Broken to Brave | Guiding you to heal & break free from anxiety

Conquering Fears with Subconscious Reprogramming

Dr. Stephanie Lopez Episode 62

Can facing your deepest fears actually be the key to unlocking your true potential? Today I'm sharing my personal experience with subconscious reprogramming. Discover how a 90-minute session turned my fear into excitement, and why avoiding uncomfortable emotions can only strip away our personal power. By activating choice, embracing absolute acceptance, and analyzing data, you too can reclaim control and become unstoppable.

In this episode, I cover the following:
1. Avoiding uncomfortable feelings and its consequences.
2. The power of subconscious reprogramming.
3. Strategies to shift perspective and confront fears incrementally.

______________________________________

[FREE TRAINING]
How high-achieving women can
DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day

www.brave-method.com/anxiety

Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most?
www.brave-method.com/testimonials

💗 Dr. Steph
@DrStephanieLopez
www.brave-method.com




Speaker 1:

I'm Dr Steph and I want you to know that you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You are not, in fact, broken 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. I am so excited for today's episode. By the way, do I say that every episode? I don't know, but what I'm going to talk to you about today is something that I have seen impact almost every single one of my clients. Seriously, I've seen it hold them back and when they allow themselves to go here, they're unstoppable Before we get there.

Speaker 1:

Today I want to give you a quick update. I know that I shared the early miscarriage with you, with the surrogacy journey, and I shared how I was processing through all of that grief and sadness that came up, the disappointment, and I did a couple things that I hadn't talked about here yet, and one of those was a subconscious reprogramming session, an RRT rapid resolution therapy session. I do these sessions for my clients and I did one of these sessions not on myself, but I had a friend do one on me and I have got to tell you, I went into that session with a lot of fear coming up about what's going to happen with the next transfer. Is it going to be another miscarriage? Is this medicine that I'm taking for these protocols going to mess me up when I get the results back for the endometrial biopsy? Is there going to be something wrong with me? You know what, if, what, if, what, if, what, if? All the normal stuff that you are probably dealing with from time to time as well. And so that's where I was when I got on the call. When I got off the call, I was excited for the next transfer. This was, I think, like a 90-minute call, maybe 80 minutes long. Excited, I went from fear what if, what, if, what, if? To excitement in that short period of time. I'm sharing this with you so that you know the power of subconscious reprogramming. It's not going to fix all of your issues in life, in my opinion. You've got to do the inner work too, and it is very, very powerful. I'm so grateful that I was introduced to this modality, that I got trained in it and that now I can bring it to each of you trained in it, and that now I can bring it to each of you. Now, I think that's all I wanted to share from a personal update standpoint.

Speaker 1:

Let's go ahead and dive into the topic for today. I want to ask you a couple questions. What are you actively avoiding? What are you actively avoiding? What are you actively avoiding? Feeling is probably a better way to say that. Do you avoid situations where you believe that you're going to feel rejected? Do you avoid situations where you feel like you may feel disliked, incompetent, ignored? If you're human, you probably have, or you probably do on a regular basis.

Speaker 1:

I have a serious question for you, though have you gotten better at dealing with these types of situations? Nope, you bet your bottom dollar that you haven't. Have you gotten better at feeling grounded and totally okay in these types of situations? Who has the power? You or the fear? You bet the fear does. If I create a life where I am set on, I don't want to feel these certain things and I'm going to avoid these certain situations so that I don't feel X, y, z, whatever it may be, I no longer have the power, because this is life Things do not go according to plan, things happen, and then, the moment that I find myself in that situation, if I've been avoiding it. The moment that I find myself in that situation, I am no better at handling it is no better at handling it. I have to tell you a quick story related to this. I am in a couple surrogacy groups because I find it like the community to be really valuable People that are going through this or actively going through it or have already gone through it. I like that.

Speaker 1:

And somebody asked a question last night. I'm trying to think exactly what she said. I think she said that she was feeling anxious for what's to come, and a psychotherapist responded to her and said here's an article for you to read. And I was like just a little curious. So I clicked open that article and one of the things that it said was avoid situations where you will feel blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, situations where you will feel blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was just like what? Why are we giving this advice? Avoid it. You'll never get any better at dealing with it, never, ever. So I just had to mention that because probably you've received recommendations to avoid it. You didn't just like come up with like oh yeah, I'm just not gonna go there.

Speaker 1:

You've probably been told by one or more people, whether you remember it or not, that you should just avoid things that make you feel certain ways. But what if nothing can make you feel a certain way? And if that sounds crazy to you, what if nothing can make you feel a certain way? What I want you to know is that you need the three pillars that I work with clients on Activate choice, absolute acceptance and analyze data. That's the sweet spot so that you get your power back. You get to choose. Do you want to live a life where there are certain things that you cannot do or cannot experience because you're afraid to feel? Do you want to live a life I've got to tell you, I've seen time and time again where I have had clients that have been afraid to open Pandora's box. They're like I don't know, I don't want to look at it, I don't want to feel it, I don't want to see what's inside, because what am I going to figure out? And then, when they finally get the courage to do it, it's way simpler than they ever ever anticipated. So do you want to live a life where you are unstoppable, because you know that not only can you cope with these things, but you can thrive in it as well, and I say this with 100% sincerity. I believe this is possible for you.

Speaker 1:

For you, if you are actively avoiding, you are actively choosing to keep yourself stuck, and I mean that from a place of love. I don't mean it with judgment, but I want you to know whether you consciously know that you're making that choice. Action or inaction is a choice. So if you are avoiding these situations so that you don't feel certain things, you are actively choosing to keep yourself stuck and when you avoid, two things happen it controls you and your subconscious mind reads it as unsafe and aka if it's not safe, then I'm gonna die. Have you ever avoided a hard conversation? Your whole body believes like I will die if I have that conversation. I know a lot of people can resonate with that. When you actively avoid, at least two things happen it controls you rather than you being in control, and your subconscious mind thinks that is unsafe, I'm going to die, which is simply not true.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk to you about a few examples and to shift your perspective here. If I were afraid of swimming and my girlfriend came over in the middle of the night, she grabbed me and she threw me in the lake. Do you think I would suddenly not be afraid of swimming? No, so this is not how I want you to take it. I don't want you to think well, I just need to dive in the deep end so that I'm not avoiding it anymore. No, but if she came over, she took me by the hand and she's like okay, steph, you want to conquer this? And I'm like heck, yeah, let's do it, maybe with some trepidation, but I'm in and we walk back there and I dip my toes in, and then dip my toes in, and then I turn around and walk back to the house. And maybe a few hours later, or maybe tomorrow, I walk out there with her, I dip my whole foot in and turn around, walk back to the house. Next day I dip up to my calf muscle and so on and so forth. What is my subconscious mind going to think if I do that over and over and over again? Well, she's not going to die. It will get very clear on. She's not dying. And huh, she's actively pursuing this. She's pursuing that buzz, that fear, that nervousness. Okay, maybe this is a good thing. That's what the subconscious mind gets on board with when you actively pursue.

Speaker 1:

You can think about this in a different way. Think about somebody who pursues adrenaline things like roller coasters, thrill rides, skydiving, bungee jumping. Over time, when they keep doing these things, whatever gave them that high no longer does. They've got to do skydiving from a new level or with some new tricks, or bungee jumping, you know, with rocks at the bottom I'm sort of kidding, but sort of not Like it's got to be more extreme in order to get them the same feeling in their body why they pursued the buzz, and then it was no longer a buzz. This works both ways with things that you have been perceiving as negative and with things that you perceive as positive, negative and with things that you perceive as positive. Same thing with drugs, illicit or non-illicit. At some point, a dose no longer works the same way to get that person high as it did previously. They have to go with a stronger drug or a stronger dose in order to get the same feeling why they're actively pursuing the buzz and it's no longer a buzz.

Speaker 1:

So if you have been afraid of something, what do you need to do? Do the thing that you have been avoiding so that you can show your subconscious mind and your nervous system. It's not going to kill me. It's not going to kill me. And then, inside of Brave Academy, what I will give you is you're going to gain the tools in how to do this from a regulated standpoint, so that your mind and your body can get on board faster, because it's one thing to pursue all of this and have no tools to regulate yourself. Your results are not going to be as smooth or as quick and may feel very dysregulating. And if you do it without the tools, you may come back and you're like Steph, what are you talking about? I can't do this, I can't handle this, I'm not okay. I don't want you to be a nervous wreck. I want you to have those tools.

Speaker 1:

And in fact, I want to give you an example of someone who came in as a client six months ago. I'll call her S, rather than you know share her identity. When she came in, she told me that she had been in therapy for 12 years to address her anxiety twice a week. She came in and after the first call or two, she reached out directly to me and she said I don't think I can do this. I need one-on-one support. This feels too vulnerable. Let's get on the same page first before I go further with her story. What is vulnerability? Emotional vulnerability is about letting yourself be seen and known for who you truly are what's truly happening for you instead of how you might prefer to be perceived.

Speaker 1:

What was happening for her on those first couple calls was she was going into freeze mode and she said like I can't even speak up, I'm just frozen deer with the headlights. However, I knew this was the very thing that she needed in order to make the shifts that she wanted in herself. I was full on my one-on-one clients at the time, but I also did not give her the option to switch to one-on-one Now. Kudos and credit to her. She stayed in the game. She continued showing up for the calls and at the beginning she wasn't speaking up, but she worked more and more and more on embodying the tools and yesterday she got on a call. This wasn't the first time that this happened, but this is the most recent one that I just feel so proud to share with you. She got on the group call. She was the second person to speak up and she openly and freely shared what was coming up for her A struggle that she was facing and she received coaching from me on how to expand her thinking even more, and then I gave her a challenge to do that day.

Speaker 1:

She took on the challenge she received. That she didn't shut down. That feedback from me, that coaching from me she didn't shut down, she didn't freeze. She feedback from me, that coaching from me she didn't shut down, she didn't freeze. She did it all while staying present, and at the end I pointed out I was like, oh my God, like, look at you, look at you, and she just like her whole face lit up. I was blown away.

Speaker 1:

She had a huge smile on her face and I could just see how proud of herself she is. You know what, though? I bet, especially after 12 years of therapy, the version of her from six months ago that came into the program never could have imagined the progress and the growth that she made. I couldn't be more proud of her. If these are results that you want, or if you're curious more about what's inside of Brave Academy, all you need to do is send me a DM with the word Academy and I will have a no pressure conversation to share more information with you to see if it's a good fit. Can't wait to see you on the next show. Thank you so much for listening today. Are you ready to finally heal and break free from anxiety, including symptoms like replaying interactions, fearing, making mistakes, imagining worst case scenarios and constant worrying? If so, dm me the word free on Instagram at Dr Stephanie Lopez and I will send you a link to my completely free class to officially ditch anxiety.

People on this episode