From Cult Shadows to Emotional Freedom: Tracy Inscore's Journey to Self-Healing

How does one rise from the shadows of a strict religious upbringing to become a beacon of hope for those battling burnout? Tracy Inscore joins us to unravel her remarkable journey, sharing her experiences growing up in a doomsday religious cult and how those early years of harsh discipline and emotional turmoil shaped her into an accomplished attorney and holistic energy practitioner. Tracy’s candid recollections of her father's rage and its impact on her nervous system provide a profound backdrop for understanding the importance of emotional regulation and healing.

Throughout our conversation, Tracy offers an enlightening perspective on navigating societal and personal expectations, including the internal conflicts that arise from pursuing a career that feels inherently misaligned with one's true self. From dealing with imposter syndrome to confronting burnout, Tracy details how she moved from fear-based decisions to a place of self-discovery and genuine fulfillment. Her story is a testament to the power of understanding and aligning with one's inner energy, rather than simply altering external circumstances.

In the final chapters of our discussion, Tracy delves into breaking free from destructive patterns and the transformative practices that guided her along the way. She shares the incredible impact of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and other holistic modalities in her healing journey, emphasizing the significance of self-administered tools for continuous growth. Tracy's narrative is a powerful reminder that true change starts from within, and she encourages all of us to embrace our strength and potential for self-healing. Tune in to be inspired by her journey and to discover how you can unlock your own path to a more fulfilling life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Healing From Childhood Trauma to Wellness
• 13:57 Navigating Career and Self-Discovery
• 21:22 Breaking Free From Subconscious Patterns
• 27:03 Awakening to Self-Healing and Transformation
• 32:51 Unlocking Healing Through EFT Tapping
• 53:01 Transformative Healing Through Emotional Freedom Technique
• 1:00:42 Embracing Change and Self-Love

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back everybody to the truth about addiction. I have a really cool guest today who found me on LinkedIn and we have so much in common. It's unbelievable. She has a story that will blow your mind, and what she decided to do with, what has happened to her, is the stuff I love talking about and hearing about on this podcast. It's so inspirational and she is truly being of service to her particular community.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Tracy Inscore has practiced land use and environmental law in California for the past 16 years.

Speaker 1: 0:48

In addition to still practicing law part-time at one of the fastest growing large law firms in the US, she is also a holistic energy practitioner specializing in burnout prevention and recovery for fellow lawyers, as well as providing support for law students and recent law school graduates.

Speaker 1: 1:11

Having personally experienced burnout firsthand and after many unsuccessful attempts to fix it, tracy found that emotional freedom techniques, otherwise known as EFT and more commonly known as tapping was the missing link in her own recovery. By working with the body's meridian system, eft helps to restore the mind-body connection and has been clinically proven effective in treating issues such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress. As a certified EFT practitioner, tracy's unique approach to burnout prevention and recovery emphasizes nervous system regulation and the power of the subconscious mind, thereby empowering her clients to address the true root causes of burnout. As one of the few certified EFT tapping practitioners who is also a practicing attorney, she is able to relate to her clients with empathy and a keen understanding of the real life issues they face. This allows her to bring holistic wellness to the legal industry in a practical and grounded way, and to put this powerful somatic technique into the hands of those who need it most.

Speaker 2: 2:39

Let's jump in dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern. Find a new reprieve.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Breaking the circuit, making it work. Welcome back. I continue to find these incredible people who are on a healing journey, who I haven't even met in person and whose story is not at all about traditional substance abuse even though mine is because I'm on a mission to really widen the lens about how we think about emotional cycles of addiction and dysfunction, and really, when I say that, what I'm talking about is subconscious patterns that our nervous system is stuck in for very good reason, by the way. So this woman who I have here found me on LinkedIn. I have not been active on LinkedIn in literally a decade and somebody suggested I ought to be, and we just had so much in common. When you peel away the differences in the degrees that we have and the specialties and the things we're doing to help people at the root of it, we're on the same path and I think that's why she felt called to reach out to me. And now here she is on the podcast Tracy in score. I am so excited for this conversation.

Speaker 3: 4:32

Me too. Thank you so much for having me and for being so open and welcoming to a stranger who reached out to you on the internet.

Speaker 1: 4:41

You know, you can tell when it's a real one and a good one.

Speaker 3: 4:47

Oh thank you. Yeah, I'm like, we guess there's so many that are not Right.

Speaker 1: 4:55

So I've already read your bio to the listener, but I would love it if you could take us back in time to whatever part of your backstory that you're willing to share, just to give us a window into who you were, because it very much informs who you have become today.

Speaker 3: 5:18

Sure, so, as you mentioned in the intro to your beautiful book, as you mentioned in the intro to your beautiful book, my real drug of choice is also control, and I think that this stems from my childhood, where I simultaneously felt very a doomsday religious cult that promoted harsh physical discipline of kids. They would pass out paddles wooden paddles at the church services to use if we misbehaved, had a ton of rules around what we were allowed to do. Women weren't really allowed to work or supposed to work, they couldn't wear makeup, we had rules around what we could eat and we weren't allowed to celebrate Christmas or birthdays.

Speaker 3: 6:14

I remember sitting through like hours long sermons as a little kid you know four or five years old and hearing about this angry, vengeful God and about the end of days and how we were God's chosen people so we would be spared, but everyone who wasn't part of the church or with us would die this terrible death. So that meant, like my grandmas, my friends, my teachers, everyone who wasn't part of our church. We never cut off contact with the outside world, but we were very much encouraged to only associate with other members of the church. I remember being told things like never let your mind go blank even for one second because the devil can take it over, and also that God knows all of our thoughts and he's keeping a record of every like, impure and bad thought ever. So I learned really to not even feel safe in my own mind sight.

Speaker 3: 7:26

I can see why he was drawn to this church, because I think it made him feel special, it made him feel righteous to have this strict set of rules and to be so different from everyone else, and since he was so dysregulated, I think he liked the structure and I think he enjoyed being able to outsource his own self-control to something outside of himself. My dad got sober years before I was born, and while I'm grateful he made that choice, he may have been sober from alcohol, but there was no emotional sobriety. I don't think that was even a concept back then. He was a rageaholic or what you might call it a dry drunk. He had a really bad temper, there was lots of yelling, and so this really contributed to my nervous system being totally out of whack, being in this state of constant hypervigilance.

Speaker 3: 8:22

I was also an only child, so I was navigating this all by myself and just really feeling this constant state of walking on eggshells, learning to stuff down and hide how I really felt, trying to stay out of trouble, trying to not provoke my dad's rage. But I also learned that academic achievement and performing academically was a way to make sure no one was angry with me, and it gave me a sense of control, gave me a way to make sure my needs were met, and that was then reinforced with a lot of praise and reward. So my entire sense of self-worth and value became tied to performing, achieving, doing, helping, fixing, rescuing, whatever, and so it was the perfect storm to really set the stage for burnout later in life. So I was primed from a very young age and then going to law school, and my law career was just like pouring gasoline on fire.

Speaker 1: 9:27

Wow, I mean the resonance you and I have for anyone listening who's already known my background is unbelievable, and also I so appreciate just the way you can speak to such painful things. I believe and not because you're not crying, by the way, because even if you were, I would say the same thing that's really important to mention. But the insight that you have is a testament to your desire to heal and the level at which you have self-excavated so that you could understand where your burnout came from, where these tendencies came from and how they show up in your life and what you can do to heal them. So I just really want to honor the level at which you can speak to those very difficult things. By the time you decided to go to law school, what was your relationship to your mother and father like, and also to God?

Speaker 3: 10:52

fatherlike and also to God. So, as harshly as I just kind of talked about my dad, I want to mention that there were a lot of positives about my childhood. He could be very fun, he was a great provider, very generous, I had a lot of love and encouragement. We took great vacations. By a lot of standards, I had a great childhood, and I say that because so often we get into this comparison trap of feeling like, well, so many other people had it way worse than I did. I didn't have any big trauma, big T trauma, it was just.

Speaker 3: 11:24

You know, everyone has a screwed up family, right, and so I say that because it's important to know that there can be more than one truth. More than one thing can be true simultaneously. You can have great parents and have had family dynamics that were very problematic and that are still impacting you today. It's not about blaming or shaming anyone, um, by the same token, I wasn't in my probably late thirties until I started doing more intensive therapy and even realized that what happened in my childhood was not okay. So when I went to law school, I still had a pretty good relationship with both of my parents. They were very supportive, very proud. My relationship with God was a different story. I vacillated between being agnostic and ultra religious, grasping very tightly to Christianity and the Bible. I think in some of my darker times when I felt the most out of control was when I turned more to that and over the years kind of developed my own spirituality which is just very much based in love rather than fear.

Speaker 1: 12:51

So I really want to make sure we get to, so we can do this now if it feels right or if it comes later in your story. We can wait, but how? You just knowing my own very trying relationship with and without God in my life, what it took to come from where you came from and disentangle yourself from all of that conditioning, to get to a place that you just described, which is that you don't consider yourself religious. You consider yourself spiritual, and the root of everything you try to get back to is based in love, which is my faith too.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So I think it's really that's not a small thing to get from where you were to where you are. So if you want to touch on that now, let's touch on it, because I'm super curious how you did that.

Speaker 3: 13:57

Sure. So I think part of it is just I was such a stubborn little kid that a lot of these messages never really fully imprinted on me. They never really resonated with me. I can remember kind of sitting there and listening to some things and being like, yeah, I think this is kind of bullshit.

Speaker 3: 14:16

And I had a lot of questions and my parents couldn't answer them and so they had a pastor sit down with me I was probably about five or six and he couldn't answer my questions either and he was like, well, you know, we shouldn't take the Bible literally and I'm like I thought you said that's what we were doing. So there was always a part of me, like a deep inner knowing that this is not right and that the loving God that we're supposed to be and that the loving God, that we're spiritual beings having a human experience, that everything is energy, that we're vibrational beings and everything is vibration. And that goes from the very bottom of that scale, which is the fear-based emotions and hatred and shame, all the way to the top, which is love. And I believe that we are all essentially pure love. The extent to which we get away from that, we veer away from our true essence, or we experience these negative emotions, is really just a function of how far we get off of that center, you know.

Speaker 1: 15:45

Yeah, I do, I do. You're speaking my language. So let's travel back again to the Tracy that is pleasing and performing like a good little soldier, doing as she is told, playing it safe. You're in law school. You're studying your ass off. What is that like? What happens when you graduate? Tell me.

Speaker 3: 16:15

Yeah. So I think even from the first semester of law school I was like, oh shit, I don't think this is right for me. But I didn't quit things, that's right, I'm not a quitter. And I was already in debt. I already had so many student loans, just boom, first semester in. I didn't have a backup plan, so I just soldiered on, kept going like I did with everything. I was very fortunate I had a great summer internship opportunity, ended up getting hired with that firm, all the while knowing, oh, I really don't like this. This is like sucking the life out of my soul. How am I going to do this?

Speaker 3: 17:00

But, by then it was 2007, 2008. I was so lucky to have a job offer coming out of school. In a recession, I had friends getting job offers revoked and no possible way to pay their loans back and so, again, just kept going with it of the job or the legal profession. It was really me, not knowing myself at the time and making a choice, you know, out of more fear-based motivation than what I would be, more what, like what would have been more aligned with me. So I, yeah, my early years of practice. I was doing really well. I was a star associate and representing one of the largest companies in the world.

Speaker 3: 17:47

I bought my first home outwardly all the trappings of success and inside I was miserable, medicating with alcohol. I was binge drinking. Most weekends I was severely depressed, very anxious. I used to hope that I would get in a minor car accident on the way to work, just so I could take some time off and have it be justified. And that just kind of goes to show you how out of control of my own life I felt Like I need so desperately wanted my outside circumstances to change. But I was not yet willing to do that inner work and I struggled with imposter syndrome to some degree anyway. But the fact there was such a disconnect between my inner and outer world, it felt even more like a fraud, like soon, like everyone's going to figure out I don't really belong here, I don't really know what I'm doing and it's all going to kind of fall apart.

Speaker 3: 18:54

So about 10 years ago I left full-time practice, I went in-house, I became a law professor. So I did all these little kind of part-time jobs. I was even a fitness instructor for a while All things that I really enjoyed. I thought I'm crafting the perfect like alternative legal career path and then I managed to burn out again doing all of those fun things that I really enjoyed. It was never about the job. It was about the energy that I brought to whatever I was doing. It was the need to be responsible for other people's experiences, never being able to say no, able to say no, and I liked that. My ego thrived on being the go-to person. It made me feel needed. It made me feel in control. It made me feel like I was safe from being rejected or abandoned. But in the process I completely abandoned myself and created a life that I just wanted to escape from and created a life that I just wanted to escape from.

Speaker 1: 20:05

I mean, again, you're, you're saying things that this is. We have the same story, just a different context. And this is such an important point because we so often. I just was on an interview the other day and this woman said now I don't want to be a skeptic, but you know and she went over the title of my book and how it has the word trauma in it. You know, because it's all about how do you rewire your mind when you've had trauma. And she's like but what if? Like what you said about your upbringing? You know, yeah, there were some things and some of them weren't so great, but there was also this other stuff and I don't really even look back and think of it like that, or you're not even aware that you could call any of those things trauma. And she said what would you say to someone like me about trauma? How would this book help me?

Speaker 4: 21:10

And.

Speaker 1: 21:11

I said let's take all that therapy jargon off the table, let's just sweep big T and little T trauma to the side. All you have to do is look around at your current life, the quality of your friendships, the quality of your romantic relationships, if there are any, the quality of how you speak to yourself. Are you walking around exhausted, resentful? Are you walking around exhausted, resentful, full of fear, full of anxiety? Because if you are, that is shining a light on the fact that, for whatever reason, maybe from when you were little, you are stuck in patterns that at one time you learned and they probably kept you safe and now they are harming you.

Speaker 1: 22:08

And so, all of a sudden, she was like oh, and I'm saying that to you because you know that already, but it's funny, yeah, because some of what you said almost made it as if you were choosing. And this is this whole thing about addiction and cycles of dysfunction, whether we have a choice or not, you know, and and the frustration and the judgment we can have not just on ourselves but with each other, especially these days, everything's so divisive and I really believe, when it's subconscious we do not have a choice, we are strictly operating from a need I have to have this thing, this approval validation, this straight A, this thin body, this, whatever. I have to or I am not okay. And you don't even know why you're doing it, why you're behaving that way. And it's really, unfortunately, when we're taken to our knees in your case, extreme burnout, extreme disconnection from your truest self that we wake up out of that subconscious pattern. There's an awakening, there's a consciousness, literally for a moment, and then we have just a little window of time to change course, at which point we had better have some tools available that we really resonate with, that we can practice, or we are subject to fall straight back into those patterns and we might get to the end of our lives going.

Speaker 1: 23:54

I don't know what I just did here. I had no love, I had no connection, I had no real joy. What was it for? I've seen that again and again, right, so I guess, in response to what you're saying, I don't know, I, in my personal opinion, you know, because, uh, in recovery there's such a big talk about being in ego.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Um, and when I was fighting the program and I couldn't hear the word God without feeling like I wanted to puke, a lot of what I was told was I was just being a self-centered, egotistical maniac in early recovery, and I think it's just so much deeper than that. I was hanging on to dear life, to everything I knew and learned as a girl, just as you did. So I don't know how much you were choosing any of that. I think you were just stuck in a loop in these cycles of dysfunction that your nervous system can do in your sleep. It's so good at it, right, it's had decades of experience until finally you hit your rock bottom and thankfully so did I, and you know, in the case of severe addiction and substance abuse, the really, really sad thing is that so many of us don't hit that spiritual rock bottom without dying first.

Speaker 3: 25:28

Yeah, yeah, you're so spot on.

Speaker 3: 25:31

And even though we may not have been able to choose the programming that went into our subconscious, especially before the age of seven seven, right like before our limbic system is fully developed, which is responsible for memory and emotion, by the way kind of important we have no framework for any of the stuff that's happening to us the way an adult would, so we store and process those memories very differently. So oftentimes we are running around as a kind of a six-year-old running the show behind the scenes, and it's a matter of maybe we didn't choose it, but it is our responsibility now to choose what we want instead. And I think sometimes, even if we're not consciously choosing something, we do have to be aware of the hidden payoffs that we're getting by a certain behavior or a certain pattern, like avoiding conflict or avoiding discomfort. You know, I really had to ask myself like, well, what am I getting out of this? And really it all boiled down to control. For me, it was a way for me to feel in control and really it all boiled down to control.

Speaker 1: 26:39

For me it was a way for me to feel in control. Yeah, that's so important and I I, in my own experience I have not ever been able to take inventory at that level. To be really rigorously honest about the payoff, as you say, I remember my first, my first fourth step in recovery. There was this pattern which, by the way, has gone on and on for decades after this, because you know the the spiritual way of life is not something you graduate from, so we keep learning the lesson right that we need to learn, and I always had these resentments at female friendships and then I would kind of play it out right. So what did they do to me? What did it affect? And in recovery, that fourth column is what is your part in the resentment, which is finally a moment while I was awake and aware where I could go? My part, which essentially is asking you what are you getting out of this?

Speaker 4: 27:43

What are?

Speaker 1: 27:43

you getting, and that was the first time I ever put together that. I loved the feeling of fixing and saving. I hated when I was in pain and they couldn't show up for me.

Speaker 1: 28:01

And then I was filled with resentment, but in the meantime, right, it was just doing what it had always done. It was filling me with a sense of purpose and worthiness. That's what I thought it meant to be loved, right, self-abandonment equaled worthiness, yes. So I've been trying to break that feedback loop literally since then, and it's still a work in progress. So, absolutely, you know, once we wake up, once we have that higher level of consciousness, we wake up.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Once we have that higher level of consciousness, it's almost harder, and I talk about this in my book. You know, like what you see, you cannot unsee. You can bury it, you can try, you can try to outrun it, you can numb it. You know there's a thousand things we can do to stay in the dysfunction because it feels good and comfortable and familiar. To stay in the dysfunction because it feels good and comfortable and familiar. But there will be a part of you, if you've woken up, that's going to know you're turning away from your healing, yeah, and that can have pretty severe consequences, not just physically. I believe that too.

Speaker 1: 29:19

I believe this is a big reason why we manifest illness, and you know, but but in your spirit in your spirit where you, you might be that person and there's so many of these people who lives a long life and who gets to the end and has a lot of regret. Yeah, yeah, this is fascinating stuff. So tell me about your bottom, take me there, take me to this place where you're like, yeah, it's done a bunch of things for me, but I cannot live this way anymore. A bunch of things for me, but I cannot live this way anymore.

Speaker 3: 30:05

And what did that look like for you? I think I had multiple of those in different areas of my life. Amen, I had that in terms of my full-time law practice, where the toll it was taking on my body and emotionally. One day I just woke up and I heard a very distinct voice. It wasn't an audible voice, it was like more of a clear inner knowing. I've always been claircognizant and so I'll just kind of I don't know, I'll just hear it, but it's not like I'm hearing a voice and it just said there is no amount of money worth feeling this way and you need to move now. Like you're done, get out now. And I just remember kind of laying in my bed like eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. It was a morning in November and I had already been thinking about quitting, but I was going to wait till after the end of the year and bonuses and blah, blah, blah, on and on. And I was like, well, I guess that's not the plan and I gave my two weeks notice.

Speaker 3: 31:11

As far as my drinking, that came about five years later. Also in the fall of 2018, I had one of my last binges and they had just gotten progressively worse. I was getting more and more ill. My tolerance was scarily high. I could out drink men twice my size and still outwardly was functioning very well. No one would have known that I had a problem. I woke up so sick after one particularly bad episode Couldn't remember major chunks of the night before which was common, which was getting all the more common, and I was like I need to get some help.

Speaker 3: 31:56

So I did Fast forward. I have not binged in over five years, which included two years of abstaining completely, during which time I completely worked on myself, reset my relationship to alcohol really any and all things outside of me. I also experienced a rock bottom in my marriage side of me. I also experienced a rock bottom in my marriage and ultimately we did decide to end that relationship. We were together for 15 years, married for nine and really again just having to choose myself and say this is no longer working for where I am in my life no longer working for where I am in my life.

Speaker 1: 32:49

That's amazing. Can you take me into the afterward? So the after of these rock bottoms and some of the healing work you've done, and which of those things I know there are some that are near and dear to your heart have been the most transformative?

Speaker 3: 33:05

Sure. So yeah, there were so many layers, so many things were happening simultaneously. It's like first I leave full-time practice and then I start getting a handle on my drinking later. Ironically, as I started getting a handle on the drinking and was drinking less and less is when my marriage really started to fall apart, because I was no longer numbing and my husband no longer had his drinking buddy and I think he was kind of bummed because we had a lot of fun when we drank together. And so that was interesting, because I feel like everything you hear is like oh, your life will get so much better when you start addressing this or you get sober or whatever, and I'm like, ah, mine kind of just got worse.

Speaker 3: 33:53

And so the first couple years of, I would say, attempting to manage my drinking, I was really white knuckling it like big time. So I'm grateful for those that time. That's when I really developed the confidence in myself to be like I can. I have other coping mechanisms available to me, I don't need to do this anymore. Have other coping mechanisms available to me, I don't need to do this anymore. I tried literally everything. So in that period of time, I've done traditional talk therapy which I'm a huge fan of.

Speaker 3: 34:32

I've done yoga. I also love yoga meditation. However, I had a really hard time trying to quiet my mind. I also have ADHD. My mind never really shuts off. I did breath work, I did Reiki. I was on medication for a while.

Speaker 3: 34:54

Even though I'm a holistic practitioner and this is not medical advice whatsoever but you know I'm not anti-medication I think sometimes that's a great tool. If you literally cannot get out of bed because you're so depressed you're not going to have the energy to go do these other things and grow and heal. We have to start where you are, and so I think that was a positive tool for me. So I think that was a positive tool for me. All of that was kind of layers, did a ton of reading, listened to a ton of podcasts, ultimately found an amazing life coach who specializes in helping alpha women who struggle in love and relationships, and she was like, yeah, she was like such a tough love, you know, loving like a mama, bear my responsibility, or that I am the one who needs to change my attitude. You know it was all levels to get there.

Speaker 3: 36:07

Everything built on the previous thing. So even if something didn't work per se, it still had value. I was still showing the universe, I'm showing up for myself. I care enough about myself to try any and everything, and I had heard about a technique called emotional freedom techniques EFT or tapping and it seemed too good to be true, it seemed too easy, and so I didn't try it for a good couple of years after I heard about it and by that time gosh, this was about only three years ago I was watching YouTube and I came across a YouTube video by the Tapping Solution Great free resource if you want to check it out and he was just showing you how to do it and I was really upset about something at the time and so I did the technique on whatever issue that I was upset about, and at one point through the process he said okay, check in with yourself, where are you?

Speaker 3: 37:12

On that zero to 10 scale? And I was like all the activation in my body, all of that just feeling flooded with that visceral anger and that tension. It was gone and I just remember looking around my living room like what just happened. That was crazy. I started doing it on my own and I was just getting these incredible results and I decided to become certified, become a practitioner and I realized through my 16 years of legal practice being around hundreds of attorneys, I couldn't think of a group that needed it more and, honestly, my mission is just to bring this to as many people as possible. In my humble opinion, it is the most underrated technique we have available to not only help regulate our nervous system, but for peak performance. I mean, if you're into biohacking, this is kind of like the ultimate biohack. I'll take this over a cold plunge any day.

Speaker 1: 38:24

Can you explain in more detail? I know a bit about tapping. I've actually never done it and it's funny for how spiritual and evidence-based at the same time. I am right, much like you right. We've got this sort of academic background that we're so proud of, and we work so goddamn hard to get the degree. And then these things that are seemingly so simple and, dare I say it, that seem woo-woo, can often be way more effective and life-changing than any doctorate or law degree, which is hilarious. So even in my own mind, I'm still, I think, a skeptic. But I also haven't tried it, which is ridiculous, because how could you be skeptical of something you haven't tried? Although that's our favorite way to keep us away from trying something that actually might help us.

Speaker 1: 39:31

What a clever defense mechanism Can you tell me more about? For me and the listener? What is that? And also, by the way, the fact that it's free. Let's just start with that, because on the mission we're on to help people in the way that was most helpful in our lives, where we could really speak to it, and to give people a template for soul care that lives inside of them that they can take with them anywhere at any time if they shoot up out of bed in the middle of the night with terrible anxiety and there's no one to call and there's no meeting to go to and there's no therapist. This is the shit we're talking about. This is the forever life-changing type of modality that you don't have to go and get from someone or something outside of you.

Speaker 1: 40:31

So take us through what you did, that tapping experience where you had that breakthrough.

Speaker 3: 40:40

Sure. So EFT tapping involves, as the name implies, tapping on certain meridian points on the head and the upper torso. So I'll just show you a few points here for anyone watching. We have the eyebrow, we have the outside of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, under the mouth. Those are just a few of them.

Speaker 3: 41:03

We do that in a specific sequence, while we focus on a particular emotion or memory or problem Could be really anything, and most of us are familiar with that concept of meridians because of acupuncture. Right, and that's that same same concept, except that eft just involves that light fingertip tapping. Sometimes you could just even apply pressure instead of using needles and centers around that core premise that everything is energy and that all negative emotion and, as you said, by extension, most physical issues as well, are caused by energy blockages within the body. So we store, you know, our emotions and experiences going back to how we're vibrational and everything is a frequency. These actually get stored in the body. So the meridian system is like an energetic highway running through the body. You know, traditional Chinese medicine was way ahead of its time thousands of years ago in really identifying this framework that corresponds to the nervous system as we know it today. So tapping allows us to restore the proper flow through those meridians, sort of clearing up, sort of, like you know, clearing up a traffic jam I know we're both too familiar with LA traffic it's just clearing that blockage.

Speaker 3: 42:29

So what I love is even though it is rooted in this, this ancient practice, you know for anyone who might be skeptical, it has been clinically proven effective in treating anxiety and PTSD because when we tap, it sends calming signals to the amygdala in the brain and that calms the nervous system and helps us get out of that chronic fight or flight state. And it actually helps us to create new neural pathways relative to that memory or that stressful event. It's not that we forget it, we're not wiping it out of our memory. We're changing how we relate to it. We're changing, we're getting rid of that visceral physical reaction that comes up when we recall that past event, and so that helps increase our resilience long-term.

Speaker 3: 43:23

And so, by engaging the body, the nervous system and the subconscious while we send these signals of safety, it's essentially what the tapping is doing. It's telling your body this is safe, this is safe to process this and experience this. And we're talking through that event or that negative emotion that allows us to actually process our emotions, process what happened to us, instead of suppressing or denying or just covering up with positive affirmations. Or on the flip side. Although I love therapy, my experience was, if you don't have a really good trauma-informed therapist, talking over and over about a past traumatic event can actually re-traumatize you, unless you have that somatic technique to signal to the body that it is safe. To signal to the body that it is safe, and so you know. I should add that, even though EFT can be used for virtually any issue, nothing necessarily has to be wrong either for you to try it.

Speaker 3: 44:35

It's just an amazing tool for peak performance. To get clarity. I'll use it for brainstorming if I'm doing creative work and, of course, by learning this technique before you're burned out, before you're at the crisis point. It's a preventative tool, it's just your daily maintenance. In my opinion, this should be taught in every school. It's one of the only things that has no known side effects Not many things you can say that about. It's completely safe. I think everyone should be doing this. You're going to love it.

Speaker 1: 45:20

No, I mean, I'm so fascinated by, I think, from some of my biggest and most recent traumas, where I could withstand whatever's coming up if I were to imagine myself in a tapping session and the level of fight or flight that would flood me, and I believe I could withstand it so that the tapping could do what it does. But I also am thinking so much about someone with far less tools, or maybe none, compared to you and I. I can think of someone right now whose nervous system is 100% of the time in panic mode and is brought to tears and is in bed. I mean just that I could see, if this were done too early, it not working. So I'm wondering do we know in the literature or maybe just in your own experience, do we know at what point post trauma this is the most effective?

Speaker 3: 46:52

That's a great question because you bring up. You brought up a great point about how this is a free, accessible modality that is meant to be a self-healing tool. We're meant to be able to learn this and then put it to practice on our own. However, if you are wanting to actually work through trauma specifically through trauma specifically so it's one thing to use this for just daily stress relief or for other you know minor issues or you know you have had a fight with your friend or you're upset about something. For the deeper traumas, I do recommend working with a practitioner, at least until, as you said, you are comfortable enough with the technique and you've reached a point in your healing where you're not going to be so flooded that it re-traumatizes you. So a practitioner will have been trained in the proper techniques to avoid the re-traumatization.

Speaker 3: 47:50

We're able to do this technique without anyone even having to repeat or tell their story. If they're not comfortable doing so, we can use techniques where they're kind of however many steps they need to be removed from it, whether it's as if they're talking about someone else or like they're watching a movie, or even if they're just completely silent and not saying anything, or even if they're just completely silent and not saying anything. So there's no particular time. In fact I would say the sooner after a trauma the better. Unfortunately this is still so not widely known about that at the time it would probably be the most beneficial, like right after a traumatic event. A lot of people don't know to do something like this, but it's never too late and it's never too early. I would just say use your best judgment, know yourself and if you feel like you need that extra support, by all means find a certified practitioner at least to get you through working through big trauma, and then you can absolutely use this on your own daily as a self-care technique.

Speaker 1: 49:06

That's great information, and another question that came up when you were talking is the creation of new neural pathways. I'm a big, huge proponent of that and giving people ways to actually make that happen, and so I'm wondering in general and on a science level, if we know this, if during the tapping the nervous system is able to switch from sympathetic to parasympathetic, is the physiologic response enough to begin the new neural pathways so that the body has a new experience around that memory and there we go, sending ourselves off into sort of a safer space if and when it comes up again. Or is there another piece of that, like talk therapy and creating a new narrative or breaking out of a limiting belief that we are unsafe when we think of that memory? That needs to be coupled with the fact that the nervous system is going into a parasympathetic state, like how important is the tapping alone versus the tapping in those moments as we're making the change, with additional tools to strengthen the new neural pathways?

Speaker 3: 50:47

Yeah, I definitely think that it's both Always get some benefit just from tapping, but by using it in conjunction, like you were just saying, is where we really see the magic happen, and they've actually done brain scans on people. You can see the changes happening in the brain in real time as people are tapping which is so amazing are tapping, which is so amazing, and you know you've probably heard this before that around 90% of our brain activity is subconscious, right, rather than conscious, and that also in terms of communications between the brain and the body. 80% is going from our body to our brain. Only about 20% is going from our brain to our body.

Speaker 3: 51:35

But what do most of us do? We focus excessively on that 20% and going on in our conscious thought, and most of the time we completely ignore that somatic piece. We ignore what's going on in the body, and so this technique really marries the two. It involves the cognitive piece, but also exactly right, as you said allowing your body to experience safety as you revisit that past event. A lot of times we think of trauma as what happened in that event, but from an energy healing perspective, the trauma is actually because a part of our energy is back in that present time or past time I should say it's no longer with us in the present, and so until we call that energy back to us, we're walking around kind of fragmented. It's almost like holes in our energy field.

Speaker 1: 52:37

It's almost like holes in our energy field. I'm wondering if you feel comfortable getting very specific with the listener about any one of your tapping experiences where something came up. You elicited a difficult memory and you were not just tapping in certain places but you were also sort of reframing the experience with words or ideas or visuals or whatever else you did and then how you felt when you were done. Just to be very literal for the listener.

Speaker 3: 53:22

Yeah, I think a big one that I've done personally is a fear of punishment, because that was a big theme in my childhood and so in that particular one I was working with another practitioner, because I'll trade sessions back and forth with another practitioner every week, which has been hugely beneficial to me.

Speaker 3: 53:43

I also tap on my own, but it can be so helpful to have someone else have an objective view of your life, because sometimes we're too close to our own stuff, because sometimes we're too close to our own stuff, and what we really always try to focus on and what was my experience in this time was really focusing in on the physical feeling of where does that fear of punishment live within my body? And for me it was kind of in the solar plexus area, and so, okay, focusing on that feeling. Was there a particular memory or event where you were punished, maybe unfairly? And, yeah, I was able to recall a childhood memory of my dad coming home from work and being severely punished for something that had happened maybe 10 hours earlier in the day. It was so far removed and it just caught me off guard.

Speaker 3: 54:44

And you realize that pervasive feeling I've been kind of carrying around like I'm about to be in trouble, I've done something wrong, I'm going to be punished, and so it's really hard to kind of put into words, because in the tapping process the whole point is to really kind of get out of your head and drop into your body more. And so I don't even remember a lot of what was said in the session. I remember I had a huge emotional release. I was crying, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. When we were done and then as part of the process we always use a zero to 10 scale. So I'm sure the practitioner asked me something like well, how real does this fear of punishment feel on a scale of zero to 10? I don't remember what I said. Let's say it was a seven or eight, and then to check in with me at the end, try to locate that feeling in my body, try to feel okay, does that still feel real and possible?

Speaker 3: 55:54

And yeah, the reframing that also happens in that process, because once you take kind of that the physical component away and your body starts to feel safer than your brain can, your prefrontal cortex can kick in for you and go no, no, no, you're a grownup now. You are safe, you're not in trouble, you didn't do anything wrong, and if you did, here's how you would handle it. You are, you're equipped to handle whatever might happen. And so, yeah, it's. I mean, it's a trip.

Speaker 3: 56:30

I not not only what I've seen in myself, but what I've seen come up in in other sessions with with clients. Oftentimes the issue you come in with is not the issue that ends up coming to the surface, because your body and your subconscious know what is ready to be released, what is ready to surface and be dealt with. And so, as you put this into practice, especially after you've done it a while, yeah, things will start coming up. You'll have new memories start to surface and you're able to kind of take them as as they come, and it's not so much as trying to withstand it and be super tough, like we're so used to doing. It's more of just an ease and a flow. You're allowing that emotion to finally flow through you and be done with it.

Speaker 1: 57:27

Hmm, I think what you're doing is so important and so amazing and, before we close, I'm wondering if there's just anything else you really want the listener to know.

Speaker 3: 57:43

I just want you to know how powerful you are and how much power you have to create your own reality and to unplug from any paradigm or system that's no longer working for you, whether that's an industry, a career, a substance, this burnout cycle. You are far more powerful than you've been led to believe.

Speaker 1: 58:12

You're amazing.

Speaker 3: 58:13

You are.

Speaker 1: 58:15

No, you are. This might be my favorite conversation to date. Oh my gosh, mine too. Truly. Thank you so much, and where can everybody find you?

Speaker 3: 58:28

My website is tapoutburnoutcom. You can also find me on LinkedIn, instagram and YouTube.

Speaker 1: 58:36

At the same handle yes, Amazing. All right, you guys. These are life-changing tools that once you learn them, you have them forever. Please check her work out. She's an incredible human being. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 59:10

I'll talk to you soon. I turn my back and hit my head against the wall. Don't need a crucifix to take me to my knees. I'm whipping my mistakes to jump over the grief. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, sick and tired of the voice inside my head Never good enough. It's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey Gotta break the pattern, find a new reprieve. Breaking the circuit.

Speaker 4: 59:56

Making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got love inside.

Speaker 2: 1:00:19

I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self compassion, start to calm my mind, taking tiny steps to loving all of me. Trust the process, cause it's gonna set me free, breaking the circuit.

Speaker 4: 1:00:40

Making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got the the life. Gotta gotta gotta break it or fake it till we make it. Gotta gotta gotta break it. Come on One, two, gotta breathe. Come on One, two, three. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got the love life. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no Deep inside. I got love, love life.