Have you ever felt trapped by your family's dysfunctional patterns, unsure of how to break free and discover your true self? Alyson, has been around the mental health professional setting and has a wealth of experience, joins us to discuss this very topic. Our conversation dives into the profound impact that family dynamics have on personal growth and mental well-being, revealing how childhood conditioning can lead to a warped sense of normalcy and how setting functional boundaries is key to unlocking self-awareness and liberation.
This episode is not just about understanding the challenges; it's a journey into the heart of empowerment. We examine the power of self-reflection and therapeutic communication, particularly for the youth who face negativity and disrespect. By sharing actionable insights on small changes in habits and communication, we shed light on how we can guide our children towards etiquette, body awareness, and self-advocacy. It's a reflective look at how we can transform pain into strength and help future generations recognize the silver linings in their toughest experiences.
Navigating our way through the complexities of family, community, and self, Alyson and I explore the importance of questioning inherited beliefs and fostering self-understanding to prevent societal issues. We contemplate the role of respectful communication, decision-making skills in children, and supportive environments in cultivating functional conflict resolution. Alyson's passion is evident as she details her vision for a new education paradigm, where life skills and emotional intelligence are not just taught but are the foundation of the school system. Join us as we unravel these insights, and stay tuned for Alyson's future endeavors in spreading these critical messages.
How to find her :
instagram: sue_bah_louuu
Have you ever felt trapped by your family's dysfunctional patterns, unsure of how to break free and discover your true self? Alyson, has been around the mental health professional setting and has a wealth of experience, joins us to discuss this very topic. Our conversation dives into the profound impact that family dynamics have on personal growth and mental well-being, revealing how childhood conditioning can lead to a warped sense of normalcy and how setting functional boundaries is key to unlocking self-awareness and liberation.
This episode is not just about understanding the challenges; it's a journey into the heart of empowerment. We examine the power of self-reflection and therapeutic communication, particularly for the youth who face negativity and disrespect. By sharing actionable insights on small changes in habits and communication, we shed light on how we can guide our children towards etiquette, body awareness, and self-advocacy. It's a reflective look at how we can transform pain into strength and help future generations recognize the silver linings in their toughest experiences.
Navigating our way through the complexities of family, community, and self, Alyson and I explore the importance of questioning inherited beliefs and fostering self-understanding to prevent societal issues. We contemplate the role of respectful communication, decision-making skills in children, and supportive environments in cultivating functional conflict resolution. Alyson's passion is evident as she details her vision for a new education paradigm, where life skills and emotional intelligence are not just taught but are the foundation of the school system. Join us as we unravel these insights, and stay tuned for Alyson's future endeavors in spreading these critical messages.
How to find her :
instagram: sue_bah_louuu
Welcome to Pockets of Time. I'm Chunky Panda. Dive in as we uncover those unexpected gems of clarity and inspiration, from mental well-being to light-hearted fun. We're all about growth and a positive mindset Looking for a lift or some clear-headed insights. You're in the right pocket. Let's unravel the magic together. Welcome welcome to Pockets of Time. This is our first Zoom recording podcast, so it feels a little funny. And I am here with Allison. She works in the mental health field and she sees a lot of the interactions that go on with patients, doctors and all that good stuff. And yeah, I'll let you introduce yourself some more.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, though. I really look up to the content that you create and the messages that you send, so I really appreciate you having me on. I'm excited. It's my first I get to be on stage and talk about the stuff I'm passionate about.
Speaker 2:So my personal testimony is probably, you know, my personal testimony is why I went into the career field that I did. When I got into this world I had two parents that were already struggling to cooperate and work together, whether it be their relationship, co-parenting, and an analogy that I like that I thought of recently is about a coach and his team right. So if you think of, like a basketball team, a coach, you got to teach the players all the rules, right. But if you go to the next court to a different game, you're not really going to know the roles, it's going to be foreign to you. And I say that because my family kind of has a systemic dysfunction, right. So that's part of my belief system around all of this, because I think a lot of people are struggling, because if you're feel that something's not right, but then the people around you are acting like, no, that's not, you know, it's okay.
Speaker 1:that kind of is conducive to a more long-term effect of what you grow up, what we grow up in yeah, it's almost like you're being conditioned to that being your norm, you know, because that's every day and people are just like well, that's just how it is right, we're being programmed at that age and I mean I don't like that word kind of sounds a little cold or like not human, but it we really are like hardware being programmed with software and that's just the basic psychology of it.
Speaker 2:And the people that I was around, they were playing this game where the roles were set up without functional boundaries. The communication was poor. If you think you're on a court, you have to in order to win a game. Communication still has to be functional, right? I just was taught poor self-care and poor self-awareness, poor social awareness and, like you said it, I just I was put into a cage mentally.
Speaker 1:And when you say self-awareness. Could you elaborate on that? And when you say self-awareness could you elaborate on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think poor self-awareness is like we don't have a whole lot of emotional intelligence. So when we come out and face the world, we interact with our surroundings and those people in a way that there's good and there's bad and then there's all the in-between. So whatever level you're functioning at, that's what you're going to attract and that's the type of people that are going to be comfortable around you. So I grew up in this mental cage and it was completely inconsistent with who I was meant to be, and part of that is when I was 12, loss and grieving and death from illnesses is a pretty prominent factor in my story, especially early on before, I don't know, before 15 or 16 years old. And you know, when you lose your mom, it's like you, something inside you happens. It's not just a death, it's that person that you feel safe with, and a lot of us, you know.
Speaker 2:There's a second parent and for me specifically, he just was not the one that I felt safe with. That I felt supported by that. I felt like I could have fun around. You know, even when it comes to like having fun, I just kind of felt like I would cower down. Oh, here he comes to rain on the parade and in my dad's defense after he has since passed and I have just accepted my relationship and how that played out with him and found more of a spiritual as opposed to like in this physical world.
Speaker 2:I guess purpose to my relationship with my father Because he just there was poor emotional intelligence and it was a lot of egotism to where my needs were not met because he was by himself but he also didn't take care of himself. He was drinking alcohol to cope a lot, but there was also not promotion of okay, let's talk about your feelings, let's sit down and have a good meal, let's those functional things that meet our needs in general. And I think that we have mechanisms that arise out of that to where. That's the part of my story where I've replicated that dysfunction and really put myself through homelessness, a history with substance abuse, poor relationships, so I, what were you when you left your house?
Speaker 2:left home um, I was 18, but it was like as soon as I turned 18 because I was in a relationship with somebody who was here again, another version of my dad, and that environment like that's. You know, I went over there with him, with his family, and that it was the same thing. We're comfortable around what's familiar. Even if it is chaotic and uncomfortable, it's still familiar. It's still how we know how to function and what we know. You know how we know how to interact when my mom passed away. Both my parents passed away from cancer. My mom passed away when I was 12. And then my dad passed away, I want to say like two years ago.
Speaker 2:So it's just very hard when you lose a parent but then you're stuck not resolving all of that negativity inside of you. And I believe my purpose, part of my purpose, is to translate some of that because it's intuitive. You can't really see it right, that emotion, the negativity like shame, not being validated, being disregarded and shamed. I want to kind of translate that for people and maybe, like I want it to have a physical diagram to represent and explain it to people. I think that's a bridge between where we are and where we need to be is understanding that the emotional dimension does exist. It is important, it is a thing and something in the narrative with my relatives is don't talk about your feelings. You either tell a joke or pick up a drink or kind of lash out and react when it comes time to being vulnerable.
Speaker 1:And what was the coping mechanism that you picked up? I know for me it was humor, so for me a lot of it was just like making jokes about it, even though it wasn't funny.
Speaker 2:I would just say codependency and just kind of clinging to relationships. But I also practice, you know, control issues, trying to feel safe with my eating and developing an eating disorder. I just I had poor self-awareness and poor relationships. That just continued. Everything that happened in my childhood. But the other thing was I had to realize that talking about a cage for so long I didn't even know it was wrong, it just seemed that's all I knew. And so when I realized it was wrong, that was one step.
Speaker 2:But then the next step I had to get to was realizing that my experience was not unique to was realizing that my experience was not unique, that so many of us there's a collective lack of emotional intelligence to where it doesn't matter what culture you're from, it doesn't matter what income level you're at, what social status you have. We all have somebody up next to us who is struggling and suffering with setting boundaries, communication, self-awareness or self-care and acknowledging you know, hey, I have a soul, I have a spirit and these negative things happened and we can't just go on and not talk about it. You know, that's how we heal and being vulnerable and that's I think a lot of us avoid that because it is just so it's so uncomfortable, but everybody's doing it, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Was there like a particular moment in your life where you were like man, this isn't right. There's something more than just what I'm, the way that I'm processing things, the way that I'm feeling. Was there like a somebody that stepped in that made you see differently or inspired you?
Speaker 2:Yes, um, I guess you would say that was my rock bottom. I hope I don't ever go that low or lower than that. But it was a relationship that with a person who you know all the relationships that I've been in, they're very good people. I just I met them with dysfunction and we just followed that back and forth. And so the one relationship that I was in, she was part of 12 step programs and so I. That's when I found ACA, which is Adult Children of Alcoholics or Otherwise Dysfunctional Homes, and that's where I learned a lot about.
Speaker 1:Is that like a support group? Yes, wow, I didn't know they had that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was so powerful to me that I just that's something I would like to. Any time I have the conversation, I like to share it because it's free. You just show up and now that we have all the telehealth since the pandemic and stuff, you can pull up a virtual meeting from Australia, if you want, at 3 am.
Speaker 2:But that group is where I realized a lot of the things that were ailing me. I gained self-awareness. I gained I don't even want to say internal resources, because I'm still working on those, but internal resources are so important. But here again, it's like in this thought dimension, where you can't see it, but it's so significant to our wellbeing is being able to do something with our uncomfortable thoughts and have them channeled in a way. We can't take the pain away, we can't always change the things that happen and keep them from happening, but we can find a way to channel strength and channel a way to get through it.
Speaker 2:And I think that's important in our support group or our support system. We have to have self-awareness, we have to have boundaries, we have to be able to communicate and be vulnerable to a certain extent, because how else are we going to connect? We have to be able to for somebody that's going to be functional in supporting us. We're not going to gravitate towards those people or interact or have relationships with those people unless we can get some of these things under wraps and that may not be truth for everybody. That has been my story, to where I just I didn't have supportive people, enough supportive people around me.
Speaker 1:We're all going to have good, comfortable and uncomfortable people around us and it's there's levels to it and so how much like people affect you, their energy, the way they think, and if they're on the same path as you. When you're starting, it's hard to break out of that when you have that all around you, so sometimes you have to cut those people off and expand. But it is scary though, because I mean you were at this level with them and now it's like you're starting to rise and they're not. So it's a scary place to be.
Speaker 2:It's super scary and I know, like my, just my neglect and abandonment every time, like I would latch on to somebody who plays that game instead of the more functional game and it kept me in my cage. It kept me stuck and confused. But here again, one of the most meaningful, challenging relationships I had. That was the time when I found ACA. So I also work with a therapist and a spiritual medium to where I am energy-based and believe in that Because, how I'm saying, people that are more comfortable and supportive and communicate and they allow themselves to be vulnerable. That helps us get out of that mental cage. But it's a frequency, a vibration, so you don't really attract those that aren't supportive if you don't let love in, if you don't have the ingredients for that to flourish.
Speaker 1:And if you're not vulnerable, I don't think people realize how much power you have when you're being vulnerable, because there's so many people out there going through the same stuff, going through the same thing, and they think that they're by themselves, and when they hear someone's story they're like, oh my God, me too, no way. So I think that vulnerability helps other people understand their lives a little bit better and also to not feel so lonely.
Speaker 2:I think vulnerability is huge. I've read Brene Brown, and reading some of her stuff has helped me significantly with my self-awareness and just understanding myself. And that's more of like in a social situation too for me personally. But yeah, vulnerability is big.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I'm glad you're up, you're on here, you know opening up and stuff, I know it's not an easy thing, so definitely appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yes, I've been doing it for a while with myself so I'm like I might as well, as I'm getting better with it and more functional. You know, I know, I know well, I guess that takes me to like my career. Aspect of my personal testimony led into my career choice. But that showed me from ACA to knowing other people who went through similar things to PRTFs psychiatric rehabilitation treatment centers to where I worked there for a while.
Speaker 1:And you handled a lot of the case management there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was direct support staff, so I was on the hall with the kids and we would run groups and stuff, but there were still therapists that would come in and work with them. Maybe that's where I got pretty good at being therapeutic not necessarily as a therapist, but just kind of talking and listening and showing these kids that we're all convinced because people give us negativity or put us down or we're just not heard or we're disrespected, our boundaries are violated, and that over time kind of disintegrates our soul, our spirit and that just extends out in our behavior or our poor mental health.
Speaker 1:If that's the case, yeah, and I think it gets confusing because your voice gets drowned out by everybody else's. So as you're growing up, you're like what do I actually really want? And then you become these people pleasers, because that's all you hear in your head. And then when you clear it out, you're just like I don't even know who I am and it is a scary place to be.
Speaker 2:Super scary. It's like you just got into a room by yourself with nobody and you don't you know there may be a bunch of stuff in there or not, but like, how do you navigate it? And that's been part of my challenge too. But you, we just have to teach ourselves. And it's like I function so much in a negative realm that there was practically nothing in the functional, creative, productive realm. It was just all negativity and creating things for myself, telling myself, okay, you can build a business, you do have knowledge and things that are of value to other people. So just, you gotta, we gotta find it somewhere. And I was just lucky enough to come across the insights that I did when I did, because ACA helped a ton and the PRTF positions that I had helped a ton and the PRTF positions that I had.
Speaker 1:I know that you were saying that you want to teach kids about etiquettes, body awareness and boundaries. Was there a particular case that you were like it just clicked for you one day where you're like this is exactly what I want to do, this is where I want to take this yes, my own.
Speaker 2:Myself and I yes, because I saw it in so many other kids and then it's hard when you go through abuse.
Speaker 2:It's hard to look at yourself because you're validated in such a negative way. You're like, oh, I don't want to look at her, let's just not even talk about her. And then little Allie gets stuffed in the corner with no fun no good food, no fun dancing, stuff like that and then that's where we get so callous that people don't even want to be around us. But that is not the case today. So that's why I'm speaking on that, because I really do have some good, supportive friends and it's why I'm able to speak so positively and so insightful, because they have helped me see that. And it's really basic when I sat down and thought about it in terms of the higher psychology and psychiatry I see in my field, to where doctors are not really teaching, hey, just go home and change this habit, or maybe try communicating with your parent like this, or those different habit changes that we could make to prevent a hospitalization or a need for medication or just like preventative care in our behavior. I think has a lot of power.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I agree. I think that when you teach kids certain things, they're able to advocate for themselves.
Speaker 2:Yes, especially now that we're advancing and like working with the kids. Now it's like younger kids in my family. I'm like, oh wow, how did you even learn that being part of our narrative? It's because their parents are my generation and we all went through these different things and I feel like a lot of us, families in general, are at that climactic point where the elders may be receptive and open to evolving with their emotional intelligence, sometimes not, but I think our generation has a lot to do with overturning just the dysfunction and the way we interact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you just realize that all these adults, it starts from their trauma in their childhood that they grow up with and they just keep growing layers over and they keep getting conditioned into leaving it until it's so difficult to even peel all those layers back to get down to the center of what the problem is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely one of my beliefs that have come out of my experiences where a lot of our youth are struggling and it's getting worse and worse and worse because of the vulnerability factor and parents have not taken the time to look at themselves and evaluate and understand themselves and unpack the things that they went through. But in every person that's like that. In their defense it just wasn't a thing and mental health was kind of like scary the way it's evolved from such primitive methods.
Speaker 1:It's that, or toughen up. Grow up Like.
Speaker 2:I grow pants on and get to it. Yeah, that's definitely us how we were groomed Just get out there and figure it out. So there are, like out of the pain, there's a lot of like positives that come from it, because if I didn't have that, I probably maybe I wouldn't have the strength to do everything that I'm doing and want to do. So there's that translation. Seeing the positive in things is pretty important when you're healing too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it helps you relate to people better, or when you talk to these kids not exactly where, cause everybody has different experiences, but you have an idea of where to meet them and where to get and break through to them. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of the kids that I worked with, I'm like their experiences were exponentially worse than what I've ever experienced and I guess maybe that's a fear-based drive for me to jump in and be like could we do something about this, Because this is really not going well. Yeah, I've seen some pretty tragic, sad stories and half the time they're such awesome kids and come out so strong, so smart, so caring, out of this pain we do get a lot of good things.
Speaker 1:Definitely, I was going to ask what are some of the beliefs that was so tough for you to break out of when you were younger, where, even now, you still may be struggling a little bit with?
Speaker 2:I think when we're kids, we come into this world and there's no like we don't get an orientation for them to set us up with. Hey, these are your choices and these are you know. You come into your family and whoever's around you and the best of their capabilities, that's what you get. And I think at a certain point, hopefully it's doing better now with the newer generations. But I was fixated on believing what I was brought up with and just the way, mostly about the way relationships functioned and oh, women should get you know. I was taught, oh, you need a lawyer or a doctor, go for a lawyer or a doctor and let them take care of you. And so I think there's so many different other versions of that, but it just taught me which I still wanted to go get my own education and be my own provider. So it's just well so that questioning your beliefs, like when you were conditioned as children and at some point I just believe that we have to determine what we actually believe and before you do that, it's like, or as you're doing, that we're soul searching and we're figuring out who we really are, and that's it's more conducive of a process if we can have a supportive family around us, and there's levels to it too. You can have a supportive family around us, and there's levels to it too. You can have a supportive family and still have some underlying negativity to those narratives that come out where the person is successful and functional, but they still have a significant piece in their stomach or in their heart that sticks with them and holds them back in a way that it doesn't need being vulnerable.
Speaker 2:If we talked about these little things, we can relinquish all of those, and it's about raising our vibration for the collective wellness, but some other ones. I just believe we need to be speaking to children as if it needs to be age appropriate, but not a degrading tone. We need to give kids the same respect that we would our co-workers and offer them the options hey, if you do this is going to happen, and if you do this is going to happen. And so when they make those choices for themselves and learn, then that's teaching them and allowing them to use their navigation system in their stomachs to figure out the world and know themselves, because a lot of times, divorce or crime or school shootings and stuff happen. A very significant person didn't understand themselves. They didn't relinquish the pain or degradation that they went through in the past, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and sometimes, when you don't ask, you don't know, and a lot of the times we make an assumption of oh, this is what this person is feeling about me and it's not even the case. You know what I mean? We're not taught to ask or incur or figure it out, and instead we sit there and we make up all these narratives in our head that aren't even true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like a lot of that has to do with any negativity we might harbor, because I think for me personally, a lot of times I will not say things because, like, I'm programmed from my father and if anybody knows him he was scary and so I think I'm going to scare people sometimes. But the point is there is functional conflict resolution. If you can control your tone, then you can respectfully tell somebody something for them to hear you, and it doesn't have to be chaos or a big argument, it's just, even if the person doesn't receive it, they still hear you. If you're not yelling, they still can take that message and let it resonate and think about it or marinate maybe the word I was thinking of. They get some time to tumble it around in their brain and then something constructive or positive can come out of it, as opposed to if we don't just, you know, put a little bit of a pin in to let the pressure out, we hold that in and then it's a hot air balloon going up, which then we're not grounded.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also the other thing is I feel like a lot of us are convinced from stuff we've been through that were an exceptional hard case oh, there's no hope for me and there's love and God and creation in every single human and to connect with that, we all have spirits, we all have emotions, we all have that system about us and just to acknowledge that I think is going to help us, help free us from ourselves.
Speaker 2:But as far as like community, I really think that just coming together and this is this may have more of like my controversial beliefs in the back of my mind, but I won't go into detail about those, but I just I feel like we're all suffering and it's not just about our households and our families. You know there's a lot of oppression in our communities. There's a lot of I'm hearing a lot of people at their jobs where management is just not functional or supportive. It's more controlling, enabling or just not structured, not functional. But I just think that if we learn how to grow our own food and changing our habits to address our ailments, as opposed to figuring out if we should trust the doctor's feedback or the doctor's recommendation or not, I just think that if we could learn ourselves a little better, at the community or at the individual level, our communities would be more supportive and effective. I'm interested in starting racial trauma groups, or at least one. You know to where we can start talking about the way the system has kind of put us against each other.
Speaker 1:I think that we need more of a community. I feel like a lot of the times it's like we say it's a community but everyone's always judging, or someone's just in the background just doing some weird stuff.
Speaker 2:Just the comments and it's like you, in everybody's face, you want to be supportive and say a positive thing, but then it's like once the people are not in front of you, our authentic inner child comes out and is not the same thought.
Speaker 1:Well, I always say it's that moment I always say like people, you always got to watch them. It's that moment when they're talking to somebody and that split moment where they look away for a little bit and their whole like face actually comes out and you're like, wow, you're not really who. I thought you were Pretty interesting. And it's even like interesting when you see like all the stuff on social media about like celebrities and stuff like that, and then you find out behind closed doors there are a whole different way. Sometimes we idolize people without even realizing what the truth is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely put a little too much emphasis. The truth is, yeah, we definitely put a little too much emphasis, I think, on accomplishments and money and assets, how far we can get, because our community has a lot of workaholism and, in general, just unbalanced relationships, people stuffing their feelings and neglecting themselves, just poor self. There's a lot of people out there living double, triple, quadruple lives just because that's how they think they should approach it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like a lot of people out there also. They're not working on themselves. It's more of they find somebody to chase after, whether that person has a nicer this or nicer that. It's a comparison into somebody else instead of doing the work for themselves. So I feel like a lot of people who are very well off, a lot of them aren't very happy people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they've gotten successful at looking outside of themselves, and I think most of us are doing that to feel okay and to find the things that we think are going to be a solution. We look outside of ourselves I mean me personally, with ADHD. I've realized that if I just get up and meditate or deprogram, for the first 20 minutes I'm awake or soak and take a bath or make a small list and just make sure I get these pertinent things done before anything else. I'm very powerful, I'm very functional, and then if I don't do those things, I'm questioning if I should apply for disability. It's two polar opposites. I feel like a completely different person just because I didn't do my habits for the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it also makes you realize that how much noise is around you and when you start to silence that, how much more clear you are, how much more calm you are, how much less stress there is. I know that I've started my own routine as well, too, where I wake up in the morning on a cold shower, I'll do meditation, and I started off doing meditation for like maybe five minutes because it was just hard it is, and I started off with guided for like maybe five minutes because it was just hard, and I started off with guided meditations because it always makes it easier and then, as I got better, I like kind of did it on my own.
Speaker 1:But I think meditation is really, really good for you, super valuable. I know a lot of people talk about it all the time and people are like, oh, you have to sit in silence. But that's the whole point, you know is to actually hear your own voice and realize what it is that you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like maybe the almost the community narrative about that is it's diluted. But once you actually do it and reap the benefits of it, you see how powerful it is to just go into your mind and slow things down.
Speaker 1:Or, like you just said, don't open your social media the first hour of your day. I know that you don't realize how much of a habit it is, because you wake up and the first thing you want to do is check this, check that, see what's going on somebody else's story. But the question comes to like, why, like, why not worry about what you're doing right now instead of just having that curiosity?
Speaker 2:I think habits are very powerful. I love reading One of the books that I read about. Changing your habits has been so insightful. I have not had a great experience with my medications and so when it comes to habits, if it's not medication, then people are like, okay, what's the solution? What can we do about it? And I think habits are pretty powerful in that aspect. You have to go slow and you have to commit and give it your time and practice it, but once you get it, you feel so confident, you feel all of these good things about yourself. If you could just start with one thing that you got to sit down, process and find something that's going to be relevant and impactful to your day and do that one thing for a month, and we would see a huge difference.
Speaker 1:That's true. I feel like everybody tries to start. Oh yeah, I want to meditate for 30 minutes a day, but it's like you haven't even done five minutes.
Speaker 2:You don't even yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. It's like, oh, I want to work out, but I'm going to work out every single day for an hour and a half. It's like you haven't even started. So it's you're pushing yourself to your limits and then you discourage yourself, and then, when you discourage yourself, you just shut off to it. So I like that. You said that developing habits and taking it one step at a time, because it's overwhelming.
Speaker 2:And I like that you brought that analogy up, because for me personally, when it came to working out physically I'm small but I'm strong, so when I would go work out, Don't mess with her guys.
Speaker 2:I would make myself sick and push myself too hard because I'm focused on the outcome and body image issues to where I was like, oh, I need to be like this and this, and that the practice became so toxic and not fun that I was just like you know what, nevermind. So if I like, go into the gym and do one specific thing, and I'm even to just do that I'm not recommending people just stick with one exercise per workout, but if that is the case, starting out with one thing will make the difference that you're trying to get and I think, focusing more inwards. We are so kind of like vanity and reputation and visual geared, so it's if you focus inwards and eat better and take better care of your mind listen to your body yes and let that navigate you.
Speaker 2:All of the outcomes that you want will naturally bloom, instead of you trying to control them. It's like control versus motivation. Those things will just naturally fall into place if you redirect where your focus is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I 100% agree and I feel like a lot of us, we just don't listen to ourselves, and I think that's the other connection that people miss you could be. I mean that's why they always say mind, body, spirit when all of those are in alignment, you feel so at peace when I know some people just go to the gym just to work out that stress, but they're not taking care of their mental state as well too. So it's like it helps you but it doesn't fully help you get through a lot of the obstacles and things that you've got buried in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely all encompassing, like if you really want to genuinely feel good, like your body is definitely important and having health, but yeah, you definitely have to have a spiritual side, and your mind and your thoughts and everything need to be managed and functional to a certain extent, and everybody's different. Some people can have a bunch of chaos, but then they know how to rail it down and kind of get to work, and so if you don't ever have those internal resources, I guess that would be the difference and you just got to practice things with your mind, your body, your heart with your mind, your body, your heart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask what are the top three difficult changes that you've made personally to help you with your healing?
Speaker 2:The first one would definitely be setting boundaries Setting boundaries.
Speaker 1:That's probably why you want to teach it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, because the three things that I'm going to talk about, for that I have three things and they're pretty basic, they're pretty commonplace, just setting boundaries. That was difficult because it really affected my social life and my relationships, but it took a long time. I was just codependent from one relationship to the next and every time one ended I felt like and when you say codependent from one relationship to the next, and every time one ended I felt like- and when you say codependent, because there's kind of like two types was it more of you needed somebody there, or was it more of you needed to be needed by somebody to feel validated?
Speaker 2:I don't know, it probably was both. I feel like it might've been both for me, because I do have a sense of my more dysfunctional self is like a fixer or a rescuer. So that's been a hard thing to learn.
Speaker 1:I feel like a lot of girls can definitely relate to that one. It's just I don't know if it's our nurturing nature, but I feel like a lot, that's a lot, of the cases for females.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's something I gained awesome insight on from ACA is if we're just responsible for ourselves and hold ourselves down, the next person is more likely to be able to do so. If you're over there trying to help somebody, be more stable, you kind of and I was talking about motivation you have to lead by example and focus inward. How do I discipline myself so that I can be there for this person? You have to. You can't be stressed in here trying to help somebody else. You have to have the opposite of stress. You have to be okay in here in order to support somebody, because if the negativity is in there, you're more prone to fix or save and those just aren't. It's not functional.
Speaker 2:The other something else that was challenging practicing discernment in being vulnerable, because I just went through a lot of isolation and so how miserable I felt, how negative I felt.
Speaker 2:I didn't understand that people were like repelling that because it was too much. But it's one thing to have a friend that's down, that needs support, but if every single little negative thing that you have going on in your mind, heart and body, you don't hold anything in or take responsibility for it yourself before you have to go out there with your friends or with partners or whoever is supportive relationships to you. It can be too much. We all have our things going on, and when I talk about internal resources, those skills that we don't really promote in our society, it's oh, you can't see it, so it's not a thing. But those internal resources, your thoughts and what to do with them so that you don't feel so negative, leading to depression and anxiety and all those other things, those are your way out, that's your power to know what to do with your thoughts, but that I think that comes with knowing yourself too. You need, it's like, knowing your rights. If you're in a court or at work, you want to know you're right so you can protect yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The other thing was acknowledging and understanding the relationship I had with myself because, like when I got to ACA, when I heard trust defined, it's like well, that's not really what I do, but I know I trust this person. I definitely trust this person.
Speaker 1:What was the definition they gave you?
Speaker 2:It wasn't necessarily like a verbatim definition, but it was just like if this person does this, then you can't trust them. And my version of trust was more or less like if they make me feel a certain type of way, then they're safe. But my familiarity was dysfunctional, very dysfunctional, and so I just had no idea that trust wasn't a thing for me, like I didn't employ it, I just it was more codependency, and so if they made me feel safe and secure, then I could trust them. Meanwhile, the people that I was in relationships with and these are friends as well too friends, family, relatives If you say you're going to do something, then follow through and do it those types of things. And I read a book, too that taught me there you have trust with yourself, with the world, with your higher power and with the people you're in relationships with your higher power and with the people you're in relationships with. And so when I read that, I was like, okay, so I need to work on my relationship with myself.
Speaker 2:And I would hear a lot of in my struggles and talking to people that were still open to interacting with me and talking with me, I heard a lot of you just have to love yourself. And in my mind I did. Lot of you just have to love yourself. And in my mind I did. But in my practice, in my how I spent my time, I was not loving myself, I was starving myself, I wasn't having any fun, I was isolating myself with people who were not supportive. So then the supportive people couldn't help empower me. And the eating thing I just didn't have the brain power to think through things. Eating disorders I've seen a lot more like eating disorders consumerism, workaholism.
Speaker 1:What has helped you through your eating disorder. Say it again. I said what has helped you through the eating disorder, Because I know you said that you've gained a good amount of weight and you feel good about yourself.
Speaker 2:That's still a difficult work in progress, but I mean the therapist that I work with now. The way she has worded things has helped me understand that my nutrition is more about a control issue, and it was so deeply validated in me that I just wasn't worth eating, I wasn't worth feeding myself or having good food. And then I went into my adult life. I served a lot, so that's a lot of nights where you're not sitting around five, six, seven o'clock at night. You're constantly moving. Actually, you're moving the most at that time when everybody else is eating.
Speaker 2:And so I got into that workaholic habit and it just continued to where, okay, I'm an adult, I know I should eat, but because I was programmed a certain way, I would go into dynamics that it didn't bother me, that I didn't have time to eat because I was used to it. But then she, my therapist, would say, like, because I got to a certain point where I'm like, oh, I can't eat fast food or I can't eat this or that, and so I was depriving myself a new way, and it is, you get anxious because I have a family history where the medical history is just not great, and so I had this newfound fear of getting sick, and so I wanted to only put good things into my body, but I did not know how to cook. So I had somebody a life coach that I was working with also told me about an app that I use that to follow recipes. And so just that app, and my therapist kind of worded it like I was almost doing too much.
Speaker 2:If you're thinking about eating and it's taking you hours and hours, just pick up something. It doesn't matter if it's a granola bar, if it's an almond, whatever it is, just get into the practice. And that's here again with habits and focusing on, not the outcome. I don't need to feel full at the end of the day, just put something in your stomach. If I need to feel full, then I have to do all of these things to get a good meal, and then that delayed and put things off. So just grounding and thinking on a smaller, more basic level has been a theme to getting better for myself.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. If there's one thing that you could tell your younger self right now, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Let me think about it just a second. Okay, what I would tell myself. What I would tell myself this too shall pass, that it is possible to feel okay and that this is not it, but this too shall pass. I think that is the biggest thing and that, no matter what anybody else outside of me thinks or says because I always kind of carried this like positivity in me somewhere. You know, I and my nanny was did hold me pretty high in terms of how she saw me and how much she cared about me, which had kind of other detrimental effects, but I had certain things like that that programmed. Hey, you are a good person inside of me and I just, I don't know, I just stuck with it.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I feel like you know our society.
Speaker 2:If we can all kind of practice like I've had to get to know myself and I've had to get to understand my power and what my purpose is, and I've been in some pretty pretty rock bottom places to where it's not necessary to go to rock bottom, but those are the things that taught me certain things about myself and I just believe, on a collective level, if we all can come together and just have our like, teach ourselves the skills to each one of us be good and be OK and not necessarily focus on the next person and how they're good and OK, then a lot of the oppression and the things in our community, in our world, will naturally fall away.
Speaker 2:We think about how oppressive and how scary our government and our world has become, but there's so many more of us than there is of them, and so I just believe if we could just get it together ourselves, they would not be able to control us and oppress us the way that they do, and eventually I think that we could all have everything that we need, we would all be living in abundance, we would all be happy, we would all be nourished and taken care of, and I just think that's. I believe that's our purpose as humans to get to that place.
Speaker 1:I agree, thank you. Allison Definitely dropped a lot of beautiful pieces there that I'm sure a lot of people can listen to and relate to, and I will definitely be including her Instagram handle in the description of the podcast and also I'll definitely keep you guys updated about the whole business that Allison is about to go into with teaching kids boundaries and teaching them awareness, and also teaching them etiquettes, because a lot of us could use that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I eventually want to evolve into a school to where it's like commonplace and I want to normalize it so that it's more common to have good etiquette and proper boundaries. So it's like you're left out if you don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for being on here with me, and Allison is also going to be starting her own podcast in the future. I will also keep you guys updated. I'm excited to help you out with that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yes, I've got my talking skills.
Speaker 1:No, it's, you're wonderful, you're natural. But yeah, thanks, guys, we love you and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Bye, hope you loved it.