Episode 16: Beyond Survival: Expanding Joy & Fulfillment Through Capacity

In the next season of the Inspired Focus podcast, host Jaime O'Connor interviews guests who delve into taboo and provocative topics, including plant medicine, social deconstruction, and porn addiction. But before tackling these topics, Jaime had to learn how to expand her capacity and learn my own lines of nervous system shutdown. Listen as she shares her journey and the tools she used to slow down and process her emotions to live a truly fulfilled life. The only question left unanswered is: what happens when we feel free to show all of ourselves?

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Realize the crucial role of emotional capacity in living a life full of joy and abundance.
• Investigate various techniques for capacity expansion, like breathwork, hypnosis, and somatic release.
• Comprehend the value of managing emotions and pain through body-focused approaches.
• Examine O'Connor's personal growth in terms of her emotional capacity.
• Appreciate the significance of mindfulness and awareness in steering clear of overwhelming situations.

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Transcript

1:58

Welcome to the Inspired Focus podcast. This is your host, Jamie O'Connor, and I am excited to be kicking off the next season. I don't really have seasons on my podcast at the moment, but the next season of The Inspired Focus podcast, and in a way, it truly is the next season because. The people I'm interviewing in the upcoming episodes are next level, and it's a new season for me in my life, which is what I wanna talk about today on this first podcast back. I wanna talk about this new season in regards to capacity, and I think capacity is a really important subject matter that we don't really talk about that much out in the world. And. The first time I heard capacity talked about in this way was from one of my teachers and mentors, Reverend Brianna Lynn, who is also going to be a guest on an upcoming episode, and she talked about the capacity waterfall. and I know you can imagine what this is when I describe it. Imagine you're talking to somebody about something. You are so, so excited about it and it is just like way in your zone of genius. It is something that lights you up and you know all of the things. Probably you know too many things about it in order to explain it in a way that somebody else is gonna understand, who doesn't know anything, and you are talking about it, and you're telling them about all of these things and their eyes start to glaze over. and they check out and essentially they have been pushed over their capacity waterfall. They can no longer absorb the information that is coming out of your mouth, going into their ear, not going into their brain, going right out the other ear. I know you've had this experience. Capacity goes even deeper than this, though. Capacity is such. An important conversation and topic for you to be thinking about when it comes to transformational change, a desire to live a very fulfilled life. When we talk about manifestation, if you wanna call it that, or bringing in calling in things into your life that you want, capacity is a very important subject when we're talking about money. and money mindset. You might be wondering why. What does capacity have to do with all of these things? When I talk about capacity and talk about the ability for you to hold something, to carry the energy of it in your life. To experience it completely and w holy. So when we're talking about capacity, we're talking about your nervous system. We're talking about the ability to experience something without total shutdown. When I'm talking about capacity, I am talking about the ability to keep your nervous system from going into a flight, freeze fight, or fawn response. because when we do that, we're no longer taking in. We no longer have the ability to handle the situation. And when we talk about trauma, which can be anything that is too much, too fast, too soon, your body goes into these nervous system responses. But the reality is we go into these nervous system responses. all the time, right? We go into these nervous system responses when we can't handle any more information. When we can't handle any more time in a situation, when we need more sleep, when we need to eat, when we need to take a break, when we need to calm down cuz we're angry. These are all times that our capacity has been pushed to the limit. And if you think about it, capacity has a lot to do with how much you can hold in a joyful sense. How many times in your life have you had one of the best days You can imagine you are. Loving the time with your husband, your kids are just being the best that they could possibly be. You've had amazing conversations with friends, whatever it is, and then at some point during the day, you get wildly upset about something that normally wouldn't really bother you, or you pick a fight with your husband. Why do we do this? It's because it doesn't feel safe to experience that much joy. We haven't trained our nervous system to actually take in that much and feel like we can handle it, because in reality, that amount of joy is the equivalent inside of our bodies as that amount of fear. It's showing up inside your body somatically the same way, and so yes our ability to handle truly handle difficult situations is equal to our ability to handle joyful situations. Now, you may be one of those people who says, well, I handle so many hard situations. I have been through the ringer. I was the same way. But what I've come to realize in my life is that I could get through those situations. The really hard stuff, the really traumatic stuff I've had my fair share of it. I've experienced multiple experiences of traumatic abuse, and so I wore those things as a badge of honor, right? I wore these things as a badge of honor that I had dealt with this really hard shit and how much grit I have and how much resilience I have. But the reality is, I hadn't actually expanded my capacity to grieve anything I had experienced to truly process all of the feelings and the emotions and the pain I had in every one of those because I went into serious nervous system, shut down, and man, that was an amazing survival tool. I became a high performer, largely because of my ability to shut shit down and keep going. I got to where I am largely because of that ability and how I had responded my entire life to very difficult situations. What I didn't know all of that time is that. I was also keeping myself from being able to handle a ton of joy in a deeply fulfilled present way, because when I would go over to the joy side and have really beautiful, amazing, loving, deep experiences. I'd also go into shut down. And so while shutdown was a brilliant survival tool to be able to push through really, really hard things, it was equally the thing that kept me from my greatest fulfillment and joy. That is a painful thing to look at. I can feel the tears welling up in my own eyes just saying this. And it was also keeping me from being able to hold more money. They're all related, right? So when we get to a point in our life, Where the tools that got us to where we are, the shutdown, the not dealing with the hard stuff, has now started to veer its ugly head and hold us back. That's the point that we start to look at what do we do to increase our capacity? And here's the hard part. The only way out is through. The only way out is through. We have to be willing to go in and actually process through all of these things that we've put into boxes and put inside shelves inside our heart. We have to be willing to. Unlock parts of ourself. We've hidden away in closets and basements inside our mind, our psyche, our body, and actually start to feel the feelings, actually start to feel all of the things we weren't allowing ourselves to feel. Be able to go through the process, the moments the experience. and have faith as we go through the dark parts that out the other side, we're able to hold it all because the more that we can go back to all of these things and hold the feelings, the emotions, the process, be able to process through those, allow them, grieve them, have them. the more we're expanding our capacity inside our nervous system to have the really good things too. But it's a slow process. You can re-traumatize Sure. By going back through the experience. That's one way. But what we don't talk about is that we can actually re-traumatize by going too fast. Too soon, having too much, too fast, too soon, trying to do the change work too fast and not accepting that we can take time, we can slow down, and that's actually the way to get the things we want faster. It doesn't make logical sense. Your logical brain, especially as a high performer who's been able to shut down, ignore hard things and get things really fast because of it, does not want to accept that you might have to take this slow in order to get where you really wanna be. It doesn't wanna accept that in order to have the level of fulfillment, the level of joy. It's actually a slowdown process. It's a process of allowing, taking the time, recognizing inside our somatic bodies when we are getting to a place of feeling the feelings that is too far over the edge, cuz here's how we need to do it. you need to look at the thing and say, okay, I can only experience this much, and how do you know, okay, this is a difficult situation from the past. I've put down all of these different feelings. I've never experienced them. I'm gonna allow myself. To write and talk through and look at what is happening here, and you get to an edge, okay, I'm at the edge. How much further can I push it? That's where we expand the capacity, right? We expand the capacity by going to our edge and stepping the toe over the line. Okay. I'm good. I'm good here. I feel safe. I don't feel like I'm about to shut down or wanna fight somebody or want to get validation. I'm good here. Okay. I'm gonna push it a little further. Still feel good? Okay. Going a little further. Nope, that's it. Can't do it. I'm gonna hurt somebody. I'm gonna hurt myself. Does not feel good. I feel unsafe. Alright, that's my line. That's good enough for today. There's so many ways we can do this. I personally love, love, love when you're first exploring these modalities to deepen in here. I love. Versions of hypnosis and breath work, these two types of change work give you the ability to own every single part of it, to have totally sovereign decision making on how far you're gonna go. Okay? Because in both, you can stop. You can say Too far, too much, too soon. Don't wanna go there. and you can stop. When you start to explore things like psychedelics, you have the opportunity to have life-changing work. However you kind of take the ability away from yourself to have the break. So I'm a really big believer in psychedelics. and I'm a really big believer that they should be added in after you have expanded your capacity and you really know where your lines are in your body, and you have the tools to bring your mind back. So, I lean towards hypnosis and breath work at the beginning of change work. Okay? Because you really can have the ability to hit the brake, hit the stop, and hit the gas pedal, and you should know and be given the opportunity with anyone you're working with. To do this right, to understand how you have the gas pedal, the brake, and the ability to stop. If you haven't been given that information, I encourage you to take a step back and ask questions. Ask questions just because somebody is a coach. So just because somebody is a psychedelic facilitator, just because somebody has indigenous lineage does not mean that they're actually holding up the best interest for you. So little bit side rant could be something to go deep into on another podcast, but I want to stick with the line of capacity here. Things like hypnosis and. Breathwork give you the opportunity to explore the deeper feelings, go into the deeper layers, and give you the ability to push just slightly over the edge, open up your capacity to feel deeply, feel. Process through all of that and just push out slightly your nervous system's capacity to hold something before it goes further into flight. Freeze fawn or fight response. These little moments expanding, working on it weekly, daily, if you can. If you can do 10 minutes of breath work every day, allow what comes through to come through. To five minutes of journaling, 10 minutes of journaling. Be able to process through. When the tears come to flow, let them flow. When the desire to scream and rage comes fricking scream into a pillow. When the desire, as you're doing this work, have a tantrum, like a toddler and beat the shit out of your bed, happens, do it. Process these feelings. Allow yourself to go to a place you were never allowed to go to as a kid. Utilize tools in a private and safe place, and these can start to expand your capacity in the most amazing ways. So why am I talking about capacity on this episode? On this first episode back? I am talking about it because the people I'm interviewing and that you are gonna get to listen to over the next five to six weeks and beyond are talking about things I was afraid to put out there. I've had to take the time, almost a year now, of deciding to record and put out episodes of this podcast. To expand my nervous system's capacity to accept that not everyone will like what I have to say to accept that not everyone will like what my guests have to say to accept that some of the topics and interests that I have are very provocative and very taboo. My nervous system was not ready. it wasn't ready to put out there. The things that were over my line for people outside of my core group to know, I was truly, deeply interested in that. I have truly deeply explored, so I took it slow. I interviewed people that were closer to my previous world and marketing. but about what was life changing in their life? What got them closer to their purpose? I started having small conversations with those people about things like plant medicine and psychedelics. I started exploring further in my smaller groups. Expanding out into people that didn't actually know me very closely, but were accepting of some of the conversations I wanna have. The taboo and the provocative. I started to allow people to have their opinions without it affecting my worthiness. I took it slow. I've processed the feelings of fear that would come up when I'd make a post in a private community and just like, Ugh, God, what if they don't like me? And I allowed those small containers to be my fertile ground, to expand my capacity so that I can come on and I can interview people that are talking about things that. We've been told we're not supposed to talk about. We're talking about plant medicine and social deconstruction, decolonization. We're talking about porn addiction. We're talking about the deep layers of things that keep you from your greatest life, how to get past them, and how to actually live a truly fulfilling life. So part of this episode is also to share my story so that if you're on your healing journey, you can learn from me. and start to explore what it means to slow down. I pushed myself beyond my capacity and set myself into nervous system. Shut down when I started on this healing journey, and not when I started on the full healing journey, because that was 20 years ago. Ironically, also after I had gone into nervous system shut down because of sexual assault. and I went into a full depressive state and then was fortunate enough to have a mom that recognized it, got me into therapy, which led me to 12 Step, which led me into my first experience of essentially shadow work. And I did that for a long time, which expanded into many other things over the years. But it was two and a half years ago that I had my first, therapeutic psychedelic experience, and my first night was truly life changing. in the positive sense, the therapeutic sense. I was able to process a lot of very difficult emotions in a safe, really held place, and I was able to let go of so much anger with my father and his decisions as an addict and an alcoholic while I was growing up that. I held onto my whole life and I was able to see in him the pain that he must have been experiencing in order to make the choices that he did in those years. Because he's got one of the biggest hearts that I've ever seen in my life. I am sure that he feels in the same kind of way that I feel and doesn't actually know it. And I saw all that. And I felt so much empathy. Empathy for his pain. Empathy for his shame because I know the choices he was making. He knew the pain he was causing and yet didn't seem to have the ability to not make them because of his diseases, his addiction, and his and his pain. And I was able to shed all of that. All of that anger, all the worthiness that was associated with not feeling like I was getting the love I wanted or deserved, and that causing me to feel worthy. I was able to shed all of that because I knew now how much he did love me. I was able to hold and expand my capacity to process my own emotions and also hold the pain that I imagine he felt in those years, and it was a gorgeous, amazing experience. Now, I do believe. I had that experience in order to have the next night happen for my capacity to be big enough to be able to come back from what happened the next night, but I wasn't actually ready for the next night. I had not done the work prior to fully hold. All of the information that I received on the next night, and I shut down my nervous system to a place where I went into depression for six months afterwards. I believe that what I ended up experiencing on the next nights is a part of my purpose. I was somehow meant to experience, and I have many times in this life pushing myself so far over the edge that I couldn't come back for a long time. This is a pattern in my life and I believe it's a pattern in my life so that I can learn and understand how to hold other people in a way that they don't have to experience that in order to change and heal. I do not think it is required. I believe with every ounce of my being, you can have massive transformational change without having to break yourself I know because I've seen it. I've seen it in my clients, I've seen it in people around me who haven't taken that path. So part of my mission on this earth is to share with you the ways that can keep you from going over that edge. The edges that I've gone over. The waterfalls I've gone over without a life raft. On the next night I was given a psychedelic. That opened up a lot of memories for me. I'll be honest, I still to this day don't actually know if they're my memories or they're epigenetic held in me. From my bloodlines and lineages, or if you really wanna go there past lives, and I don't really need to know. What I know is that I had spent many, many years in my late teen and adult life having this feeling that something really bad happened at a young age. It had come up many times for me where I just had this like feeling, feeling, and it hadn't come up in about four years. I hadn't really had that feeling. And on the second night, on my second drop in, it landed like a ton of bricks, little bits of what felt like memory, but more than anything, it was like the knowing this happened, I felt this deep understanding. that some form of sexual trauma happened at two and a half years old, and I just completely broke. I was taken into a room by the facilitators and given somatic exercises. One of the amazing things that they did was, um, Explained to me that I did not need to mentally process this. This needed to be released from my body in that particular time. Mental processing might be something we do after or after the psychedelics are gone, but like right now, this is about somatic release and my body tremor for 20 minutes releasing all of this held pain. and I still truly own. I really don't know if this was my trauma. It may have been. I don't have that information and I honestly don't need to know. I have come to that place now. I've come to the place of being able to somatically process these feelings and these emotions that come through when they still come through sometimes of. Deep desire to not be seen. That's, that's the biggest connection point that I, I had from it is from that moment on, I hid myself and I was also a target for predators many times over the next few years that I was able to not. End up in a similar situation, but I had no less than three instances of predators approaching me until I was 18 years old, and it made everything make sense. So whether I had held that in my body from my previous generations and somebody in my line having had something happen to them, or something happened to me at two and a half that I don't recall, that all came out that night and it was too much for my mental processing. It was too much for my nervous system. I was okay. After the somatic release and the tremors, I actually came out and had this beautiful experience of being able to truly feel other people's feelings. It was like, it was like this part of me was released that had been totally cut off my entire life, starting at. What I assume is two and a half, but it was afterwards. It was, it was the next day and the next six months where essentially my body, my psyche, my mind said, what the hell did you do to us? We can't take anything else and just shut down. Went into full depression and. I learned a lot from that experience as a coach. Now today, that experience has shaped the way I coach. It's shaped how I believe we should be teaching people how to be connected deeply to their capacity. Teaching people before you enter into any kind of psychedelic container, how to deal with these kinds of things. Because traumas come up, they come up in psychedelics. Absolutely. I can tell you firsthand it happened in my first psychedelic container as I just explained, and we don't have to do it that way. you don't have to be forced over your capacity waterfall in order to have a beautiful, life changing, transformational experience that gets you to the place of a totally fulfilled life. I am so proud of myself for using this podcast as an example. To take the time I needed to, to expand my capacity before I started really delving into the things that are hard to talk about and be totally prepared for the fact that this may make you uncomfortable. This may make you not wanna listen anymore. It also may make the people who have. Had the hard shit or wanna talk about their porn addiction or feel like they have absolutely been affected by systems of oppression may make them listen. And either way, I'm not attached to it cuz I've done the work leading into this moment. So, I'm gonna end this episode with a few thoughts for you to contemplate. Where is one area that you might be able to push yourself just slightly to feel a little bit more? How actually connected to your body are you when anger, sadness. Any major emotion starts to arise. Do you know where that exists inside your body? Do you know how your body reacts? If not, that's okay. That's the place to start. When you start to feel any bigger emotion, this is your reminder to take a moment and say, what's happening in my body? or go back to that moment. Go back to that moment where you yelled at your kids and regarded it afterwards. Go back to the moment where you were a little bit passive aggressive with your husband, or you tore apart an employee because they did something a little bit wrong. Go back to those moments. Imagine them and then drop into your heart center. Imagine the moment and just notice where the things come up in your body. What does it feel like if you do this after the situations have happened? Just a few times. You might notice that in the situations going forward, you start to be aware of just the little changes that are going on, and the more aware you get, just a little bit of awareness, the more you get. To push slightly beyond and actually feel the feeling, the feeling inside your body. That's what feeling feelings is, by the way. It's not in your head. It's not thinking about it. It's feeling it in your body because when you feel it in your body, a lot of times the actual underlying thing starts to come up. Sadness, grief, worthiness, and then, you get to take a pause and not react the way you are reacting. Presence, presence and capacity building. I'll be talking about presence in another episode soon. Thank you so, so much for listening to me, this story and this expansion. If you haven't already, I would love it if you subscribe to your favorite platform and if you liked this, drop a review. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here and come back next time.