these Instagram posts , and a lot of times it's very , very , very challenging to put the puzzle pieces together , because online you're getting free content which does not include all of the information that you need . Because why ? I mean ? People have to make a living right , they have to be paid . If they could just put out free content all the time and then somehow get a paycheck , I'm sure there would . The puzzle pieces would come together a lot easier , but there's missing information that you need , and I wish that I had hired a coach earlier .

DM on Instagram for Empowerment Training

Speaker 1 33:12

All right , I would love to hear which of these resonate most with you . Send me a DM on Instagram , let me know . Let me know if anything I said brought up questions or you can relate to it . I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll see you next week . Thank you for listening today . If you're ready to heal so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered , brave and thrive in any situation , dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions , and what you can do instead .