Balancing Family Crises with Self-Wellness

My son was bit by a cobra!!! 🐍 Oh no wait. It was only a copperhead. Listen in as I recount a recent incident involving my son and how prioritizing my well-being helped mitigate its emotional impact, emphasizing the importance of practices like meditation, journaling, and breath work in fostering inner peace.✌️

The choices we make daily can be pivotal in managing our emotion 😊😭🤣🥰🙄, especially in the midst of family crises. Listen as I share practical examples, such as handling my mother's panic over my son's snake bite and dealing with the financial💵 stress of missed work without letting these situations overwhelm me. 

Not just by focusing on mindfulness 🧘‍♀️and building habits to manage stress, can we can regain control over our emotions and maintain a balanced perspective. More specifically  we need to pay attention🚨 to our daily choices and have regular check-ins 🤔with ourselves. 

This heartfelt conversation not only invites you to prioritize your self-care but also encourages you to join our community, "Healing Her Childhood," to connect with others on a similar journey. Tune in and take the next step towards healing and emotional resilience.

PS: I call the snake a cobra at least twice. Haha! TV really has me linked up to cobras. 😂

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Also, DM me if you would like to chat about how I can help you in your journey to emotional health and balance.

This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Hidden Healing Podcast, the Heroine's Journey. This podcast is just for you. Yes, you. You beautiful soul and kindred spirit with a gentle heart who, because of life's circumstances, have been hurt, neglected and left in so many ways to fend for yourself because the adults who raised you weren't able to be what you needed or provide you what you needed in the early years of life. I have a hunch that you, my friend, have worked really hard to have a good life and to provide one for your family, and you've succeeded, but you still aren't feeling connected to the people in your life or fulfilled, and you're always meeting other people's needs, which never allows time for your own needs. You've likely already done work on yourself, so this journey isn't new to you, but you know that there is more to be done. In this podcast, we'll talk about how complex trauma robs you of joy and connection, even into adulthood. Until you do the inner work, you may be wondering what more is there to be done. Well, let me tell you Helping others on the journey of healing from the impact of complex trauma is my passion. I have spent the last five years really digging into what specific aspects of healing will bring the biggest impact in life and how to open the doors to more healing and connection, so that you never feel lonely or disconnected again. So listen in as we discuss complex trauma and how you have the power to change how you feel and, yes, change your life now. Hi there, do you want to be friends? I do Listen.

Speaker 1: 1:41

I met my best friends online during the pandemic. I thought for a while these are pandemic friends, right? Surely the friendships will end soon. And then, on top of that, with my past experience from a crappy childhood, I learned to be self-sufficient and not need anyone, so I was certain these friendships would end. Let me tell you, our friendships are going strong and I want that for you, which is why I'm opening a private Facebook group for women. This will be a safe space to hold space for others because, let's face it, we're great at holding space for others. But also, this is a safe space for you to be held. Yes, a safe space for you to have your life witnessed. Yes, a safe space for you to have your life witnessed. Community is the foundation of healing from complex trauma which results from having a crappy childhood or many crappy situations that you were in in childhood. You can start the healing alone, but it takes a community to heal. Listen to the end to hear more about how to join the Healing Her Childhood private Facebook group for women.

Speaker 1: 2:50

My son was bit by a copperhead. Today I want to talk about how I turned something that could have been very traumatic into just a stressful situation. In other words, I downgraded it so that I didn't have to process and deal with this for days upon days and I didn't have to have it come up later. I know that sounds kind of odd that I would want to do that, especially in a situation like this, but I have goals and I have aspirations to feel some joy in my life and with four kids, things are always coming up and I know that in your life you have the same kind of situation where people rely on you. You're constantly the one people are coming to. There's probably very little space in your own head for your own life and when you hit 40, that's something that that arises in your body.

Speaker 1: 3:43

For women who are, who are in their 40s and in their 50s, they want to create space for themselves now, and a lot of it has to do with having raised families and now it's my turn. A lot of. It has to do with the fact that over givers, people who are caretaking, and people who just grew up with crappy childhoods that taught them that in order to get that love, they had to take care of other people. We know how to give so much. We even know how to give from our own need, and so when we hit a certain age, there is nothing left to give and you have to stop and take care of yourself. And that's how why I started this podcast and that's why I am so passionate about helping women.

Speaker 1: 4:28

So over the past few years, I've been working on creating safety in my body so that I don't walk around in chronic stress all the time and having years of depression and having years of very stressful everything in my life. I lived in chronic toxic stress all of the time. I didn't even know what it felt like to live in my body. I was sexually abused as young as three years old is my first memory, and what I can tell you is I learned how to instantly live outside of my body, and there were very few times when I remember ever living inside my body. It's something that in my 40s it was like there. Something has to change. I can't keep living the way I'm living, and as I started learning, I figured out one of the things is creating that safety in my body so that it's okay to be here, to be in my body, to be by myself.

Speaker 1: 5:24

And that's not something that is easy for people to do. It does take work. That's the work that I talk about, the work of taking care of yourself. I'm not even talking about self care, although that just happens naturally, because you do want to take care of yourself but I'm talking about meditation. I'm talking about journaling. I'm talking about breath work. I'm talking about meditation. I'm talking about journaling. I'm talking about breath work. I'm talking about looking at your problems. And if you need to go to a psychologist, go get some therapy for a while. If you need to have any big T trauma in your body that you've never looked at or never talked about or never taken that layer off of your body by by acknowledging it, then you've stuffed it and it is become a big monster that wants out, and so that's if you need to go to therapy. That is the perfect place to deal with those things. And sometimes you go to therapy and you know you may go for six months, you may go for three months, but you go and deal with these big things so that you can get them out of your system, so that you can heal and process those things and then, as you become more aware and become, create safety in your body. You realize that as you're going through life, you don't want to create new traumas in your body.

Speaker 1: 6:46

So back in September 21st of 23, my 20 year old got in a motorcycle accident and he it was really bad. They light lifted him to the hospital. He had a rod put in his leg, he had surgery and possibly he was supposed to have it on his hand but his hand ended up healing. They didn't end up doing surgery. He broke his wrist, he was unable to walk for a long time and he was in the hospital for five days. That was a big trauma to my body. Going through that with your son, listening to your son scream as they're putting his leg in traction um, you know all the surgeries looking at him be excruciating pain when he's, when they're giving him. You know, right after the surgery they want him up and walking, and so all of that was a very big trauma for both Justin and I, we flew into action. We got through it. I, my daughter, was just incredible and helping me that's a little clue there and it was just incredible. It was incredible that we got through all of that.

Speaker 1: 7:57

But in the end I cried, I was stressed, I was shaky. Going to work was very traumatic for me, leaving my son, all of these things, and for probably the next 30 days for sure, I like out of body 100% of the time. I had to, you know, really let go of all of that and find safety and really work with myself to understand that Rory is safe, that I'm safe, that this is going to be okay, and probably, I want to say, six months later, most of that was gone and it took a lot of working through that, believe me. And this act, this Cobra bite, brought all of that up for me again. And so when we got the call, I decided at that moment I said, look, I am not going to turn this into a big T trauma for myself.

Speaker 1: 8:51

First of all, my son did tell me and I verified instantly Cobra, um, cobra bites, um, copperhead bites, are not, uh, fatal. Most of the time they don't. If it is, it's like an odd reaction or something. And so I looked that up just to be sure, um, and I explained to my husband that I didn't want this to be a big trauma for me, that I wanted this to be a stressful experience. For sure, because there would be no way to take the stress out of it for me right now, but for sure I did not want to turn this into a trauma.

Speaker 1: 9:24

And that meant doing different things, that meant choosing a different path. That did feel a little uncomfortable. Did you think? I questioned myself? Celeste, this is really important. Your son just got bit by a poisonous snake. Maybe you should be panicking, maybe you should let this be a stress. And I had to quiet that voice and say Celeste, you need to take care of yourself.

Speaker 1: 9:46

If your son is going to be an adventurer, and he gets that from his dad, 100% from his dad his dad is very much an adventurer. And he gets that from his dad 100% from his dad. His dad is very much an adventurer. And, of course, as he started having kids, that sense of responsibility kicked in and all his trauma and everything, and he dropped that part of himself. But that was the first thing that attracted me to Justin, and Justin loves that part of himself and loves when he goes on vacation and can feel that again, even if it's for brief moments. And so I reminded myself and I reminded my husband he gets this and it's from you and it's beautiful and we love it.

Speaker 1: 10:24

But also, just because he chooses that he's 21 in a month and that makes him a grown man, I don't have to have a trauma every time something happens in his life. That's hard in a lot of ways, because that's hard, I'm a parent and I don't want to let go of my son. Of course I'm a parent of a 21 year old, so of course I'm letting go. Letting go, letting go it's a constant. You know it's constantly work for me to let go more and more and more. But in this case it it is a little bit uncomfortable, it is a little bit scary. So Justin and I talked and decided it wouldn't be a trauma and that we were gonna handle this differently. And so I downgraded something that could have been a trauma to a stress. And you can do that too. You can downgrade something that's highly stressful and just make it like a tiny bit stressful or not stressful. We can choose to do that and that's why I'm excited is because we get to choose.

Speaker 1: 11:25

The thing that we have to think about, though, is how do you get to that point where you do get to make a choice, where you something does happen and you go hey, I'm not going to panic, I'm not going to let this really impact me in a way that's going to change me forever. So Victor Frankl said when we are no longer able to change a situation, then we must change ourselves. And how beautiful is that? Because wanting other people to change me, wanting my son to change and be more safety conscious all of that is not going to happen, even if I want it. So I get to choose different things, as I have practiced to create safety in my body. There are a set of habits that I have had to practice, and I want to share that with you, because you, too, are on the road to healing, on the road to recovery, and you, too, get to make the choice.

Speaker 1: 12:15

Every single day. When a family member comes to you with problems, you know whether it be a child or an adult sibling or a parent. We don't have to turn those into big situations in our lives. We don't have to buy into it the same way they buy into it. We don't have to let that turn our whole life upside down for a day or a week or two weeks. We get to choose. So how does that choosing happen? So there are daily choices, daily habits that we are making every single day. And when we choose not to make something a big deal, when we choose how we're going to react sorry, how we're going to respond instead of react, we're building that muscle. So, for instance, throughout your day, when things are going on, when the kids are asking you for something, when your husband is asking you for sex, yet again after you said no, you know. Yet again, after you said no, you know we could turn those into different like, reframe them basically. So, like my husband really loves me, he's still attracted to me. My husband, you know, still has his vitality, all of these things and instead of turning into oh my god, I said no already. We could believe me. I also need help on this. So I'm preaching preaching here to my own choir, but that's just an example of like, where we are making daily choices to not make something negative and angry. We need to constantly be asking ourselves if I want to feel this way.

Speaker 1: 13:47

So when someone comes to you, my mom, she comes to me. She's like oh my god, why aren't you calling the ambulance? Rory got a snake bite and I said, mom, we don't want. We already owe medical bills galore for our son. This is not life and death. We've looked it up and you can look it up too. So we are choosing the way that we're going to do this and Rory is 100% okay with it. We've already talked to him. We said do you want us to order an ambulance? We talked to him and told him that how he wants to do this is okay. And then when he was like, nope, what do you guys want to do? And I said, okay, what we'd like to do is come and get you and we're going to look and see how things are and see if we need to go to the hospital or not.

Speaker 1: 14:29

And my mom was very reactive about that because for her this is life and death. I mean, she and me too have watched the movies and the only thing references we have to snakes aside from the anaconda on the airplane, which I did not see, the movie, but I just obviously have seen billboards and movie posters and whatnot is cobras. Cobras, I want to say, like movies in the 50s, 60s, 70s, even a lot of cobras. So that's her experience, that's a lot of my experience too, and so she's panicking and it did make me panic for a minute and did make me reactive for a minute and then I said, no, that's not what I want. I didn't have to buy into that. You don't have to buy into the way other people want you to feel. You don't have to buy into the reaction that you think is what is normal, what you've done in the past. You get to choose. So, asking if you want to feel this way and if you don't, then stop and choose what kind of reaction you want to have.

Speaker 1: 15:30

When you stop to think and see if you want to react, which creates negative feelings in your body and panic and all that, or if you want to respond, then you get to have a different experience, also stopping on a regular basis to notice how your body is feeling and especially when big feelings arise, stop and feel that your body is feeling and especially when big feelings arise, stop and feel that. Just put your hand on your heart when you have some big feelings arise and go. Yeah, my chest is tight, boy. I'm feeling a little stressed. This is making me feel like my throat is closing. That is how my body responds to stress, by the way, and it took me a while to be able to name it. I didn't wasn't able to name it right away, and then I I go oh yeah, this, this snake bite, is really scary and it is definitely making me feel this way. But I know that my son is safe. I know that he is.

Speaker 1: 16:26

We talked to him many times that he was his, his thinking was not affected and he was not. His walking was not affected. He did not feel poison through in my body. Yes, there was stress. Yes, there was stress, but also not trauma. So those are daily choices you have to make, to make the time and space to ask yourself those things. And when you're living in toxic stress, it is really scary to stop and feel the stress. But when you feel it, it disappears or at least dissipates. It's so funny because when we ignore it, when we try to pretend it's not there, it gets bigger and turns into this ugly monster. But when we stop and feel it, when we allow it and accept it without judgment, it gets smaller. That's a habit that you have to build on a daily basis, smaller. That's a habit that you have to build on a daily basis, because that is the habit that allowed me to choose something different in this situation.

Speaker 1: 17:34

I'm not happy that this week's episode did not go as planned. It today is, I believe, saturday, and my podcast is usually done by Thursday and published on Friday, and that did not happen this week. I had a day off of work, which means less money on my check. My husband also had the same day off of work, which means way less money because he makes a lot more than I do. That's not great news. You know that's going to affect us later. But also, I feel like God always provides what we need and so we are not without.

Speaker 1: 18:05

So, looking at the situation, looking at everything, all in all, I want to say that, as I look back on the last two years of creating safety in my body, learning how to regulate my nervous system myself, doing the work, doing the work every single day, every single day, that is what allowed me to have the skill to downgrade this thing that could have been a big trauma, into something else, into a stressful situation. That's taken me two days to get over, maybe three days, because I'm talking about it today, obviously, but that's a big difference, right. Then the six months it took me to get over his big accident and all the cries that I had with that and all the out of control feelings I had, and it's a big difference and I want that for everybody. I want that for every single woman that is in this world today, but also anyone listening to this podcast. You have that ability to do that, and the first step is looking at yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:10

If you are flying off the handle, if you know people are coming to you and their problems are becoming your problems, that is a sign that you need to make a change, that you need to make your daily habit, not of just meditation, not of just journaling. Those are the things that support you to be able to take the steps forward. So that stuff is important, but stopping and noticing how you feel in your body, noticing if you're reacting instead of responding, choosing something different in the moment. So there's this, there's this perfect moment that happens and when you start training yourself, it's like this it's just like you know, like they say for photographer, that there's that magic moment in the morning and in the evening, that I guess it's like 20 minutes or 15 minutes of perfect lighting. There's that. I'm talking about a second, a second perfect moment where there's perfect whatever's going on in the synapsis, in your neurons, in your brain. Just that perfect second when you get to choose and decide for something different. And when you build that habit, you create habit that will in the future serve you like it served me today. And I want that for you Because we have so many women just living on toxic stress.

Speaker 1: 20:33

Obesity is out of control because of the toxic stress that we are in. What is going on in the households of women today, with all the toxic stress, is not acceptable and we do have to make a change. But that change happens inside each and every one of us women, where we get to choose something different. I'm going to get off my soapbox. I feel like I am on a soapbox today because I just really care about women and I want the best for everybody. I want everyone to know what it's like to live inside your body and I didn't learn that until the last two years of my life what it feels like to live inside my body. And let me tell you when I can get 100% in my body. It is a glorious feeling, and even when I'm 70, 80% in my body, it feels really good to be alive, and I like that.

Speaker 1: 21:26

Thank you for joining me today. I know your to be alive and I like that. Thank you for joining me today. I know your time is valuable and I appreciate that you chose to come here. And yes, I remembered my promise to tell you how to join the private Facebook group Healing Her Childhood, which is a private community with like-minded women on a similar journey in healing. So head over to the show notes and click the link to take you to the community. It's designed to help you continue in your healing in a safe community of women just like you. You know what I mean, right? Do you want to stop feeling isolated and invisible? Then join the community now so you can break lifelong patterns that are keeping you feeling stuck and alone. This resource can be your next step towards healing and recovery. Again, the link is in the show notes and I'll see you next week.