TUNED IN MODULE 10

Transcript

Here we are at module 10. Once again, thank you so much for taking this journey with me for yourself and for your kiddos. And today's module is just so much fun. My intention is truly for you to just feel excited about the future ahead of you in making a really strong commitment to shift out of trauma, out of dysfunction, and fully into wellness, which will include so much kindness, awareness, self compassion,

and the moments where you naturally regress. That's just the psychology of being human is that as we're growing, we will naturally loop back to moments of progression. But I hope now you feel that you're really on track to be on a path of two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, until hopefully sooner than later you land in an experience of waking up to the life of your dreams.

So in this module today named intentionally weaving your family's future, I'll start with an introduction to choosing wellness and choosing to manifest the life that you want. I will share about some existing schools of psychology that relate to wellness and choosing to be in a life that feels good instead of the psychology schools that are really focused on what's wrong and pathologizing.

So I'm going to be sharing some more psychological science around creating your future. So it's not just a lecture on woowoo manifestation, which I also have a heart for but you'll get that more logical brain piece if that's something that feels good for you.

We'll talk about tools and visualization and meditation practices for creating the life that you want. And then we'll close the last meditation, the last embodiment integration for the course after this will be a really powerful one that you can go back to again and again.

And that will be it. So, let's dive in. I want to start by sharing my own experience with manifestation and choosing the narrative of my life. I have been on a journey from when I was very young to being highly intuitive, highly sensitive and really taking in a lot to my system and holding a lot.

This eventually led me to develop a pretty horrific eating disorder that led me in very intensive treatment and therapy. This was as a teenager. And I'm so grateful for every part of that story because I eventually got incredibly healing support that made me even more whole than I was before.

So I truly believe that any traumas, any trials that you've been through, and of course I have a whole story at some point, maybe I'll put a bonus audio or video in here that tells more of my story. But there were some other chapters with difficult events that eventually led me to a place of accessing great healing, feeling really confident in who I am and what I want to share and creating relationships in a family life that are so true for me.

And in that process of finding wellness, really choosing to be well, choosing to live a life where I'm connected to myself, I'm in a place of self -love and I'm resourced enough to help others. I started practicing a tool for manifestation where I would get really grounded and I would become really clear on my goals for whatever it is that I wanted to have happen next.

And I would meditate with that experience as if it was happening and it started to really work for me. So when I decided that I was ready to meet my husband and settle down and have children, I told my best friend, I still remember, I feel that this one is coming.

I'm ready for him. I'm going to meditate with him. I'm going to make sure that I'm in a space that is open to actually receiving this person when they arrive. And I can't wait. And I started to. meditate with my now husband as if he was there.

And as you might guess, he arrived a few months later. Of course, it's never in the form that you think it's going to arrive. He wasn't exactly what I expected. He's absolutely amazing. But it just the story didn't unfold exactly how I expected.

But it was beautiful. And it was the manifestation that I chose. Same thing when I decided to leave my grind, my grind I was in at an agency when I was working really on the ground in community in the field of mental health in a way that wasn't actually nourishing for my sensitive self.

I got really clear on the private practice that I wanted to start the kind of clients that I wanted to work with how I wanted my business to feel. And within a pretty short time, my practice had been launched.

my business was full and it's been a really continuous, continuous cycle of fullness ever since. So I absolutely believe in the power of becoming clear, creating the experience in your mind's eye that you're wanting, and then connecting with the feeling that lives there so much so, and so often and with so much depth that eventually it arrives and there it is.

So that's my more woo -woo or heart -based approach to knowing that we have power to create our own reality. We'll get a little bit back to that at the end and in the meditation, but take the parts that feel true, leave the parts that don't.

I just wanted to share my own personal experience and I could share so many other examples if you're wanting to. Other than that, before we get into some of the content on the fields of psychology that are already existing, I want to just remind you that when you choose to shift out of trauma, to have the traumatic patterns that have developed over generations usually that are still living in your system,

be halted and to choose a life of wellness and wholeness and empowerment, you're really making a choice to change your narrative. There's actually an entire field of therapy called narrative therapy that's all about therapists sitting with people as they tell their story and then eventually helping people move out of the story that they have, that they're a victim and that things have happened to them and moving into a story of,

this was all for me and I'm empowered and every single part of the story makes sense because I'm here now and I love me and I love where I am now. So I want to share my story with you. Thank you. I actually have made a commitment to myself that I have the people around me hold me accountable to that I don't allow myself to be in a disempowered state.

I allow myself to be under -resourced. Sure, I get tired and overwhelmed and just know that I could engage in more self -care during different chapters if there's intensity, but if there's ever a moment where I'm creating the story that this is happening to me or my life is so much harder, I'm comparing to other people or I'm wishing it was different, I make a choice to enact a cognitive shift into a place of,

this is my life, I chose it, I can handle it, and I'm proud to be who I am and where I am exactly as I am. So if you can make a commitment to be shifting out of any disempowered states that want to come up into empowered states, it will change your life.

And you'll also be teaching your children to do the same. How many times have I said that in this course? If you do X, you'll be teaching your children to do the same, but it's really so true. I will post an article here on this idea of victim consciousness.

And the important point I find in it is that in order to shift out of the victim, we have to turn on observer consciousness. So when we become the observer and we don't get so wrapped up in the emotionality of what's happening, we can then just notice, okay, like here's the situation that has unfolded.

I'm one player in the whole situation and it's just happening. Like it's just happening. I'm not going to be a victim to this. I'll just share here. I was actually running the Boston Marathon when the bombs went off.

I was in the finishing corrals and it could have been really easy to take that moment of my life as a moment of being a victim that took me down and created post -traumatic stress that was unfixable.

But instead, because I'm in this commitment to being in an empowered state, it was just an event in my life. And the observer part of me was able to notice what unfolded there, how different people were reacting to that based on their own internal capacity and their own pain.

And don't get me wrong, it was a horrific event that unfolded, but it was my choice to become victim to it or not. And again, there are so many other examples I could share, but I'm sure you can think too in your life of moments where you could have become a victim, but instead you just chose to meet the moment.

So looping this back to our work here, it's another invitation to orient towards what's right instead of what's right. wrong. So maybe you've been thinking, it would just be so much easier if my child wasn't highly sensitive.

If we could just be like the other families where bedtime was easy, and the kids listened, which is never actually the case, by the way, inside the doors of their houses. Trust me, I see many families of different who appear different on the outside.

And I get to find out as a therapist, what's happening within the four walls of their home. And there's always chaos, there's always tension. Just each family has their own way of working with stuck points.

So anyway, but it's like, can you choose to find what's so perfectly right in your family exactly as it is? And just like you've made a choice to choose to know what your child is experiencing as a highly sensitive person and taking this course, you can continue to make that choice to accept what's here.

and look towards what needs to be done instead of getting stuck in victim. Okay. So I'm going to move into talking about some psychological schools of thought that relate to looking for what's right, looking towards the positive instead of the negative so that you can actually move in that direction.

And the reason I'm doing this is that I didn't want to present this module as something that's just, you know, a spiritual soul -based heartfelt manifestation. There's always a place for that if your values connect with that.

But I feel like a really powerful part of this course has been also providing the logical linear science to back some of the ideas. So take the parts of this that feel helpful and I do hope that it helps.

So one school of thought was developed by Carol Dweck and she talks about having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. You can refer to the chart in the module here but I just want you to start to look at how if someone's in a fixed mindset, they avoid challenges, they give up easily, they see their effort as fruitless, they ignore negative feedback because they're scared to get feedback, they can't take criticism,

they feel threatened by other success and generally they don't have a lot of access to reaching their full potential because they're so focused on doing it right and looking smart instead of actually moving towards their greatest potential.

With a growth mindset, you're aware that you're developing and you're always growing and learning. If you're taking this course, I imagine you have a growth mindset. But as I was reviewing this work, I was able to identify some ways that I think I have a growth mindset, but sometimes I get a little bit stuck in the fixed mindset, which actually blocks growth.

So with the growth mindset, you embrace challenges, you desire to learn, you persist in the face of setbacks because you're not stuck in victim. You see effort as a path to mastery, you're learning from criticism instead of just rejecting it and being unable to receive it.

And you find inspiration and lessons from others instead of being so stuck in comparison that you can't learn from them. So I really encourage you as you're weaving your family's future to continue to take on a growth mindset when it comes to any obstacle that comes up.

As I was sharing in a little bit of my personal story, I had some pretty major obstacles in my childhood and young adulthood, and those obstacles were just part of my story. as I integrated them into my sense of self, I got to grow so much.

I got to learn how to be incredibly embodied. I got to learn how to face extreme devastating community events and still feel empowered. And if those challenges hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't be here sharing with you.

So when your child is facing whatever obstacle that comes up for them, because they will face obstacles, that's the only way they can grow, can you orient to them with a growth mindset and encourage them to have a growth mindset so that it just becomes part of their story and a beautiful part of their story as they learn and grow.

The next school of thought I want to share about is positive psychology. So Martin Seligman, he's a UPenn researcher. He was studying in the later 1900s. I remember learning about him in my undergrad psychology classes because he's the one that did the studies on learned helplessness.

If you haven't heard about that, it's actually pretty horrific that animals were used for this. But if you can just take the content without getting, if you're sensitive and you're realizing that this was not a great study to be using dogs for, basically the study was dogs were given shocks and there were two different groups in the study.

One group, the dogs were given shocks, but there was a gate that they could jump over pretty easily and basically escape from the uncomfortable experience. Whereas in the other study, the dogs were given shocks, but there was no way out.

So what was fascinating was that a little bit later they came back and with that same group B where the dogs were stuck and they couldn't jump out, this time they offer them a way out. Like there was a way for them to get out pretty easily.

But all of those dogs didn't even try because they, because of so many times of being in discomfort and not being able to get out. They just learned to be helpless. They just learned like there's no way out.

I might as well not even look. So can you think about the implications for that in humans? If we've had so many times of getting knocked down that we've learned to just stay in victim and not find a way out or even look for options of ways out.

We eventually will stop trying. What I'm suggesting now is that we start to remember that it doesn't have to be the way that it always was. That even if we had a lot of experiences of getting knocked down with no way out, we can start to look towards metaphorical doorways or literal doorways out in different directions.

And later on, the same researchers added in this idea of learned optimism. Like what if instead we learn to look towards optimistic views of our situation and our world and we see what happens then. So we're wanting to teach ourselves this, we're wanting to teach our children this.

Dr. Seligman went on to create a whole field of psychology called positive psychology. You might have heard of the happiness lab at Harvard. They are based on this idea of positive psychology. There's a great podcast on all of the positive psychology methodology.

But basically it was based on the idea that he was seeing all of these people pathologized and all of these psychologists were learning, okay, here's the top eight mental disorders. This is what creates suffering and struggling for people.

Let's figure out how to make them not miserable. So if you're depressed, let's just make you feel okay. If you're anxious, let's make you feel baseline functioning. And his thought was, well, what about helping people thrive?

What about helping people actually have a life that feels really, really good, not just okay. And so they started developing a set of practices that invoked positive psychology in people. I'll tell you what those practices are in a moment with some examples of studies that showed this, but what these practices ended up doing for people was offering a lot of great benefits, including boosts in self -esteem,

change in perspective, improved relationships, higher productivity, and increased success. So people that engaged in positive psychology practices actually had more success and did better. So positive psychology focuses on positive events and positive influences in life.

So positive experiences like happiness, joy, inspiration, and love, positive states and traits like gratitude, resilience, compassion, and positive institution. So actually take these principles and applying them to entire organizations and entire institutions.

In this case, I'm asking you to bring these ideas to the system of your family. So here's a couple studies that give you an example of what they were looking at. So there was one where people were asked to engage in a random act of kindness to a stranger, like really have empathy with the stranger and engage in a random act of kindness.

Two weeks later, it was shown that they were actually happier, there was more contentment. There was another study similarly that showed that strangers sharing in generosity and empathy actually had more of an oxytocin release, which then connected to greater generosity later and weeks and weeks and months later.

There was a study that from prompting pro social behavior in teens. actually boosted their own acceptance and well -being. So they were asked to engage in kind offerings with their peers and then later on they were actually exhibiting a greater sense of belonging and acceptance.

There are a couple more because I just feel like these are fascinating but do a quick search on positive psychology experiences and you'll find so much. There was one of people driving in traffic and some had contentment around their commute to work even though there was traffic and some didn't.

The only difference of whether they were content or not is whether they were present and engaging in mindfulness. There was nothing to do with how much traffic or how long and it was everything to do with were they engaging in distractions were they in victim were they complaining or were they present focused calm choosing the moment which then indicated greater happiness.

We'll get back to the other one I wanted to share was on gratitude and having people engage in sharing gratitude and how that linked to happiness later but I'll come back to that one a little bit later in the lecture because gratitude is a whole different field that a lot of people have contributed to.

So we talked about growth mindset. We talked about positive psychology. We talked about learned helplessness first learned optimism and really one more thing I want to add about the learned helplessness first learned optimism Dr.

Seligman pointed out it really it wasn't even that it wasn't even that the animals were so helpless it was just that they started to believe that they weren't in control like they started to believe that even when they did have control and power they didn't have access to it it was the story that they weren't in control.

So the takeaway is really to start to trust that you can cultivate a positive perspective and you can have control. I'll share a TED Talk on this whole idea that's very interesting. But just be watching when we're engaging in learned helplessness, when we are our children are, the symptoms that are associated include feeling a lack of control over the outcome, failing to ask for help, having low self -esteem,

decreased motivation, putting less efforts into tasks, a lack of persistence, feelings of frustration, passivity, and giving up easily. So if you're noticing any of those, it might be that there needs to be a shift into feeling a sense of control and feeling optimistic.

And that might come from first asking for help. A couple more ideas here. Flow is something that a number of researchers have looked at, including Dr. Seligman. And it's the idea that we have to activate states of flow, meaning engaging in activities where we lose our sense of self.

So if you've ever gotten lost in a creative project or lost in dancing or singing to music, this experience of flow actually creates a regulatory experience in our system that helps us perform better, do better, receive more happiness.

It's a fascinating field of study. And in the TED talk that I'll share, if you have space and interest in listening to another extra resource, the psychologist that's talking about flow shares about just the amount of stimuli that we're receiving in any given moment.

It's like too much to experience all at once. And when we add it into that, the experience of focusing very intently on an experience that requires a lot of our attention, like playing the piano or connecting with music, we end up having to let go of some of what we're taking in.

And so sometimes we'll let go of our sense of self, like feeling really all the sensations in our bodies. And that can be an incredibly regulating experience where we can find a lot of happiness. So if you don't have any activity or practice in your life now where you're connecting with that sense of flow, I really encourage you to find one.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's books, there's a lot of research on the importance of that flow for physical health symptoms. And by the way, when I was talking about those studies on positive psychology, which do include flow states, the markers that were indicating happiness weren't just around mood.

There was also less doctor visits, less sicknesses, and ailments and that kind of thing, and the people that had engaged in the practices of positive psychology. So just imagine if you start choosing to engage in positive ways of being, how it will impact you and then impact your child.

So I said I would come back to gratitude here. My teacher, Lisa Dion, who developed Synergetic Play Therapy and the nervous system handout that I talked about in module two, she says over and over again, the fastest way to come back to presence, the fastest way to come back to that center column on the nervous system handout where we're regulated and poised, mindful and connected to self is gratitude.

Gratitude is strongly linked to well -being. I'll share, there will be a lot of extra resources in this module. There's a meta analysis from Berkeley around how much gratitude is linked to well -being.

There was a study from the positive psychology field of people that were asked to write testimonials and read them to people in their life that they were grateful for. And a month later, there were a lot of indicators of increased happiness.

There's just so many more examples here of experiences of people connecting to gratitude and then genuinely feeling more at ease, more content and then inviting in more positive experiences to their life.

It's this idea we've been talking about all along of looking towards what's right instead of what's wrong. When we look towards what's wrong, we contract and we close and then we're actually resistant to even good things coming towards us.

Have you ever run into a friend that you love and that is a positive influence in your life, but because you're in a close state, you don't even want to see them. Like you're like, I just can't even handle it.

That's because you're in contraction and you're looking at what's wrong. When you're looking towards what's right and you're in a more open space, you can support your child in your adoration for them.

And you're just like here helping them and whatever they're going through, you're not so stuck around what's wrong, which as we've talked about many, many times here, causes them to contract and then not be able to move towards growth.

In that moment, you're really projecting a fixed mindset on them instead of a growth mindset while you're asking them to grow, which can be very confusing for a child. Okay. Lastly, before we move into some tools for manifestation and closing, I just want to touch briefly on the field of cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT.

And this is the field of study that links thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. It's the idea. It's like a triangle. Our thoughts impact our feelings, which impact our behaviors, and they all impact each other.

So I can choose to change. or work with any part of this triangle on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors triangle. So I can choose to change my behavior and then I'll have different thoughts. And then I'll have different feelings.

I can choose to work through my feelings using the process of emotional assimilation that we talked about in the parent self -healing module. And then I'll have different thoughts. Suddenly I'll be thinking more positively.

Or I can choose to shift my thoughts into more positive cognitions, which we've also touched on. And then all of a sudden I'll feel differently and I'll be engaging in different behavior. It's a brilliant tool for becoming empowered to change your state.

And yeah, I just encourage you to look into CBT support and maybe even a CBT therapist if it feels like something that would be helpful for you. My experience of CBT is it's not as body -based and process -based, but it's really helpful if you want.

some logical linear ways of thinking about changing your states and changing your behavior. One last thing with this. I'm a huge fan of the state change. So if I'm really stuck in something, I like to activate a different state by taking a cold shower, going for a run, doing some pretty intense breath work, pouring cold water on my face and my hands, like we really shaking it out.

We really have power to choose to go from state A to state B if we take that first step in being aware that we need a state change and then just doing it. It can be really hard when we're feeling stuck, but oftentimes it's necessary when it's time for one -on -one special time with your child and you're not in the mood and you just need to get there.

So the state change is a great tool to be using. Okay. So manifestation, choosing to create a different reality for yourself or something that you're really wanting. What I so love about this, I was sharing this with a mom that I've worked with for a while and she's been through every module of this course even before it was recorded.

And when I was sharing this with her, I thought maybe she would have some really big dream for her family's future. And all she wanted was to just be at the dinner table with her family and feel in a flow with them.

She just wanted to feel like all was okay and hard moments were coming up, but they knew how to handle it and they moved through it. And the system was staying somewhat in an easeful and restful space, even when the challenging moments that come up with kids all the time came up.

So you don't even have to have your sights on something that big or complicated. You just have to really know what you want. You have to really know. what you want and then also believe that you're worthy of getting that.

So I have some meditation teachers that talk about everyone thinks that manifestation is all about just getting really clear on what you want and picturing it and starting to be there with it until it happens.

But actually the piece that a lot of people are missing is trusting that they're worthy of having it. If you have any stories around not being worthy of having what you really want and wanting what you really want, then you'll actually have blocks to receiving it.

So there's a journey of opening up to knowing that you're worthy, trusting that you're worthy knowing that you deserve for it to be good. There's no difference between you and the person on Instagram that you're comparing yourself to, and creating the story of like, well, they can have it, but I can't.

So I'm going to invite you to really take some time. releasing negativity around not trusting that you can have what you want and trusting that you can have it all. So, and again, we're going to have an experiential process of this in the embodiment integration.

I'm just plugging some points and the three main points are this. The first is you have to feel the thing that you want as if it's in the present moment. So it's to open up regulation in your system that would be required for that thing to happen.

So an example is I could have been trying to manifest the husband that I wanted, but not working on opening up to what it would feel like to just be in the presence and safety with this person that is there in the safe marriage that I now have.

And if I hadn't have been like feeling it as if it was happening, I would have been operating from a place of lack of safety and contraction. And I wouldn't have been able to connect with him when I met him.

So I'm opening up the pathways to what if it were safe? What if it were, and by safe, I mean, emotionally safe and supportive and that kind of thing, not necessarily a lack of physical safety, but that that's there too.

But it's, so I was feeling into how that would feel. And then I was literally creating shifts in my nervous system to be in a more regulated space. So it's the same if you're trying to manifest or open up to an experience where you're on a family trip and it's going really well and everyone's in connection.

You have to imagine that you're there and that experience is happening. And then literally you will activate the rest and digest part of your nervous system. You'll open up new pathways where it could go well, and then it can happen and you can receive it.

Number two, you'll have to take time getting really clear on what you really want. If you're operating from a place of what you think you want or what you think other people think. you want, it's likely going to be hard to manifest what you really want.

So please take some time contemplating, meditating, journaling about situations that are of your greatest desire. And don't be shy. Like let them be really good. It gets to be that good. And then lastly, this piece on worthiness and a teacher that I had called it having this and you're really wanting to identify your current thermometer of what you're allowing in and what you believe you can have and see if you can expand that a little bit.

Like what if you really believed that you are worthy of having it all. And that might take some unpacking of experiences where you were told or received a message that you weren't worth it, which goes back to the parent self healing module and potentially is a call to get some more one on one support around that.

Okay, there will be more practice. of that in the final meditation. Just some final reminders here. It truly takes a village to raise a family to be human. It's so important to find support outside the family with therapy, with coaches, with healing practitioners, with the right doctors or medical people for the right exercise, play therapists, family, friends, getting support when you or your child are in the process of integrating something new.

So likely when you found this course, you were in the process of integrating what it would be like to fully accept that your child is highly sensitive and they need you to engage in a certain way of being.

And so you got support, go you, for taking a course, for getting the right information and not feeling like you have to do it alone. Can you imagine if you had just decided not to learn any of this? You wouldn't be in the place that you are in in this moment.

So it takes a village. In the positive psychology studies, there was actually a lot of research that said that one factor for happy people was that they were very social. Even if they were introverted, they made the time to connect with others and be in community.

So in a time where community is kind of separated after a post COVID era, it's important to remember that sense of community and that sense of belonging. Please remember to have realistic expectations of yourself and your kids, because this too shall pass in any given moment.

We get to ride out the waves and trust in the process of transformation that sometimes comes with contraction before an expansion, stuck points before clarity and intensity before it gets easier and the wave just continues.

So please have realistic expectations of yourself at whatever point. you're on in the wave, because we know that no behavior lasts forever. Because if every behavior is rooted in a feeling, need or desire, and we know that our needs, feelings and desires change all the time as we change and grow, that means that our behaviors will change too.

And lastly, if you are a parent of a child, it means that you are living in a beautiful mess. Family life is a beautiful mess. It gets to be messy. It is messy. Kids make messes. I love, there was one moment with my stepdaughter early on where I was getting a little bit activated by the Play -Doh and every single toy out in the living room.

And I made a comment like, I think it's time to clean up this mess. And she looked at me and said, Sophie, this is what kids do. We make messes. And oh my gosh, my heart was... such a yes to that moment, that reminder, that wisdom from the little one reminding me that kids are meant to make messes, we are meant to get messy with them.

Family life is a beautiful mess. Oh, I'm so grateful that you have been here with me. Thank you for learning. Thank you for trusting me to stand side by side with you on the beautiful process that is being a parent to a highly sensitive child.

Now that you've been through this journey, you are in you are in the rooted rhythm community. I have had the privilege of working with epic human beings that are choosing to parent and more conscious ways.

I do plan to take this community into something more connected at some point. So stay in touch. And I know there will be a time and a platform that we can all connect together. But for now, I hope I hope you feel that there's a group of you choosing to have this be different.

And I will keep you updated on what's happening for me. I am actually well, depending on when you're listening to this, I'm probably really engaged in this. But I'm in the process of starting a doctorate program in depth psychology to truly understand the relationship between parent parents and their children and how children really show us the subconscious stuck points.

The book that I plan to write is called soul bound, a depth psychology perspective on the parent child relationship. So there's a lot of exciting things coming. The last thing I'll share is a podcast that I created with my sister in law called sisterhood meets motherhood, this idea that we're not meant to do it alone.

And we can sit and chat about the truthful messy parts of what it's like to be a mother, what it's like to be a sister in law, what it's like to be a sister, what it's like to be a daughter, all the things.

And it can be exciting and fun. And it doesn't have to look any certain perfect way. So, so much more coming there. Keep in touch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And I will see you soon. Thank you.