Episode 161 - The Two Conversation Buckets

There are almost always two things happening when hard conversations feel impossible, and understanding the difference can change everything. In this episode, I’m introducing what I call the two communication buckets—clarity and vulnerability—and why they so often lead women into silence, self-protection, and disconnected relationships. You’ll hear why confusion between the two buckets is one of the biggest reasons hard conversations stay stuck, and how the relationships that feel most alive and nourishing are built on both the willingness to say the true thing and the willingness to let yourself truly be seen. Here’s what I cover:

• A story about an emotional moment with my husband when I finally admitted something I had been terrified to say out loud

• How years of communication struggles and independence caused me to armor up in my relationship

• What the clarity spectrum looks like from softening and hedging to direct and honest communication

• What vulnerability really is and how the “glass wall” keeps people from truly knowing you

• Questions to ask yourself and tiny first steps that help you move toward the conversations you want to have

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

00:59

One of the things that I have been really open with, because it's the place where I have made the most progress that means the most to me, is in my relationship with my husband. 

 01:12

And I want to tell you a story. We were on a weekend trip. It was just the two of us. And by that point, we had done a lot of hard work, right? It was several years of really kind of unraveling and untangling what had been broken between us, all of the codependency, and even some of the hurt. 

 01:40

And we were genuinely in a different place than we had ever been. It was better. And I remember sitting across from him at this restaurant where we were having dinner, and I was just flooded, like totally flooded with love for him, with longing, with wanting to be not just even physically closer to him, but emotionally closer to him. 

 02:08

And it came out of somewhere that I hadn't been anticipating and that I hadn't let myself access in a really long time. And the feeling was so big and it was so overwhelming that I was tearing up a little bit. 

 02:26

And I was just, you know, completely overwhelmed. And so as I was just sitting with that feeling, something that I had not ever let myself really feel, how much I wanted him, how much I needed him, and how terrified I was to say that. 

 02:45

He noticed and he said, what's wrong? Are you okay? Now, I had spent the first eight years of our marriage, which was really hard, really, really hard. We did not know how to communicate with each other. 

 03:02

And I had resolved that by very carefully learning how to not need him. I was very independent. I did what I needed and wanted to do largely on my own. And I told myself that needing him was weak, that it was pathetic, and it was the kind of thing that made women into people they definitely did not want to be. 

 03:28

I loved him. And there were a lot of things about like our partnership that were actually going okay. But I kept him at arm's length. And subconsciously, I could not have told you this at the time, but I was certain that if I let myself really need him, really love him, and really express those things to him, that he would reject me and that I would not survive that pain. 

 03:59

So I armored up, right? The safest thing that I thought was just to kind of close these heavy iron doors and not let any of that out. And so that's where I was on that trip, like noticing the tension between like I can't quite armor up in this moment. 

 04:21

I'm flooded with all of these emotions and my eyes are teary and I'm just, you know, sitting here not saying anything. And he was waiting for me to answer his question. And so I finally said the truest thing that I had ever said to him, which was, I am so afraid that you will leave me if I show you, it's making me emotional again right now. 

 04:50

If I show you who I really am and what I really want, I'm so afraid that you will leave me. And I'll come back to that moment in a minute. And I want to tell you that what I've learned in the years since about why that moment was so hard and not just emotionally hard, it was structurally hard because there were two different things happening at once. 

 05:15

And I couldn't see it at the time, but once I could see them through this work of coaching all these other women, everything made sense in a new way. And it's actually really shaped the specific work I do around helping women have hard conversations. 

 05:33

So when women come to me because they can't have the hard conversations, they freeze or they cave or they stay silent when they most need to speak, there are almost always two things going on. And they're not exactly the same thing. 

 05:48

And I think separating them out is really helpful because they might look similar from the outside and they both produce silence. But there's some differences and I call them the two communication buckets. 

 06:04

Bucket number one is about clarity. Clarity is about saying something in a clear, unambiguous, unapologetic way. It's about knowing what you actually think, what you actually want, and what you actually need, and being able to say it with enough directness that the other person can actually hear you, but with enough kindness and respectfulness, if that's what you want in that situation, that you can say it, 

 06:36

that you feel comfortable saying it. Clarity is the difference between someone who says, oh, I don't know, whatever you think, it's fine. And, you know, I want to be honest with you about something. And I really hope you can hear me out. 

 06:53

That is clarity. And clarity is on a spectrum. If you can imagine a scale from one to 10, on the one side of that scale, you are soft, you are apologetic, you are indirect, you are accommodating. And you are saying something technically, but you're saying it in such a way that it can be easily missed, easily dismissed, and easily absorbed by the person you're talking to without anything actually changing. 

 07:22

And on the 10 side of the scale, of that clarity scale, you are candid, you are even bold, you are clear, you are unapologetic, and you are direct with your values of kindness and respectfulness as well. 

 07:39

But the difference is you say the actual thing. Most women I work with can feel the difference between those two ends of the spectrum and they can tell and they start to be on to themselves about when they're being vague on purpose. 

 07:54

They know when they are softening something into like almost being invisible because they are afraid of what will happen to the relationship if something lands too hard. Lack of clarity sounds like whatever you want when you're afraid to have an opinion that could be uncomfortable for the other person. 

 08:14

It sounds like, no, no, no, no, no, it's okay when it's not okay. It sounds like 20 minutes of context and hedging and qualification before you actually get to say the thing you need. When I'm trying to drive this point home, I often ask if anyone can imagine a woman who wants to ask for something, like maybe a specific table at a restaurant. 

 08:37

But here's how she asks. Oh, I'm so sorry to bother you. It's totally not a big deal. I know you have a lot going on. But I was also wondering if maybe, possibly we could have a table closer to the window, maybe even right by the window, only if it's available though. 

 08:51

I know you're busy. It's totally okay if it doesn't work out. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. That's a more extreme version, but the heads are always nodding and chuckling because it's also a true extreme version. 

 09:06

It also looks like a woman hinting at something like you're on a road trip and asking if anyone else needs to go to the bathroom because you need to go to the bathroom, but you don't want to be the only one. 

 09:19

And you needing it is somehow not enough to say, hey, can we pull over at the next gas station? I need to go to the bathroom. Those might feel a little more extreme, but if you notice the ways that that is showing up for you, that is a clarity issue. 

 09:35

The skill of clarity is learning how to move toward the more direct end of the scale. Not necessarily all the way. I'm not saying that all communication should happen at a 10. I'm saying that a 10 should be accessible when you need it. 

 09:55

And that the way that you bring your values of kindness and respect and compassion definitely don't undermine the message. They complement it. So bucket two is vulnerability. And this one is different because it's not about the words. 

 10:17

Vulnerability is about access. It's about what you let people see. It's the difference between managing what you reveal, you know, carefully curating which version of yourself is visible at any given moment and actually letting someone in. 

 10:36

Vulnerability is on its own spectrum, you know, one to 10. On the one side, you are guarded, armored up, hyper-independent. I'm fine. I don't need help. I can handle this. You are stoic. You are competent and you are private. 

 10:53

You only share your struggles after they are resolved so that by the time anybody hears about them, they are already proof of your strength rather than evidence of your need. On the 10 side of the scale of vulnerability, you are open-hearted. 

 11:13

You are relational. You are emotionally available. You can say, you know what, I'm really struggling with this. You can tell people how much you appreciate them, how much you might love them, how much they mean to you. 

 11:27

You can admit to having feelings like shame or fear or anxiety because it doesn't mean anything negative about you. You're just a human having a human emotion. You can say, I need you. You can say, you are so important to me. 

 11:46

You can let the other person in front of you actually see you and not that curated, has it all together version, the real one. Someone who can communicate with vulnerability is strong and competent too. 

 12:02

They just believe that vulnerable communication is actually the door to more connection, more good feelings. And if the other person doesn't respond as they hoped, they don't make it mean that they were wrong to try. 

 12:19

Lack of vulnerability sounds like, I'm fine. And that's said behind a glass wall, right? You want people to only see what you allow them to see. It sounds like sharing parts of yourself, but it only goes to a certain depth and no further. 

 12:38

It looks like relationships that work, but don't really feel alive or satisfying or energetically delicious, right? To be sharing that much of yourself with another person. And because you're a highly competent woman, it ends up looking like being needed everywhere and truly known almost nowhere. 

 13:05

Here's the thing I want you to hear. Clarity and vulnerability are not the same problem, but they often show up together and confusing them and not knowing kind of which one to work on is one of the main reasons that hard conversations stay stuck. 

 13:24

Sometimes you lack clarity. You have an inkling of what you want. You don't know how to say the thing. You have been trained to soften and hedge and apologize. You've been so trained to soften and hedge and apologize that the words you have access to aren't the words you actually mean. 

 13:44

The skill you need is about finding more direct words and trusting yourself to use them along with your values of kindness and respect and compassion. Sometimes you lack vulnerability. You have the desire to be closer and express more of your inner world, but you feel trapped by the not knowing about how they will respond. 

 14:11

And something in you will not let the other person actually see what's true. That glass wall goes up. The armor goes on. You are good at delivering words clearly when it's about anything outside of you. 

 14:25

Naming facts is easy. And even letting, you know, some of your emotions show a little bit when it's on behalf of others, your kids, your clients, right? You can speak up and even be vulnerable for them. 

 14:38

But when it comes to you, your inner workings and desires and needs, that glass wall will just not let those words through. And sometimes, often actually, it's a combination of both, clarity and vulnerability. 

 14:55

So back to the story with my husband. That night on the trip, sitting across from him, I knew what I wanted to say. And by that point in our marriage, I had done enough work that I could find, you know, the language for what I was feeling. 

 15:13

And I could have described it, you know, very well. What I didn't have, what I had been actively preventing myself from having for eight years was the willingness to let him see it, was the fear of what would happen if he saw it, to let him see that I needed him, to let him see that I was afraid, that the wall I had been so carefully maintaining wasn't just about independence. 

 15:43

It was about protection. And it was keeping him out of the very parts of me that I most wanted him to reach. And the sentence I finally said, I'm so afraid that you'll leave me if I show you who I really am and what I want. 

 16:02

There was some clarity, right? But there was so much vulnerability in that clarity that it was about both of those things for me. And he responded with more love than I knew what to do with. And that moment changed everything for us. 

 16:20

It changed everything for me. And it's why I do what I do, because I want women to have those moments of intimacy and connection and vulnerability with the most important people in their lives. Because I love to think about this quote from Esther Perel, the quality of our relationships is the quality of our life. 

 16:46

You can't have a rich, rewarding life without rich, rewarding relationships. So for just a second, I want you to think about the conversation you haven't had. Maybe there's many conversations. Maybe there's one that sticks out. 

 17:03

It's maybe it's something that you have rehearsed. Maybe it's something that you just kind of feel in your chest. Maybe you kind of think about having different versions of it, but then you just in the moment, you can't say it. 

 17:18

Which bucket is it in? It might be a little bit of both. Here's something to consider. Are you stuck because you don't have the words? Because you've been so well trained to be accommodating, to soften everything, that you don't actually know how to say the direct version of what you want. 

 17:40

That's a clarity problem. The skill is about finding the more honest words and then building the muscle and the inner sturdiness to use them. Or are you stuck because there's tension between letting yourself be seen and how that might be perceived as weakness or neediness or too dreamy or silly. 

 18:03

Maybe you'll be looked at as someone who's lacking competence. Maybe you worry about being rejected, being too emotional. And your worries about those things just feel like an insurmountable task. So you just retreat behind that glass wall. 

 18:19

There's too much fear or shame or worry if you actually let the other person see what is true. That is the vulnerability bucket. And the skill there is a little different. It's about learning to stay. 

 18:34

And the skill there is actually exactly the same. It's learning how to manage the feelings in your body and have enough inner sturdiness to be able to let those emotions be visible instead of managing them into invisibility. 

 18:55

It's about being able to say the words that feel most true and vulnerable along with your values and then not caving under the emotion that it takes to say them. Here's what I want to leave you with. 

 19:11

When you think about either that conversation or the relationship that that conversation is a part of, I want you to just think about the one that feels the most stuck, the one where you know that there are true things that have not been said. 

 19:30

And I want to just give you three questions to ask yourself. First, what is my hunch about which bucket or buckets I need to draw from to move this relationship from this place of stuckness into something that feels more alive and satisfying? 

 19:51

What's my hunch about the buckets? Question number two. What is the first tiniest step in the direction of having that conversation I someday want to have? The first teeniest, tiniest, maybe feels a little scary or risky, but it's doable step that you could take. 

 20:14

And then number three, just let yourself sit with that first teeny tiny step. Let your nervous system feel a little activated about it, a little worry, and just sit with it and breathe your way through it until it passes. 

 20:30

That's giving your nervous system some reps that will actually expand your ability to feel uncomfortable and to be sturdy on the inside as you work through the emotions that are totally normal to feel. 

 20:45

Let me give you a personal example of how I used those steps. I have a son who loves to argue with me. I mean, he just relishes being the contrarian. And it was wearing me out. It was pissing me off. 

 21:00

It was making it so that every time he and I were going to have an interaction, it was almost like I was ready to fight with him. And sometimes I would overreact or I would come down harder on him than I might have otherwise because I just, everything was a fight. 

 21:16

And I started noticing some distance between us and I didn't like it. I knew that eventually I wanted to talk with him about this situation of like everything turning into a fight. And I knew that I was going to have to be both vulnerable and clear with him. 

 21:36

And I wasn't ready to address it directly yet. So I looked for that smallest, teensiest, tiniest step. And I just started touching him more. A short rub, you know, on the back when he was standing next to me, seeking him out for a good night hug, giving him knuckles, which he thinks is so lame when he did something that we were both proud of. 

 22:02

And I noticed that he started reciprocating. I mean, granted, sometimes it was trying to like jokingly wrestle me to the ground, but other times it was coming to me for a hug. And so then I took the next smallest step. 

 22:17

One day he was telling me about a TV show he was interested in watching and I said, hey, why don't we watch that together? He agreed. And I bought his favorite snacks and I jokingly said, because I couldn't say it directly, like, hey, if you want these snacks, which are all your favorites, you're going to have to come sit right by me. 

 22:38

He jokingly acted like I was asking him to saw off his right arm and that was the worst thing in the world. But then he came over and sat by me. It was months later before I really addressed the bigger fighting contrarian dynamic, but we got there. 

 22:55

And that's what I mean when I suggest, you know, those three steps. Something truly small and doable, even if it still feels a little risky. That's teeny tiny steps that I'm talking about where you can be successful and it moves you ever so slightly in the direction of having the conversation you want to have. 

 23:19

And when you're ready to learn how to move from where you are to where you want to be, the words and developing that inner sturdiness, that's exactly the work that we do together. Here's what I know, relationships that are deeply alive, the ones that feel mutual and real and nourishing, they are built on both, on clarity, the willingness to say the true thing, and on vulnerability, the willingness to let the real you be seen. 

 23:52

You cannot manage your way into intimacy. You cannot curate your way into being truly known. You cannot have those really deeply satisfying, true relationships where the real you is loved and known and celebrated. 

 24:13

If you're living behind that glass wall in your most important relationships, and it's totally possible to change. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.

Episode 160 - Staying Quiet Is Already Jeopardizing Your Relationships

There’s one sentence I hear more than any other from the women I work with when we’re talking about hard conversations. It usually sounds like, I know I need to say something… but what if they get upset, what if they don’t like it, what if they push back? Underneath all of it is the same fear: what if I jeopardize the relationship? In this episode, we’re looking at where that fear comes from and how it’s really impacting your relationships, because resentment, anxiety, and disconnection don’t go away when you stay quiet; they just build over time. Here’s what I cover:

• Why the relationship is already being affected when you don’t say what’s true

• The different ways fear can show up when you have something difficult to say

• Why staying quiet creates an edited version of you in relationships instead of real connection

• How loneliness builds when you’re in relationships where you aren’t fully seen or known

• A practical way to begin speaking up in your relationships, including a phrase to open the conversation

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

00:58

Hi, happy Wednesday. Short episode for you today because the constant avalanche of bullshit that we are living through right now, whether that is politically, especially in the United States, perimenopausally, if you are in my same demographic. 

 01:16

Yeah, it is a lot and it has made me appreciate small bite-sized things that are meaningful, that are simple, that work, that I can just take and think about. And so I want to talk today about the one sentence that I hear almost more than any other from the women that I work with when we are talking about how to have hard conversations, how to address things that hurt, things that don't work, things that need to change. 

 01:46

And it goes something like this. The person will say, I know I need to say something. Like I can tell in my body, I'm anxious, I'm angry, I'm resentful, I'm lonely, I withdraw. I find myself going to Netflix or shopping or just collapsing and kind of shutting down. 

 02:08

And I know I need to do something about it. And then the second part of that sentence, it varies a little bit, right? They'll say something like, what if they get upset? What if they don't like it? What if they push back? 

 02:20

What if it doesn't work out the way that I want? What if my emotions come up and I can't control them? What if the person thinks I'm too much or they misunderstand me? And so all of that is kind of the same fear as, what if I jeopardize the relationship? 

 02:41

What if, you know, this relationship is at this certain level right now, or it looks like this certain way? And what if when I say something, it changes and I'm not able to handle how it changes? It's just a kind of dread and fear mixture and the sense that something bad is waiting on the other side of you saying that honest thing. 

 03:08

And so the smartest move is to just stay quiet and continue to internalize everything. And I just want to spend some time with that fear today because it is real. It is very understandable. And it is also not telling you the entire truth because that fear wants to move you away from the quote unquote danger of the hard conversation, but we don't pay a lot of attention into where that fear is actually moving us. 

 03:39

Like what does it look like to live in the fear of, I can't speak up because I'm afraid of what it might do to the relationship. So first, let's just break it down a little more specifically because the fear isn't just one thing. 

 03:55

It shows up in a lot of different situations and maybe wearing different costumes. So specifically, though, what if they don't like what I say? What if they get mad? What if there's pushback? This usually is the woman who's already mentally run the conversation 27 times in every single possible version and tried to guess at every single possible reaction, the other person's face, their body language, 

 04:24

what they say, what they don't say. And they've already imagined that there's a look on their face of disapproval or the relationship gets cold or the other person says something that confirms her worst fear, which is, I'm asking for too much and I shouldn't have said that. 

 04:41

So that's one way that the fear shows up. Another way, what if they push back? And that's actually a little different because this means that the person is at least willing to start the conversation, but she's afraid of not being able to hold her ground once it starts. 

 05:02

That the other person will have whatever objection and push back a little bit. And she knows that the moment someone else pushes back, something in her is just going to collapse and cave in. And she'll end up either just apologizing for bringing it up at all. 

 05:20

And she will spend a lot of time berating and criticizing herself for bringing it up. And neither one of those sound like great options. So I'm just not going to bring it up at all. And then there's another version that is the most common. 

 05:36

It's the kind that just doesn't have words to explain it yet. It is just stuck. It's just like I feel this low level anxiety all the time. I'm walking on eggshells. I am really kind of trying to figure out what I could or might say, but it always just feels terrible. 

 05:56

And so I don't even really think about it much after that. It's just a quiet, chronic sense that something needs to be said, but I also can't say it. And I don't know exactly why. And these are all rooted in the same fear. 

 06:13

They are all different versions of I might lose something that I can't afford to lose, or I won't know how to deal with the loss of. And here's what I want you to understand about this fear. It did not come from nowhere. 

 06:32

It came from a very early, very rational calculation that most girls make before they're even old enough to know that they're making it. The research on this is crystal clear. Girls learn early that there is tension between honesty and belonging, right? 

 06:51

That you can't always have both. They learn that telling the truth can put relationships at risk. I want you to think back to your earliest memories of when you knew that someone was not happy with you. 

 07:06

An adult that you depended on for survival, that you needed to be able to safely navigate something, school, a teacher, a coach, a religious leader, a parent, and how your experience of that interaction with them taught you, oh, I can't tell the truth here. 

 07:30

Telling the truth about what's going on for me actually gets me in trouble. I don't, I'm not rewarded. I'm actually punished. And the punishment shows up in I'm separated, I am talked about, I am blamed, or I feel that the other person withdraws a little bit. 

 07:49

And so most of us, when we have that interaction, we learn to choose the relationships that we depend on for our survival. It's a no-brainer, right? Learning that the people in your world need you to be a certain way. 

 08:10

We learn that. And so that's how we accommodate and make ourselves smaller because the alternative, the loss of the relationship to a four-year-old or five-year-old or 13-year-old or 17-year-old or even 25-year-old, right, is so catastrophically dreadful that we're just not going to go forward with anything that would threaten that relationship. 

 08:36

And that makes so much sense. We go quiet. We smooth it over. We learn that the version of ourselves that is most likely to be loved is the version that asks for very little and manages everything and everyone without complaint, without need. 

 09:01

And that makes so much sense. I always want to start here. How does it make so much sense? We learn that when we're young and then we grow up. And now the threat is no longer like our survival, but it still feels like it. 

 09:18

That is the thing about conditioning this deep. It's not usually one event. Sometimes there can be one event, right, where you clearly remember, but it's like death by a thousand paper cuts. It is the hundreds and thousands of times that your human nervous system picked up on other people's disapproval and shrank back to the version that would get love and safety. 

 09:45

That is your nervous system doing what it is supposed to do. The one issue we run into as adults when we are talking about conditioning that is this deep is that your nervous system doesn't update automatically, right? 

 10:00

It doesn't update just because you grow up. Your nervous system is still running that old software that says, you know what? Silence is how you stay safe. Silence is how you stay loved. Editing, performing, like keeping myself this size is how I stay loved. 

 10:20

And here's the part that I want you to sit with. The fear says when we're older, right? If I say something in this relationship, I might jeopardize it. But here's what I want you to think about. What happens next? 

 10:39

So then you retreat, make yourself smaller, you swallow whatever it was that you were going to say or do. And where does that go? It goes into your body and it goes into your nervous system as proof that you can't or shouldn't say something. 

 10:59

And so what while our nervous system doesn't update to let us know, oh, you know what? Sara's an adult now, right? Sara doesn't depend on the same adults for belonging and security in the same way. 

 11:14

So we don't have to have this fear anymore. That doesn't happen. But what does happen is that every time I make myself smaller, every time I edit, every time I collapse, my nervous system takes that as proof that it needs to still run that same fearful program. 

 11:33

So that's the first thing that happens. It doesn't go away. It just gets buried. It doesn't get resolved. It just goes into this file folder of false proof that you need to stay the same small, edited, curated way. 

 11:51

The second thing that happens is that has an effect on the relationship. Think about it this way. If you've been holding back what you actually need and what you actually want, what you actually feel, your opinions, your dreams, your desires, if you've been holding that back for months or years, which is typical, then who exactly is in that relationship? 

 12:20

The other person isn't in a relationship with you, who you really are, what you really want, what you really desire and want to be, your dreams, your opinions. They're in a relationship with the curated version of you that has to be carefully managed so that they never feel uncomfortable. 

 12:44

And we don't think about that. We don't think about the fact that that actually isn't a relationship. It's a performance. It's not intimacy. It is a carefully curated version of that that has consequences. 

 13:02

And two of the biggest consequences are resentment and loneliness. We resent that we cannot be who we really want to be. And sometimes it comes out sideways. Sometimes it blows up when we try to get close to having a conversation. 

 13:19

And so it's the reverse. We want to make sure that we can have a conversation without all the resentment coming up, but it's the resentment that leaks out anyway, even when we don't feel like we can have an actual conversation. 

 13:33

So it's going to happen no matter what. The loneliness that comes from being in a relationship where you're never fully known is its own kind of jeopardizing. It's just quieter. It happens more slowly. 

 13:49

It doesn't ring loud bells and tell you, hey, you know what? This loneliness, this is because you don't really let anybody see or hear you. It just quietly hollows you out from the inside and weighs on you year after year after year. 

 14:06

And so here's what I want you to hear. The relationship is already at risk because you haven't spoken up. Not because you spoke up, but because you haven't. And there's one more relationship that is the most important. 

 14:25

And it is the relationship with you, your connection to you, your authentic understanding of who you really are. Every time you swallow the thing that you want to say, the true thing, every time you talk yourself out of asking for what you need, every time you decide that your honest experience is too risky to put into words, you are teaching your nervous system that it's not safe, but you are also disrupting and damaging the relationship that you have with you. 

 15:03

And the message is you can't be trusted with your own inner life, right? I can't even be honest with myself about what I need and want and that those needs aren't even safe with me, right? That is the relationship most at stake. 

 15:22

The self-abandonment that happens when we don't speak up creates internal disconnection. And so no wonder we have a hard time knowing what we want. No wonder we have a hard time knowing what a yes is and what a no is, because in trying to protect external relationships, we sever the one that we rely on the most to know what we want and to know what we want to do. 

 15:51

And that is the one with ourself. Okay. So how might we gently and practically begin to turn this around? A lot of times the question is, how do I know if the relationship that I am wanting to have a hard conversation about or this person that I want to bring something up with, how do I know that they might be receptive to that? 

 16:20

And how do you start feeling like, okay, I think there's something I can do here that isn't the equivalent of lobbing a grenade into the middle of the conversation. And I want to tell you about something that I've been navigating personally because I think it illustrates the real decision point better than, you know, any list of steps I could hand you. 

 16:43

Over the last several years, I've become increasingly aware of a dynamic with a family member that has started to not feel great. In our interactions, I've noticed that they like to talk over me, like to interrupt me with their own opinion. 

 17:02

They are not particularly curious about me, my life, my experience, my perspective. And when we would talk, it seemed like this person was more interested in showcasing what they knew and what they thought and their experiences. 

 17:19

And they weren't even aware of how I was going quiet on my end of the conversation. There was not a lot of reciprocity and we would spend time together and we would do things together and I could feel myself just, I couldn't wait till it was over, right? 

 17:37

I couldn't wait until I didn't have to feel the pressure of wanting to have a conversation, but I didn't think I could. And so I started to notice myself. I started to notice how I was responding to this. 

 17:54

I got quieter. I stopped talking as much. And then gradually I've just stopped reaching out and not wanting to spend time together. The relationship was already being affected, not because of anything like super dramatic, but because this slow, quiet withdrawal had been happening inside of me that is very normal to happen when we don't feel seen. 

 18:21

And so I want you to think about if this is something you notice in yourself, when you don't know what to do, you just kind of shut down and withdraw. It's very common. And so for a while, I just decided, you know, it's fine. 

 18:34

I don't need to say anything. I actually don't think there's anything wrong with what I call the slow fade, which is like, you know, gradually stepping back from a relationship that doesn't meet your needs anymore. 

 18:45

It's a completely valid choice and you are allowed to decide for any reason at any time that you don't want to continue to invest in a relationship that isn't working for you. There is no rule that you owe every relationship a conversation or even a hard conversation, any conversation at all. 

 19:03

And sometimes the smartest thing that you can do is just not show up. But when I thought about what I wanted to do, I have decided, and I haven't done it yet, that because of the sadness and the resentment that I was already feeling and kind of I had started the slow fade. 

 19:24

This person is always going to be my family member. And so I will continue to see them and interact with them. And I knew that the sadness and the resentment were going to start coming out eventually, probably sideways, probably in a moment that I didn't choose. 

 19:39

And I know myself well enough to know that saying nothing wasn't actually going to protect this relationship. It was just going to delay the inevitable while adding more weight to what I was already carrying. 

 19:55

So I'm going to address it, not to fix this person, not because I am sure that they are wrong or bad, but I'm going to say, hey, this is how I have been feeling and what I have been noticing. And I wonder if you can share your thoughts with me about that. 

 20:12

Because I'm open to the fact that I have a story going about this person and I'm interested in their feedback because the cost of staying silent, I'm already paying. I'm already dealing with the heaviness and making myself smaller and the dread and the guilt. 

 20:34

And so that's how I have decided to handle this. And I want to use that story as an illustration. First of all, my sense is that this other person would want to know how I am feeling. And so that's the first question that I would ask you and that I ask my clients is when you're thinking about saying something, and if you're trying to figure out if the relationship could be open to more depth, what's your best guess? 

 21:07

That is usually pretty spot on. And because we are not in charge of what other people decide to do, depending on the circumstances, sometimes that's enough. Like, for example, I've talked in previous episodes about how my relationship with my parents has really gotten smaller over the years since I decided to leave the church. 

 21:27

And I know that because of their particular makeup and how they think about the world, that's not going to change. And so I'm just making the best of what we do have. But sometimes there is the sense of, you know what, I do think this person would be open to hearing my experience. 

 21:48

And so look for openness, not perfection, because you're not looking for a guarantee that it's going to go your way. You're looking for small evidence that this person is capable of hearing you. Have they ever acknowledged being wrong about something? 

 22:04

Have they ever asked how you were doing and actually waited for an answer? You don't need them to have a perfect track record. You just need the sense that you matter to them and that if there were something wrong, that would concern them and that they would want to know about that. 

 22:23

And second, start with an invitation, not an indictment, right? One of my favorite ways to open a hard conversation. I said it just a few minutes ago. I'll say it again now. I've had something on my mind for a little while and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. 

 22:41

That phrase does a lot of work. Number one, it signals that you have been thoughtful and not reactive. And by the way, when we are angry and resentful, right, the thoughtfulness kind of gets erased when our anger takes over. 

 22:58

So this is a conversation that you want to have when you're not activated and when you're not upset from a calm place. Hey, I've been thinking about some things or I noticed something the last time we were together and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. 

 23:14

It signals that you're being thoughtful. And number two, it positions this as a conversation. You are interested in hearing their thoughts and it's not an ambush. It's not a, it's time to hold you accountable for this. 

 23:27

It opens a door and we just need to see if the other person will walk through. Next, start somewhere small. Don't go to your hardest conversation. If you have a group of girlfriends who go out to dinner and you never feel comfortable picking the restaurant because you feel like it's, you know, inserting too much of yourself, that would be possibly a great place to start, not with your boss or your partner that you've had, 

 24:03

you know, this resentful loneliness buildup for a long time, because it does matter to start somewhere smaller and safer, because that's how confidence gets built. Small victories and small wins really matter here because what your body will begin to notice is that, oh my gosh, I had this conversation in this small place, somewhere that felt safer, and I didn't die. 

 24:37

I survived. And that begins the collection by your nervous system of some different information, right? Then you can sit with what happened and hands on your chest, taking some deep breaths. Congratulate yourself. 

 24:53

We did it, right? We said what was true for us in this small way and nobody died. Here's the takeaway that I want you to sit with for today. What if I jeopardize the relationship makes a lot of sense? 

 25:09

And here's what I want you to know. It is already jeopardizing the relationship. The way that you have to perform and make yourself smaller and shut up when you can't say the thing is already having an effect on your relationship with that person and your relationship with yourself. 

 25:26

So if you have any questions about this, please send me an email, hello at seraphis.coach, or send me a DM, because here's what I know from working in my own life and with every woman I've worked with. 

 25:41

You deserve to have relationships where you are truly seen and known and where you don't have to present the managed version of yourself. Is that going to be every single relationship in your life? No, that's not how it works for humans, but one or two of them, yes. 

 25:58

And in your less important relationships, you deserve to be able to speak up and to show people more of who you really are and not just the managed presentation. And it decides with acknowledging that, you know, I have this fear that I'm going to jeopardize the relationship, but the truth is it's already happening. 

 26:19

Have a great week. See you next Wednesday.

Episode 159 - Why Your “Yes” Feels So Hard to Find

The reason you feel stuck is not because you’re weak or broken, even though your brain may be telling you that. You’re stuck because you’ve gotten so good at being fine for so long that you and everyone around you don’t know anything different. Even when you can understand that, there’s often another layer underneath it: this pattern is so ingrained that you don’t even know what you want anymore. In this episode, I’m breaking down why your “no” has become so loud, and how you can start to find your way back to your “yes” and the life you actually want. Here’s what I cover:

• Why your brain is already listing reasons something won’t work before your “yes” can fully form

• How years of deferring to everyone else can disconnect you from yourself and what you want

• How a part of you has learned to shut down your “yes” to protect you from disappointment

• Why you can’t logic your way past these patterns and what it looks like to build a relationship with them instead

• How learning to hear your “yes” again is a skill you can build by starting small and practicing over time

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

00:59

I got an email a few weeks ago that I've thought a lot about because it's so common. I had written to someone, I'll call her Valerie, and told her something that I don't think we talk a lot about. 

 01:11

I told her she wasn't stuck because she was weak. She wasn't stuck because she was broken. She was stuck because she'd gotten so good at being fine that she'd accidentally convinced everyone around her, including herself, that she was fine and didn't need anything or very much. 

 01:30

And then she wrote back and she said, this is so good. This is exactly how I feel. But the trouble is, what if you don't know anymore what you want? You just know what you don't. And I've been thinking a lot about that ever since because it is very common to hear that from the women that I work with. 

 01:48

And I think it deserves a real answer. So that's what this episode is about. Here's what I told Valerie. The no comes in loud and clear first because the resentment fueling it has been building longer. 

 02:04

The no has had years to accumulate evidence. It has a whole case file. And every time you went along with something you didn't want, there was a little entry in that case file. Every time you swallowed the thing that you needed to say, every time you showed up for everyone else and then came home empty. 

 02:25

I'm telling you, the no has receipts. The yes is quieter. And there are a few reasons for that. And I'm going to walk you through all of them because one of them might even be yours. Reason number one, the brain gets there first. 

 02:42

The first reason that yes is hard to feel is that your brain has gotten so fast at giving you all of the reasons that something won't work that intercepts that yes or the want before it can fully form. 

 03:00

And I'm not talking about conscious thinking. I'm talking about the split second response that happens before you even fully let yourself know that you want something or how much you want it. Here's what it feels like. 

 03:16

You start to feel a pull towards something, more connection with your partner, less obligation with a particular friend, or something that you actually really want to say at work. And before that desire can finish forming, your brain is already 10 steps ahead. 

 03:36

What if they pull back? What if they take it wrong? What if I say it and it makes everything worse? What if I want this and I don't get it? What if it causes problems? What if there's an argument? What if, what if, what if? 

 03:48

And suddenly you have a dozen reasons that are fully formed about why it won't work before the yes has even had a chance to really be fully formed itself. All the reasons why it is a yes. It's like the avalanche of all of that good girl programming of being responsible for other people's reactions, responsible for how the emotions that they're going to have, what happens, what if, what if, what if that avalanche starts subconsciously the second you're even pulled towards something you want. 

 04:27

And so it overpowers all the reasons why you might want to do the thing, want to say the thing, and that yes doesn't stand a chance. I want you to notice this happening to you because it is so subconscious and it is so sneaky. 

 04:45

And what ends up happening is we walk away thinking that we made a good decision and we're not necessarily happy with it, but it just seems self-evident that I can't have this for the avalanche of reasons. 

 05:01

And we never fully get to feel the reasons why we should have it, why we do deserve it, how it might feel to have it, how it might make life better, how it might make the authenticity and the richness that we want to be living our lives more fully formed and part of our lives. 

 05:22

The yes doesn't stand a chance. This is not something that's wrong with you, right? I love how our brains as women, we just go there like, oh, is there something wrong with me? No, it's not a character flaw. 

 05:37

This is just a nervous system that has been doing this job for a very long time. You learned early that wanting things out loud was risky and your nervous system gets very, very efficient at protecting you from that risk. 

 05:57

That is all that is happening. Reason number two, you lost the thread. The second reason is quieter and I mean, if I'm being honest, actually a little sadder, right? Sometimes you can't feel the yes because you have genuinely lost connection to yourself. 

 06:16

You've lost the thread back to you. When you have spent years, maybe decades organizing your life around what everybody else needs, what everybody else feels, what everybody else expects from you, your own wants go further and further down the list, if they're even on the list, and they start to feel even a little suspicious. 

 06:37

Like I talk to women who, when I ask them what they want, they go blank, not because nothing is there, but because they genuinely don't know how to access that part of them anymore. They know what needs to happen. 

 06:51

They know what is expected of them. They know what they should do to make other people happy. But what do they want? That's a different language. And it's almost like they've forgotten how to speak it or they stopped speaking it a long time ago. 

 07:05

I had a client once who told me that she hadn't had a preference about where to go out to eat for dinner in 15 years. She was not joking. She had just gotten so good at deferring, so practiced at saying, you know what, whatever you want, it's fine with me. 

 07:20

I don't mind. That she actually stopped knowing. And that preference had atrophied from disuse. If that resonates with you, if something in you just went, oh, okay, I think that's me. I want you to hear this. 

 07:36

Again, not a character flaw. It's not who you are. This is a pattern that you developed for good reasons to protect yourself from the disappointment and the punishment that did happen to us when we were younger, when we wanted things that we weren't supposed to want and got in trouble. 

 07:54

The problem is that system just does not update on its own. So you're still living in it. Reason number three, a part of you is protecting you from the yes. The third reason is one I want to spend the most time on because I think it's the most common and possibly the least understood. 

 08:14

Sometimes the yes is quiet, not because you don't know what you want, but because a part of you is trying to make sure you don't feel it. I know this sounds strange. I know, but here's what I mean. We don't have one unified inner voice. 

 08:31

We have many, many parts. And some of these voices, some of these parts have been doing a very specific job for a very long time, keeping you safe from the particular kind of pain that comes from wanting something and knowing you're not going to get it or not getting it. 

 08:53

Wanting something out loud is very vulnerable. Asking for something means you can hear no. The other person can say no. Letting yourself know what you actually want in your marriage. Maybe you want to be more connected, right? 

 09:10

That you want your friendships to be more reciprocal, that you actually want something different in your life. That comes with risk attached. The risk of being disappointed, the risk of rejection, which is one of the most awful feelings that a human can feel. 

 09:27

The risk of finding out that maybe the people that you love might not want to give you more of what you need. So there is a part of you, a protective part, a part that has genuinely been trying to keep you safe, that has learned to do that by intercepting the yes before it becomes a want that you can actually feel and really develop. 

 09:53

Because you can't be disappointed by something that you never wanted in the first place or never allowed yourself to fully want. And so that's the protection mechanism is if I squash this yes, if I squash these little inklings, right? 

 10:07

If I squash these desires before they're even recognizable, then you won't be disappointed. And let me give you an example from my own life. For years, I would feel these little flickers, these small moments of wanting to be closer to my husband. 

 10:24

He would walk into the room and I would feel a little pull toward him. He would sit down and I would want to snuggle in and wrap his arm around me and just be really overly affectionate. At least it seemed to me at the time that it would have been overly affectionate. 

 10:39

And sometimes it felt like longing and it was stronger than others. But other times it was just kind of like a little pull. But before that pull or flicker could even finish forming into a sentence or a plan, my protector part voice was already there and saying, that's gross. 

 11:01

That's needy. He's going to think you're weird. He's going to think you're weak. Wanting someone that much, that's gross. We're not going to do that. You're too much. Don't. And just like that, it was gone, intercepted. 

 11:14

And I didn't even really experience it as a loss because it happened so fast. I was fine. There was just this part of me that was shutting down something that could potentially hurt me. And it was doing that because it had learned to protect me from the specific pain of reaching towards someone that I loved and having that reach go unreciprocated, not land the way I had hoped. 

 11:43

That was a part of growing up for me, reaching, wanting closeness, wanting affection, wanting to be cuddled and cared for and not getting it. So this part had just cataloged all the times that maybe I had tried a little bit and he hadn't reacted the way I wanted. 

 12:00

So this part was just protecting. It can be dramatic and it can be loud, but the efficiency is really what is amazing. It shuts down the yes before you can feel it long enough to want it. And this is actually where parts work becomes one of the most amazing, effective, useful tools that I know. 

 12:20

The basic idea, and I'm going to simplify a little bit here for the sake of understanding basic principles, there is a much deeper body of work that underlies this. And so the basic idea is that instead of fighting those parts that seem to be getting in the way, we get curious about them. 

 12:40

Instead of trying to override them and just push through and make ourselves do something, we get to know them. We find out what they're actually afraid of, what they are trying to protect us from, and what they would need to feel or the support that they would need in order to feel safe enough to stand down just a little bit. 

 13:01

Because here's what I have learned after a lot of years doing this work. You cannot logic your way past a protective part very effectively, if at all. You might be able to override it momentarily, but it's hard and it doesn't last. 

 13:16

You cannot continually override it with just willpower. And you can't read enough self-help books to make it stop running the show. But you can build a relationship with it. I have sat down with clients and I mean brilliant, capable, emotionally sophisticated women who have been trying to figure out what they want for years. 

 13:38

They have journaled, they have listened to all the podcasts, they have read the books, and they could describe their patterns with a lot of clarity, but they still couldn't feel a really strong yes. And when we got quiet and went looking for the part that has been squashing that yes, the part that has been trying to protect them from feeling what they actually want so they don't get disappointed, 

 14:02

something shifts. The part doesn't disappear, but it feels seen. And sometimes that's when the yes comes through. I want to say this clearly because I think it's probably the most important thing in this episode. 

 14:17

If you don't know what you want, if you can feel the no, but the yes is harder, you are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not uniquely damaged. You are not the one person that this won't work for. 

 14:29

You are just a woman who learned a long time ago that wanting things wasn't safe, was painful, her needs come last, and I'm probably going to be disappointed. And you shouldn't have to live the rest of your life that way. 

 14:46

The yes is in there. It's just underneath a very intelligent, very sophisticated, very understandable, well-worn crew of protectors that your whole nervous system built to keep you from getting hurt. 

 15:03

Learning to hear the yes is a skill. It's a practicable, learnable, yours forever skill. And like any skill, it starts somewhere small. We are humans. Wanting is part of our experience. Desiring, needing, it's baked into this experience, and you deserve to feel that. 

 15:25

You deserve to know what it is that you don't want just as much as you deserve to know what you do. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.

Episode 158 - When Speaking Up Changes Your Life with Jessica Carlson

If you’ve been curious about what it looks like to say what you need to say in practice, today you’ll hear from someone who found her outside voice and is using it to create the life she wants. Jessica Carlson has spent years serving others—as a pastor’s wife, a mom, a teacher, and now supporting college students in getting the resources they need. Jessica and I first connected over our shared background in high-demand religion, and since we began working together, I’ve watched her life transform. She learned to speak up messily and imperfectly, and to support herself through hard conversations that once felt impossible. Jessica’s journey is a powerful example of how everything can shift when women use their voices, not just for themselves, but for the kind of change they want to see in the world. Here’s what we cover:

What Jessica’s life looked like when she first joined the Stop People Pleasing group

The power that comes from realizing you get to choose the kind of discomfort you feel in relationships

Why the goal isn’t always to say no, but to understand you have that option when you need it

How a simple step-by-step process helps you find the right words and practice speaking up

Jessica’s journey of running for public office and the changes she has made by working on this skill

Jessica Carlson is a university career coach and former high school teacher. She lives in the midwest with her husband of 23 years and 2 children, both in college. She has a bachelor’s in English and secondary education and a master’s in education. She was raised in a fundamentalist high-demand religious context and then married a Christian pastor through which church experiences compounded the people pleasing she learned at an early age. At her core, she serves people but that service as a wife, mom, teacher, and community member caused her to lose herself. Jessica is a reflective thinker and someone who cares deeply about connection and meaning but has only recently realized that her voice matters and that it is powerful and she can impact systems. She is especially drawn to conversations about how we unlearn the pressure to be everything for everyone, and what it looks like to choose ourselves, sometimes for the first time.

Find Jessica here:

instagram.com/jess_c7072

tiktok.com/@queenbee7072

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

Sara Bybee Fisk 00:59

I'm so excited for today's conversation. It is with one of my very most favorite people, Jessica Carlson. I'm so grateful for your time and your willingness to come on the podcast today, and I just wanted to tell people a little bit about you, is that okay? 

Jessica Carlson 01:14

It's great. Yes. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:15

Okay, Jessica is one of these amazing people who just at her core, she loves to serve people. And she has spent a lot of time in service as the wife of a pastor, a mom, a teacher, and now she works with college students, making sure that they get all the educational resources that they need. And I think Jessica, you and I kind of initially connected over our shared background in high demand religions, right? 

Jessica Carlson 01:45

Yes. Yeah. I met you through another coach that you came on with our group there and presented your material as a partner coach. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, wait a minute. I think at my core, this is my issue. Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 02:03

Yeah. Yeah. And it is for so many women. And one of the things that I notice about you, Jessica, and the thing that has kept us in conversation is that Jessica is a really deep thinker and something will trigger a thought for you and you'll DM me or you'll email me. And so we're constantly kind of in this little conversation back and forth about, I noticed this and then I did this and Jessica, if you have one strength, it's that you just keep going. You keep implementing the things that we have learned together. You keep implementing other things you've learned other places and it's, I would say, and I'm wondering if you're going to agree with this, that your life two or three years ago when we met looks very different now than what it looked like then. Is that fair? It looks so different. Yes.Okay. Well, that's what I want to talk about because if we can kind of boil it all down to what is the one thing, the one or two things that you have really learned to do over and over again, and you have learned to do them messy, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to come out exactly right, but you have learned to speak up. I have. Yeah. Yeah. And you've learned how to support yourself as you speak up and say things and have hard conversations and communicate ideas that at one point would have really been scary for you. Is that fair to say? That's, that's exactly right. Okay. So let's get into it. When you first started working with me in the Stop People Pleasing group, what was life like for you then? 

Jessica Carlson 03:43

I felt broken. I didn't know really how to make decisions for myself. I felt kind of at a crossroads in a lot of ways. I was about to be an empty nester. I had left the classroom. I had been a teacher for 20 years. I was struggling with my identity. I was just in the midst of taking a new job that I was like, it was a totally like really new industry for me. I didn't know how to advocate for myself in what I needed in my personal relationships and my professional relationships. And the things that you said, it really resonated with me. And I didn't really believe you that I could do it. I mean, I'll be honest. I was really skeptical, but I was desperate. And I was like, she's so hopeful and she says it will work. And I just need someone to tell me that. And I was like, okay. And you said, just do one thing. I'm like, okay, I can do one thing. Just one thing. And so I learned that advocacy piece by piece because the things that you said really fit with my struggles. And that's kind of where I was at.And I feel like my inside my core is totally different. It's more authentic to who I originally was, like how you talk about our little me. I'm sure a lot of the speakers have or the listeners here have heard you talk about a little me and who my little me was and how she was looking towards like the future. And so that was something that really inspired me to do this work. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 05:20

Well, that doing just one thing, I mean, that has really, really been the way you've revolutionized your life. And we're getting into specifically what that looks like.When you look back, that lack of advocacy, like lack of ability to advocate for yourself, my guess is, and I think we've talked about this, like you were able to advocate for your students or for other people who couldn't speak up, but when it came to your, yeah, your own kids, your students, other people who depended on you, but it was in your own personal life around some tender, hard things that were happening there that you didn't feel like you could speak up. Is that fair to say? 

Jessica Carlson 06:01

No, I was totally a coward I was and I was bringing it all inward which just like I That's why I felt so broken is Bringing it all inward and I felt that that was what I was that was my sacrifice and like we're supposed to be Sacrificing like I was from a very young age like you said in the high demand religion background The woman is the one that sacrifices and that is supposed to be this beautiful thing and there's certainly a part of it like in Relationships you do sacrifice if there's a healthy part of that, but you also can lose yourself in that so I lost myself completely and so I thought when you started with identity and who are you and like What do you want like your dream?I'm like, um Like I can have one of those Like you gave me permission to dream

Sara Bybee Fisk 06:53

that makes me so happy because that's what I want. I want women to be able to look at their life and create and imagine and dream. And I'm really glad that you felt like you saw permission to do that.When you look back at where that lack of advocacy or lack of ability to speak up was showing up in your personal life, was it around specific situations? Was it in specific relationships? 

Jessica Carlson 07:25

I would say that let's start at the bottom, like the easier ones, the hard ones. So in my professional life, I knew I had great ideas. I knew I was really a master in my field. I was a national board certified teacher if anyone knew what that is. And yeah, I would even have an administrator at the end of the year saying, you need to speak up more to your team. Like you need to tell them these ideas. You tell them to me and like, you need to do that. And I still, I wouldn't because I didn't want to, you know, be contrary to anyone's viewpoint. And I didn't know how to do conflict. And conflict is bad, bad, bad, bad. And I didn't want people to not like me. That was a big deal.And I want to be like the nice person that was everyone's friend. And like, you can still be that way and also not lose yourself. And so professionally, I would just do my thing, but I didn't really kind of, I think, speak up when I wanted to. Again, I would just say, oh, it's not my place. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 08:33

I noticed you said just a second ago, I was, I was a total coward. And I'm wondering, like we know, we know through, you know, decades of studies and books and personal experience that women are programmed and taught to care for relationships over themselves.And so what I wonder is in like your professional life, I hear some defaulting to taking care of the relationship between you and the other people on your team over your ideas that might raise some conflict or, you know, there might be some explaining or some, some questions. And I know that that can feel in retrospect, or maybe even when it's happening like cowardice, but does it also feel like it was part of how you, you were taking care of those relationships through maybe some compliance and performing what you thought they wanted you to be? 

Jessica Carlson 09:30

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I didn't want to cause anything that would make it more difficult to be in relationship with each other. I didn't want to feel uncomfortable in that way, but I knew that I was choosing another kind of discomfort.And that discomfort was just imploding. And I didn't know what to do with it. And so learning that there's two kinds of discomfort, and I get to choose the discomfort that I would want. That was mind blowing. I'm like, wait a minute, I don't like this discomfort in holding in and not saying what I believe is right or what in that case, like what my students would need or really like standing up for individuals that, you know, might be marginalized or being hurt in some way by the system. And I was like, wait a minute, like, which is worse? Which discomfort is worse and which one do I want to choose and envisioning that discomfort? Then I was it was a no brainer. I'm like, wait a minute. Like if I can handle this discomfort, I can handle that discomfort. I just never thought it was an option. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 10:42

That is something I talk a lot about, and I just want to give a good example so that if people listening for the first time aren't familiar with what you're talking about, when we are stuck in people pleasing patterns where we're not speaking up, we're not telling people what we need, we are not advocating for ourselves or boundaries, our preferences, that is uncomfortable. We feel overworked, we feel alone, we feel resentful, we feel, you know, there's a lot of negative emotions, but we're just kind of used to it because that's the way we've lived our whole lives.I was also a teacher, I also had a team, right? I didn't want them to be mad at me for suggesting something that would take more time or something that they didn't want to do. So I'm really familiar with that dynamic, but any woman who has been raised in our kind of Western patriarchal way is going to feel that pressure in a group where I don't want to stick out, I don't want them to be mad at me, and that's one type of discomfort. But then there's the other kind of discomfort of I'm not speaking up clearly, I'm not getting what I need, I'm working late or long, I'm taking work home with me because I'm not able to say what I need to say. And so once it becomes clear, like if I stay stuck in this pattern where I can't say what I need to say, I'm gonna experience this type of discomfort for the rest of my life, or I can lean into the discomfort of speaking up because it's uncomfortable either way. And seeing that and being empowered to choose, I actually want to choose the discomfort of speaking up because I like what that's gonna get me, I like the direction that that's gonna take my life. 

Jessica Carlson 12:32

Just to give another tangible example, the very first thing that I tried, because you're like, just try this with one little thing. It wasn't a professional thing. It was with my daughter. And we have always been super supportive parents. Whenever the kids were doing something, had an activity like we were there unless there was a conflict like many other parents would. But I also would sacrifice my own personal needs to do that. And I didn't I didn't even consciously I thought, well, I'm not supposed to balance that. I have to be there 100 percent for my kid, because if I'm not there, even one percent, like I've failed as a mom, I was like, I had a way way too high expectations for like what I could be as a mom.And I remember you said, just try one. No, like try like what discomfort do you want to feel? And like try saying no to one of those things and saying yes to the other. And my daughter had a concert now. She is she was she played the flute. She was in the marching band, the concert band, all of that. She had lots of concerts and it like wasn't even her senior year. So we're not even talking like a high stakes concert. And I realized that I had so much to do at home. I was so overwhelmed. And I could have chosen number one to go to her concert and to deal with that continued overwhelm and manage my time. Stay up late, wake up early, whatever that could. Could be, or I could manage the discomfort of saying, can't come to this one. I have to, you know, do this one thing because this is also important for this other area of my life. And I thought to myself, I said, which one is easier right now? Which one do I want to choose? And I said, I need to choose saying no to her concert. And I thought in my mind, OK, my reasons are I've been to every single concert in the last six years, which is actually legitimate. She's been that much. Yes. And I hadn't missed a single one. And I had put so much weight on missing one thing. I'm like, wait a minute. There's parents that don't go to any of them. Yeah. I'm like, I can say no to one concert because I am so overwhelmed. I need sleep. I need to do X, X, X, X. And she was fine. I'd worked up in my mind that it was going to be the end of the world. And she said, oh, mom, that's no big deal. I understand. I was like, wait a minute. That was so easy. And I stayed home. I wasn't even guilty. I was like, this is I'm like, what if I did this all the time? 

Sara Bybee Fisk 15:01

And why do I do this all the time? Yes. 

Jessica Carlson 15:06

Now I can't say I do it all the time, but I do it a lot of the time now. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 15:09

I do want to say the goal is not to do it all the time, right? The goal isn't that you say, no, no, no, I'm not showing up. I'm not showing up for you. I'm not going to that. I'm right that the goal isn't to always say no. The goal is that you have a choice. And what I heard and what you were saying is that before you didn't actually feel like you had a choice to either go to the concert or not. It's feeling obligated like you're a bad parent, a bad mom, if you don't go. And so playing around with when do I need something different? And do I have the option to do what I need? That's the goal.Because this is a really kind of common misconception when I'm talking with women about what it's going to look like when they can say what they need to say, when they are not so stuck in people pleasing. Their concern is, well, I'm just going to be bitchy. I'm going to be selfish. I'm going to alienate all the people who depend on me and love me. And again, that's not the goal. And I think it's interesting. We've been so programmed by patriarchy that the opposite, like a woman who can say what needs to be said and who can advocate for herself. She's a bitchy, selfish woman, right? That's so sneaky. But subconsciously, I think keeps a lot of us from leaning into, where can I say no? Where can I say, you know what, that doesn't work for me. But what I can do is this, or I don't have time in my schedule this week for that. It keeps us from looking for those places. 

Jessica Carlson 16:54

I think part of it too for me is like, as, as a child, I was raised that, I mean, there obviously had been shown a chart. There was a chart that had an image of a man, an image of a woman, and it was in a big red book and it was on the shelf in the family room and my dad would pull it out. And I thought that was the way it was supposed to go.And even though in my then like romantic relationships and ultimately my marriage, like the, those connections never said that was the way it was. I didn't walk into relationships that were like that. Actually, I saw relationships that were contrary to that. That was so ingrained in me that even though I was in relationships that were freeing and that were encouraging me to express myself, encouraging me to, you know, advocate for my needs, I still was a girl looking at that chart. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 17:50

And the chart, just to be clear, was hierarchy, right? Like men are on top. Right. And then women and then children. 

Jessica Carlson 17:59

Because then in another specific way that I learned to advocate for myself was some extended family relationships with males in my said family who had kind of asserted this dominance that even though I have lived separately, I've been married for 23 years and they assumed that their opinions were correct. And then I started speaking out about my opinions.They didn't like it. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 18:25

I like that. I wanna hear more about that. 

Jessica Carlson 18:30

So, at risk of being political, like the most recent election happened. We're political here, yeah.Okay, all right. I have no problem being political, because the big ending piece of this is now I'm running for public office. So. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 18:47

Oh, my goodness, Jessica, what an amazing development and announcement. That's incredible. OK, how did you get there? 

Jessica Carlson 18:55

First of all, like little itty-bitty roles. Like we're talking about townships in my state. Like- 

Sara Bybee Fisk 19:00

does it matter? This is okay. So back to the beginning. 

Jessica Carlson 19:04

I probably in college when I left home was in a pretty diverse university environment that embraced like lots of different faiths, lots of different like beliefs. I started to realize, okay, wait a minute, the way that I was raised, there was so many rich parts of that. So if my family is listening to this, like so many rich benefits to my upbringing. So, you know, I was never really traumatized. I was never abused in any way, you know, physically or mentally.And so I started to go to think like, wait a minute, that there's something wrong with that hierarchy. It's causing not just me, but the broader population of women to be in a state that's not healthy. And so I did start to kind of break away from that. But my opinions in terms of maybe political issues, but also societal issues of how we treat others, like really started to deviate from how I was raised. And especially then still continuing to be in a church environment, I was a pastor's wife. And so I felt I could not express my beliefs, because they were still contrary to many people. And it was also risky, because then that potentially like jeopardizes my husband's position because people can assumptions and oh my gosh, he has this wife that she's so liberal and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.And so and when I did speak out, there was huge repercussions. There was conjure congregation members that said like negative things about our family, we did us on Facebook, which I thought like the world was ending, because I got deleted on Facebook, because again, I didn't I couldn't deal with the conflict. And even though there was like big things at stake. And so when the 2024 election happened, and I realized there's really high stakes now, there's really high stakes for people in my community and people that I love. And I was already working with you, I was already realized that I had stifled all of these beliefs and opinions for decades. And so I said, you know what, whatever, like, I should just start speaking out because people are getting hurt people that I actually know in my community are getting hurt by what was happening at the federal level.And of course, I live in a very conservative state. So there was continued like action to to like, legitimately hurt marginalized people that I care for both in my university setting. And then you know, in my small rural community where I live. And I just started saying my opinion on Facebook. And I was like, you know what, let the chips fall as they may, like, like, I felt like I have nothing to lose. Because again, the discomfort I had chosen for so long is I am going to bottle up myself, I am not going to be me outwardly, I'm just gonna be me like inwardly. And I was done. I'm like, the discomfort I want is potentially causing someone else to feel this discomfort because they realize maybe like, oh, she thinks differently. I'm like, I can't do that anymore. And so it finally came to a head when I said some potential controversial things. And my dad replied to my Facebook. And he said some really mean things at me, like things that I would never actually think he would say he he called me names. 

Jessica Carlson 22:44

He talked back and forth to another person in the comments in a really kind of, I would say within hateful way. And he had never really talked that way before.But those were all these talking points I was raised with as a kid, you know, like, it actually was a sin to be a Democrat. Like, that was very much ingrained in me. And when I was expressing those ideas, then I felt, okay, this is risky. And I had to be very direct with him. And I sent him a message is probably the hardest message I ever sent. And I said, this is what I believe. And part of the reason I believe this is because you raised me to serve and love the least, the last and the lost. And this is where it's led me. And if you don't like it, you can delete me. Which years ago, that was, that was something I was trying to avoid. And I was like, you know what, like, I'm gonna be me regardless. And I said, if you continue to mistreat me. you, I will delete you. I will not tolerate being mistreated. And so that was significant for me to, to finally have a boundary before I was thinking about boundaries. I'm like, but they were like wishy washy boundaries. And I was like, no, I don't, I'm not going to be mistreated anymore. I'm not going to be called names. I'm not going to have people to tell me that my opinion doesn't matter. And I love my dad, you know, in a lot of ways, like all of this good stuff in me is also from him. Those were ideals I was raised with, but I had to advocate for myself in that moment. And that was incredibly difficult. And he never replied.No, he read it. He never replied. Yeah, but he also didn't delete me. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 24:47

Jessica, I love that story so much and I have some questions. First of all, what did it feel like to go through that process, to see his messages, then to know you had to respond and then to respond? 

Jessica Carlson 25:03

Well, at that point, we, like I had worked with you for at least six months. So when it happened, I was like, oh, like it was all of the holy rage in me. And I was like, I mean, in kind of a way, I was thinking like, this has to happen and it has to happen fast. Like I was even actually out of the state on a trip when this happened. And I said, I cannot wait for this. Like I have to, I have to speak up right now. This is the opportunity I cannot wait because waiting would actually give him power. And so the words actually came really quickly to me because I had practiced all those smaller steps. Well, it was really difficult. And I kind of, you know, I like milled over that conversation. I was laying out like all the words in that message, but it was really empowering to tackle something that big, especially because I was able to do it out of a place of love. And I felt like you had taught us, you know, those 10 steps, how, and you might have to fill people in on this. So you say things at the maximum level, the way you probably wouldn't like respond to someone, but you just get it all out. And then you think about, okay, if it's a little bit less, right, like how do I soften that? And you talked to us about the softener. So I said, you know, I want to actually maintain this relationship. I didn't want to cut it off. I mean, ultimately he could have chosen that, but ultimately I finally wanted it to be his choice because I was laying out like, this is what I need from you. And to be in relationship with me, either in person or online, whatever that looked like, like this is what I need and this is what I expect. And if you don't meet those expectations, that's on you. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 26:50

Okay, I love that so much. Oh my gosh. The process that Jessica is talking about, you can hear about it in episode 23, Say What You Want to Say. It's a process for finding the right words, and that's what she's talking about. My question coming back to your story though is, how did you know that you could do it? How did you know that you could have such a difficult conversation with arguably one of the hardest people? I think our parents, for a lot of us, are some of the hardest people to really have these conversations with. How did you know that you could do it and survive? 

Jessica Carlson 27:29

I think because of being in a group with the other women and hearing that they were struggling the same way and the way that you start with the celebrations and the way that a lot of them had tackled really difficult conversations. And it started to let me know, just kind of on the back end of my brain, I was still thinking like, I can't ever do that, I can't ever do that.But I was doing it in little ways, I was doing it at work, I was doing it in my parenting. And so remembering that, oh, wait a minute, you know, Janie, she did that really big thing. And that was incredible. And I was like, wait a minute, that could be me too. And she talked about how freeing it was and how now she's thinking about like, what's next for her and she's making these decisions. And I'm like, wait a minute, I want that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 28:21

Well, that is the power of being in a group, right, is that we can see our lived experiences in other people's lives. We don't feel so extra special, super broken because we're like, wow, she is struggling with this exact same thing.And so many of us internalize that our lack of capacity is something wrong with us. And so being able to be in a group where you can hear other people working through some of the same issues, you can see the success they're having, it's so magical. 

Jessica Carlson 28:54

It is. It really is.I'll be honest, I kind of doubted it at the beginning. But again, I was in a position where I was like, okay, this is me. And I just have to take the one step. One step at a time, like you told us. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 29:07

Yeah. So what are some of the other changes? I mean, running for public office and do not diminish it and say it's just a little, you know, little county position. That is a big deal.Tell me about some of the other changes that you've noticed in yourself. Like what are you able to do now? 

Jessica Carlson 29:32

So I think it's definitely more automatic for me to know that no is a full answer for my time and my capacity. And so I can say that and not feel guilty because I get to protect my time. I get to protect my energy. I get to protect what I need to do, what I want to do. And that wanting is really what drove that. I'm like, oh, I actually can want things because before I feel like I never really could do that. And so it's now become kind of automatic that like even last week I have a friend that messaged me with this really cool opportunity to like work with students and to do this little thing and be a part of impacting the system. I was like, wait a minute. I am already doing a lot of things. A lot of things already give me life. This is a really cool thing. But if I choose that, I have to not do da da da da da da. And almost immediately I was like, nope, can't do it. Thanks for thinking of me. Such a compliment that you thought of me. But those things are coming really fast to me where before it's like I had to really take a pause. And you also talked about giving time and space. So I remember being on a phone call with someone and they asked me something and I said, at first I was gonna jump in and say, yes. I was like, wait a minute, Sara said that it's okay to say, oh, I gotta think about that, I'll get back to you. Like that's a normal response. But to me, that was also life changing. And so then I realized, wait a minute, I can take that minute and then realize, I do not wanna do that at all. And I can say, no, I'm sorry, not available. And that's a full answer.Also a full answer to say, I don't have the capacity for that. Yes, and I have said that so much in the last six months and no one has challenged me. I expected in my mind, I had worked at this whole thing. Oh, when I say that, people are gonna say, oh wait, but you're so good at this or you can do this or we really need you. And I'm like, I thought through it. I decided for myself, I don't have the capacity for this. And they're like, okay. And I was like, wait, why did I work that up in my mind? 

Sara Bybee Fisk 31:49

That's how we're programmed, right? We have these worst case scenarios. And I do think there are times when that does happen, right? There are times when we try to set a boundary or a limit, or we try to make our preferences known. And it happens when we're children and the adults are like, no, you don't matter. What you want doesn't matter. And so we quickly learn what matters more is what other people want, their time, their energy. And we just kind of fold ourselves around that. And some of it we do because we have to, because kids, right, we both have children. They need to be taken care of when they need to be taken care of. And so that kind of sacrificial way of life that we get into just becomes the way we do everything.But what I love, and you just spoke to this over and over in our group coaching, that worst case scenario where we lose the relationship or people are mad at us or they don't like our reasons, that is rare. What is much more common is people adjust. And people say, yeah, that makes sense. 

Jessica Carlson 32:58

I think the next step, and this kind of heads into the public office, is that my role in the community kind of changed because I went from a K-12 setting to where I'm in a higher education setting. I don't have any stake in the community as far as my financial status. I'm not getting paid by anyone in my area. My kids are graduated. I don't have any risk to their position, and that was a huge deal as a teacher. I can't do anything that makes anyone mad because ultimately we all know people retaliate against your kids. At that point, we were actually not serving full time in a church anymore, so I was a little bit removed from that, still involved very much in Christian ministry, but I didn't have that high stake anymore. My former colleagues were in a really terrible, and still are, a really terrible circumstance in my former district. And because I was a safe person, I understood the issues, I understood the people that were driving these big problems in the district that they didn't have anyone to talk to. So they all reached out to me, numerous people were reaching out to me like, did you hear what's happening? I'm like, yeah, it's awful. Like, I don't, I'm so sorry, your experience is they would just vent all of the problems because they couldn't talk about it openly because in lots of systems and workplaces, if you talk openly about the problems, you're done. Or if you confront the problems, you're done. I think especially in schools, this is the case. And so I was like, oh my, they need help. And I have zero risk, zero risk, what people in my community don't like me, I already now don't care because I can be me and I can advocate for what I want to advocate for.So I started speaking up in a real way that made people really uncomfortable. I started writing letters to the editor. I made public posts on Facebook, directly addressing the problem, calling out the people that were causing the problems. And I went to school board meetings that were broadcasted live, calling out names. I had teachers that wrote whole scripts. And I stood up and said, your teachers wrote this and they can't be here to speak it because they'll face retaliation, but I'm going to tell you right now. And so that kind of started this, I don't know, this trickle effect of, wait a minute, like, I'm not afraid anymore to speak up for what I think is right. And for also listening to people, I'm very good at facilitating conversations. I mean, as a teacher, we just said that, you know, and meeting people in the middle and I'm an Enneagram nine. And so I'm all things to all people. And then I started getting involved in local politics and understanding how that kind of worked. I'm already kind of a nerd, like a history kind of nerd. And I had been involved in some education policy work a couple of years ago that kind of set the stage for that. And so all of a sudden these, they were talking about, oh, well, you can be in this position and you just help people know where to vote. 

Jessica Carlson 36:20

Like, oh, well, that's really easy. It's called in Indiana, it's called being a precinct chair. I was like, oh, I just help people know where to vote. Like all people, hey, that sounds so great. Like everyone should vote.Like, that's really easy. And they're like, oh, wait, you can be a state delegate. And you get to go to Indianapolis and you get to be at this big convention and you get to decide who's going to run for state office. And I was like, wait a minute. That sounds pretty cool. Like I could do that for one day. And then I was reading all the positions. I'm like, that's not very much work. Like I like I could do more. And I started looking at the various duties like, well, you can also be a township board member and you get to decide how a portion of your taxes are spent in your township. And for me, that's like, I don't know, that's maybe a 10 mile block of land and the couple hundred people that live here. I was like, wait, we have money that we spend. They're like, yes, you fund the fire department to come when there's a problem. You fund the cemeteries, you pay the library so you can get a library card. I'm like, oh, like there's people that decide that. And I could talk to my neighbors and find out what they need. Like that's so cool. And so like now I'm going to be on a ballot to do these things. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 37:38

I mean, if you're seeing the YouTube version of this, I'm grinning ear to ear, because just to see you open up this way, right, to go from someone who was afraid to speak up for herself to speaking up, not just for others, but in such a public way, running for public office, allowing your name to be put on a ballot where people are literally going to vote, right, for you. Jessica, that is just that's such an incredible transformation.And I just have to ask, what do you think of yourself now? 

Jessica Carlson 38:18

whatever I want. And I don't mean that in a way of like, I'm gonna like, bulldoze over people.Of course. Yes. Yeah. I can rashly think of what am I really good at? How can I help people within the capacity that I choose? And then how can I use the time that I have? Not only for myself when I need it, but for other people when they need it. And I actually understand how I could balance that all. And I can look to the future and decide what I want in the future too. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 38:56

What I think is just incredible is that this is the theme that shows up, I mean, over and over and over again. I have a choice.I know how to use my voice and because I know how to do that, now I have options. I can create the type of life that I'm really interested in creating for myself. I can create the type of life that I'm interested in creating for my family. I can create the type of community that I'm interested in living in. I can have a broader effect on my town where I live, how I show up for the other neighbors and people in my community. 

Jessica Carlson 39:40

I think for me too, is that I have been so heartbroken about what's happening at federal level and ultimately how some of the laws being passed at the federal level and at the state level are going to and have already drastically affected people's lives that I care about. But in a lot of ways, I can't do anything about that.Like I can, you know, call my representatives, but that's just a voicemail at this point. They don't even answer the phone anymore, like they did nine months ago. And I mean, I could, I could write more and try to publish it, but like what I really can do is help my own community come together regardless of what they believe. Like regardless if they believe differently from me, like we all in essence really want some of the same things. And so if more of us start to just look at our own talents, our own interests, our own networks, and how can we just start to live a little more to bring people together? And like that's where I get really excited. And so

Sara Bybee Fisk 40:49

exactly what I'm doing. It shows and I'm so I'm in awe of the transformation that you have made, not because I didn't believe it was possible. I believe it's possible for every single woman and I'm really grateful that you felt my belief in you because I've had people who believed in me and that was so important to taking those first steps but I look Jessica at your face and your eyes and you're just so lit up with this vision of your work to do in the world and how you can support not just the life you want for yourself but how that benefits your community and honestly it's making me emotional because it all comes back to the thing that you have been just absolutely dedicated to is just keeping going, taking the next step and the next step and the next step and it's just it's incredible to see. It feels incredible.Well I'm so grateful that you would take some time to walk us through the transformation and how Stop People Pleasing and Group Coaching and working with me was helpful to you. It is such an honor to have played a small part in that. I will absolutely take you know credit for the program that I offer. It's amazing, it's a magical space but it also it doesn't work unless there's someone like you on the other end who's like I'm ready. I'm sick of living in this stuck place where I don't feel like I have any choices and I'm ready to I'm ready to do it and taking those small steps getting up every day and just doing it again and again and again has has been how you've created such an incredible opportunity for yourself. That's right. Jessica is there anything that you didn't get to say that you really wanted to make sure got included in our conversation today? 

Jessica Carlson 42:51

I think I didn't believe that my mindset could change. I thought, okay, I'm gonna take these little steps that she says to take. I'm gonna be able to make some of these changes that helped me to express my needs. I had already done that in a couple relationships, in a couple different environments. I had decided, okay, these are my boundaries, this is how I'm gonna be treated.But I didn't think my mind would change. I don't know, I don't know why I didn't. I was, you know, maybe I was still stuck in a lot of that patriarchy that is saying like, you still have to do this. But I'm amazed now at how quick it comes to me. Like it's just a beat. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 43:34

And when you're talking about how it comes to you, what's the it? 

Jessica Carlson 43:38

That I get to choose based on my capacity, I get to choose the discomfort that I want, and often I'm now choosing the opposite of what I've chosen for decades. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 43:48

Yeah, it's just become who you are.

Jessica Carlson 43:50

Exactly. And it also has made some people uncomfortable in my life. And I've just had to say to them, this is what I need. And I don't even apologize.Like I even was typing a message to someone. And they were not happy with me about something. They had actually, it was a misunderstanding. And I was typing, I am so sorry. I was no, no, no, automatically. It's like I kind of heard your voice in my head. I am not sorry. Because what they're expecting of me was not actually like an expectation. I'm like, delete, delete, delete, I said, you know, something completely different. And I actually said, this is who I am. This is what I'm doing. And I didn't say it in this way. But I'm like, kind of like you get what you get. And if that's not for you, go find less. Like if anyone has not heard Elise Myers, like I love Elise Myers. And so she has this whole video of the time and the place where she realized that she was a lot for people. And then she realized that she couldn't, you know, hide herself anymore. And that's where I came. And so like her little mantra is if I'm too much, go find less. And I that I bought her t shirt. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 45:13

All of these little pieces have come together in such a powerful way, and it has been such an honor and pleasure to witness what has happened for you and to be a part of it, and I'm just really grateful that you would take the time to let me interview you, and I can't wait to see what happens for you. 

Jessica Carlson 45:33

You're so welcome. It's a joy for me to share.

Find Your Outside Voice Part 6 - Your Outside Voice Is Waiting

Save your spot for my upcoming workshop HERE!

How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we’re talking about the life of freedom, confidence, and empowerment that is waiting for you on the other side of developing this skill.

Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.

• You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT 

• You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no — and say it out loud.

• This workshop is free. No catch.

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

 00:59

Episode six, mini podcast series, Find Your Outside Voice. Last episode, and I want to talk to you about what it feels like on the other side of this skill. I've talked a lot in this series about what's hard, the hidden tax, the obstacles, the cost of, you know, carrying all these unspoken conversations around. 

 01:21

And I don't want to leave you there. I want to tell you about what I know is waiting for you. It's freedom. It's confidence. It's empowerment. Because when you are the woman who knows if it's a yes or a no and who can say it, even if it's messy, you are never again held hostage in situations, in relationships that you don't want to be in. 

 01:53

This to me is the very definition of freedom because when I didn't have this skill, that's what kept me going to church after I knew it wasn't right for me. It's what has kept me anxious for years in friendships when I felt like something was wrong, but I couldn't bring it up. 

 02:11

It caused so much resentment when I didn't feel like my opinion was something that I could freely share. All of the work that I am going to do with you, I first did on myself. And it is freedom. It is confidence. 

 02:28

It is empowerment. It is the ability to decide where I want my time and energy to go. And it's the ability to create the life you want in the world. You're going to hear another podcast episode with one of my clients named Jessica. 

 02:45

And Jessica is an incredible example of this. There was a time when she was very afraid to speak up about anything. And after working with me and after she has put in so much time to know her yes and to know her no and to be able to say it, Jessica is now running for public office. 

 03:08

It's incredible. And that kind of transformation, whether it's public office or not for you, is available to you. You can learn to say the thing that is true for you. You can learn to handle whatever happens. 

 03:25

You can learn to be true to what you really want. You don't have to stay quiet and curated anymore. Oh my gosh, that describes so much of my life, like that careful curation, because I just didn't know how to say it. 

 03:43

So here's what I want you to know about your outside voice. You don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to be willing to say one true thing. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? 

 04:02

You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. 

 04:15

I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. 

 04:42

Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. 

 04:55

You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. 

 05:13

So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. 

 05:27

And here's what I want you to know about your outside voice. It's not necessarily loud and aggressive unless you want it to be. It's not the version of yourself that you were taught to be afraid of. The bitch, the boss, the one who blows things up or makes everything worse. 

 05:43

That's not true. Your outside voice is just you, honestly. It's you when you know your yes and your no. It says what is true simply, clearly, and sometimes messily, okay. But then it just lets the other person respond. 

 06:02

That's it. That's the whole thing. It's available to you right now, this week, starting with one conversation you've been avoiding. This workshop, Say What You Need to Say, is where we start. It's free. 

 06:16

It's an hour. It's three steps that you can use before the week is over. The link is in the show notes, and I want you to be there. If you come to that workshop and something lights up for you, if you leave thinking, I want more of this, I want to do this, the whole thing. 

 06:34

I want someone in my corner while I'm doing this work, then I want you to know that is exactly what Connected is for. Connected is my group coaching program. I've been running it for seven years under a different name. 

 06:48

I used to call it Stop People Pleasing, but that name needs an upgrade because we're not just stopping something, we're building something. So connected is where I teach you how to find the exact right words for your actual situation. 

 07:04

And I teach you the framework for developing the inner sturdiness to say them. And I teach you how to handle whatever comes back, how to stay in the conversation, all of it. That's the full skill, along with six months of other really essential skills to create a life free of people pleasing, free of codependency, where you have relationships that are deeply, deeply connected and valuable. 

 07:29

The workshop is the beginning. Connected is where it goes next. But I want you to start here with a workshop. One hour, one yes or one no. You're going to say it out loud somewhere small before the week is over. 

 07:42

You have an outside voice. You always have. I'm just trying to help you find it because the world needs your voice. Right now, more than ever, the world needs women who know how to speak up. Whether it's in your home, whether it's in your social groups or your community groups, we need women who are able to say what needs to be said. 

 08:05

And I want you to be one of those women. See you soon at the workshop.

Find Your Outside Voice Part 5 - The Two Things That Will Try to Stop You

Save your spot for my upcoming workshop HERE!

How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we’re unpacking the two biggest things that will try and stop you from saying what you need to say.

Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.

• You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT 

• You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no — and say it out loud.

• This workshop is free. No catch.

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

 00:59

Episode number five of the mini podcast series, Find Your Outside Voice. All right, you've been listening to this series. You know that it comes down to your yes and your no, and you've given yourself permission to say it messy. 

 01:15

You're ready. And then something happens. Something always happens. But I want to talk to you about this thing that is so normal that happens when we try and speak up because it shows up for every woman that I work with. 

 01:31

And I want you to be ready because most of the time we misinterpret when this obstacle shows up. So what are the obstacles? The first one is this. What if they don't like my yes or my no? Very normal. 

 01:48

Humans need to be in groups. And what if I say something and they don't like it and I get kicked out? This is the fear that shows up before you say anything. You worry about them being disappointed or frustrated or pulling back. 

 02:03

And sometimes this obstacle is enough to stop us before we even start. Imagining their reaction, we decide that the whole thing just isn't worth the risk. And here's what I want you to hear about this one. 

 02:17

Are you ready? You are managing other people's reactions before you've even said it. You're putting in an enormous amount of emotional labor for a conversation that hasn't even happened yet. 

 02:35

And you're protecting people from reactions they haven't even had yet. That's exhausting. That's why you're exhausted. And it's not your job. Their reaction to your yes or no is about them. It is information about them, their stories, their limitations. 

 02:59

And it is not evidence that your yes or your no was wrong. The second obstacle is a little sneakier. It shows up after you say it. We have the conversation, we say yes or we say no, and then we get clearer or we get more information and we realize we wish we had chosen differently. 

 03:23

And we immediately start telling ourselves that we did the wrong thing. We made the wrong call. You start second guessing. You start criticizing and judging and you wonder, do I even know what I want? 

 03:35

Because it feels like failure. But here's what I want you to hear. This is not failure. This is what it feels like to be a woman who is learning to trust herself when all of the programming that we've been given about saying what we want tells us not to. 

 03:56

The discomfort of someone else's reaction is not proof that you were wrong. And you realizing that you wish you'd said something differently is not proof that you were wrong or that you did it wrong. 

 04:10

It is just information. Information that you could not have gotten without saying something. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. 

 04:33

Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? 

 04:50

My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. 

 05:06

Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. 

 05:19

You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. 

 05:36

So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. 

 05:50

I want to tell you about a client. Let's call her Rachel. Rachel wanted to talk with her husband about how labor was divided up in the home. She felt like for too long, she had been doing too much. She wanted to have the conversation. 

 06:05

So she said it clearly and as kindly and honestly as she could. And on his face, she could see his reaction. He got quiet and she was a little scared. So of course, immediately she starts thinking, I shouldn't have said it. 

 06:23

I made it worse. I should have just kept handling it. It's not worth it. He's going to be mad. So obstacle two hitting full force. But here's what happened next. He took some time and came back to her and said, this is a conversation I do want to have with you. 

 06:41

Yes, I'm feeling a little attacked and like I should be doing more, like you're mad at me, but it's a conversation that I think is worth having. And so the conversation that followed changed how the labor was handled in their home. 

 06:55

Rachel didn't do it perfectly. She second-guessed herself all the way through, and it still worked because she said the true thing. I want to talk to you about how the labor is divided up in our house. 

 07:10

Now, both of these obstacles, knowing what to do when they hit full force, knowing how to handle your body when it's flooded, knowing how to take care of yourself, that is deeper work. And that is what I teach inside Connected. 

 07:26

I teach you how to find exactly the right words, how to develop the capacity for real inner sturdiness when you say them, and how to handle everything that comes after you have the conversation. But today, I just wanted to name those two obstacles so you recognize them. 

 07:45

And so you can know that it doesn't mean you have failed. It is just information. And information can help you decide next steps. One more episode to go in this series. It's the best one. I'll see you there. 

 08:00

Don't forget, say what you need to say. Free workshop coming up. You've got lots of different options to choose from. The link is in the show notes. It's absolutely free. Be there.

Find Your Outside Voice Part 4 - Say It Messy

Save your spot for my upcoming workshop HERE!

How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we’re talking about the thing that really keeps people stuck: waiting to say it perfectly.

Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.

• You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT 

• You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no — and say it out loud.

• This workshop is free. No catch.

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

Transcript

00:59

Welcome to episode four of the mini podcast series, Find Your Outside Voice. I want to tell you about the thing that keeps women stuck longer than almost anything else that I talk about with them. 

 01:12

It's not even fear. It's not conflict avoidant. And it's not even a lot of the like heavy relationship stuff that we talk about. It's waiting to say it perfectly before saying anything at all. It's so simple and yet it just right from the very beginning, it stops women in their tracks. 

 01:33

And I see this a lot. A woman knows what she wants and she has done the work to know that. She knows whether she wants to say yes or she wants to say no, but then she waits. She waits because she doesn't have the exact right words. 

 01:49

She ruminates a lot. She's still workshopping that opening sentence. She tries to imagine how they will respond and then she tries to come up with a perfect way to respond to their response. And she's so caught up in figuring out how to say it in a way that will land perfectly and offend no one and get her the outcome that she wants, that days pass, weeks pass, and that hidden tax that we talked about just keeps accumulating. 

 02:25

The longer she waits for perfect, the heavier the whole thing gets. And then she starts saying things like, well, I should have spoken up. Now it's too late. Now I can't do it. And then that layer just makes everything feel so heavy and so stuck. 

 02:43

And here's what I want to offer you today. You have permission to say it messy. And here's what I mean by that. Of course, you're going to think about it and try to say it the best way you know how, but you don't have to wait for perfect. 

 02:58

Your voice can shake a little. You can use words that aren't exactly right. You can start a sentence and then switch to a different sentence. Messy and honest beats perfect and silent. Every time. There was a time in my marriage when I was carrying a conversation that I hadn't been able to have yet. 

 03:20

I had been holding on to it for years. I wanted to be closer to my husband, but I was very afraid of what would happen if I let him see that. I had been using my hyper independence and like not needing him to kind of put this buffer between us because it felt safer. 

 03:40

And I didn't want that anymore. So I tried to write out like the perfect way to say it. And then it didn't seem perfect. And so I would rewrite it. And it just, I just carried it for a long, long, long time. 

 03:56

When I finally said it, it did not come out beautifully eloquent. My voice broke. I was crying. There was snot running down my face. I forgot half of what I'd planned to say. And what came out was really just vulnerable and not the speech that I had been rehearsing. 

 04:15

I just said, I'm so afraid that if I let you see who I really am, you'll leave me. But that's what was true. And it's the very essence of what I needed to say. And here's what I learned. The other person doesn't need your words to be perfect. 

 04:34

They just need them to be real. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. 

 04:52

Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. I felt alone and exhausted, and it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? 

 05:08

My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. 

 05:24

Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. 

 05:38

You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. 

 05:55

So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. 

 06:10

So think of one yes or no that you have been sitting on. Not the biggest one, not even the medium one. Think of something small, something that feels low risk, and something that maybe you've just been carrying around for a little bit. 

 06:24

And say this out loud to yourself right now. I want blank. Or I don't want blank. Let me give you an example. I have a friend who is invited me to drive an hour and a half to join her for an event that I don't really want to. 

 06:44

This is my example. I need to tell her no. I know I do, but I've been trying to think of the right way. I get stuck in this too. But when I take myself through this example, I want to tell her that it's not a good time for me to go. 

 07:00

Just telling the truth, right? I don't have to make it pretty. I just have to say what's true. That's it. That's the whole exercise. You just practiced your outside voice. The reason that I teach this before I teach anything else is that words matter actually less than you think. 

 07:17

What matters is that you let yourself say something that is true, even if you're only saying it to yourself first. So when I tell myself, I don't want to go to this event, I want to tell her it's not a good night to go. 

 07:31

That is me telling the truth to myself because I can't say my yes or my no to her until I have first said it to myself. So that's what I want you to practice. Just finish that sentence. I want or I don't want. 

 07:50

Just fill it in. That's it. In the workshop, say what you need to say. I'm going to walk you through exactly how to take that one honest sentence and then turn it into a real conversation. Not a perfect one, a real one. 

 08:06

So find that link. It's in the show notes. It's free. It's one hour. I'll see you next week for episode five, which is where I'm going to tell you what is going to try and stop you from doing this, because something will. 

 08:19

And I want you to be ready.

Find Your Outside Voice Part 3 - It’s Just a Yes or a No

Save your spot for my upcoming workshop HERE!

How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we’re exploring how every conversation you’ve been dreading is really just a "yes" or a "no" that you haven’t said yet.

Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.

You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT

You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no — and say it out loud.

This workshop is free. No catch.

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Transcript

 00:58

Episode 3, podcast miniseries, Find Your Outside Voice. All right, I promised you a story about a car. That's what we're doing today. But first, I want to update you on something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. 

 01:12

For the last seven years, I have run a group coaching program called Stop People Pleasing. Maybe you've heard me talk about it. For a long time, it was the right name. But lately, I have started to dream bigger, bigger for myself and bigger for the women that I want to serve. 

 01:29

I don't want you to just stop people pleasing. I want you to feel deeply connected to yourself, who you really are, what you really want. And I also want you to feel deeply connected to the most important people in your life, where you are able to have relationships that are very clear, where you can be vulnerable, where you can be intimate, where you can show up as the whole of who you are and be loved and accepted. 

 01:58

And I also want you to feel deeply connected to your life, to your life that feels authentic to who you are and what you want, to your values, to what you want to be doing with your time and your energy. 

 02:10

I want you to feel deeply connected to a life that feels very fulfilling and maybe even powerful. And so I'm changing the name. The program is now called Connected. Not because our work is significantly different. 

 02:26

It's actually very much still the same. We're still going to talk about people pleasing, but because we're not just stopping something. We're building something. Relationships with ourselves and with others that are deeply satisfying, reciprocal, deeply connected, and worth every bit of the work that we put in. 

 02:46

So connected means to you, to your life, to your time, to your energy, to the important people in your life. And you're going to hear me talk more about connected later, but I wanted you to hear it from me here. 

 03:00

So more on that later. Let's get back to the car. So I had a client. Let's call her Claire. And Claire was in a time of life transition. She had a bunch of kids and the last of her children had just gone off to college. 

 03:14

And so for the first time, she didn't need to have a car for transporting kids. She wanted something different. She had the money and she wanted a car that was a little sportier than the mom minivan, right? 

 03:29

Full of the soccer balls and dirty cleats that she had been driving around for so long. She wanted something that felt like her. And she had spent about six months thinking about this car. Six months. 

 03:43

When we talked about what was in the way of her buying this car, she said, I worry that my mom will say I'm being extravagant when I should be more practical. She said that she was worried that her ex-husband would think that the car was too expensive. 

 03:59

Like, why does the ex-husband get a vote? I don't know, but that's how brains work, right? And so in running through this long list of all the people that would have thoughts about her purchase, she said to me, and I want you to notice this, she said, I know this is so stupid. 

 04:18

And I want to stop right there because I hear this phrase a lot. This is stupid. This is silly. I know this is so small. I'm embarrassed that this is even taking up space in my head. And it is never silly. 

 04:30

It's never stupid. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. 

 04:47

Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? 

 05:03

My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. 

 05:19

Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. 

 05:33

You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. 

 05:50

So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. 

 06:04

Because underneath the car, underneath every situation that feels like conflict is a woman who learned a long time ago that what she wants is not as important as what people are going to think about it. 

 06:22

And whether or not they approve of it is the most important thing. This is not silly. This belief makes a lot of sense. It was once very important for us to conform to what the people around us wanted. 

 06:36

And it's just a belief that was still running her entire life. And here's the thing specifically about Claire's situation that I want to draw your attention to. Six months, six months of spinning and worrying about what other people would think. 

 06:53

So I asked her, do you want the car? And she stopped and she thought about it because she had lost sight of what she wanted in all of the worrying about what everybody else was going to think. And so when I asked her just that and nothing more, she said, I really do. 

 07:13

I really do want this car. And that is the whole first step. Just letting herself feel her yes, to know that it's what she really wanted. And so here's the reframe that I want to take with you today. 

 07:28

Every conversation you've been dreading, every situation that you're spinning about in your head is just a yes or no that you haven't said yet. Whether it feels impossibly big or embarrassingly small and silly, whether it's a conversation with your husband or your boss or a decision about a car or a vacation or where to eat, it's just a yes or no that you haven't said yet. 

 07:55

And it always comes back to the same question. What do I actually want? Is this a yes or a no? Simple is not the same as easy, and I know that. And so while this is a simple reframe, there's going to be some work that we need to do together. 

 08:11

Everything that comes after the yes or the no, how to say it, and what to do when they push back and how to support yourself and stay in the conversation, that's real work. And that's what Connected is actually built to teach. 

 08:26

But the yes or no always comes first. And you can find your yes or your no with me in this workshop that I'm teaching. Say what you need to say. You can find it this week. The workshop is free. The link is in the show notes. 

 08:41

Come and learn how to find your yes or your no with me. Get signed up. I'll see you in just a little bit. And I'll see you for episode four.

Find Your Outside Voice Part 2 - The Hidden Tax

Save your spot for my upcoming workshop HERE!

How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we’re talking about the hidden tax of not speaking up and how it drains your time, energy, and connection until you start asking yourself what you actually want.

Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.

• You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT 

• You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no — and say it out loud.

• This workshop is free. No catch.

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Transcript

 00:58

Episode number two of my mini podcast series, Find Your Outside Voice. We're going to talk today about the hidden cost, a tax that you're paying that you have just become so used to paying that you might not even see it anymore. 

 01:16

And the reason that I want to talk about it is so that you can catch it and do something about it. When you don't know how to say what you need to say, whether it's something you need to ask for or the truth about an experience that you're having, you are spending an enormous amount of energy. 

 01:34

Let's get into it. I want to tell you about a client of mine. Her name is Maya. And Maya knew for months that she needed to have a conversation with her sister. And by the time she and I talked, she had been carrying this conversation for four months. 

 01:50

Now, this hidden tax happens before the conversation, during, and after. And I'm going to walk you through exactly what it looks like because I'm willing to bet that you are paying some version of that right now. 

 02:05

So going back to Maya's example, the first layer of the tax is what happens before you ever say a word. For Maya, it became this constant, almost background noise. She would be in the cereal aisle in the grocery store, and then all of a sudden it would pop into her brain and she would start to rehearse and refine and imagine what would happen if she said this and her sister responded this way. 

 02:29

She was carrying it to bed. It was often the last thing that she thought about or worried about at night. Sometimes it even woke her up. And it was often something that was on her mind the minute her feet hit the floor. 

 02:41

She would be half present at dinner or at work or in meetings, and she would just notice that part of her brain was always taken up by this conversation she hadn't had yet. She would catch herself rehearsing, rewinding, ruminating, imagining how it was going to go, playing out different versions and trying to find the one that would make the conflict go away. 

 03:08

She would imagine it going badly. She would imagine it going fine. And when she came to me, the first thing she said was, I feel like I am losing my mind. And she wasn't losing her mind, but she was noticing this enormous price that she was paying. 

 03:24

At the time, she didn't even have the language for what it was costing her because it was just the background noise. It was like the weather or the wallpaper. It was just what it was like to be her. She hadn't even said a single word to her sister yet, but mentally and emotionally, she had been in that conversation almost every single day for four months. 

 03:48

That is the hidden tax before, the dread, the carrying, the way that it just follows you into every room and never quite leaves you alone or lets you be fully present anywhere. The second layer, that's what shows up when we go to have the conversation. 

 04:07

Because Maya did try once. A couple months in, she started to bring it up and then she noticed her sister's face. She said that it wasn't like a big dramatic change. There was just a shift. But Maya's body felt it. 

 04:22

And she caved. She retreated. She said, you know what? It's actually okay. It's not a big deal. And then she changed the subject. That flooding, the moment when your body just like evacuates the conversation, just retreats before you've actually made a conscious decision to, that's part of the hidden tax. 

 04:43

The caving, the shape-shifting, the moment when you open your mouth and something that isn't quite true comes out because the true thing feels too risky. That is part of the tax during the conversation. 

 04:59

And then Maya walked away from the conversation feeling worse than before she had tried, because now she's telling herself, I did it again. I didn't stand up for myself. I couldn't see it through. And that kind of self-judgment and criticism is another part of the tax. 

 05:15

It's why women stop trying sometimes. They're just so tired of the self-criticism and judgment, but it's a real part of what takes a significant amount of energy. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? 

 05:33

You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. 

 05:47

I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. 

 06:14

Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. 

 06:27

You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. 

 06:44

So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link, or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. 

 06:58

And then there's the third layer. And this one is so painful. It's the tax after. So Maya spent the next week after attempting to speak to her sister in what she described as a spiral. Did I say it wrong? 

 07:14

Did I make it weird? What does she think of me now? Is she mad? Should I have just stayed quiet? Was I being too sensitive? Am I making this too big a deal? And then somewhere underneath all of it, that judgment and criticism really ramped up. 

 07:29

That after spiral can run for days. And it is exhausting in a way that I think is really hard to explain because on the outside, nothing happened. There was barely even a conversation and then it was quickly buried. 

 07:46

There was no blow up and no drama, but Maya was just alone with the ruminating, the replaying. She continued to pay that tax in the way she always does. Now, here's what I want you to understand about Maya's situation. 

 08:03

Maybe this applies to you too. She had spent four months thinking about what to say, how to say it, how to handle her sister's reaction, enormous amounts of mental energy and enormous emotional labor. 

 08:17

And she had never once stopped to ask herself the question that I asked her when we first started speaking. I asked her, what do you actually want here? Is this dynamic that's going on with your sister, is it a yes for you or is it a no? 

 08:35

And she went quiet for a long time. And then she said, I've never even actually asked myself that. I've just been so anxious for this to go away that I never even considered what I actually want here. 

 08:50

And that is another part of that hidden tax. She'd been spending all of her energy on the situation and almost none of it on what she actually wanted. The before, the during, and the after, all of it is the price that each of us pay when we can't speak up. 

 09:10

Notice that I'm not saying it's the price we pay for not having the perfect script or the courage or the right moment. Because while all of that is helpful, the very first thing that we need to ask ourselves is, what do I want? 

 09:25

Is this a yes or is this a no? That is where it starts. And that's where we're going to start in this workshop. Because to not pay this tax, we need to focus less on just making the conflict go away and more on focusing at the simple starting point. 

 09:42

What do I want here? Is this a yes or a no? So that's where it starts. In the next episode, I'm going to give you a reframe that my clients say is really helpful and it makes a really complicated situation feel, I'm not going to say easy, but clearer. 

 10:00

And then I'm also going to tell you about one of my favorite clients who spent six months not buying a car that she wanted. It's one of my favorite stories. And as you might guess, it's absolutely about a lot more than just buying a car. 

 10:13

Say What You Need to Say is the free workshop where I'm going to walk you through how to stop paying this tax, how to find what you want, find your yes or no, and say it within the week. It's a free workshop. 

 10:26

Link is in the show notes. I'll see you for episode three.

Find Your Outside Voice Part 1 - You Make Sense

Save your spot for my upcoming workshop HERE!

How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we start with a powerful truth: if you’re struggling to speak up, you make sense.

Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.

You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT

You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no—and say it out loud.

This workshop is free. No catch.

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Transcript

  00:59

All right. Welcome to How to Find Your Outside Voice. It is a short mini-series I'm doing as the lead up to a free workshop I'm hosting called Say What You Need to Say.

01:14

If you have been here for a while, this is not something new. You've heard this before. If you are one of the newer listeners, welcome. So glad you're here. This series is really driven by my undying commitment to this belief that I have that when women have the skill of being able to speak up in ways that are comfortable and doable, where they can see the conversation all the way through, that they can actually change their life.

01:47

They can change the lives of their loved ones. They can remodel and improve relationships. They can stop worrying about other relationships that are taking up too much time in their lives. They can save time, energy, effort, brain space, and resources.

02:03

And so my commitment level to teaching women this skill has never been higher. It has never been needed more. And I want to talk to you about why it is so important. If you find yourself not able to have conversations that you need to have that are weighing on you, that feel heavy, you're in the right place and we're going to do something about it.

02:27

Before I get into some of the content for these episodes and something about the workshop, I want to start with something different. And I really want you to hear this. You make sense. Everything that you are doing, every time you've gone quiet when you wanted to speak up, every time you have spoken up and then caved or accommodated or retreated, it all makes sense.

02:54

One of the defining characteristics of the women that I talk to is a deep sense of something is wrong with me or why am I bad at this? I should be better at this. I am 40, whatever years old, 50, whatever years old, 60, you know, 30, whatever years old.

03:10

Why am I still struggling with this? It makes complete sense because that's what you learned and you learned it for a reason. And here's what I actually mean. I want you to think back because at some point early probably, you got messages about asking for what you wanted or telling the truth about your experience.

03:35

Maybe it was direct. Maybe you asked for something and you were told no in a way that really stung or was embarrassing. Maybe you told the truth about something that was happening for you and you watched someone dismiss you.

03:50

Maybe it was the climate of the family you grew up in or the religious or social or cultural or political or professional group, you know, that you grew up in or are a part of now, where certain things are simply not said aloud.

04:06

I know that when I think about that, like what could I not say growing up? There's a list, right? There are rules. And my nervous system and your nervous systems, which are very, very, very, very smart, noticed.

04:21

It cataloged. It took notes. Asking for this kind of thing or saying this truth out loud in this kind of relationship with these kinds of stakes, can't do it. It's risky. And it built a system to protect you from that risk.

04:40

Let me give you a personal example. In the religious organization in which I grew up, the LDS Mormon Church, one Sunday a month, we had what was called testimony meeting, where members of the congregation could get up and express their feelings about maybe Jesus or the gospel.

04:59

And it was meant to be a very faith-affirming experience. You were encouraged to share stories that were faith-promoting. And so when I got up, I think I was probably 14-ish years old. This was in the congregation that I had grown up in since I was a very, I didn't know, ever know a different congregation.

05:22

These were the people I'd grown up with. I had a sense that there was something that I wasn't sure of in Mormonism. I couldn't have named exactly what it was. But when I got up, I don't remember having a point, but what I remember most vividly is that I was standing at a microphone in front of my congregation.

05:44

I could see everyone. I could see my family sitting in the pew. And I said something like, I don't know that everything that you all tell me is true is really true. I don't know how to know that. And I have questions and I have doubts and I worry that what I didn't say underneath was, I worry that I don't belong here because I don't believe the same way you do.

06:12

And it was the attempt of a young girl to show some vulnerability to the people who were tasked with being her community and to be received. And I remember my mom's face just kind of falling. I remember her looking down at her hands and not meeting my gaze again.

06:34

And I remember the sinking feeling in my body of like, oh, I'm not supposed to be saying this. This is, this is not okay. And afterward, a man from the congregation came up to me and put his arm around me and said, well, you always keep things really entertaining.

06:55

And so in those two instances, I learned that if I can't talk about things that are not supposed to be talked about or my mother, right, somebody who I need for love and support is going to withdraw from me.

07:13

And I'm going to be teased. It's going to be something not taken seriously. And so I know that you can think of something like that that happened to you. And our nervous systems, of course, respond. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something?

07:36

You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years.

07:49

I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want.

08:16

Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat.

08:29

You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week.

08:47

So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there.

09:01

One of the ways that we learn to behave after this that I hear a lot of clients talking about looks a little bit like this. You put a little bit of yourself out there, right? Just a little bit, just enough to test to see what other people's reactions are going to be, and then you wait.

09:19

And then at the first sign of resistance, the first hint of tension, the first moment when that other person's face does something that you weren't expecting, you retreat, you close down automatically.

09:31

Before you even make the conscious decision to do it, you just cave. Because what your system has said is danger, danger, danger, danger. And so your nervous system makes the decision for you. And then later, when the threat level has passed and you don't feel activated, then you kick yourself.

09:54

Why did I retreat? Why did I collapse? Why did I cave? Why did I accommodate? And that vicious judgment cycle that so many of us are stuck in kicks back in. And here's what I really, really, really want you to understand.

10:10

That automatic shutdown is not weakness. It is not a character flaw. It doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you or that there's anything going on other than you have a protection system that was built a long time ago when the relationships that you depended on for safety were the same ones that you could not risk.

10:36

The problem is just that the protection system doesn't update itself on its own. It doesn't know that you're an adult now. It doesn't know that you have different resources and options and opportunity now.

10:49

It doesn't know that you don't depend on those same people in the same way. And it doesn't know that some of the relationships that you actually want to be deeper and more connected can't be if you're still protecting yourself.

11:06

That system just runs all the time. And that protective system running means that you, a driven, capable, intelligent woman who can handle just about anything, can't handle telling the truth and asking for what she needs in some situations.

11:26

Can't handle asking for more connection here or more limits there. More of what you actually need from the people who matter most to you. And I spent years in this, right? That wasn't my first opportunity to get feedback on telling the truth.

11:44

I became the woman who on the outside looked pretty together. And on the inside, I was really resentful and lonely. I was performing. I was over-delivering. I was convinced that if I stopped being useful, people would lose interest in me.

12:00

And if I asked for too much, I would lose the relationships that I had. And that belief shaped everything. It shaped my marriage. It shaped my friendships until it didn't, until I was able to see it.

12:14

But I'm going to tell you a little bit about that in a later episode. For now, I want you to just sit with this. The reason that you can't ask or tell the truth about what you want or need or your experience has nothing to do with being broken and everything to do with being protected, overprotected.

12:35

And that's a really important difference. You were just never taught that asking for what you wanted was safe. So of course you can't ask. That just makes complete sense. And so when that comes up in your mind, why can't I?

12:50

I should be able to. I want you to tell yourself, oh, this actually makes sense. I was never taught how to ask for what I wanted in a way that feels safe and doable. And so that's where we're going to start.

13:04

And that's why this workshop is called Say What You Need to Say. It's free, it's an hour, and it's for women who are really ready to finally learn this skill of asking, starting somewhere small, starting this week.

13:17

The link is in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there. I'll see you in the next episode.

Episode 157 - Leaving Polygamy, Finding my Voice with Shirlee Draper

Today, I get to talk with someone whose story has stayed with me for years. Shirlee Draper grew up in a polygamist community that became more controlling and unsafe as time went on. With no money, no work history, and no support outside her community, she made the difficult decision to leave everything behind and start over. We discuss the tension between staying and knowing something isn’t right, and what it takes to start trusting yourself again. This conversation is not just about Shirlee’s journey—it’s about what can happen when women find their voice and their autonomy. Here’s what we cover:

• How Shirlee spent years saving money and quietly planning before she could leave

• What it means to choose the “least harmful option” when every choice feels like a betrayal

• Why we can’t understand other people’s choices without their experiences and context

• Why decision-making is something you have to learn after being told what to do your whole life

• What it looks like to help women build their own inner voice instead of replacing it with another authority

Shirlee Draper was born and raised in “Short Creek.” After leaving the community, she obtained a Bachelor of Social Work and a Master of Public Administration. She has served in many capacities in the rebirth of her hometown, including facilitating the election of the first female mayor in 2017; opening a community health clinic in 2019; serving on the board of the UEP Trust and Short Creek Community Center; and part of the Collective Impact project aimed at community revitalization.She is employed as Deputy Director for Cherish Families, a social service nonprofit which helps people from polygamous backgrounds move from crisis to thriving. She specializes in bridging the population with mainstream society and provides education for outside service providers and government agencies She also serves on several state and civic committees. Shirlee lives in St. George with her special needs children and loves to play the piano, read and travel.

Find Shirlee here:

cherishfamilies.org

instagram.com/shirlee_jd

facebook.com/shirlee.draper

linkedin.com/in/shirlee-draper

lostandfound.club/events

Support Cherish Families' work

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

instagram.com/sarafiskcoach

facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching

tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

Transcript

 Sara Bybee Fisk 00:59

I am so excited for you to hear this interview with Shirlee Draper. Her story has inspired me, and as I have followed the work that she has done, it has just been an endless source of inspiration. It is so deeply human. Let me tell you a little bit about Shirlee. Shirlee grew up in the FLDS church, the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is an offshoot of the LDS church that I grew up in. And she grew up in this really tightly knit border community known as Short Creek, which is Colorado City, Arizona. She was born into a polygamous family and raised in the FLDS church that really dictated everything about what she wore, who she married, and how much of the outside world she was allowed to see. At 23, Shirlee was placed into an arranged marriage. She became a first wife, and then part of a plural wife household, and then a mother of four children, including a medically fragile daughter that she almost lost. And then, with no money, no credit history, no rental history, she packed her children into a car and left everything she had ever known in her community when she realized she did not want that life anymore.That all by itself would be remarkable. It would be an incredible story. But what Shirlee has done since then is what really made me want to have her on the podcast. I actually first met Shirlee back in 2018 when Short Creek was just beginning to open itself up to the outside world. For context, Warren Jeffs was the self-proclaimed prophet of the FLDS church, and he wielded absolute control over the community for years, arranging marriages, including lots of underage girls, expelling families on a whim, abuse and violence, and using fear and isolation as tools of really total domination. It's an incredible story. Google it if you're interested. He was arrested in 2006, and he's currently serving a life sentence for sexual assault of minors. His grip on Short Creek had been so complete and so suffocating that even after his arrest, it took years before the community felt safe enough to cautiously begin opening its doors. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 03:27

And I was among a small group of people who got to visit in 2018 as that was starting to happen and meeting Shirlee then, kind of planted a seed that eventually led to this conversation. A little bit more about Shirlee, just so you really get a feel for how amazing she is. Shirlee went back to school, she earned a master's in public administration, and she is today the director of operations for Cherish Families, which is a nonprofit that has grown from two volunteers in 2014 to 21 employees that help families in 17 different states, Canada and Mexico.And the heart of what Cherish Families does is something that I find I just connect with. so completely. It's meeting women exactly where they are and helping them make choices about what they want for their lives. If a woman wants to leave her polygamous community, then Cherish Families helps her leave with housing and support and case management and mental health resources and somebody who actually understands what she's walking away from. But there are women who don't want to leave. They want to stay. And if she wants to remain with her family and in her community and with her faith group, then Cherish Families helps her to do that too with dignity, without judgment, and with resources that will help her make the best decisions for her life. Because the goal is not ever to tell women what to do, right? The goal is to make sure women actually have choice, informed choice, resources to help them make their choice. And that's what Shirlee does. And I think it is just incredible. Now, some of you might be thinking, okay, what does somebody who has left a polygamous, you know, life and faith organization have to do with me? And you're going to find out what Shirlee and I talk about in this episode, the themes, finding your own voice when every system is telling you to be quiet, trusting your gut, even when the stakes are high, and making brave decisions before you can possibly know how they'll turn out. Those are not niche experiences, right? They are the human experience and Shirlee just lived them in a different way than most of us will. But that clarity makes her one of the most honest and insightful, wise people that I've ever encountered about what it actually looks like to stop outsourcing your life to other people's expectations, and to start trusting yourself to reconnect, or to connect to the voice that all of us have, that helps us know what is best to do. You do not have to have grown up in a polygamous community, in order to know what it feels like to silence yourself or to stay somewhere out of fear, or to wonder if you're allowed to want something different. Shirlee's story just covers all of those themes, and I'm so excited for you to hear this. Finally, if this episode moves you or is intriguing to you and you want to go deeper, I have actually some, it's news that I'm truly excited about. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 06:35

This April 17th through 19th, Shirlee is leading a historical tour of Short Creek in Hilldale, Utah, and I will be there. All of the proceeds benefit Cherish families. It is genuinely a rare opportunity to visit this community, to be hosted by Shirlee, to learn its history, and to support the women and families that Shirlee's organization works with.You can find all the details and get your tickets, find out any information you need at lostandfound.club. I will put the link in the show notes. I'd love to see you there. Please welcome the remarkable Shirlee Draper. Shirlee, it is such a pleasure to have a chance to talk with you again. It's been several years since you and I interacted, but I have thought about you many, many, many, many times. 

Shirlee Draper 07:24

Thank you. It's an honor to be asked to be on your show. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 07:26

As we kind of begin our interview, I'm really interested in if you could just give us an overview of your life as many details as you would want us to know that kind of set up the context for our conversation today. 

Shirlee Draper 07:41

Hey, that's, that's not a small ask. Let's do that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 07:46

Just that little thing. 

Shirlee Draper 07:48

Okay. So, of course, born and raised in the FLDS community in Short Creek, which is Hilldale, Utah, Colorado City, Arizona. And growing up really in a village, like it was, everybody in town was either my relative, my neighbor, my school friend. I literally knew everybody in town. When the saying, you know, takes a village to raise a child, nobody knows what that means anymore. We really did have a village. We took care of each other. We lived in common. The community was owned by a trust, which was owned by the church. And so, that meant that we were all pretty cohesive.And we had a community garden, and we all went and bottled the fruit, and it went in the bishop's storehouse, and people who needed it could take it. And we just had our plays and programs and dances. And we were a self-contained community. As a child, there were very overt messages about, you know, what a girl's role is, what a woman's role is. But I was raised by a woman who was not quite a round peg for a round hole. She was quite an outlier. And so, my mom, very early on, well, she instilled a love of reading into me. And so, I read everything I could get my hands on, but she was also quite a feminist, very outspoken, quite independent.And so, she instilled in me the, and quite explicitly, you know, you question things. You feel good in your soul before you do things. She called it the distant early learning system. If somebody sets your bells off, she said, you trust your inner being. And so, my mom taught me how to be outspoken at the same time as kind of reinforcing the religion. And so, it was a little anachronistic, but that's human nature. Like, there are all of these contradictions we're constantly encountering, and that was my home life. And so, before Warren Jeffs came along, we had, you know, I went to public school, graduated from public high school. I was going to the local community college. There was a lot of freedom.I was working. I had my own job. I had my own car. There was, you know, girls were not expected to get married really young, but they were expected to toe the line. They were expected to be obedient and say the right things and do the right things. And I wasn't necessarily saying the right things, but I was doing the right things. I was a good girl. I would go to church every Sunday. I fully believed in this religion that was the correct religion because I was born into it, and that's how we define correct religions. And I fully believed, you know, this is what God wanted. And there were things about it that I didn't agree with, and I just figured I was going to navigate those things, and I would have it out with God after I died. And so, I was placed into an arranged marriage because that's how our community did it. And soon after my marriage, or even right around the time I was getting married, was when Warren Jeffs was really starting to rise to power. 

Shirlee Draper 11:12

But at that point, he didn't really have any impact on my life. You know, he was in Salt Lake. Mostly, you know, he'd come down with his father once in a while. We'd see him around and things like that, but I never had any regard for him, and it didn't mean anything to me.But soon after I was married, I had three children in rapid succession. And by then, he'd really kind of ensconced himself into this leadership. And I remember the first time I heard him speak in church, and he said something that made me just go, oh, I don't like this guy. Like, that's not what we believe. And so I just, at that point, I'm like, well, and it doesn't matter because he's not in leadership, I don't have to worry about him. But I started to see him really slide himself between his father, who was the prophet at the time, and the community and start to really do horrible things and taking families apart and instilling really ridiculous rules and saying we can't say certain words, we can't wear certain colors, we can't play, we can't, you know, all of these things, we can't be critical or questioning of any doctrine and then really seeing the cost when people would start to do any of those things, they would immediately be ejected from the community, they would lose their families, they would lose all contact with any friends, family, anything. And so that cost was so high, and that's when it became so rigid that I started realizing that I would have to be really careful, I would have to start being silent about my questions and my concerns, my way of operating in this world. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 13:04

So fascinating that you have a mother who teaches you about this distant early warning system. And then one of your earliest memories of Warren Jeffs is him triggering that early warning system.That's exactly right. And you feeling in your body, I don't like this guy. 

Shirlee Draper 13:25

the very first time I heard him speak. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 13:27

help those who would be listening to this who don't really understand the cost of being ejected from the community, right? They might think, Oh, well, you just go live somewhere else. Or yeah, you just, you know, you just move.Can you please, if you're, if you're watching the YouTube version of this, Shirlee's eyes just got real big. Can you please help them understand what the actual cost was. 

Shirlee Draper 13:55

Oh yes, there was no just about it. First of all, if the church owns the home that you live in, and you've spent your entire life giving over everything you own, and all of your money and everything because that was

Sara Bybee Fisk 14:10

the practice, that was the expectation, right? You're provided a home, buys church, and in exchange, you... 

Shirlee Draper 14:17

Yes. You turn over all of your access to the church. We were living Brigham Young's version of the United Order. And so for many people, you have no assets that you can parlay into a new home. For everyone, you have no rental history. You can't just walk up to a landlord and say, I've got all of these years of good rental history. So there's all of these barriers. For women specifically, there's no credit history. There's no income. Sometimes there's not a lot of education, no work history. And so for me specifically, there was no just anything. By the time I decided I have to get out of here, I had three children and another on the way. And with no rental history, no credit history, no work history, no income for children, and two of them were special needs. And my daughter, who was medically fragile, her nighttime nursing care, all of my friends, all of my family, my identity, my sense of belonging, everything was tied up in this community. I had literally nothing on the outside, no assets, no support structure, no sense of belonging.And I don't know if your listeners are in tune to how critical the sense of belonging is to good mental health. When you are taken from that, it has a huge psychological cost. So all of these costs coupled with the fact that every time I left my community, I was treated with a lot of hostility because we were deviants. We were evil. And so people would see me in my distinctive dress and go, that's one of those. She's evil. She's not welcome here. And I would get treated like that. So when I'm saying the cost of being ejected from this community, where first of all, it's mostly safe, you take away the Warren Jeff, but everything else is safety. It's belonging, it's love, it's support, it's all of this structure. And so you're choosing in a moment, am I going to negotiate with Warren Jeffs? Or I'm going to leave literally everything and try to negotiate with the hostility on the outside. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 16:44

That is certainly the tension that I want to get into in just a second, but before I just, I want to go back because you talked about this kind of beautiful village, right? This self-contained community.And for those who are not familiar with the way that the FLDS community works, it was isolated. The only people who lived in that community were members of the FLDS communities and the various, you know, maybe different branches. Is that the right way to say that? 

Shirlee Draper 17:17

kind of. I mean, it was the vast majority was FLDS. There were a few outliers. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 17:22

Okay, thank you. And this beautiful community that you talk about where everybody takes care of each other, everybody donates all of their extra money and food into this common pot that takes care of everyone.That seems like such a beautiful idea until you look at the effects on the women and those who want to leave, no job history, no rental history, no ability to provide for themselves, no understanding of how the quote unquote outside world works so that you can navigate it. Your dress is distinctive, your hair is distinctive, your manner of speech is distinctive. And any time you leave your community, you are treated as the deviant other.I remember traveling through on family trips, traveling through that Four Corners area and stopping in a Walmart and seeing members, I'm not sure where they are from, but the distinctive dress, the long hair, the buns, the many, many children, and just staring, right? And so I can't imagine what that was like for you as a woman with children, especially the ones that you described having special needs and medical fragility. And so at a certain point, you knew you wanted to leave.Yes. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Can you tell me a little bit more about what was it that kind of tipped you over from, I don't like this. I don't know about this. This, my early warning system is being pinged too. I don't want to be here anymore. 

Shirlee Draper 19:05

Yes, there was actually a moment, and I had actually several of these moments, but the one that tipped me from going, I can navigate this, I think I can figure this out, to I have to get out of here, was the day that Warren Jeff stood up in church and said, Father said we have to take our children out of school. And it was because it was a public school and they couldn't keep apostates or others from the outside in coming to that school. And so our children would have to associate with apostates, which was again, very high cost. So that day, because education meant so much to me and my children weren't even of school age at that point. And I just thought, oh my gosh. And again, remember my history is having read every book in the school library and everybody's library is in town. And there was a lot of history books in there. And I'd read about what dictators like Hitler does and about how shutting down education is very, very important to keep people in ignorance. I just had a chill run down my back and I'm like, oh my God, okay. So I knew this train was going off a cliff, but it's going off a cliff now. This is it, I have to get my children out of here.And that day it was nuts. I'm sitting there in church and I'm thinking, I can't be the only one that's feeling like this. And I'm looking around at other people's faces to see if anybody else is going, what? And everybody was just like, very serene. And I'm like, did you not hear what he said? And I just, I sat, I used to be in the choir, but that day was sitting in the audience and I leaned forward and I looked at the side doors and I thought, those are closed. If they trot the poisoned Kool-Aid in here now, how am I going to get out? That moment I equated to this, this is it. Like, this is the final straw. This is, there's no getting out of this. I had no idea how much worse he could get. I had no idea. All I knew was that I was not going to stay there and let him do that to my kids. And so, and that was, so in 1998, I decided that I wasn't part of anything and I might have to leave, but I think that was in the year 2000 that he said that. And that was the moment that I was like, oh, I'm not, I can't just play around anymore. Like, I have to actively get going on planning this. And I have to figure out a way to leave on my own terms with, and that means I have to have time to create assets and figure out finances so that I can take my children with me. Because if I had just left at that moment, I would have been sleeping under a bridge and I couldn't do that to my children. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 22:28

I think what people can identify with is being a part of a system that is getting increasingly more toxic, controlling, whereas less sovereignty and freedom, and thinking, okay, all right, I'm going to have to figure out how to do this. I'm going to figure out how to handle this. Okay, I can do this because what they get out of being in the system, like a job or a certain relationship is still worth it to them, quote unquote, worth it, right? But then there's that moment where it tips over into, wow, I don't think this is worth it anymore.That's right. And there are professions like that. There are relationships like that. There are situations like that. And systems like that. Systems like that. That's exactly right, right? And so whether it's the polygamist FLDS system or the medical system where you're a doctor in a hospital that is increasingly just squeezing more and more and more and more out of you and having less and less and less room for you as a human and what your humanity demands, I think we're talking about themes that are very, very familiar to a lot of people. And so I appreciate you speaking about it that way. And I also appreciate you bringing up the fact that you centered the experience of your children, because I often think that women especially and parents will often do things for our children that we may not necessarily do for ourselves. And that is also a really important connection point for people listening to this because you knew if we're going to leave, it has to be done in a certain way so that I can take my children with me so that they are safe and so that I can care for them. 

Shirlee Draper 24:35

Yeah, that's right. And I think I probably, I don't know, it's hard to speculate, but it really was trying to keep my children safe, that gave me the strength to do most of it.And that was that was really the moment where I stopped thinking, I'm just going to continue to try to negotiate this, I'm just going to, you know, keep quiet, keep to myself, keep, you know, keep we have to, we have to be done. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 25:08

Yeah. You've said that you spent some time in what you call the little dance of self-suppression, right? Because you were not ready to be kicked out. You wanted to avoid being ejected, but you knew that that was the direction you were heading in. How did you manage that?And how do you distinguish between being strategically patient and self-betrayal? 

Shirlee Draper 25:37

That's complex because it felt like a betrayal. It felt like a betrayal, but no matter what I did, it was going to be a betrayal. In that moment, I'm choosing the least harmful thing. Not the best option, but the least harmful option because all of the options are harmful.From that moment on, I'm packing up a pan here and a blanket there and some toys and things that might not be missed from the household and starting to pack boxes together and I'm starting to save money. I'm starting to make plans, but I have to keep my mouth shut about how I feel about Warren Jeffs and what's happening because if I'm exposed, I'll be ejected and they'll be able to keep my kids and it will be a fight after that. Those were all betrayals. Listening to people talk about Warren Jeffs as if he's God and inside it's burning my very soul. That was a betrayal to not say anything, but it would have been a bigger betrayal to my long-term plans to expose myself. Starting in the year 2000 until the last week of February in 2004, that's four years of betraying myself in service of something better for my kids and just listening and trying to not give myself away while I'm strategizing and saving and planning. It came to a moment where it was a ready or not moment. There was a Saturday meeting where Warren Jeffs called 21 leaders of the community in front of the audience and ejected them publicly and then he made everybody get down on their knees and swear allegiance to him. And that was my moment where I was like, there will be no more betrayal. And every time I took a breath for those four years, it was like there was a band that was tightening around my chest to where I couldn't breathe and I couldn't breathe and I couldn't breathe. And that was the final moment was like a harness clicked into place. And I went, this is the day there will be no more days like this. When I finally said, OK, next Saturday, I'm driving away. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 28:10

That's so incredibly powerful and also so nuanced. I think it's so fascinating that we want there to be good guys and bad guys. We want there to be right choices and wrong choices. And we so often look on the outside of people's lives and want them to have made different decisions.But I think you're talking about having to choose the lesser harmful things in service of the greater purpose is such a beautiful thing to consider because we just can't know what that is for other people all the time. That's right, that's exactly right. And so the judgments that we make and the way that we look through the window to their lives and criticism is such a disservice not only to us, right, because we don't know, but to the humanity of other people and to the wisdom that individuals are only given for their own lives. 

Shirlee Draper 29:15

That is so true. I've learned since then, and I've said so many times, that if there's one thing I know, is that if I were the person I'm looking at and wondering why they're doing something, if I had been raised, because they had been raised, if I had the information in my head that they have in their head, if I have the fears and the experiences and all of the things that make up their world, I would be doing what they're doing. Yes, yes.And I can't just imbue my perspective into their world and expect them to do something different because they don't have the information that I have in my head, and I don't have the information that they have in their head. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 29:54

Yeah, their life makes sense in the context of their experiences and what they know. And I think that's so easy to lose.I lose sight of it, right? When I look at people with whom I, I have differences, I want them to act, quote unquote, better, different. I lose sight of that. And I really appreciate how you're, how you're talking about that. So the following Saturday came, what happened? 

Shirlee Draper 30:21

So I had, I had found two allies during those intervening four years and one was my younger brother whose soul had also been insulted by Warren Jeffs. I finally found somebody I could talk to about it. And so he was very sympathetic and told me, you know, I will gather up your boxes and keep them in my room so that you won't be found out. And I had recruited him and my nephew to get a U-Haul and show up at my house that following Saturday. And I think, you know, there's, there's this, this pervasive notion out there that if somebody left, they had to flee in the middle of the night and people were coming after them and they were dragging them back and all of that. And that might have been true for one or two people, but, but writ large, you know, Warren Jeffs was very mindful of the poisoning of the well. If he was preemptively removing them so that they would not talk about things that he didn't want them to talk about. So, so rather than having people come after you, it was good riddance and we never want to see you again, mostly.So, so my plan was that Saturday I was going to get up and just tell my husband and my sister wife that I'm leaving and I'm taking my children and I'm also taking this particular piece of furniture and, you know, things like that. But it was, you know, if it was very lucky, my husband and sister wife decided to go out of town that day. And so I didn't have to navigate that. So my brother pulled the U-Haul up to the front gate at 10 o'clock in the morning and we loaded up and drove away. But, but before I left town, I went around to my family to tell them goodbye. So I, I just made the announcement to my family. I just went to my parents. I went to each of my siblings in their homes and said, I do not believe in this. I think it's been very harmful. I understand that you do. And I also understand that if you believe in this, this means this is the end of our relationship and I'm not going to pursue you. I won't, you know, I won't put you in harm by coming to your house, but I want you to know, here's my address. You can come and find me at any time. My door is always open to you. And so I just, I said goodbye believing that that would be the last time I would ever see them. And so you can imagine that day was so hard because I was so close with my family. And, and leaving them and rethinking, you know, I'm going to a place where I'm going to be friendless and family less. I'm going to be an orphan. You know, it had to take me being at a point where I literally could not breathe before that was going to happen. So I moved, I moved to St. George that day and, and my parents and my brother and his wife came and found me that they just got in their car and followed me down to make sure that I was moved in okay. They helped me move all the furniture. They made sure everything was safe and secure and we had food and, and they didn't leave until like one or two in the morning. And, and I just, in that moment I was like, well, I wish I'd have known you were going to do that before. I would have left a long time ago. So. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 33:57

Yeah, not being able to talk about it, not being able to talk about your feelings, not being able to talk about that distant warning system that is now fully on fire every single day in your body suffocating you not being able to breathe.Do you have a sense of what that was like for your mother to watch you do that? 

Shirlee Draper 34:21

You know, it's so interesting. This is my mom because she's passed away now, but she occupies such a huge part of who I am and what I became. And she is so, she's so human in that she's got so many contradictions because until she died, she still professed to believe in the religion, but she wasn't doing the dutiful, obedient things that she was supposed to be doing. And so she chose to live her religion on her terms.My mom was one of the few people that I actually expressed quite a bit of my discontent to. One time I told her that I felt like that Warren Jeffs was the antichrist because he was undoing everything Christ taught us. And she never betrayed me, you know. And she said, you know, I said, what, you know, Christ only asked us to love. And Warren's telling us to not love. I can't think of anything more antichrist than that. And she said to me, and as I look back, I think it was so ingenious how she worded it. She said, that's not right. And I'm like, no, it is not right. And it could have meant anything. She could have meant that you're not saying the right thing about Warren or that she agreed with me that it wasn't right. But she never, never did shun me. From that moment on, she would come and see me all the time. And we spend a lot of time together. And so she was, it couldn't have been a surprise to her that I was going to leave. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 36:09

I experienced the smallest part, I think, of what you're talking about because when I was having my own inner turmoil, I couldn't talk about it with my parents either. I was afraid that I was afraid of their disappointment. I was afraid of crushing them. And the day that I told them that I was leaving, it was the hardest conversation that I ever had.And I had nowhere near on the line that you had, right? I did experience the loss of friends and community, but nowhere near the scale that you are describing. And so when you were driving away, what was that like for you? 

Shirlee Draper 36:51

you. Again, the contradictions, you know, it was terrifying. You know, the there was an overriding fear of the unknown. I know I'm leaving behind hell, but I don't know that it's not hell that I'm going into. There was

Sara Bybee Fisk 37:10

so that your previous treatment whenever you would leave the community. 

Shirlee Draper 37:14

Yeah. And, and being unclear about how I'm going to, you know, how am I going to help my children navigate, um, acculturation? My kids don't know anything about public school or, you know, pop culture or anything. That's a huge barrier.Um, how am I going to navigate financial systems and structures that I don't know anything about? There's the fear, of course, of, of losing all of my friends and family and not knowing, you know, where my support structure is going to be. But there was also a sense of exhilaration. And I am, I think I have a little bit of a neurodivergence in that I've always mistaken fear for excitement. So, and so I did have this sense of grand adventure. Like I have no idea what's going on and I'm free. I'm going to be making every decision on my own without repercussions, without, you know, denigration. I will choose exactly what I want to do. I will manage my life exactly how I want to manage my life. And so that sense of exhilaration as I was driving away coupled with the fear and the sorrow was just, it was really overwhelming.So having left this very controlling culture, I was, I was so excited to join what from the outside looked like such an egalitarian society, you know, all of the right things are said, you know, women have all of these rights and women can hold public office. And, and it was, in fact, it was one of the things that the FLDS pointed to as evil was that women didn't know their place in outside society. And so I was really excited to join this, this place. And, and it was, it was such a shock and a disappointment that the outside world really wasn't different than the FLDS. It was just more covert about it. There were a lot of unspoken rules, a lot of microaggressions, a lot of side eyes, but you know, nobody was ever honest about women shouldn't do that. They never said it out loud, but, but there was a lot of cues that I just kept just tripping over and bumbling into. And pretty soon I'm like, Oh, Oh, Oh, I see how it is. Okay. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 39:49

I wish you were wrong, Shirlee. 

Shirlee Draper 39:51

I wish I were wrong too. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 39:55

Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it, almost like the words got stuck? Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now.If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say. And it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one-hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. But yeah, the gender roles and the rigidity and the desire for compliance over sovereignty is, yeah, it's a feature, not a bug. 

Shirlee Draper 41:40

Oh yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and that's what makes, you know, right now there's, there's this dystopian fun house mirror where, you know, handmade's tail apparently has been a, a how to instead of a cautionary table and tail. And so now I'm, I'm looking at this stuff being coded and being, now this is being said out loud, you know, these kinds of things. And I'm, I'm horrified because I'm like, did nobody learn anything from what we just went through.Yeah. Like people are saying out loud, women need to be obedient and submissive. And I'm like, Oh yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 42:19

Oh, but no. Women need to know their place, right? Women shouldn't vote. Women should be... Yes, there's a lot more of that being done. 

Shirlee Draper 42:28

said out loud now. And it's, you know, actually, in retrospect, it's good that these things are rising to the surface because before, you know, I would be calling this out 22 years ago when I joined this wonderful society. And I would be called a feminazi. And that's not true.And women have all of these special privileges. But now that it's being said out loud, now I'm like, now can we talk about this? 

Sara Bybee Fisk 42:54

Yeah, it is. You and I are in agreement.We have to expose that dark underbelly of people who still think this way. We have to know that they are not just a figment of feminist nightmares, right? It's happening in actuality. 

Shirlee Draper 43:14

Yeah. And now, because now because, you know, it's being recorded, it's on the internet, we can not just say, this is what I'm experiencing, because women can't be believed that that's what they're experiencing, it has to be shown. And another man has to be saying it before other men can say, Oh, oh, you are experiencing this. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 43:34

It is true. It is happening. So, Shirlee, you now work with women who are exiting controlling systems. I would love to know about your work with Cherish families. 

Shirlee Draper 43:48

I would love to talk about cherished families. So, you know, it's interesting, the more the more therapy I do, the more I realize, you know, cherished families is, is a result of my trauma. We always work through our trauma. But it was born out of, you know, seeing, you know, I'm like, okay, this is my experience. There are going to be more and more people who are going to catch on to this, who are going to be victims of trauma and family abuse and all of these things that are going to need help. And in fact, people would show up at my house, I was having people sleep on my couch while I would be connecting them with services. And and I would go to elected officials and say, Hey, did you know that there's all these kids being taken from their parents and farmed out to different places and being abused and what we know about childhood trauma and its impacts on the lifespan, we are going to have a flood of crisis. It's coming, it's arriving. And I felt like chicken little running around, saying the sky is falling and everybody's like, Oh, yeah, probably, probably. And nobody was doing anything about it.And so finally, I realized that I'm was going to have to do something about it. And that's when I can collect connected with Alina Darger. And she'd already filed the paperwork for cherished families. She came and hey, I hear you're talking about doing this work. And I said, Yes, I am. But I also had had a lot of experience with other organizations who were trying to quote unquote rescue the polygamists. And what that looked like was rescuing them from their bad religion and imposing the correct one on them and thereby solving all their problems. And you know, shipping them out of the world. It's like now you're a whole human being because you look like me. So now you're worthy of God's blessings. And and then a lot of exploitation in the process, you know, putting people on television, making them say horrible things about their own DNA, their family, their upbringing. And and I just I was horrified by that.So you know, we Alina and I had to come to Jesus, I'm like, you will not exploit people, you will not do this. And and a lot of it really was about, you know, we're not making people's decisions. So one of the things that cherish families does not do is tell people they have to leave polygamy. We're like, what would you like to do? What help do you need? What would help you become a whole human being expressive of your own wants and desires and best life choices. So we help people from any polygamous background, they don't have to be leaving for us to get help for them to get help from us. And we provide crime victim services, which is so huge, mental health, housing, family peer support, basic needs, legal services, and and we connect to any other thing that people need. 

Shirlee Draper 46:50

So our overarching program is crisis to thriving. And we measure 10 life domains, it's whatever you need in any of these life domains to reach thriving. If that's a job, we'll connect you with workforce services in a very culturally sensitive way, so that they can provide services and help you get education and and a job that you know, sets you up for success. If you need education, we'll get you into a university or whatever is appropriate for you. If it's you know, in medical services, we have all of these partnerships that that help people get the resources they need. And it's a way that is that is so much more cultural, culturally sensitive and friendly. So I am really proud of the work that we do. . 

Sara Bybee Fisk 47:33

I hear two things kind of reflected back in the story of what you do with cherished families. Number one, you are now that ally that you found in your brother and in your nephew. You are now the person that they can talk to, that they can run these ideas by, that they can get perspective from. And that is so essential, right? To have someone who is willing to hear your inner thoughts of like, I don't know that I want to do this. Or there's something about this, that distant early warning system, right? Mind is being pinged and I think you're someone that I can talk to about that. I might not know what it means yet. I might not even know what I want to do about it yet. That's right.But I hear that echoed often in the work that I do with women, where something doesn't feel right. They don't know totally what it means yet or what it's going to mean for their life. And they're very scared to think about the final destination of this, whether it's in a relationship that is not showing up or working out the way they thought it would, a job, any kind of a friendship. Right. So I have found that if I push them in any direction, there's a collapse because they're not ready to make the decisions. And then the second thing that I hear is that strategic patience again, where honoring someone's sovereignty and inner wisdom is the only way for it to develop within themselves. And it's like trying to harvest fruit before it's ready, right? It has to have the time that it needs to grow and mature because otherwise you're not going to get what you want. You're going to get fruit that isn't ripe, fruit that isn't ready. And it's going to, in most cases, they're just going to go back and kind of double down even harder on what is already known and safe and familiar. 

Shirlee Draper 49:45

Yes, that's exactly right. And for this population, particularly, because they've been told what to do their entire lives, and particularly under Warren Jeffs, where perfect obedience at the hint of something that you're told to do, you jump. There is no questioning, there's no thought for yourself. And so to tell someone what's best for them to do is just recreating that authority that Warren Jeffs had over them. And so you take that burden, that mental of Warren Jeffs off them, and you put your own onto them. And all you're doing is perpetuating the crisis.And so it's so important for us to help people develop their own inner will, their own inner listening, their own inner self-determination. And many times, we've had people just say, I'm at this crossroads, I need you to tell me what to do. And we're like, how about we walk through a decision tree? What would happen if? And if you choose this, what might happen? And just really building into those skills, because they have it, they have it within themselves. They just need to learn how to tap into that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 50:59

That is such an important point because I think having also, you know, a lot of experience with being told what to do and being told what to wear and how to behave and what was okay and what to watch and what music to listen to and what life decisions were best on a, on a different scale, right? Where the scales are not the same. And I want to acknowledge that I am so familiar with that feeling of just tell me what's right. Just tell me what to do and looking to some authority figure outside of myself who seems to have it together, right? I'm just going to follow what they want, but you're so right in that that just recreates the system that keeps me disconnected from myself and it reinforces that I don't know and that I can't handle the consequences of making my own decisions.And I think one of the most powerful things that I have learned for myself is that I can, I can handle messing up. I can handle making the quote unquote wrong choice. I don't know that I believe that there, you know, are right and wrong choices. The way I, I know for sure that I, I don't believe that there are right and wrong choices the way I used to. Um, but I, I can handle making a mistake. Right. That's how we grow. And I think when you grow up in, you know, either the FLDS version of perfect obedience or the mainstream LDS version of, you know, obeying with exactness, right? Cause that's one of the phrases that I grew up with. Oh, wow. There is that disconnection from yourself and this absolute a hundred percent focus on am I keeping the rules? Can someone look at me and judge me worthy and, and honorable and obedient? So, York Creek had kind of this impenetrability to like out outsiders, right? Law enforcement didn't really go in. And do you think that that is important to talk about what happened after Warren left and in terms of what that meant for Cherish families, because Cherish families started before he was arrested or it was getting started kind of at the same time that kind of all of that was falling, that house of cards was coming down for him. 

Shirlee Draper 53:29

So, Cherish Families wasn't incorporated until January 2014. We got our 501c3 then, but Alina and I were both doing, you know, grassroots, independent social work from, you know, 2003. So, we were, you know, doing this kind of work and trying to connect people to help and everything until we finally had a structure that we could get grants and employ people. But yes, during that time, and even up until around 2015, 2016, my big goal with the work that I was doing was helping people get out of Short Creek, get out from under the control, because, you know, everybody was spying on everybody else. They had cameras. They were destroying people's lives, moving them around from house to house. And for me, it was like, if I can get you out of that community, you know, it's, it's tenuous. It's rough out here, but we can get you, we can get you settled. We can get you safe. We can start helping you make your decisions and, you know, get education until, until after the Department of Justice got a guilty verdict for the towns for discriminating in the police department.And that's when the reform started to happen, 2016, 2017. We really started to have a good police department that we could, we could report crimes to. Up to that point, it was the FLDS police department that was an arm of the church. And whenever I was reporting crimes in that community, I was going to the county sheriff to report crimes. And they were coming in and secretly, you know, working with me to investigate behind the backs of the local police department. And so, and so now with all of the reformations that have happened in the community, you know, homes are privatized. There's a lot of new people moving in. A lot of people who left are coming back and it's a completely different place. And now I'm telling people, and I remember the first time I told a woman this, she'd left the community. She called me, really needed some support. And I'm, and I heard myself say out loud, I think it would be a good idea for you to move back. And I was like, did I say that? And now, you know, we have affordable housing. Cherish families owns affordable housing in the community. And it's a, it's a great place for children to get back into school and be really understood and, you know, get back into community. And, and it's, it's a completely different place. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 56:02

That was the Short Creek that I visited. It was in probably right. I'm going to have to go find the year, but it was the turning over, right? You did. Right in that time.Yes, there were two restaurants, I think. And when we went, so I visited Short Creek as part of a group that was attempting to help. And one of the projects that we did was to take the former home of Warren Jeffs and attempt to turn it into a halfway home for people leaving polygamy. It's my understanding now that that was not the successful project that we hoped it would be at the time, but it gave me four or five days in that community talking with people and the hope was palpable. The way that people were describing their hopes and their dreams for rebuilding, for people returning, for them being able to own their own homes that had been part of the FLDS Trust. It was such a unique experience and the way that I remember it was in the voice of one woman that I'd spoke to. I remember her first name was Heather and she just said, it feels like I have a chance to create my life now. It feels like I actually have a chance to create the life that I want for myself now. Right. 

Shirlee Draper 57:43

Yeah, yeah, those were those were magical and heady times because we made a strategic plan. There was a group of us that got together, we called ourselves the community alliance, we made a strategic plan for the community. And we followed it through it happened.And so now, you know, we're turning the old meeting house into a community center, we've got a rec center, we've got all of these parks, and we've got trails planned. And we have a completely, you know, non religious, both towns are led by a completely secular town council. And, and it's just I mean, it's like a phoenix rising from the ashes. It's pretty glorious. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 58:25

must be so just affirming for you because I think back to that little girl whose mom was teaching her about that early warning system. And I mean, first of all, so revolutionary in the context of the life you grew up in.But that guide, that inner knowing is what tells us about the life we want for ourselves. And then to be able to live that out, not just in your own life, but then to be able to translate that work into the community that you loved, that you grew up in, that nurtured you, that cared for you, that was that beautiful. And I'm sure it wasn't all beautiful. There's always good and bad things of every situation. But to be able to take that back to that beautiful community that you grew up in must have been amazing for you. 

Shirlee Draper 59:26

Right. I'm, and it's one of the things that we, that we grapple with too, you know, it's like with such huge change and with everything being privatized, how do we get back that sense of community that was so destroyed, that sense of belonging that was just utterly annihilated by Warren Jeffs. And so there's been a conscious effort to, to rebuild the things, you know, our, our celebrations, our parks, the, the things that would bring us together are dances. There, there is a concerted effort to recreate those things so that as people are coming back and they're healing their wounds, that we are reestablishing a sense of community and belonging, because that was so important.And so, you know, looking at, at the whole, at the whole of, of my life of our childhood and taking what was working and was so great and healing the rest. It's, it's a very intentional and, and strategic and complex thing, you know, because so many people's amazing memories really are wrapped up in having two moms, you know, the, our, our lovely mayor, my best friend, Donia Jessup. One of the things she talks about was she always had a mom at home was providing their lunch and their dinner, even while her mom was working and she so deeply loved her other mother and she's still her mother to this day, even though the families are no longer together. And so, and so we, we look at that and we say, how do we recreate that without having the, the patriarchal and harmful systems that created that? And so we, we create our own grandmothers and we connect them with people and we create our own mothers and we adopt family members and, and we figure out other ways to do that. But it is very complex because there's also a lot of trauma wrapped up in the good. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:01:26

I didn't even think about that. Like how do you navigate the privatization? How do you not tip over into toxic capitalism where now it's every man for himself, every, every person who can just extract and earn for themselves.Like how do you preserve the best parts of what a community like Short Creek offered without poisoning it with the toxic traits of capitalism.That's, that's so fascinating. 

Shirlee Draper 01:02:03

I will say that's an uphill battle. We started off with a lot of empty homes and now, there are no empty homes and there's been a lot of investment and at one point, I did a housing study and found that 13% of the entire housing inventory was tied up into short-term rental and that was the direction it was going.So, now, housing there is just as expensive as it is in St. George and it's very expensive in St. George. So, we've got lower quality but the same prices and it's driving out the vulnerable, which is one of the reasons that cherished families invested in the affordable housing. We took a couple of very large houses and we're retrofitting them into multifamily apartments so that we can preserve places for the vulnerable and the population to be able to stay there and receive the benefits of community, home, all of the rebuilding efforts. But, it's hard to fight against that capitalistic machine. I wish I could say with any kind of confidence that we're going to be able to do it but I mean right now, that's the one of the cults that we're in as capitalism. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:03:22

Yeah, you have done a lot of cultural competency training for professionals who work with this population.What do outsiders most misunderstand about women who come from these communities and how does that, what farm does that misunderstanding or those misunderstandings do? 

Shirlee Draper 01:03:47

Well, I mean, there are several. One that I will point to is that women must be stupid to have the temerity to be born into this structure and be staying there and even choosing into it. And so there's this level of pity and condescension that's directed to our women. And I say that's greatly misplaced.You know, most women from all of these communities, first of all, we're all products of our socialization. But I wouldn't say that very many of them are dumb. There's a high level of competence and resilience that most experience, they're the most express. But even beyond that, there are reasons, there are functional reasons that women might opt to stay in polygamy. There are benefits that nobody wants to encounter. And it's true for really all, we talk about Muslim or Hindu or really any Mormonism. There are benefits to these structures. And when they're unpopular religions, nobody wants to hear about the benefits.And so I think that vulnerable, weak women is, that trope to be repeated is very, very harmful because it attracts predators to our community. We've had at least five men that I know of move to the community specifically to exploit women because this is a trope that keeps being repeated. So, for me, I'm like, let's first of all, get rid of the notion that somebody is a bad person for being born into or socialized into whatever the structure is that they're living in. And start to have room for this understanding that human experience is so complex and that everybody's experience can be different.So that's another, that's a third trope is that all of us have the same experience. So I will hear over and over and over, oh, I read so-and-so's book and so I know what you went through. And I'm like, you couldn't possibly know based on her experience because my experience was nothing like hers. And so there's this question, I always get these questions, what do they all do when this? When people leave the FLDS, do they do this? And I'm like, who's they? Tell me how everybody in St. George buys their groceries and I will condense for you the FLDS experience. It's not to be contained because humans all express so differently. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:06:54

love that you speak to the individuality of that experience and of our human tendency to just kind of collapse everyone from a particular religion, community, profession, culture, language group into a monolith and into one kind of singular experience. That's the human brain trying to simplify and reduce.I think a lot of times so that we can understand, but we have to fight against the urge and the inclination to oversimplify because it does rob people of their individual experiences. 

Shirlee Draper 01:07:39

Right. But it also, you know, and it's something that I have to fight against so much, it also collapses us to our worst common denominator, too, right? It's like, I've heard of all of the horrible things that happened in the FLDS. And so you're all guilty of it.Right. And so every news story that focuses on something that happened, and you can go find the comments that say, they all do this, to this day, they all abuse children, they all are, you know, are horrible in this way, they all get married under age. It's like, that's, that's not helpful. When people are trying to unpack and and look at the complexities of what they want to do, if all their experiences collapsed into this evil thing, then they don't have this luxury of unpacking and keeping what works. And so it causes people to go from from this one extreme to a far other extreme, where there's always, you know, really, really counterproductive things come out of that. People need time to unpack what might work. And if they're not allowed to, because of this dominant narrative, we're going to be unpacking on the other side. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:08:52

That is such an important point. And just speaks again to that strategic patience that you have made such a part of your own survival story and now the career of service.These conversations are my favorite because they really make me think about how I want to ask in a way that honors your experience and really gets at something of value for everyone because we are not all born into the same circumstances. And it is individuals who make up every single system. And so as you look back on the way that one leader dramatically changed the experience you were having and how that one leader sought to silence women and sought to train women in particular to abandon themselves in really particular ways. What do you think we as women in general can learn from that? 

Shirlee Draper 01:10:06

Well, I think there's a pattern, right, with authoritarians, with autocrats, that they have to not be questioned. And so I think it bears looking at and witnessing and seeing patterns. I'm literally begging people to see patterns of the creation of autocracy and fascism because they're there.There are no new tricks. The pattern is the same, and it's over and over and over. You just need to go reread the prints. From the beginning of time, the pattern has been the same. And I don't know, I think it's so in your face. And certainly, it starts with women. But it never ends there. And so men who are so comfortable with having women be silenced need to know, they're coming for you. When you create structures and systems that oppress people, you will end up being oppressed. This is a wheel that does not stop just because you're up. And so I think it's so important for people to understand. The world is made so much better when women are allowed to participate in society, in leadership, in structures. Like, there are objective studies that show how much better companies do, how much better governments do, how much more peaceful, how many more people are at the table when women are fully empowered. And for people who seek to oppress that, it's nothing more than a dream of power over others. It's not in service to a better society. It's not in service to anything being better other than having more power for themselves. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:12:08

That's it. And I'm so appreciative, Shirlee, of you taking the time to share your experience with me and with my audience.I have such respect for the way that you have turned your experience into a career of service and of helping. And as you noted, there's some working through of trauma in that. I feel that in my career, right? I help women leave the structure and the system of people, please. And there is an autobiographical line straight from my old life and who I was and what I used to believe to what I do now. And I feel very privileged to stand with a next two women like you doing this work, because I think we want the same thing. We want women to be able to speak, to say what needs to be said, to have a voice in whatever sphere they want. If it's just their own home, if it's just their own life, if that's what they want, I want them to have that. If they want it to be in their community, I want them to have that in their government, in broader political systems, I want them to have that. And I am just so appreciative of being able to do that work with you. 

Shirlee Draper 01:13:25

autonomy. Autonomy.And I'm sorry, I think that women are just more invested in everyone having a better experience and a better life. And maybe that's what makes capitalism so incompatible with egalitarianism. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:13:47

I agree. I think that over and over and over and over and over again, because another branch of the work that I do is with a nonprofit organization that works in Bolivia, which is where I served my LDS mission. And we work with women and children. And over and over and over and over again, we see that when we empower a woman, when we give a woman resources, she turns to her children and her family and her community, and she wants everyone to have a better, improved experience.That's right. And I, we could go back and forth. Is that nurture nature? I don't know that there's a good answer, but what I do know is that the research bears it out. Whether you are giving women microloans in terms of money, whether you are educating women, whether you are giving women work and job opportunities, they invest and they reinvest in their children and in their broader communities. 

Shirlee Draper 01:14:43

That's exactly right. It's my experience, you know, there's the old saying, a rising tide lifts all boats, and I like to amend that by saying when women are out fixing the holes in everyone else's boats, yes, but if we're torpedoing other people's boats, the rising tide does not lift all boats. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:15:05

That's right. That's right. But Shirlee, I'm so appreciative of your time. Is there anything in our conversation that you didn't get to say that you would like to end with? 

Shirlee Draper 01:15:15

Uh, I would, I would love to invite, I think that your audience would be really, really appreciative of this. We're doing an event with lost and found club as a women's retreat in Hilldale in short Creek, the weekend of April 17th through 19th, and it's going to be absolutely amazing. People get to tour the community and, and, uh, learn about it, but also learn about each other and it's going to be a lot of fun. And so anybody who is interested in that, we only have, I think 30 tickets left.Uh, they can go to lost and found.org. I think it's lost and found club.org or something and see the information there. But I would love to invite, invite people to that. And it's not just women men can come to, but they won't be staying on the same location that we'll be staying in because it'll be a shared house, but it's, it's going to be a lot of fun. And that will, that's a fundraiser for cherish families. And I'd also like to invite, you know, anybody who loves the work that we're doing to please become a monthly supporter right now, we're really looking to build our monthly giving club and, and just go to cherish families.org and support our work because, you know, we, we have had some amazing federal funds that got cut last year, along with everyone else. And so we're, we're struggling to maintain the level of services, but, but we're so committed to it. And so always looking for new friends and supporters. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:16:41

I will make sure that there are links to all of those events in the show notes. And as always, you can send me an email, sarahatsarahfisk.coach, if you have any questions about how to connect with Shirlee. Shirlee, thank you so much. 

Shirlee Draper 01:16:56

Thank you, it's been an honor. 

Episode 156 - Healing in a Community of Women Re-Release

I’m bringing back an episode that explores something I care about deeply: the healing that happens when women gather in community. We live in a culture that conditions women to believe something is wrong with them—that we’re too emotional, our thoughts don't make sense, and we can’t trust ourselves. But when women share their real experiences with each other, that belief begins to unravel. In this re-release, I discuss the communities I’ve been part of that have shaped my life and why support from other women can drive powerful change. Here’s what I cover:

• How patriarchal conditioning teaches women to believe they constantly need fixing

• Why witnessing other women’s stories helps us see that we are not “extra special super broken”

• How being witnessed by other women can completely change the way we see ourselves

• Two common obstacles that keep women from seeking community and how to move through them

• Why learning with and from other women creates powerful momentum for growth and change

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What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

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Transcript

 00:59

I realized this morning that I was not subscribed to my own podcast. So I went to the Apple Podcast page, which is where I listen to podcasts and subscribed. And I saw a couple reviews that just made my heart so happy. 

 01:17

I wanted to share them with you. E Wong206 says, I came to this podcast through another podcast, Judith Gatan, my girls style masterclass. She says, Sarah Fisk is unbelievably honest and raw, calling out all the good girl programming that it's hard to see when you've been swimming in the patriarchal ocean for so long. 

 01:39

Thanks for sharing your truth and keep it coming, please. Thank you. I really, really appreciate that. If you have not had a chance to rate and review and subscribe to the podcast, I would be grateful and happy if you would do that. 

 01:56

You can do that by going to whatever page you use for your, to get your podcast, Apple, Spotify, BuzzSprout. There's lots of ways to find it. And then subscribing and leaving a review. I wanted to talk today about something that is really near and dear to my heart. 

 02:15

And that is healing in communities of women. And as I thought about how I wanted to set this up, there's a really interesting kind of push-pull here. And what I want to start with is that patriarchy programs women to believe that there is something wrong with them. 

 02:40

They are too emotional. Their thoughts don't make sense. They can't be trusted. Their bodies are unreliable. And so all of that programming really primes women to believe that they need to be fixed, that there's things wrong with them, and that if they could just fix the things that are wrong, then they would be worthy, they would be more valuable, then they would finally have the life that they think they want. 

 03:14

And so I want to point that out because it is very, very real. What it ends up creating is a lot of hustle around being better, always having some project that you're working on with yourself, your weight, your wrinkles, your heart rate, you know, your, there's an ongoing, most women that I speak to, I speak to a lot, they have some project that they're always working on to improve themselves, either their bodies or their minds, their personalities, their emotional state, their mental state. There's just a constant list of things to do. And so if that is you, I want you to just pause for a second and ask yourself, why? Why is it that I have this list of things about myself that I think need to be improved? 

 04:17

That's not to say that self-improvement is bad or wrong, because the other side of this push-pull is that sometimes the ways in which we are thinking about ourselves, treating ourselves, the point of view that we have when we are in the focus of our own attention is causing us a lot of harm and is causing us a lot of pain. 

 04:43

And so I do believe that there is value in working on the painful, damaging thoughts that we have about ourselves so that we can come to a place of greater self-acceptance, possibly greater self-love and self-trust, and that that is always good for women. 

 05:04

And so I just want to acknowledge that push-pull kind of right at the outset, because what I want to talk about is finding community to heal in. I have really benefited throughout my life from having communities of women in which to talk, to be seen, to share my experiences. 

 05:29

Humans need interpersonal contact, right? So many of us are still suffering because of, you know, COVID lockdown and not being able to be out and about. I mean, some of us loved it. I will say there was part of me that really loved not having any options to go anywhere or do anything and to just be home. 

 05:52

But that also runs its course as well. And we do want to be with other people. It's an actual need that we as humans have. So I grew up in the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

 06:10

And one of the things that Mormons do really well is community. And I had a community of young women my age. I later had a community of women my age and going through a lot of the same things. And it was really helpful to me at the time. 

 06:29

There came a point when it wasn't helpful anymore, but there were always communities in which I could go and be seen and witnessed, get help. Another community that was really important to me was a homeschool community that I was a part of for like 10 years with other families who were homeschooling their kids. 

 06:53

It was such, it was such a joy to get together with the other moms and talk about things. I noticed we shared a lot of like birth stories. It became apparent to me that one of the most important things that women do is they share stories about themselves that only other women can really understand because it's been their experience. 

 07:17

We shared challenges with kids and challenges with, you know, self, and that was a really important community for a while. When I decided I no longer wanted to participate in the religious community of Mormonism, post-Mormon groups were really important to me because I could express feelings, frustration, I could compare my experience and have it validated and honored. 

 07:50

I could read and commiserate and offer support and help to others. It's been really fantastic. And then lastly, probably one of the most important rooms that I'm currently a part of is a group of coaches who are in a business mastermind together. 

 08:08

My coach, her name is Stacey Baiman. And it is so powerful to be in a room of mostly women who are all working toward the same purpose, building coaching businesses. I get to see women who are powerful. 

 08:24

I get to see women who are intelligent. I get to see my genius in a room full of geniuses. That's one of my favorite phrases that my dear friend Maggie Reyes, who's also a coach in that community, says, is like, we get to witness ourselves in community with other women. 

 08:44

So as I thought about why this is so important, I came up with, for me, like four really essential reasons. And I just want to talk about each one of them. It's important to have a safe space to share and be supported. 

 09:01

One of the things that is, I'm going to be talking a little bit about different communities that I know of, including the community that I have created, Stop People Pleasing, which is a group coaching program, and encouraging you to consider joining, finding your communities as we go through these things together. 

 09:23

So one of the things that is really beautiful about the community of Stop People Pleasing is that it is a safe place to share stories about your people pleasing that in other circumstances might embarrass you or you might be self-conscious. 

 09:44

It's so fascinating when people come to any community where there is a shared goal, like making money as a coach in my business coaching community or stopping people pleasing in the Stop People Pleasing group coaching program, to have the opportunity to see other people working through your same challenges is so beautiful. 

 10:13

It is such a human thing. It's such a female thing to think that there is something wrong with me. I call it extra special super broken. That, you know, there's something just that is that's just me. 

 10:31

I'm the only one in the world who has this particular problem. And when you're in a community where it is safe to share your experiences and you get supported, you find out, oh my gosh, we are all the same. 

 10:45

The circumstances might be different. The challenges might look a little different. But we're all having a very similar human experience. We're struggling with a lot of the same things. And that just seems to be how it is. 

 10:59

It's not about me personally. I am not extra special, super broken. This just kind of seems to be how it is. And we all get to wrestle with those challenges together. Reason number two, to learn with and from other women, I think is a sacred experience. 

 11:24

I mentioned that there's kind of a beautiful momentum when everyone is working on the same goal together, right? We are all working on finding our people pleasing, understanding it, having grace and graciousness with ourselves in the process. 

 11:41

And we are watching other women do the same. It is the experience that can give us different points of view. And especially in something like a group coaching program, you learn not only from me, the coach, but you learn from the other women as well. 

 12:02

Because sometimes someone else is struggling with something. And because it's not you, you can see it so clearly. You can see the unkindness in the way she's talking to herself. You can see the options that she has that you don't think you have. 

 12:20

And then when you observe and can learn in a little detached way, then you can apply some of that teaching to yourself in a much, much more readily because you've seen it, you've witnessed it. We unlearn together as well. 

 12:42

We witness and support each other's progress. Reason number three is sharing stories, being witnessed. Going back to what I said about the homeschool group, we talked about the things we had in common. 

 13:00

We talked about the struggles that were unique to that particular endeavor. We shared hard things that happened. And so sharing stories and being witnessed by other loving, supportive women is such a beautiful experience. 

 13:18

In one of our groups, we had a woman. Her name is Tammy. I've actually changed it to protect her privacy a little bit, but Tammy was really struggling with paying for her adult son's bills. Tammy was not in a financial position to do that, but she kept doing it out of obligation. 

 13:40

And when we coached on it, it was tied to some mental health challenges that her son was experiencing and her fear about what would happen if she told him that she wasn't going to be able to pay for these bills anymore, which is what really was best for her and the outcome that she wanted. 

 14:02

The way in which the other women in the group witnessed and supported and loved and helped her as she worked through the complicated feelings and decided to take the action to get him the support he needed and then stop paying for his bills was such a beautiful thing to witness and to be a part of. 

 14:26

In Stop People Pleasing, we have had women who are in college and women who are in their 70s in the same group. And to see them cheer each other on, to see older women offering advice to younger women and really supporting them and helping them through their experience is one of the most beautiful parts. 

 14:49

I think of any female community. When I was still attending church, I shared something. I had a bunch of kids, really young. My daughter, Rachel, was 13 months old when her twin brothers were born. So for a little while, it felt like literally a three-ring circus. 

 15:08

And I remember going to my LDS community and sharing in the women's group just about how hard it was. And an older woman expressed to me her love and her understanding of the situation. And she said a sentence, she just said, it won't always be that way. 

 15:28

Someday they're not going to run and hug you. Someday they're not going to. She said, I know it's hard, but just know that eventually they're not going to do that. And that sentence sustained me through a lot of the really difficult, high demand times of having a lot of young kids. 

 15:46

And so the support that we offer each other through our experience is just so precious and invaluable. The last reason, reason number four, is to have people to cheer you on. In Stop People Pleasing, one of the things that we start every group coaching session with is celebrations. 

 16:07

And we celebrate the hell out of everything, awareness, times when you acted just a little bit differently than you would have in the future. Like maybe you didn't say yes immediately to a request that you didn't really want to do, but maybe you took a pause. 

 16:24

Maybe you said yes later. That's fine. We're going to celebrate the pause. And so to come to a community where women can celebrate and listen and support and offer you someone to cheer you on. It's just such, it's such an amazing, amazing experience. 

 16:47

If you're thinking, well, I don't have that kind of a community, what I want to talk about next is how to find one. Lots of communities are created around shared values and shared interests. So the first thing I would encourage you to do is define that. 

 17:05

What do I value? What are my interests? Do I want to join a marathon running club so that I can run a marathon? Do I want to join a book club because I would really like to have some more books and friends to discuss them with? 

 17:18

And come on, we all know we go to the book club meetings for the snacks. So good snacks. Is that what I want more of in my life? Because by defining the why, that's how you know whether or not the group is working for you. 

 17:32

It's important to have a clear vision of what you value, what would be worth your time to give to, so that you can decide, is this something I want to keep doing? Is this hitting the spot, scratching the itch, whatever it is, whatever your why is, is going to be really important to know. 

 17:51

Once you're clear on the why, it's just a matter of like Google searches to find community groups and things that you can try out and be a part of. So then let's talk about two obstacles that for sure, maybe one or maybe both, maybe neither. 

 18:08

I don't know. I guess I shouldn't say that, but I've noticed two common obstacles. The brain has an incredible capacity for negativity bias. And what that means is your brain scans what's going on and takes it to the negative, sometimes extreme. 

 18:27

If you have anxiety or some other type of added mental health challenge, it can be even harder. But the negativity bias that our brains produce is almost always wrong. I recently read a fantastic book that I cannot recommend more highly. 

 18:45

It's called Platonic by Dr. Marissa Franco. And she's talking about finding platonic friendships, but she mentions several studies that have been done in several different ways, several different groups, several different countries, and they all confirm the same thing. 

 19:05

The negative thoughts that we have about ourselves are not the negative thoughts that other people have about us, usually. So when we're going to a party or going to join a group, we are automatically thinking about being rejected, where we might not belong, where we might not fit in. 

 19:22

We're assuming that people do not like us, do not want to talk to us. And the data shows that's simply not true. People like us more than we think they do. People are more open to getting to know us, to talking to us, talking with us, and forming a connection than we think they are. 

 19:43

And so the first obstacle that you're going to face, possibly, is the negativity bias in your brain. You're just going to have to do a very good job of catching it and redirecting it. Here's how I suggest doing that. 

 19:59

If the brain bully starts up, they're not going to like you. You're too fast or not too fast. You're too slow. I guess if you're going to join a running club, being too fast might not be a problem, but you're too slow. 

 20:13

You're not going to do it right. They already have all of their connections and friendships formed and there's not room for you. It's to catch that talk and then redirect it. I love to redirect my own brain by saying, no, we're not going to talk about that. 

 20:31

We're not going to do that. We're not going to beat ourselves up. Chances are they like me. Chances are they're going to be open to forming a relationship with me. Chances are I'm going to find people who I fit in with. 

 20:44

So oftentimes I can redirect with just some logical thinking. Other times I need a little bit more of some emotion processing. So I sit with my anxiousness. It's not a problem. It's not bad. It's not wrong. 

 20:59

It's a normal part of being a human. And so if I can sit and be with my anxiousness, my fear of being vulnerable in a loving way, I give myself more of an opportunity to be successful when I feel those same feelings in the moment. 

 21:18

It is uncomfortable to not have a community. It's uncomfortable to have goals you want to work on or issues that you want to solve and to not have a community in which to do that. It is also uncomfortable to present yourself to a community, to apply, to join, to seek out, to try and create. 

 21:44

What I'm asking you to consider is that the discomfort of finding a community is actually the discomfort that serves you because it moves you forward in the direction of human connection, human interaction, working together with other people on a project, or reducing a harmful behavior like we do in Stop People Pleasing the Group Coaching. 

 22:11

That discomfort's going to be there either way. You're either uncomfortable because you don't have it and you feel lonely and disconnected, or you're going to feel uncomfortable as you go out and get it because it's going to require that you put yourself in new situations and try new things. 

 22:25

So pick the discomfort that works best for you. I will also say this. It is impossible to change. And by change, I mean eliminate a behavior that doesn't serve you anymore or meet a goal or try something new. 

 22:42

It's impossible to change while doing the same thing. Growth and progress is predicated on something changes, something changing, because if you do what you've always done, you will get what you've always gotten. 

 22:59

Obstacle number two is the fact that women are programmed to believe that taking care of everyone else first is essential. And that if we deserve anything for ourselves, it's after we have met the needs of everybody else. 

 23:21

And then there's another kind of double whammy thought there, because if we do take time for ourselves, then it's probably selfish. If we spend money on ourselves, it's probably selfish and irresponsible. 

 23:35

And I don't fully deserve to have this thing. My growth, my time for myself should come after I take care of everyone else's needs first. Prioritizing myself is bad and wrong and selfish and spending money on myself. 

 23:54

That is even worse. Here's what I want you to consider. Many of us are already dealing with the lack of community in other ways. We're spending money on other things. We are shopping. We are buying things maybe we don't need all the time. 

 24:14

We are eating. We are keeping busy to try and distract from some of the loneliness, some of the disconnectedness, some of the frustration, some of the hopelessness that we feel around these unrealized dreams and goals. 

 24:32

So you're already doing something to try and solve this problem on your own, whether it's eating or buffering with Netflix or, and again, none of these things are bad. I absolutely love a good Netflix show. 

 24:48

Just ask my kids. Where I want to point it out is that many of us think I don't deserve to take time for myself. We are already taking time, but we're just doing it in sneaky ways like watching TV and scrolling social media. 

 25:05

Many of us think it's irresponsible or selfish to spend money on myself. We are already spending money in other places. Most of the time, it's unconscious and it is not solving the problem for us. The money is going out anyway. 

 25:20

Many of us think, I don't deserve to have this time, but we're trying to give ourselves other treats or pleasures like food, because we do want something for ourselves. So I'm simply asking you to consider the wisdom of swapping the time, the energy, the effort, the money that you're already spending trying to distract yourself from the loneliness, the unmet goals, not having the opportunity to be in community for the sacrifice of time, 

 25:56

energy, and effort to have a community. The sacrifice is almost the same. The ways in which we are uncomfortable, yeah, it's going to be uncomfortable either way. But what I have overwhelmingly found is that when women join communities, they heal, they are seen, they're listened to, they're supported, and they have, they take all of that support and love and being cheered on, and they make amazing changes in their lives. 

 26:33

They run marathons for the first time. They learn how to swim as adults. They stop people pleasing. Every day, there is a podcast. Well, I guess almost every day that I listen to. It's the Daily by the New York Times. 

 26:48

And one of their advertisers is Dana Farber Cancer Research. And there's a line that they say in these commercials, and I just love it. So I want to share it with you and tell you why I love it. Here's the line. 

 26:59

And it's not exact. I'm going to butcher it. Nothing moves the needle on beating cancer like a relentless series of breakthroughs. That is what happens in group coaching. We meet, we learn tools, we practice them, you go out into the world, you practice them, you get feedback, you notice, and then you come back for coaching on what worked, what didn't work, what we can try again, what we can do differently. 

 27:30

And those are the relentless series of breakthroughs that actually get the people pleasing eliminated. You join a running club and you run a quarter of a mile your first time. And then the next time you're able to run just over a quarter of a mile. 

 27:48

And then you get to a half a mile and then a mile, so forth and so on, so on. Those little breakthroughs happen with much more support and ease and fun in community. Thanks for listening. I hope something that I said was valuable to you. 

 28:06

And I hope that it encourages you to look for the communities that you think will best serve you. And if it doesn't exist, to create it. I'll talk to you next week.

Episode 155 - The Powerful Combination of Choice and Voice Re-Release

To what degree do you feel capable of saying what you want to say in your life and in your relationships? In this episode, I’m revisiting one of my favorite episodes about the powerful combination of choice and voice. A revolution happens when women say what they want to say. When you can express how you really feel, it becomes easier to stand up for yourself and set expectations. Your relationships shift, your choices become clearer, and you stop performing and start actually living. Here’s what I cover:

• One of the key skills I teach my clients: how to articulate themselves during difficult conversations

• How reconnecting to your own wants and needs is a process that takes time

• Why we are capable of updating the relationships in our lives to match our current wants and needs

• Why authenticity removes the pressure to perform in order to feel accepted

• How learning to handle the stress of advocating for yourself leads to deeper integrity and lasting comfort

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What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

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Transcript

 00:59

All right, let's jump in. This topic of saying what you want to say has been on my mind almost constantly for the last couple months. This last Monday, I hosted a free coaching session to teach women my process for getting to the right words to say what you want to say, and then for feeling the stressful, yucky feelings that come up when you do. 

 01:29

It was amazing. I'm going to be doing it again. So watch for the next date to be announced or you can check the link in my bio once I settle that and I'll put it there. But what is just being confirmed to me over and over and over again is that there is a revolution that happens in the lives of women when they can say what they want to say. 

 01:53

And I choose those words very, very carefully. It felt revolutionary for me. And then as I have developed this process and tested it with clients and in different situations, it just keeps proving true to me that when we experience the ability to say exactly what we want to say, it opens up an amazing opportunity. 

 02:21

So I want to talk about it again from a little bit of a different vantage point so that I can encourage you to look at your own life and ask yourself this question. To what degree do I feel capable of saying what I want to say in my own life and in each relationship that I have? 

 02:43

You know, if I have a romantic partnership, if I have child relationships, if I have work relationships, friend relationships, parent, sister, any kind of relationships that we have, I want you to think through each of them and just ask yourself, to what degree do I feel capable of saying what I want to say, which is an accurate representation of who I am and what I think? 

 03:11

Because that's really important to know. We're going to back out. We're going to zoom out. Back up, zoom out for just a second. What we feel allowed to say is a conglomeration of all of the rules that we were taught about the different groups in which we grew up. 

 03:34

So your family had rules about what you were allowed to say. I remember very distinctly telling my own children that they were not allowed to tell each other to shut up. It just felt so mean. I didn't want them to do that to each other. 

 03:47

So that was like one of our family rules. And there are rules about what you can and cannot say in religious organizations, community organizations, political organizations where you work. And in the beginning, when we are learning all of these rules as infants, before we can really understand language, what we are programmed biologically to be very keyed into are facial expressions and the results of what we do and what we say. 

 04:20

And so from infancy, we're gathering all of these rules and clues about what is allowable. And there's a very good reason for that. We have to have big people to take care of us until we're pretty old. 

 04:34

Like think about the average age at which someone might be fully capable of meeting all of their needs. And it's not until 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, you know, sometimes older. And so it is for very good reasons that we are so attuned to what it means to be in a group and needing to stay in the group and the fear or the danger signals that come up whenever we think about saying something that might challenge what we're allowed to say in the group. 

 05:06

All of that is very good and very right. And we are right to people please when we are young because it's how we get our needs met, which include loving, connected, bonds, friendship, belonging. All of that is necessary. 

 05:21

The issue becomes that we don't update our software, you know, that's always kind of running in the background telling us what we can and cannot do when we become adults who are capable of meeting a lot of those own needs ourselves and we're develop, we're able to develop and create love and safety outside of the group, sometimes for ourself or in other relationships that we seek. 

 05:47

And so this podcast episode is an attempt to give you some good reasons for updating that software. And what I mean by updating the software is, what am I capable of doing today? How am I capable of taking care of myself in stressful situations where I stand up for myself, where I say what I want to say, that I wasn't capable of doing earlier for whatever reasons, maybe in a previous marriage or previous relationship or previous workplace or in a previous situation. 

 06:18

How am I different now? And what are the benefits of updating that software? So here is the premise that I want to work with. I think the whole world suffers when women are not able to say what they want to say. 

 06:39

Now, bold premise, maybe, but here's why I think it's true. When women are not able to say what they want to say, they are cut off from their own wanting. They have to constantly push down or subjugate their own wanting to the needs of others. 

 07:00

And sometimes that's important. But the problem is, is that when women grow up with their wanting always coming in second place to everybody else's, they never fully connect to who they are and what they want. 

 07:17

And that means that they are not able to fully choose what they're doing, even if it's not something they enjoy. Let me give you an example. So early in my marriage, we didn't ever really talk about gender roles because they were just already spelled out for us. 

 07:38

I was going to be home with the kids taking care of the house, and my husband was going to be working and, you know, earning money. We never talked about it. And it was always just such a given in my mind that the needs of the kids, the needs of the house, the needs of the husband, the needs of, you know, taking care of the children were always more important than my own. 

 08:03

And I mean, I'm pausing because I'm even thinking it through again right now. Because I was not able to fully choose being home with kids because it was just handed to me as the rule. There were parts of that job that I hated. 

 08:26

There were parts of that job that just created a lot of resentment and irritation. And I just constantly had to shove that down because I didn't have another choice. I felt like I had no choice. So would I have chosen that job? 

 08:50

I mean, now maybe not, but let's just imagine that I had had the chance to sit down and to fully think through, okay, do I want to have children? If so, how many? Do I want to be home with them full-time? 

 09:06

Do I want to work part-time? How do we want the household to run? Who do we want to be taking care of household things? Do I want it to be 100% me? Do I want, and by the way, it wasn't always 100% me. 

 09:19

My husband was very helpful. So if he's listening to this, honey, I love you and I know you helped. But the point is, without fully choosing it, there were always parts of it that were really, really hard for me. 

 09:34

And I was never able to come up with valid reasons why I wanted to do it. Once we were in it and had five kids, I was like, well, we have five kids now. So this, that, that train has left the station and now I just have to keep doing these things. 

 09:50

Now, I love my kids. I love being home with them. All that's a given. But there is something essential that happens when a woman is present enough with her wanting to choose something, even if the task is not enjoyable. 

 10:06

So changing diapers. Didn't love it. Now, I chose to have my children, so it made the diaper part of it okay. Again, even if it's not enjoyable, if I can find a reason that I like for doing it, then it becomes a task that has less chance of creating resentment. 

 10:30

So the very first thing I want you to consider is when women are able to fully choose what they're doing, even when it's not enjoyable, it changes. And the only way we can fully choose is being connected to our wanting. 

 10:46

And the only way we can be fully connected to our wanting is if we feel free to say what we really want to say. So when we're not connected to our wanting and we kind of we are cut off from our choice, we have to expend extra energy pretending and performing. 

 11:09

So I would go to my church group, the women's group meeting, where everybody was talking about how much they loved motherhood and how beautiful it was to be a mother. And yes, some parts of it certainly were. 

 11:24

But I remember like putting a smile on my face and pretending and performing like, oh my gosh, I love this so much too. And being extra aware of the fact that I was choosing my words carefully. I was trying to silver line things. 

 11:43

I was trying to put lipstick on a pig, however you want to say that, because some aspects of it, I really just didn't enjoy, but I didn't feel free to say that. I felt like it meant something about me as a mom, or I would be judged. 

 11:57

So for me, that happened a lot at church and in friend groups because of the type of rules around enjoying motherhood and that being a sign that I was a good, faithful woman. But for you, it might be somewhere else. 

 12:11

Like, what are you not allowed to say at work? What are you not allowed to say in your relationship? Where do you have to pretend and perform or hide parts of yourself or suppress part of your opinion? 

 12:24

And that's what I want you to think about. Because what happens is that no one is getting when we're not able to say what we want to say, no one is getting the real honest versions of us. And so I'm pretending and performing, and then you're looking at my pretend performance and you're thinking things about me. 

 12:46

And I remember when I finally got to the point where I could be a little more honest about how hard it was, about how tired I was. And I would say something to kind of express that. And I would have women come up to me and say, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said that. 

 13:05

I'm tired too. This is really hard for me too. I don't know what I'm doing too. But until I felt some liberty to be honest, everybody was just looking at this pretend version of me. And we are looking at so many pretend versions of women who are performing to meet whatever standards they think other people want, and they're not able to talk about what's really going on. 

 13:33

And so not only is no one getting the honest version, but then that's what your relationship is based on. It's based on this pretend performances. Everybody pretends and performs. Now, in relationships, we're always discovering more about ourselves, right? 

 13:49

So I'm not saying that at any one point you become the 100% real, authentic version of yourself. I don't think it works that way. But we miss out on the satisfaction of being in relationships that are as real as possible for the moment. 

 14:09

And we miss out on the juice, the juice that's worth the squeeze of really doing what lights us up because so much of our time is spent pretending and performing. We end up giving so much of our time and energy and effort to things that we aren't fully choosing or choosing for reasons that we really like and spending more energy because we are repressing or suppressing or hiding our true feelings about it. 

 14:46

It kind of reminds me of that t-shirt you see. I'm sorry, I'm late. I didn't want to be here, right? So not only is there, are we late because we didn't want to be there, but then we have to pretend and perform that we're happy to be there. 

 15:00

So here's what I think the goal is. The goal is to know and like your reasons for doing whatever you're doing, even if it's not enjoyable, and to be able to say what those reasons are, to say what is important to you, to offer your opinion. 

 15:21

When we're agreeing to things that we haven't fully chosen for ourselves, it binds us and it limits us because it cuts us off from the true power of our choice. I choose to be here. I choose to be invested in this. 

 15:39

I choose to give my time and my energy and my resources to this, even if it's not enjoyable, because I know my reasons for doing it and I like my reasons for doing it. And then once we know what we want, we choose it for reasons that we like and then we can express it. 

 16:00

So the powerful combination of a choice and then having a voice is what I think is so powerful. Now, as I began to figure out more about myself in my romantic relationship with my husband, let's just go with that one because I think it's a good one. 

 16:25

You are always discovering more about yourself. And one of the biggest benefits of a relationship, especially like a primary romantic relationship, it's where we get so many of our needs met. Our need for safety, our need for connection, our need for communication and validation, and to have someone else who is that place for us, that soft landing, who knows us and loves us and protects us. 

 16:57

I talk to so many women whose relationships are mostly working. They're mostly happy. They're mostly okay. And it kind of gets worse from there. And when we dig into why it's not a fully satisfying romantic relationship, it is because usually the woman feels like she is not able to rewrite the rules, right? 

 17:29

Like when I married my husband, I was a very different person. We will have been married for 25 years next year. We celebrated 24 this year, bonkers. And I was a very, very different person. And for so many years, the fact that I didn't feel like I could update our agreement, right? 

 17:48

Because our agreement was I'm going to stay home with kids and you work. There was this undercurrent of resentment that was running almost all the time because I did not like taking care of the house. 

 18:01

I did not like it that I was fully in charge of cooking and shopping and cleaning up. And again, remember, he did help. So, but it was always like helping me, right? This is your job, Sarah, and I'm helping you with it. 

 18:16

When that's not, it's not really what I wanted. I didn't really have a good example of what I wanted, which was, you know, true mutual partnership. But once I began to see that that's what I wanted, I didn't feel like I could ask for it because the roles were defined and we had already agreed to them, right? 

 18:40

So so many of us find ourselves in relationships that mostly work because we are mostly able to say what we want to say. But there's always some areas, whether it's in financial areas of the relationship, sexual areas of the relationship, communicative or emotional relationships of areas of the relationship. 

 19:03

There's always this part where it just doesn't quite work. So you have to shove down those emotions or hide them or suppress them, or we end up eating or shopping. There's so many different ways in which we have to deal with the negative implications of not being able to do what we want to do and say what we want to say. 

 19:27

It's astounding. Think about how often you are frustrated by not able by being by not feeling like you are able to stand up for yourself, share an opinion, ask for something, create an expectation around a need or a request, and how often you have to mask that with food, with scrolling, with shopping, with going and talking to someone else outside your relationship, like a friend or someone else, 

 20:02

editing. All of that just takes more energy. No wonder we're so fucking tired, right? Every woman I talk to is so tired. So as our relationship progressed and I developed the ability to say what I wanted to say, it was disruptive. 

 20:27

And sometimes we're in a partnership where we can say what we want to say and the person responds in a loving, open way, even though they don't understand it and they're willing to work with us. And that's how relationships progress to the next iteration, right? 

 20:44

Where both people make sacrifices to understand each other, where they're coming from, what they want, and to give it to the other person. And that's how relationships progress. This is one big update to the software that we need to make. 

 21:02

Women, we are capable of updating our relationships to match our current wants and needs. But to do that, we have to learn to say what we want to say. Second big update. If I want to update my relationship, if I want to get to the next iteration where we are both able to say what we want to say and give that to each other and come into these new versions together. 

 21:30

If we're not able to do that together, I'm able to go find a relationship where I can do that. If I'm in a relationship with someone who doesn't want me to say what I want to say and get more of what I want, I'm able to go find relationships where I can be that. 

 21:49

Sometimes that means a divorce or separation. Sometimes that doesn't mean a divorce. It just means understanding the limits of this particular relationship and making your peace with it, if that's what you want to do. 

 22:03

And then going to find other relationships where you can show up as fully you. There isn't a right or wrong here. But what that allows you to do is have places where you can fully show up and fully be seen. 

 22:18

And you are no longer expending that extra effort to shove down your emotions, to have your life full of things that you aren't consciously choosing, to edit and to hide, and where you're not able to connect to your own wants and needs, because other peoples are always in the way and they will not let you become the new person that you want to be. 

 22:45

Their limitations become your limitations. There are so many benefits to updating our software about what we are allowed to say or not. The connection to themselves that the women have who go through this process is incredible. 

 23:10

Their ability to connect to what they want and to own it and to find a way to say it that honors the relationships that they're in and themselves is such a beautiful and possible thing. One of the biggest benefits that I found is that I get to be the same person everywhere I am. 

 23:35

I did so much pretending I was one person at church and I was one person at home and I was different person with my friends and a different person with my family and a different, you know, different versions that I thought were acceptable. 

 23:50

Takes a lot of energy to do that. And once I felt confident that I could say what needed to be said and that I could handle the stress of saying it and that my relationships would either come with me or not and that I could handle either outcome. 

 24:10

There's a tremendous sense of self-connection and unity and integrity that comes from I'm just the same person everywhere. What you see is what you get. And the way that I listen to myself and the way that I treat myself and my own wants becomes the standard that I want in my relationships. 

 24:35

So all of my relationships currently are ones in which I am able to be seen completely. And that doesn't mean, and I'll say this, that doesn't mean that I tell everyone everything, but the extent to which I feel comfortable sharing, that is seen and honored. 

 24:59

And relationships deepen. Vulnerability is available. Openness. And I mean, the word that's coming up is it just feels congruous. It's everything is congruent. And that feels really, really good. Doing this work has also helped me to really decide when I want to give my time and energy and effort to something, it's because I like my reasons for doing it. 

 25:32

And when I don't, it's because I like my reasons for doing it. And so it totally still happens. Like by no means am I hoping that you understand that this is like a skill in which I have perfection, not at all. 

 25:47

But it is a skill saying what I want to say and liking my reasons for giving my time and energy to things has produced a life where I just don't do a lot of things that I don't really want to do for reasons that I like. 

 26:04

When I talk to women who are tired, one of the primary reasons is because their life is full of things that they have not consciously chosen for reasons that they really like. And you can never rest enough from a life that is too full of things that you don't really want to be doing. 

 26:30

I want to say that again because it was really powerful for me to understand that. I was constantly thinking, gosh, I just need a break. I would go to bed at night thinking about all the things I had gotten done that day. 

 26:41

And I would get up the next day and just do it again and do it again. And I would just be thinking, gosh, I just, I just need a break. But you cannot, you can't take enough breaks from a life that is so full of things that you're not consciously choosing and don't really want to be doing. 

 27:01

And saying what you want to say allows you to see with clarity what you do want to do and what you don't want to do. This is going to be something that I continue to explore in my coaching and in podcasting and in the workshops that I'm going to be offered because I really feel like it is at the heart of the big changes that so many women want to make, but they don't know where to start. 

 27:34

I think saying what you want to say is so powerful because all the time that is now going to pretending and suppressing and performing and making up stories that aren't totally true, disconnection from our wants, all of that time comes back to you now. 

 27:58

You don't have to do it anymore. And so now you have all that time to do something else with. If this podcast episode has meant a lot to you, I really would love it if you would share your thoughts with me. 

 28:13

I get DMs every week about people's reactions and I respond. And I love that because it continues to inform me about how this is landing for you. It continues to inform the way I teach about it. And then the other thing I want you to do is just watch my social media and get on my email list because that's where I announce all of the upcoming workshops. 

 28:38

And we're going to be doing a lot of this because I imagine like millions of women who feel capable of saying what they want to say and then dealing with the discomfort and the yuckiness that comes from saying that because that is real as well and very normal. 

 28:57

But millions of women who feel empowered to say what they want to say. And I think the way that that will change their relationships and all of those relationships influence other relationships, I feel like the ripple effect, it's, I mean, can you imagine it? 

 29:17

Can you imagine just for yourself being able to show up anywhere and in a way that is congruent with your values and how you want to be in the world, your desire to be kind and respectful, your desire to be blunt and clear, saying that. 

 29:36

And what a tremendous effect that would have on you, on your relationships, and on the world. And that, that's the work I'm committed to doing. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week.

Episode 154 - What Needs To Be Said with Alex Reegan Re-Release

This episode is a reminder of how prejudice can soften when we look beyond policies to see real people, and it feels especially important to bring it back now. In this re-release of a past conversation, I’m joined by my dear friend Alex Regan, a trans man, interfaith minister, speaker, author, and transformative spiritual coach. Meeting Alex changed my life because it replaced my experience of an abstract label with a real human being with a nervous system, a story, hopes, and fears just like me. Once you see someone clearly like that, it becomes much harder to ignore how they are being treated. My hope is that hearing Alex’s story will create that same kind of shift for you. Here’s what I cover:

• How stories reduce prejudice by turning a “group” into a real person you actually care about

• How good girl conditioning trains us to abandon ourselves and why that wiring shows up everywhere

• Alex’s journey of unlearning evangelical rules and building trust in his own inner knowing

• What it looks like to stop fighting for approval and let people be wrong about you

• How community changes everything when you stop performing and start living as your real self

Find Alex here:

www.alexreegan.com

www.instagram.com/revreegs 

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

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Transcript

Sara Bybee Fisk 00:59

This week's podcast is a re-release of one of my very most favorite episodes. To this day, I've only had two men on my podcast. One of them is my husband and the other is Alex Regan, and I wanted to share a quick just reflection. Meeting Alex changed my life, and I didn't realize how profoundly hearing Alex's story would change me. He wasn't trying to convince me of anything. We were not having a debate about politics or policy. It changed me because I got to know him, and Alex is trans. He was the first trans person that I ever got to have more than just a few passing sentences with and the way that our conversation changed my life stays with me to this day. There is a well-known idea in psychology called the content hypothesis, and it basically says that prejudice will decrease when people actually know someone from a group that they have been taught to fear or judge or misunderstand. When there's an actual human that you're talking to, instead of just interacting with an abstract idea, something shifts in the brain, and the story stops being theoretical, and it becomes really, really personal. That's exactly what happened to me when I met Alex. I didn't meet a, quote-unquote, trans issue or a trans policy. I met a person. I got a friendship out of it, someone with a life and a story and a nervous system and hopes and fears and dreams, and it was just like my life. Once you see someone clearly like that, it just becomes a lot harder to ignore the ways that they're being treated because now when I hear about trans policies being enacted on trans bodies and trans lives, I think about Alex, and now I know many trans people. I have trans people in my close family and among close friends. My hope is that this episode will help you see Alex clearly, and then it will become a lot harder for us to ignore the way people like Alex are being treated.Right now in places like Kansas where the driver's licenses of trans people were literally canceled overnight, policies are being passed that affect trans people in these really critical, kind of sweeping ways, totally ignoring their humanity, right? 

Sara Bybee Fisk 03:39

How are they going to get to work? Are they going to get the things done that requires them to have mobility?And so that's why I'm re-releasing this. Regardless of where you land politically, these decisions like the one in Kansas are not abstract for the people who are living them. They land on real people with real lives, real concerns. So this conversation is my small way of pushing back against the distance that lets us turn people into issues and never see the people behind them. Stories close the distance and sometimes hearing one person's story is enough to change your mind. Here's the conversation with my good friend, Alex Regan. I have been so excited to have this interview with you, my good friend, Alex. And we'll get to my nervousness in a minute because this is going to be such an important interview, I think, for so many people. You have been so important to me. And I just want to make sure that I do you and your story justice and in the bigger picture of what we are trying to do as good girls, unlearning that socialization and the rules. This is just going to be fantastic. I'm so glad you're here. 

Alex Reegan 05:00

I'm so glad to be here. I'm really excited. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 05:03

This is Alex Regan, and Alex is an interfaith minister, speaker, and transformative spiritual coach who uses his intuitive wisdom to help guide people toward their own inner knowing. His journey has led him to sobriety, shamanism, and then seminary. That's an interesting path, which helped him reclaim his faith and trust in the divine. 

Alex Reegan 05:27

And I'll just add in and the author of that nice new book that you're holding. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 05:35

This is, I mean, we were going to have a conversation anyway, but then you went and wrote this amazing book, which I was sharing. If you can't see me unless you go to the YouTube channel and watch this video, I had to take out like three fourths of the tabs that I had in here because I knew I would never be able to find what I actually wanted to like really focus on your book.What needs to be said was just released. And it is such an incredible journey. It's your journey, but I found myself so much in the pages of it. I see so many similarities between dropping the good girl rules and finding who we really are and your journey. 

Alex Reegan 06:22

I mean, that was like my biggest hope. You know, a lot of people even ask me, what's your hope that you get out of this, that other people get out of this? And one of the first things I said is that people see themselves. And one of the most amazing endorsements I got was from Sonia Choquette, one of the other big Hay House authors. And she basically said exactly that, that you'll see yourself in this story.And, you know, I've spoken to several other groups already. I was speaking to an LGBTQ church group and, you know, this woman piped up that she said, you know, I'm a lesbian. And when we first started talking, she's like, I was just like, oh, I'll go to this, but I don't know what I could possibly sort of get out of this, you know, kind of. And then she said about halfway through it, she started to realize that she saw herself in my story and she started to really understand herself in a different way. And I was like, bingo, that's exactly, that's exactly what, you know, I sort of have joked to, I challenge you to read this and not see yourself in it, which is I think really important right now. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 07:19

I love that because on the surface, your story from a person assigned female at birth, and then through your journey to find yourself as a trans man, and the the journey of that experience doesn't seem, it seems very niche, right? Like only a very few specific people have that that journey.But I think that's true. And before we get into that, I actually want to back up for a second because you I don't even think you realize that the importance of the role that you played early on in my growth and understanding of humans under the label, right? We have lots of labels that get thrown around a lot today. And in some ways, I can appreciate that the brain wants to categorize as a way of understanding, right? Man, woman, child, adults, boy, girl, and I've spoken on the podcast before about my brother in law coming out as gay in 1998. And how just sitting with his story over years and years and seeing him and knowing him and loving him and watching his, his struggles and watching him grow into relationships really softened me and led me to think that not only was I wrong about some of the things that I had been taught to believe about people who are gay, but that my church was wrong. 

Alex Reegan 08:57

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 08:58

And I will admit, here's, here's kind of where my nervousness comes in. The trends and the, the, the, the T and the LGBTQ was the last place for me of, of some confusion and fear. I didn't understand it. I didn't, I was afraid of the fact that you could think that you were different than who you were. And I had been raised to believe that there's two boxes. There's a mailbox and a female box and you check one of those. And it all depends on the sexual equipment that you're born with. And that's, that's that. 

Alex Reegan 09:32

Yeah, ironically, someone checks the box for you. It's not even that you check the box. That's true. Someone else checks it for you. Someone else checks it for you. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 09:39

else takes a look and checks the box for you. And so when you and I met, that's kind of the state that I found myself in. And even today, I am still in a state of understanding and of relearning and unlearning. And so some of my nervousness today is I really want to honor you and your journey and yet I'm still learning.So here we are, I'm willing to show up and have a conversation with you, even though I might make some mistakes and you are willing to be here in conversation with me. And I think this is just such a beautiful, a beautiful thing, even though I'm nervous. 

Alex Reegan 10:19

Definitely. Well, one, I don't want you to be nervous because I think that this is the natural state of where we actually grow and expand the curiosity and saying, I'm willing to have a conversation. I might mess up. I might not do it right. I might mess up. I might not say it right. But the truth of the matter is there's something powerful in the curiosity in that sort of like, I don't know what this will turn into. I don't know that I have all the answers. I don't know that I'll say it right or correct. I might be wrong. I might be willing to say, I'm not sure. And I think that's where the power is in our connection in all of us as humanity is when we're able to just sort of step aside from our own, like this is how it is. And I know what this is the right thing and instead have curiosity and openness to say, hey, I'm not sure what can I learn from you? And the truth is we can learn so much from each other from both sides. It's not it's not about that one person, I don't think has all the answers and there's only one way to do it. So yeah, don't be nervous.We're in this together. And you know, we'll we'll figure it out. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 11:24

So you and I met at a Rob Bell event and the year has even slipped my mind. Was it 2018? 

Alex Reegan 11:35

I think 2018 or early 2019, somewhere around there. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 11:40

So Rob Bell, you can look up his podcast if you'd like, a really great voice and kind of, you know, this work of understanding yourself. And I, you and I, we're both living in Arizona at the time, you and Flagstaff and me in the Phoenix area, and we got on our plane. I don't think we, I don't even know that we talked at the event. 

Alex Reegan 12:03

Maybe more than just, hello, how are you? A couple little just exchanges. It wasn't like anything that was like a full conversation, just some small talk like exchanges. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 12:14

Yeah, pleasantries. And then we get on our plane. And you are seated next to me. And in the other seat is our friend, Andrea. And we pull away from the gate, John Wayne Airport, ready to come home.And there's a lightning storm. And we sit on the tarmac in those seats, sharing our snacks for the next three hours. And you just what I what I remember is it's like you just unfolded yourself to us in the most beautiful way. I mean, it's making me a little emotional now to remember just in that space. It feels like there was just like this little holy bubble. And I don't say holy, and necessarily a religious but like a sacred like the universe is saying, it's time, Sara, it's time for you to have an experience with a person under the label. 

Alex Reegan 13:10

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 13:11

And that's what happened. And you began to respond to some questions in such a beautiful way.And I just want to say right now that it is not your job. And I think you know this, but to everyone out there who might be listening who is trans or black or a person of color, it is not your job to educate people who have questions. If it is something that feels good for you to do, fantastic. What was it like for you in that moment, Alex, to receive our questions? 

Alex Reegan 13:45

You know, in that space of genuine, in the holiness, I think that's a great word for it, because I felt that too. And I had forgotten it even was a lightning storm. I couldn't even remember why it was we were stuck on the tarmac for three hours. And our flight was like 45 minutes or something. It was just like, we could have been home and on our way, you know, but it was like, literally we could have flown across the country by that time. And yeah, I think the holiness of the curiosity, the wonder, the like genuine, I want to understand and know you and questions from those heart spaces for me have always been just a no brainer. Like I'm always the type of person who wants to just like dive beneath the surface. If people are open to going, you know, deeper with me beyond the like, hey, how's the weather? What's going on with your job? Was it, you know, and really talk about deep life things and spirituality and self-development and healing work and all stuff like I'm in. And so I never feel phased by those questions. And I'm so open always to those kinds of conversations because I think one, that that's an important way in which we actually get to know people.I mean, I think this is what is sort of like confusing right now is there's a lot of misinformation. It's just sort of been, you know, taken, I mean, this happened also to the gay community. I mean, this always reminds me back in the nineties, like when Ellen came out on TV, on her TV show, the moment that happened, it was like, it opened up this possibility that this could just be your neighbor. This could be the lady you met at the PTA that's so-and-so's mom. This could be, you know, like this could be the guy at the grocery store. And all of a sudden society began to evolve into these spaces of like, oh, it is my neighbor. It is my friend to cry. It is my brother-in-law. It is, you know, and that unraveled this sort of monstrosity that had been sort of like, you know, it reminds me of Scooby-Doo when there's like just a guy hiding underneath the mask. You know, it's always just a guy. It's not like the monster, okay? And I think that's what's happened societally and trans people have sort of been the sort of next, you know, target of that. And it's just, there's a lot of confusion. So I think anytime you can answer genuine questions, I'm always open to that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 16:08

It was that openness that really allowed me to proceed. And one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is that a lot of what we're doing, unlearning these good girl rules, is that we are seeing I have been taught to be afraid of this label. I have been taught that this label is bad. I have been taught that this thing is bad. And that has come from an outside source.But once I have the opportunity to check in with myself, my own intuitive knowing and wisest part of me, what do I think then? And that's what I felt like came online that day in those airplane seats, as we shared Almond's and Apple's slice of this. And is that I had set aside, this is what I have been taught to think of trans people. And I am experiencing now this human with his warmth, with his struggle. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that journey that you had to know yourself. 

Alex Reegan 17:25

Yeah, I mean, it was, it felt like a long, long arduous journey because, you know, I think, as you know, growing up in any sort of like fundamentalist religion, I grew up in a very evangelical family. The denomination of our church as a whole was not super conservative, but my family and their immediate friends certainly were. And so I think in that you sort of learn, you unlearn your guidance system that is completely innate in you, right? Like, you know things that are right for you and everyone's sort of talking you out of that, you know? I mean, it reminds me back to like, you know, in the third grade being like, I have to go to the bathroom. I have to go to the bathroom. Like, I don't feel well. And they're like, no, no, sit down. You don't have to go. Wait till break. And I ended up totally throwing up on the teacher shoes because it was like, I knew, dude, I got to go to the bathroom, but they convinced you, no, it's not the right time. And I share that because I think that's what religion in a way did to me.You know, it basically made me sort of not trust myself until me internally, like you don't know. And whatever you think, you know, you probably are on the wrong track. So just kind of stuff that away somewhere and just ignore it. And so, you know, I think it took a lot of, you know, sort of, I mean, just tearing down everything I ever believed in and thought was true. You know, it's like, if you have a house and there's something wrong with the, with the foundation, you have to tear the whole thing out. And so that's really what I had to do in my twenties and even some into my thirties was just tear down everything. So, you know, when I came out or when I was outed to my family, like in my twenties, then I just decided like, I hate God. I don't want anything to do with God, anything to do with anybody who wants anything to do with God. You know, I kind of just ran away from it all because I had to, in a way, completely remove myself to figure out who I was and what I really wanted and needed in the world. And I remember, you know, I had a therapist in my late twenties who said to me, you know, it seems like we have to figure out what it is that you want. And so I want you to get a notebook. I want you to start writing down what you want. And I just had to tell him, like, I don't know how to even say that. Like, I don't know how to even write down something because what I wanted was not part of the equation. That was not an option. You know, that's not what they were teaching us. It was like, no, what does God want? What does your family want? Like, what are these rules want? This is what society wants you to do. This is a sign female birth. You have to follow all these rules and do all these very specific things that I noticed cis men not having to do at all. Like, I was always like, wait, what? You know, I tell a story in the book about being around six and my brother and some of the other boys in the neighborhood were out playing in the sprinklers and my mom comes running out and is like, you have to put your shirt on. 

Alex Reegan 20:20

What are you doing? And I just remember just like looking at them, looking at me. And I remember just being completely baffled because first of all, I was like, why, why do I have to do something different? Like, why don't they have to put their shirts back? You know, like it just, my brain could not even compute it. Cause when I looked at them, I thought I was the same as them, you know? And I mean, I know cis women who have gone through similar things where their family was telling them to do these societal things, you know, cross your legs or do different things. Like, and it's just such a ridiculousness to have to like conform yourself to these weird societal rules that somebody just made up.Um, so yeah, I don't know. It was just a long journey of really undoing those things of stepping outside of those beliefs and kind of then trying to figure out for myself, okay, what do I want? Who am I without all of this? Where does my life go from here then? And, and that was, you know, I mean, that's still in the process. I suppose in a lot of ways, you know, I don't think it's a, it's a journey that ends. Um, but yeah, hopefully that gives you a little bit of an answer to that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 21:28

First of all, I love that story that I had highlighted to for sure and read because I think it is such a beautiful snapshot of how we are, how being a human, being raised by people who are not in touch with their own intuitive wisdom and inner guidance, how they just pass that on. And really, it's an education in ignoring red flags, like your stomach was sending you a red flag that day in class, like we're going to throw up and the adult outside of you is like, nope, nope.And that happens, that happens whether you are at first, whether you are male or female and being, you know, socialized male or female, because things happen. Like, I don't care if you don't want to give him a hug or kiss, he's your uncle, get over there and give him a hug. You're not sad. You're not hurt. That didn't happen. Go apologize, right? And so there's all of these ways in which outside authority, we are taught because we are dependent on the big people in our lives, and we want love and connection from them, we learn to ignore ourselves. 

Alex Reegan 22:42

Yep. Yep. And we learned that we'll lose, we could potentially lose the safety, the security. They might not feed us. They might not pull those. They might not keep a roof over our heads if we don't follow.I mean, it's probably not usually that extreme, but it certainly can be. And so we learn, okay, in order to do this, I have to sacrifice myself, you know, in order to keep my safety, my food, my, you know, the big people. I like that, as you call it. Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 23:08

Well, and at that young age, living with disapproval, living with disconnection is just like living without a roof over your head. True. Yeah. It is essential.We cannot not have that connection. And so as we learn, oh, what I feel and what I want doesn't matter as much as what the big people are telling me matters. So we shove that intuitive red flag finder down. And I think religion only kind of adds another layer to that because now there's just a whole other set of authorities, God being God being the ultimate authority and all these people who say they speak for God and they are going to tell you what God wants from you. It just, I mean, no fucking wonder, right? That, yeah, that this becomes a process of untangling and unlearning. 

Alex Reegan 24:07

Yeah, no doubt. And it's a long process. You know, it's not something you do overnight. It's not one therapy session. It's not one X, Y, or Z thing. You know, it, it, I honestly still believe that this will be something I work on my whole life is unraveling.Um, the, those, like the wiring in my brain from such young ages about how I'm supposed to be, who I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to do, and how you, you know, the good in you is what gets you to heaven or get to your parents approval or whatever the things are. And that if you're not that, you know, there are ramifications and repercussions and that's a lot of weight to live under. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 24:47

And then we gather information about our expression. Is this okay? Is this okay with you? And sometimes we're met with rules like, no, not okay. Put your shirt back on, right? And then we experienced punishment or disconnection. And then we have to self abandon to reclaim that connection. We have to give in to what the big people want. And sometimes what they want is even done with love and concern for us. But then we are constantly living in that self-abandonment so that we can have the connection.But then eventually we can't do it anymore. Like that splitting from ourselves, pushing our own wants and our needs and desires down just doesn't work. And so we express again, and then we experience the rules or the conditioning. And then we experienced the punishment and the disconnection again. And we just keep going around and around in that circle. And I just want to read, this was such a tender part of the book. And I just wanted to read it because it's one of those moments where you expressed and then you got data, right? You said, the first time my mother lets me select my own clothes for school picture day, I come out of the bedroom looking like I just stepped out of the Miami Vice set. I am bursting with pride. I'm wearing a flower and a button up shirt. Oh, this is just so precious. A magenta suit jacket and a matching tie. So that's your expression. And then you get the information from your mom. My mother takes one look at me and looks like she wants to sink into the ground. Every bit of her body language screams that she regrets letting me choose my own outfit. 

Alex Reegan 26:29

Yeah, yeah, my brother is a few years older than me and he remembers vividly the look on her face of just being like, oh God, you know, like, oh no, I don't. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't even know where I found like maybe the flower shirt, okay. But I don't know where I found a little magenta short sleeve like jacket and a tie that was matching color. Like I don't even know how I pulled that out of whose closet like, but yeah, that's what I came out wearing. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 26:59

So, so much of our lives as little people is doing just this, like, is it okay? Is this okay? Is this emotion okay? Is this expression okay?And then we run into the rules, the good girl conditioning, the good boy conditioning too, which exists, you know, at that point too. And so,

Alex Reegan 27:16

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 27:17

It is, I see you as somebody deeply, deeply brave for being in the fight for who you are for this long. And you're just going to have to read the book, you know, if you're listening to the podcast, you're just going to have to read the book to really get a sense for how many times you, Alex, were told, no, no, that's not okay.No, that's a sin. Hell, eternal damnation, burnt in all the different ways that that messaging was sent to you in much the same way that as good girls, be nice. Don't offend anyone. Don't make waves. Don't do anything that will hurt anybody else. And other people's needs and wants for us dominated our lives for so long. 

Alex Reegan 28:09

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 28:11

You mentioned in the book that your fighting time is over. Say more about that. 

Alex Reegan 28:18

Yeah, I think, you know, this doesn't isn't something that will work for everyone. I know there's a lot of things that we could be fighting against. Still, there's a lot of there's over 400 and something anti-trans bills in the United States alone. Right now, there's a lot of racial inequity, poverty, you know, gender inequity. There's a lot of things still going on that we need to do better.But I think for myself, I just had to decide that I couldn't just be the one sort of like, you know, fighting against something. And I wanted to reevaluate about really just looking at what I was for versus what I was against. And just that has a different energy to it to to really sink into, well, what am I for? What do I stand for versus like, what do I stand against? And so that was part of it. And then I also think there was, you know, this aspect of myself where I started to realize that I was really in a place of judgment. Like I was feeling like I could very easily kind of say, well, like, I'm better than you, like I'm on the right side of history because I'm for I'm pro choice. I'm for like humans, you know, being safe. I'm against like racism, you know, and it feels really easy to sort of be vindicated in those ideas and to just say like, you know, this is the right way to do it. And I guess what I started to say to myself, and this is not everyone might not feel even comfortable doing this. But for myself, I started to challenge myself to say, for instance, with my parents who I have vastly different beliefs about a lot of different things. But I started to ask myself, what if I'm neither better or worse than them? Hmm. And they are neither better or worse than me. Because what I found is is my parents ultimately, they want me to be different so that they feel better. And if I want them to do something different, so I feel better, I am ultimately no different than they are. And so if I stop acting in that space, if I stop needing them to be a certain way so that I feel something and instead I just choose to like tap into myself, OK, how do I get to where I need to be? Whether that's peacefulness, whether that's, you know, even just being a little content, whether that's working through my own issues so that no matter what someone else is doing, I can be OK. And that is tremendously hard work. It's it's probably the hardest work I've undertaken because it's everything seems like it's dependent on all the things around you for us to sort of be OK. And that has I've discovered that's kind of a losing battle. Like I'm never going to, you know, I'm never going to get all the things I need so that I'll feel OK. And so I have to find a way to do that inside of me. So I think that's what the fighting days are done kind of meant that I'm just like I'm done fighting against all of that and deciding that I have all the answers and that you have to do it how I think it should be done. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 31:23

That's so relevant to this, you know, that kind of the ongoing conversation that I'm in, which is, how do you disconnect from all of the authority figures and the people in your life, who you have depended on to tell you who you are and what you should be doing, and bring that back in house, right? And how do you make peace with the fact that they are going to continue to be who they are?They're likely going to continue to have the same opinions and the same thoughts about you and what you're doing as bad or wrong, if that's what they think. But how do you exist? Letting them be wrong about you? How do you exist? Knowing fully that because I have my own trust in what I'm doing, because I have my own affirmation that who I am is good and right. Like, sure, having yours would be great, but I don't need it. 

Alex Reegan 32:25

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 32:26

I can drop the fight to try and get it because the fight means me always changing myself to be what you want so that you will reward me with the connection I'm seeking from you. 

Alex Reegan 32:36

Definitely, definitely. And the thing I found too is the work always begins inside of us. Like that's actually where the change happens. We can never get someone else to do something differently just cause we want them to. And even if we could, one, it probably won't be lasting. They probably won't keep change, you know, doing it because we wanted them.And two, we won't feel what we think we're going to feel. It has to be inside of us that we change. And that's the thing we're kind of like, no, anything but that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 33:07

And what I love in your book is that you provide a way to do that in this way that you use these dearly beloved prompts. Now I acknowledge that a lot of people have a tricky relationship with capital G God, right?This man up in the somewhere who's watching, you know, he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, kind of weird thing. And I always. 

Alex Reegan 33:36

it's a little too much like Santa Claus. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 33:39

Right. Right. And but this was this was always confusing to me is he loves me, but he's going to punish me. 

Alex Reegan 33:47

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 33:48

Like, how do I understand love in terms of potentially being punished and always thinking, I got to do more. I got to do more to please him, to earn his favor, to make sure that I am doing enough.And I want to get to the dearly beloved prompts in just a second, but what you wrote here on page 181 is so beautiful. You said, this work, this journey home to ourselves, begins to create deep new space within us slowly. We gain access to a place of renewal as if we had done a home renovation. And I think this is what you're talking about. When you bring the work inside the walls of our home, one sheltered us. Yes, that's why we built them. But now time has come for us to knock down the walls that no longer give us shelter, but instead confine us. 

Alex Reegan 34:39

Mm-hmm 

Sara Bybee Fisk 34:40

So gorgeous. The work is never complete.We have entered a constant becoming. So how do? First of all, I noticed that you use lowercase G in your description of God. Tell me tell me why that was chosen. 

Alex Reegan 35:00

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, that kind of stems back to when I was in seminary. So I went to an interfaith seminary program. And, you know, so the first whole year was studying all the different world religions. And when we got to the month of Christianity, I remember being kind of like annoyed. Like I was like, I don't need to study Christianity. I spent two thirds of my life up until, you know, it felt like so much of my life studying Christianity. I didn't want to study that. And I remember my dean saying to me, I'm going to challenge you to enter this space with an open mind and to imagine that Jesus could be different than who you imagined him to be or who you were taught that he was.And so in the process of that month, you know, up until then, even I just wouldn't even really use the word God. I mean, so most of my 20s and 30s, I just wouldn't even use the word God. I just didn't even like that word. I didn't like people who were using that word, you know, it was really triggering for me still. So something in that, I guess I really entered into that space. OK, deal. I'm going to have a little more curiosity. I'm going to sort of try to set aside some of my judgment and try to look at this with a little bit of a like a beginner's mind, as they say in Buddhism, you know, to try to just look at this with new eyes. And I did that and I did start to see something different. I started to see the possibility of what if this isn't all bad? You know, what if it's just been manipulated like so many things have and there are positive things that I can take from this. And I guess in that I just started using God with a lowercase G. I just decided like I can kind of reclaim God because God with the capital G, it has a lot of connotations. Like you said, you know, it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. It makes people feel like they own God. And I feel like that's sort of one of the most predominant things I've found myself saying is nobody owns God. And I feel like making it a lowercase G, it's sort of like reclaims that. It's like, oh, I can call it God because I'm not saying it's your God. I'm just saying it's God. And and that kind of I don't know, that gave me some space to sort of evolve beyond what I had known and to kind of like what we're talking about at the very beginning, there was then a curiosity to say I can learn something here beyond what I had known. So I think that really helped me to do that. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 37:22

What I love about what you said is it's essentially the same process that I went through when I didn't yet know that I was going to eventually leave the church I grew up in, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. But I remember that there was a time when I used to think that I got to God or that my relationship with God was through the church. And I had, like, God is up here on top, I'm down here below, and the church is in the middle, kind of facilitating all of it for me. And I remember it's almost like I took that middle piece, the church, and I set it off to the side. Like, I still appreciate what the church does for me, but what I have with God is mine. It is my own.And I don't need it to be facilitated or policed through this institution. Like, what God and I have, it's our own, it's my own thing. It's our own thing. And that was even revolutionary for me because growing up in a religion where there are lots of outside authorities who, you know, there's a prophet, and the prophet speaks directly to God, and then he tells us what God said and his word is as if it were God's word himself. And so,

Alex Reegan 38:41

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 38:41

that there's something very revolutionary about taking the authority out of it. And so for those of you who are listening, maybe you have a great relationship with God that you love, maybe you are restructuring it. But what I love about what Alex has done is redefining God to be the presence in your life that works for you. You can do that.You can do that. And in fact, you can benefit greatly from it. And one of the ways that I think you invite us into exploring the benefits is with these dearly beloved writing prompts that are throughout the book. And I'm just going to read you possibly my favorite one. At the end of every chapter, you just have a prompt and you say turn to the God within. And this is the one on page 179 and ask, how can I get in touch with the fact that my life is okay, that my life is not will be okay. My life is how can I foster a deeper faith in the universe, in you and in my own compass? Why did you choose

Alex Reegan 39:49

beloved. That actually comes from Liz Gilbert. So I was in a writing class back in I think 2017 with Martha Beck, who's just an amazing author and teacher. And it was like a six or eight week course that it was all over the phone back then. This was like before Zoom and all of that stuff happened. So, you know, she'd have like a weekly call, you'd go on the call, everybody was just listening, she'd give different tips, and then you turn in writing assignments. And on the Friday of each of the ends of the week, she had Liz Gilbert on, which is like one of her closest friends. So it was like amazing.You got like these two amazing authors and you got to like listen to them, talk about writing and all these things. And one of the things one day was Liz Gilbert started talking about a process that she does herself, which was she'd sit down in the morning and she'd write herself a letter from love. And she usually would start it off. Back then, this is what she, I think now she just says she just starts it off as from love. But she said, dear beloved, this is what I want to tell you. You know, and when I heard that, I just went, oh my God, this is amazing.And so for months, I just, every day I would just sit down and write and I would just wherever I was that day. So, you know, whatever that one is in that, that one that I wrote, that's from years ago, this is not even tied into the book. These happened well before the book was even taking much form. So if I was having a really bad, it would be like, dear beloved, you know, angry, frustrated, you know, suffering self, this is what I want to tell you. And then I just would let myself like tap into whatever you want to call it, the God within the divine, our guides, ancestors, whatever, and love as Liz Gilbert says. And I just would get these responses and they almost came through. If you notice in the writing, it's a different writing. It doesn't even sound like my voice per se, because it's like it came through in this almost channeled way. That was really this like message for me. And so I did that for months. I think I ended up with almost 60 of these dear beloveds. And so I always knew somehow, oh, this should be part of something that I share. And as I began, you know, putting the book together, I was like, Oh, this will fit perfectly. And hilariously, there was literally one of those for the ends of every chapter and ones that fit perfect.I mean, it's not like we, I mean, we edited a few things like my, the grammar and some things, but literally they fit perfectly with each of the chapters. Like you couldn't have made that up. Like it was literally just that synchronicity. So yeah, the beloved also felt important to me because of my roots. In fact, one of the Hay House editors that, Oh, should we take out beloved? We can put another word. Like that might be more accessible to people. I'm like, this is the one thing I'm like, please don't take that out. Because especially a lot of Christianity, there is this, the Bible talks a lot about us being the beloved, you know? 

Alex Reegan 42:38

And so there was this part of me also that was reclaiming that, that was like, we are the beloved of the divine of God. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're white, black, Jewish, straight, gay, trans cyst, the whole gamut of all of us. We are the beloved as a whole body of what I believe is the true body of Christ, not what's, you know, sort of taught as the body of Christ.And so keeping that beloved felt so important to me too, because it was like this healing energy for myself to just call myself that dear beloved. And, and then other times in the book, you know, I actually refer to the reader as dear beloved, you know, like that I just want them to know like we're, we are each other's beloved. Like this goes so much deeper and beyond, you know, the ideas around that kind of language and being sort of that being kind of gate kept gatekeeping away from people being the beloved because they're not part of the body of Christ anymore. And I, I just think we all fall in that there's no, there's no separation. Like I, that line I say where there's no place where you end and I begin. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 43:49

That just is so beautiful because I think inadvertently, probably. I mean, I just have so much compassion for my parents and who were raised by their parents, right? Who none of them were taught like, hey, you are good. 

Alex Reegan 44:10

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 44:11

you are good. And it's not that they weren't taught that. It's just that message, I think, gets blurred when, hey, close your legs, put your shirt back on, go kiss your uncle. You're not tired. You're not hungry. You're not going to throw up. Like it gets lost because now we just become this creature to please. And are people pleasing?I don't really believe our people pleasing is optional, but that's a separate discussion. Because it gets our needs met and it helps us to survive. But the programming that we get as good girls is that you need to fix yourself. You need to be better. You need to be trying harder. You need to be doing more. And that there's almost something fundamentally broken in us, which if we're going to talk about Christianity, it was Eve, right? Who messed everything up for everyone. And it was, there are teachings in the there's also teachings about how your body is bad and cover it up and you can inadvertently cause men to have impure thoughts. And so what I love about Beloved is that it, I think it brings us back to our essential goodness. 

Alex Reegan 45:27

Yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 45:28

you are good, you are beloved, you are valuable, you are worthy and that the information that we are open to receiving when we think about ourselves that way. 

Alex Reegan 45:38

Yep. That's so different. Yes. So different. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't have to any longer, what you're saying is great. Like we become performative versions of ourselves in this, right? When we're following all the good girl, good boy rules of this is how you do things. This is who you have to be. We become this performative version of ourselves. That's not even the real version of us. And so I think, yeah, stepping outside of that, pulling back into the truth of we're not broken. There's nothing wrong with me. And I don't care if you think there is, you know, that's on you to figure out and to recognize that we are that beloved. It's about calling ourselves the beloved, you know, it's about seeing ourselves as that. Like I am my beloved, you know, like, and loving ourselves and welcoming ourselves home, you know, because we can't just keep, it's just, we can't just keep playing this performance of it's like we're, it's like we're on always, we're putting on a show for everyone to make sure we get, like you said, when we're younger, to make sure we get our needs met, because we have to do it. It's you're right. It's not optional. It's a survival mechanism. It is literally sheerly survival. But then when we become adults and it's not any longer survival method, that's what I'm talking about in the sort of building, taking down the walls that are no longer service. Yeah. It helped us survive as children. Now it is keeping us captive in these spaces and we have to be willing to tear down those walls and say no more, you know, like I am not going to perform for you so that you feel whatever you think you need to feel by me doing this. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 47:13

Yeah. One of the most fascinating parts of kind of my discussion and our ongoing discussion about this is how the rules changed for you after you transitioned. 

Alex Reegan 47:25

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's, that's ever evolving because of you, I don't know if you, those of you who are not watching can't see, but I'm starting to get more facial hair here. And so like that's changing it even more, you know, like I'm noticing how I was in the store the other day and it was pretty older gentlemen. Uh, we pass each other and he gave me the very much like, Hey there son, you know, like he really like engaged with me. And in the past, like they, he would have just walked right past me, you know, there wouldn't have been like an engagement. And so I'm noticing interesting things like that where older men who wouldn't normally have engaged with me are now kind of seeing me as their peer and seeing me as the, this equal. And so I'm getting more engagement in some of those interesting areas.Um, but the interesting thing too, is that like I transitioned while still working for the nonprofit that I work for and things like that. So it hasn't necessarily changed. You know, I have some friends who have transitioned and then now they're in different jobs. And so now they're seeing potentially as just assist man. And they're totally having a completely different experience. You know, people are treating them totally different. There really are not the same rules that there are for people assigned female at birth. And so I have seen more and more of that, um, as, as like, I've just trained as my transition sort of continues to evolve and it's definitely, um, yeah, I don't, I notice, um, you know, even sometimes in, in work environments where the people as I'm female at birth were definitely treated differently and expected to like do more behind the scenes work and kind of, you know, like, Oh, you guys should eat, you, you ladies should eat in the office over here.And meanwhile, most of the assessment are out in the room with the like larger group of people at the conferences and things and just little weird things like that. Where I've noticed and, and now I think I'm sort of in this weird in between sometimes for them because maybe they feel weird being like, you should go in there with them, you know, kind of, I guess go out there where I don't know where to send you, you know, kind of thing. And just noticing the differences, um, and just also noticing how different, um, you know, I, I've been joking that I really want to write a graphic novel that's about bathrooms because first of all, bathrooms are a huge issue right now, right? That's one of the big things we're facing. Like, uh, trans people can't use the wrong bathroom, you know, all this stuff that's going on. Um, but I really want to just, because it is two different environments. I mean, you know, the women's restroom is very much like, there's a lot of talking going on. There's a lot of engaging. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of like people at the mirror. Oh, can I borrow that? Oh, what are you doing? And you know, especially if you're in restaurants or out at bars or places like that, you know, the women's restroom was, is so interactive. Really. There's like a lot going on in there. 

Alex Reegan 50:21

And it's also usually very clean. Let me just say, even though y'all might think it's not clean, it's very clean.And then there's the men's restroom, which is literally like your, it's like church. There's no talking. There is no talking. There is no eye contact. If you bump into someone, don't say sorry, or excuse me, because then they will look at you. We're like, why are you talking? You like broke the rule of fight club. Um, also they're disgusting. I just have to like, I don't know what's happened in half of them. So it's an interesting difference too. And the energy levels are just completely different. And you know, honestly, when I was still, before I transitioned, I was stopped by women going into the restroom. I was told you're going into the wrong bathroom. What's wrong with it? And I was like, do you think I can't read? Like I would walk with other women assigned female birth who are women themselves and identify as women into the bathroom with them. People would still stop me from going into the bathroom. Like it was constantly a trauma for me to ever use the bathroom in public.And now I never have a problem. Like men don't even look up. It's like, go in, go to the bathroom. That's it. Go out. There's no. And so that's just one of the interesting little things. It's just also my own differences in how I'm treated. I actually was treated worse sometimes by cis women in bathrooms and in places like that. Because I think in part that people pleasing and that performative, it's like there's also are assuming all women have to look like all other women do. There's a lot of judgment around if you look masculine presenting, there's just a lot of judgment around that you're not conforming. And that's like seeped so into all of our brains that we will literally judge other people saying you should also conform and do this performative thing so that I feel safe in the fact that I have to do it. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 52:30

Oh yeah. And for, for a lot of the people that I work with, that's where a lot of our resentment comes from of like, listen, I am busting my ass to perform. Yep. Why, why the hell aren't you? Like we're all in this together where we all got to perform and pretend that we are not feeling bad or feeling sad or that we actually are happy to be here when we are not at all happy to be here.Like the pretending and the performativeness just is, is endemic in, in, in our, our, our lives as, as people pleasers. And so for those of us who are stepping away from conformity and stepping away from pretending and performing, there was a beautiful part in the book. Um, it's one of my gazillion tabs here where you talk about meeting Doris and, um, her band of, of people that you began to really think like, wait a second, these might be my people. You've met somebody who was trans. Was it probably possibly for the first time? 

Alex Reegan 53:37

Yeah, that I knew of, yeah. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 53:39

Yeah, that you knew of. And so one of the things the reason I wanted to mention that is for those of you who are listening, who are on learning and stepping out of performance and pretending and people pleasing.What role, Alex, do you think having people other people you connect with who are also undoing? What role? 

Alex Reegan 54:01

that play? I mean, I think that's life-changing. And I think the thing I'd say first to that is you will find those people as well. Like it almost becomes like a magnet because I think when you start that process of pulling back, when you start the process of like, I'm not going to just do this to please you anymore. I'm not going to follow your stupid rule just because you had to follow them and you want me to follow them too, you know, whatever the nonsense is like passed down through generation to generation. There's a lot of fear in that moment of that pullback, like sort of as you disconnect, it's like recut in the umbilical cord again, I think in a way. And you're like, yeah, no, I'm not going to fall. I don't care that this is what you all have done for ancestry down the line. I'm not going to do it. There's a lot of fear in that initial thing.Like I will be abandoned. I'll lose my own community. I'll lose it. And you might. And yet when you move far enough away from that, you will start to like draw in like magnets, the other people doing this work in the world, people who are no longer, you know, like submitting to, I have to follow these standards and these rules. I'm going to be outside of the binary or outside of gender norms or outside of the good girl norms outside of this is what you have to do to be good for God. Whatever all of those things are, you will find other people on that journey and you will find each other because I have found that over and over and over again. As my life has gone on ever since I actually kind of pulled back and said no more almost as soon as I did that, I started to find other people doing this work and you will, you will find community and it matters that it will be helpful because you'll also meet people kind of further down the road than you who've like been doing this a little longer than you. You know, sometimes I meet people who are just newly deconstructing from Christianity and I'm like, shit, I've been doing that for like 25 years now. Like, what do you want to know? You know, like, let's talk about this. And they're like, I've been out of the church for two months. I'm like, Oh God, okay, where are you? You know, and I think it's nice to know that you'll then meet people that maybe have been doing it a little longer or further down the road. And you can kind of say, Hey, how did this work for you? What I'm at this part where I'm really stuck where how did you get around this part? And, and you really can find that space in those communities to help you really unlock that more and find yourself then in that process. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 56:29

Absolutely. And because we are humans who are meant to be in relationships, in communities, in groups, I love that you say that you will find it. It's almost like when I started doing the work for myself to love and accept myself and to deal with the fear of punishment, the fear of disconnection and to connect to myself. It's all I, I liken it to kind of like I started sending out a different frequency. My frequency was no longer who do you want me to be? What can I do for you? How can I please you? How can I fit into your plan for what you think my life should look like to? Yeah, I am a sovereign being. And that frequency attracts a different type of no doubt, a different type of person. And so I love that you say that.What, what is your hope for what your book will do in the world? 

Alex Reegan 57:30

I mean, I think, you know, it partly just goes back to that idea that I hope people will see themselves in my story. You know, it's really easy to think again that we're so different. You know, we spend it's not just a societal thing. I think it's also just how our egos are built. And we sort of spend our whole time just sort of identifying the other, you know, like whether it's because people have different color skin, they have a different religion, they have a different dialect of language or they sound different, they have a different accent, whatever the things are that we really have like pinpointed. In fact, I kind of think there's something to the way that we've manifested this world that is such a like multifaceted, diverse place. There's just so many different people from so many different walks of life. And the fact that like we have the opportunity to learn to see each other in each other as opposed to seeing each other as the other is like that is the it's like we're given every day a thousand opportunities to do it over and over again and to keep and to choose the sort of I don't want to say the right answer, but to choose love, to choose to see one another.And so I think that's my hope is that right now it just feels like we're really in this space where there's a lot of confusion, a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of misinformation, a lot of fear mongering, which, you know, always is a big red flag to me. You know, if people are pointed at someone else and saying they're to blame for your lot in life for whatever is wrong in your life, that's usually a red flag. And so I think I hope that people, you know, my challenge has been to several people. If you think you can't find yourself in my story, that's sort of this trans man who grew up in an evangelical household who came through and got rid of Christianity, went through addiction, went through weed smoking, went through finding shamanism and became an interfaith minister. If you think you just cannot find yourself in this story because it feels so different from you, I promise you, like I challenge you to read this book. And and I don't believe that you'll come out on the other side of it without seeing yourself in some piece of yourself in this, because I truly wholeheartedly believe that we are oneness. I believe that we're all connected. We all know what it's like. You know, the surface level of the story might be different. But underneath, if we excavate beneath the story level to our emotions, we all feel the same emotions. We all feel we all know what it feels like to want to belong. We all know what it feels like to want to be worthy. Most of us know what it feels like to probably feel like we are a sinner or we're not good enough or we haven't done it right. You know, we all are running through the same current of wanting to connect and belong. And I think, you know, that's my hope is that people will find that sense of belonging even in something that they think, you know, is not is not for me. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:00:30

Well, I see myself in your story and it's why I wanted to share it with, uh, the people who listened to this podcast and it's not that the circumstances are the same, it's that the journey is the same to find who you are, to be seen for who you are, to stop the pretending and performing that gets in the way of being seen for who you really are. I mean, the most common thing that, you know, middle-aged moms and women who I talk with, they say, I just don't even know who I am.Like if you take away the kids, the job, all the things that I do for others, like who am I? And I think that that beautiful yearning just, it doesn't seem to go away. 

Alex Reegan 01:01:18

No. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:01:19

to be wanting to be seen and known for who you are. And so I love that I see myself in your story and I love that other people now have the opportunity to do that as well.And to make that easier, I am gonna be giving away five copies of Alex's book. And I just wanna say right now, here's how you can get yourself entered into the drawing for it. So Alex is on social media at RevRiggs, RevRiggs, R-E-E-G-S, that's his handle on all of the social media platforms. And if you follow Alex, that will get you an entry into each of his social media platforms. You can also follow me on my social media platforms, Serifis Coaching or Serifis Coach, it's one of those two. So follow on social media, you can also follow the podcast, that would actually be fantastic and rate it. And if you just screenshot that, DM it to me, I'm gonna take all of these names and put them into an entry, send you a book. And then Alex, tell them what you're gonna add to that. 

Alex Reegan 01:02:28

So I realize it's too complex and complicated to try to have you send me the book so I can sign it and send it back to you. So as long as you send Sara your information, we'll get you at least I'm going to make some placards that I can sign and I'll send it to you and then you'll be able to stick it in your book so that you have a signed copy of the first edition. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:02:46

Beautiful. So sign up, follow, screenshot it and DM it.And then I would love to put one of these books in your hand. And if one of these books does not end up in your hands through this giveaway, they're the the softcover is available now anywhere you buy books. And please, once you read it, write a review. Um, Alex, is there anything that we didn't cover that you really wanted to say? 

Alex Reegan 01:03:14

Hmm. I think, you know, I just want to say, you know, thank you to hopefully, I mean, to you, first off, but I think hopefully my hope is that the listeners also will understand the opportunity in this moment, which is to be open and have curiosity to something that you might not understand something you might even have fear or anxiety around something that seems so foreign to you. And so outside of your realm and your life, and to just like have curiosity to be open to something new and to learning something beyond what you know, because I think the beauty is, is that you don't know who you could attract into your life and who you could meet and what could change, you know, just like Sara saying, when we met, you know, we could have just like met and passing at that event, talked, chatted and gotten on different planes and gone on with our lives. And a lot of us do that in our lives. You know, we don't end up in that moment sometimes. And I think partly the reason we don't end up in those holy moments where you actually get that opportunity to have that little bubble experience where you learn something and expand and grow is because we don't have enough curiosity is because we just aren't open to possibilities beyond what we think we already know and what we think how things are.And this is, this is it, this is how it is. And so, you know, I just hope that we all would take that opportunity in our own daily lives, you know, to just have a little more curiosity, have a little more open heartedness towards each other towards a stranger at the grocery store, you know, the cashier that you're talking to or the teller at the bank, it doesn't have to be some huge, you know, broad thing, but it can just be some simple little meeting that we have with each other where we're willing to see each other and to see, I see you, you know, because I think the truth is that we're all here to be seen. That's what all of us want. We want to be seen for who we are. We want to be loved for who we are. And we can give that to people if we just open up our hearts and have a little more curiosity and understanding that, you know, we don't know everything, but we're willing to learn and expand and grow. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:05:21

beautiful. And I just want to point out something that we don't have to understand each other to see each other.We don't have to understand deepest, you know, inner workings to just extend seeing to each other. And so I'm kind of in my mind seeing like like a continuum, like the first step is just to see below the label, like this is a human having a particular experience, I don't have to understand it, to see them and to understand that they are a human who has rights and who has who, who is entitled to the same opportunities that I want for my life. And so as if you are listening, and this is your first time lists listening to someone who is trans curiosity and and seeing is enough. 

Alex Reegan 01:06:15

Yeah, great place to start. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:06:17

But if you follow that a little bit longer along the continuum to actually becoming a friend, or maybe even an ally, that is an amazing opportunity to then step in front of some of these people who we see are brothers and sisters who are tired of fighting, who are tired of trying to just carve out a place to exist in the world of dignity, of access to health care, access to the things that, you know, those of us who present at, you know, this head and to put our bodies in front of their bodies in terms of legislation, calling people, standing up for them in our circles of friends. Like, that is work you can do if you want to.It's not essential to just see and have curiosity about someone. But I do just want to acknowledge that what you have enabled me to do, Alex, is be you and to see the similarities in our lives and that your life and your journey is, we're the same. And it has influenced me to step up and advocate and write and call and that has been such a beautiful gift that knowing you has given me. 

Alex Reegan 01:07:51

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, that means a lot to me. And I think, you know, what you're saying is so right. You can start at the very basic part of just being willing to see people as humans. And, and I love what you said about that next space of putting art, putting yourselves in front of these bodies. And that goes not just for LGBTQ people, but for people of color and anyone who's fighting against oppression and is seen as a minority in this world. And I think this is how we heal the world together. We do it together.We don't do it just like one person standing, fighting, screaming at the top of their lungs when nobody might even be hearing us, we have to come together and do this work together. And I would challenge people. There are a lot of these bathroom laws and a lot of things like that happening. Keep your eyes open for people. Keep your eyes open for persons that you might see coming into the bathroom that might look like they are presenting. Maybe maybe it's the women's bathroom and someone's presenting. Maybe they look a little bit like me and keep an eye out for that person. Like watch and make sure other people aren't being mean or trying to harass them. Cause like I said, that was something I faced for decades in my life long before I ever transitioned. So, you know, we can keep an eye out for each other and we can look out for each other and know that we're, you know, I see you and I'm standing beside you. It doesn't mean that you have to like literally physically confront someone or get involved in a situation that might be uncomfortable. It might just be about like Sara saying, you might step in front of someone into the, like the sinks just to separate something where you see something that doesn't feel right. You know, like use, use your privilege, whatever privilege that might be to try to like hold space in the world for folks who don't necessarily, you know, have that privilege right now. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:09:39

Yeah. I love the definition of privilege and I wish I could remember where it came from. It's not mine, but it's privilege is whatever you don't have to deal with. 

Alex Reegan 01:09:51

Hmm 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:09:51

right? I don't have to deal with being mistaken for any gender other than how I present.And so that privilege where I can just walk into spaces that are for females and no one questions me, I just don't have to worry about it. And so privilege is a loaded word for some people, but I like to think of it as just whatever you don't have to deal with. And so I love the idea that I can use the part of my life that is easy to advocate for and take a stand for people whose lives are not easy when it comes to something as simple as just walking into a fucking bathroom. 

Alex Reegan 01:10:30

Yeah, yeah, for sure. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:10:32

Alex, this conversation, I just I wish we could talk forever and we will, you know, off offline.But is there anything else that you want people to know about the work that you do about working with you in some way? 

Alex Reegan 01:10:51

Yeah, definitely. I mean, one thing, if you belong to a church or a spiritual community, I do a lot of speaking and guest preaching spots. So if you want to have me, you know, come and talk somewhere, you can contact me on my website and reach out that way. I also do a lot of, I still do some one-on-one coaching. I also do some workshops and smaller group things as well. So feel free, you know, my website's just alexregan.com, you know, you can feel free to reach out to me there, email me, you know, and we can set up a time to talk and figure out what it is that I can do to help you or your community.I love to be out there in the world talking about not just my story, but also just about the things that I've learned along the way that I really think, you know, one of the things I put in the book was I really tried to give you workbook things, you know, like actual sort of homework that you could do yourself, things that have worked for me in hopes that they might work for you as well. And so, you know, any way I can, you know, support a community you might be in, if it's other LGBTQ groups as well. But even, you know, I think one of the things I'd certainly feel called to is coming into spiritual communities and spaces that are open and affirming and talking to them because I've gotten a lot of great responses from people, people who, you know, like Sara is saying that it just helped them to see a new frame of reference and it really helped them open their hearts and their minds. And that's like where I think, you know, I can be of great service to people. So yeah, hit me up. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:12:21

Well, it's certainly where you shine because I have had the privilege of being in the congregation when you preached and when your wife Doris sing just the most gorgeous songs. And so, yeah, Alex, thank you so much for your time and for writing this book. It is a gift to the world. 

Alex Reegan 01:12:39

Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here. 

Episode 153 - Using the Past and the Future to Solve Problems in the Present

It’s so easy to feel stuck and overwhelmed when we haven’t figured something out yet. But what if you looked for the evidence in your life that you can solve the problem? In this episode, I share how I’m borrowing belief from my past self to help me make a decision I’m wrestling with now. Instead of demanding certainty or shaming myself for not knowing the answer, I’m using real proof from my own history to help me relax while I take the time to figure it out. Here’s what I cover:

• How leaving the church one step at a time taught me how to untangle my beliefs

• Why your brain relaxes when you offer it real evidence from your past

• How to copy and paste a past growth process onto the problem you’re facing today

• The self-judgment that creeps in when you think you should have it figured out by now

• A powerful visualization to help you imagine the future version of you who already solved the problem

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

Transcript

00:59

Short and sweet episode coming your way today that is really based on some work that I'm doing and a realization that I had that was really helpful. And I hope there's some value for you as well. 

 01:12

I am currently working on resolving how I feel about charging money for my coaching services. And I have struggled with this for years, years and years and years. I've charged more. I've charged less. 

 01:28

I've worried a lot about what other people think of what I charge. I have adjusted it. I've given it away. I've been all over the place. And a lot of that is because women are taught that we should be helpers. 

 01:43

We should be givers. We should be willing to help other people and solve their problems for free. That our time is not really our own, that it's the best and highest use of it is to help other people. 

 01:59

And so when you are in the type of profession that I am, where you are helping and wanting to help other people, for me, there's been some challenges. And there's a part of me that really believes that it is wrong to charge money when you could do it for free, right? 

 02:20

It's wrong to charge money for something that comes easily to you. It's wrong to charge money to help other people resolve their problems. I should be willing to just do it for free. And that it's wrong to profit in some ways off of other people's suffering. 

 02:40

And you can kind of hear that that part has kind of a dramatic take on what I do, because it's not all suffering. Yes, people pleasing causes a lot of problems and there is some suffering. Anyway, as I have tried to better understand what all the different parts of me have been programmed to believe, it has felt for a long time like this particular issue is just, I'm just kind of stuck in it. 

 03:11

I could charge this, but then that's too much. I could charge this, but then it's too little. I could do this or do that or do this. And it all just kind of feels like I am trying to land on the right number that will keep other people happy and that will make me happy as well. 

 03:29

And it's all over the place. That number doesn't exist. So you can see how the programming that I have grown up with really is kind of making me look outside of myself. What's the right answer? What does this person say I should charge? 

 03:46

What does this person, what will this person think? And it's kind of just tied me up in knots over the years. And so I just drop it. I've just kind of dropped it and, you know, kind of limped along, not really feeling like I've made a powerful decision or I've made a decision that I am very happy with that really kind of resonates with my values. 

 04:11

So I was talking about this with my coach last week. And in just the opportunity to talk through this with her, I realized I have had problems in the past that I thought were this kind of intractable, this stuck. 

 04:35

And I was able to work through them. And that gave me such relief and hope. And so what I wanted to talk a little bit about is how I am now borrowing the process and kind of borrowing some belief from what I did before to help myself feel confident in this time where I don't have this pricing issue solved yet, but I'm using my past success with changing something. 

 05:13

And I'm going to get into what it was in just a second. My past success in changing what I thought was just this intractable belief and how I was able to finally kind of loosen my grip on that and have a different experience. 

 05:28

I'm using that, the memory of that to inform what I do next. So what was the belief that I shifted? And why did it feel so immovable? When I was realizing just how out of alignment continuing to go to church was for me. 

 05:51

When I really looked, I'd looked at, you know, what the Mormon church taught about things that were really sensitive and tender to me, and I didn't agree. I wanted to leave. I wanted to stop going, but I didn't feel like I would ever fully be able to leave. 

 06:12

I felt like a part of me would always be wondering, should I go back? Was it the wrong decision? Am I messing up my kids? Am I missing something? Is there, you know, a part of something that I'm not seeing that if I knew, I would want to go back to church. 

 06:33

And so I kind of imagined myself leaving. And my fear was I would never fully be able to leave, that I would always feel kind of a lack of confidence about my decision, that I might always kind of crumple or collapse in the face of questions from people that I knew and loved who were still practicing Mormons. 

 06:57

And I felt really kind of immobilized by that fear for a while. Like I'm not ever fully going to be either in the church or out, just kind of in this limbo space between those two states. And it took up a lot of my time. 

 07:14

It took up a lot of my brain space. And I think if I look back, the parts of me that were active were just really trying to protect me from making a decision where I might be open to the criticism and judgment of others, or where there might be some very normal things to regret or to feel sadness about the loss of. 

 07:43

There are so many positive things about having a religious community, and Mormonism does a few things really, really well. There's a lot of opportunity for social connection and service and a lot of opportunity to meet other people who are like-minded. 

 08:02

And I thought about the loss of those things and thought, gosh, will I ever get over that? Will I ever just not grieve that anymore? And so that limbo between wanting to leave, but not feeling like I was able to, it feels a lot like the stuckness that I'm feeling right now. 

 08:21

So when I looked back and asked myself, okay, so how, how did I do that? I had the opportunity to really kind of step through the steps. So first thing that I did was that I didn't demand that I make a change within a certain time period. 

 08:43

I knew that I was going to need some time and some space to be able to feel comfortable. And I could also, now looking back, I can see that my brain wanted to know, what does the end look like? Our brains crave certainty. 

 09:03

They create concrete evidence. They crave, you know, the known and do not like the unknown. And so my brain at the time was really wanting to get to what is this going to look like on the other side? 

 09:15

And I couldn't come up with something really concrete. But what I did was I had to trust myself to take just the next step. And if I look back, the way that I left the Mormon church was one step at a time. 

 09:36

And for me, that journey was over lots of years. It was like over seven or eight years, right? Just one little step. And sometimes I didn't even realize that I was taking a step. But as I told myself the truth and didn't discount what I was feeling, I let it really, really matter how uncomfortable I was, how much I wanted something different, how the effects of what was being taught at church were showing up in my life and in the lives of those that I loved who were affected by them. 

 10:09

I just did the next thing, the next step. I skipped meetings that I didn't want to be at. Then I started declining invitations to participate in other things that weren't in alignment for me. I started talking about my fears. 

 10:29

I got a coach who helped me work through the grief. And I just did the next thing that felt right. And so what I was able to create over time is a lot of trust with myself because every time I took the next step, I felt better. 

 10:51

I was still scared, right? In a lot of situations, I was scared to completely disengage, completely leave. But I was the next step, the next step, the next step that really showed me you can do this. 

 11:07

You can do this. So when I think now about how stuck I felt around being able to fully leave Mormonism, it's not that it feels silly to me because I remember what a struggle it was, but I am so confident and solid in my choice. 

 11:24

I've had lots of people, you know, question or try and poke holes in my reasons and, you know, share their opinion of what I should be doing. And I can just say, okay, yeah, well, thanks for sharing your opinion. 

 11:38

And I feel so rock solid, sturdy, and confident about that decision that it gives me a lot of hope that I can also feel that way someday about this decision that I'm working with now. So now, when I'm looking at this current quote unquote problem, right, opportunity to better understand myself, to better understand my parts, and to solve the issue at hand, which for me is I want to make a powerful, grounded, aligned with my values decision about what I charge. And I don't want it to be up for discussion. I want to feel confident and joyful about it. And I want it to accurately reflect the value that I provide. 

 12:26

So the value that I'm getting out of looking back at how I solved that old problem is I realized with this new problem, what I charge, I was really being hard on myself. Why haven't you figured this out? 

 12:44

Why are you still going back and forth about this? I mean, for heaven's sake, you've been a coach now for eight years. Why don't you have this down? So I had to drop that really sneaky judgment. And I got to look back at how I already did it by taking the next step and holding it with gentleness, not a strict timeline, not any judgment or criticism, and some spaciousness that kind of gave my nervous system a chance to relax. 

 13:24

Because the message that I was sending to myself is, listen, we can take our time with this. We can take all the time that we need to be able to make a decision that feels good. And so all of that felt really good when I realized it last week. 

 13:42

And then it just kind of made me zoom out a little bit and give myself some space. But also my brain started thinking, okay, why does this work? Why does it work to look back on past success and kind of copy and paste what worked to what the problem that needs to be solved now is? 

 14:03

And I just briefly want to point some things out. Our brains are designed to conserve energy. Clinging to familiar beliefs because they feel safe is easier energetically in terms of just the energy that it takes to create new beliefs. 

 14:21

And so, of course, your brain is going to want to cling to the familiar because in terms of energy, that's what conserves the most energy and it's what feels the safest. So when you show your brain proof from your own history, you know what? 

 14:39

We have untangled some sticky beliefs before. We have made decisions that felt powerful and so aligned before. And when we can offer that to our parts, to ourself, to our brain, there is some relaxing that happens. 

 14:59

It's like you take a deep breath. You're like, oh yeah, we've done this before, right? That builds self-trust because it's built on what actually happened instead of, I think, what sometimes for me feels a little out of reach, which is more like fantasy confidence, right? 

 15:19

I can look back and see, no, I actually did this. I'm not trying to manifest anything. I'm referencing my actual past history. And it became such a powerful moment for me because I could relax like, okay, we've already done this once around something that felt like impossible to unwind. 

 15:42

And we did it. So we can have all the confidence and faith that we're going to be able to do it again. So if that is valuable for you to look back, there is often a lot of success that you've already created by taking small steps or doing what it was that helped you that you can reference for what you are working on now. 

 16:11

Lastly, looking back isn't the only way to expand your reference for what is possible for you. Because another way to do it is to actually go to the future and create a version of you that exists in the future, future you, that is based on who you want to become. 

 16:37

So that's what I want to do right now. If you're driving, just listen. If you can write some things down and you want to, great. I'm going to take you through a little bit of a visualization that teaches you how to draw on the future to create an idea in your imagination, which is really, really powerful of who you could become or who you would need to be to solve the current problem. 

 17:04

So here's what I want you to do. Just start to imagine yourself two to three years from now. What is that person like? The belief or the problem that you're currently struggling with, it's no longer running your life. 

 17:19

It's not a problem anymore. And I want you to really imagine that version of you in a specific set. And I want you to ask yourself, what do you notice about her? How is she sitting? How does she hold herself? 

 17:40

What does she believe about herself? What does she no longer tolerate or argue with? What is she capable of doing that current you is not able to do? How did she get there? If you look at who she is and you work backward, what is one small move that you made to become her? 

 18:14

What is one small belief that feels accessible to you now that she just absolutely like nails? Sometimes it's helpful to think about a ladder, right? If she's at the top of the ladder, what are all the rungs that she had to climb in terms of action she took or beliefs that she developed and held that got her to where she is? 

 18:42

And what is one small move or step that you can take in her direction this week? How would your body move if you were already her? What would you be thinking and believing? I want you to just let that image sit with you. 

 19:04

So if I were doing this about this desire for me to feel confident and joyful about the money that I charge, I would imagine future me explaining what I charge to a client, smiling, feeling so grounded and calm, handling objections with ease and with compassion, because money is, you know, it's a sensitive subject for a lot of people. 

 19:33

And what one person thinks is a lot of money, another person doesn't, and vice versa. So I just imagine myself talking about it very openly, very compassionately, but also feeling like sturdy about it. 

 19:50

I'm smiling. I don't feel any pressure or any embarrassment or any shame. It just feels like sturdy confidence in my body. And so then if I ask myself, okay, if that's at the top of the ladder, what's like the next rung for me? 

 20:10

It might be something like reviewing my current prices and seeing how I feel about that. Like, do I feel happy and joyful and confident about where I am now? Interesting question. And I would take a look at that. 

 20:25

And so using future me to guide this is so beautiful because it gives me a really powerful tool, my imagination, to create who I want to be and hold that out like the light at the end of the tunnel. And then all I have to do is let her tell me what I would do. 

 20:51

I can ask future me, what's one thing you would share with me right now? Let me see. Let me see if I can. My head really wasn't in it because I'm recording this episode, but I'm going to give myself just a beat here. 

 21:06

Future me would tell me that it's possible to have a joyful exchange of money for goods and services. And if you're watching, you know, this on my YouTube channel or otherwise, my face just kind of totally lit up because that's a belief that I don't have yet, right? 

 21:29

I can see that it's possible. And I can see why my part who grew up with a lot of money scarcity and insecurity would have a hard time believing that. Like it's possible to have a joyful exchange of money for goods or services. 

 21:49

And that feeling, it feels amazing for me right now, but also I would not have come up with that on my own had I not been doing this exercise with you right now. So I invite you to look to the past and to the future for help with solving the current issues that you're wrestling with. 

 22:15

What have you already done in the past that can inform what you're doing now? Copy and paste what you did onto your current situation. Adjust it if it needs, but give your brain the evidence from the past of something you've already done. 

 22:35

And another equally powerful tool is looking to the future. Who do I have to be to solve this? What is she like? What does she believe? How is she different? What would she tell me about this issue that I am working through right now? 

 22:54

And how can I walk up the rungs of the ladder toward where she is? It is really powerful to use our past evidence and our future imagination and bringing those tools to the present. Because I think I know I feel like the stuckness, I feel like it's just going to go on forever. 

 23:18

And this is a really beautiful way to draw on evidence that you already have that beliefs can change. You don't need blind faith, right? You have actual reference points. That past self is proof. And your future self is a beautiful, powerful guide. 

 23:36

Thank you so much for listening. I would love to know if you feel like there is something in this episode that really resonated for you. If you do that future me exercise and want to share that with me, I would love to hear it. sara@sarafisk.coach.

Episode 152 - How to Stay Informed Without Losing Yourself

The overwhelming amount of information, emotion, and terror we are experiencing in the world right now can make it hard to know what to do with ourselves. Last week’s episode came from my own experience of feeling like I was going to break and realizing my nervous system was completely overloaded. In this episode, I build on that and talk about what to do—because it’s not enough to say you will “just get off social media” or “stop doom scrolling.” If it were that simple, I would have stopped, and maybe you would have too. We’ll look at why this is so hard to put down and what it takes to step back in a way that allows you to stay informed without losing yourself in the crush of information. Here’s what I cover:

• Why doom scrolling is not activism and can hinder you from taking thoughtful action

• The good girl rules that make disengaging feel like a moral failing

• Why learning to regulate your nervous system can be a powerful form of resistance

• What happens when your reptile brain takes over and you’re stuck in looping thoughts

• Practical ways to regulate so you can stay informed and respond in ways that actually help

Find Sara here:

sarafisk.coach

pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

Transcript

00:59

Today's episode is kind of a part two to last week's episode. And so if you haven't listened to that one, it might be a good idea to go back and listen. This can also stand alone, and it's really kind of prescient for the time that we are in. 

 01:14

It is February 17th. I'm located in the United States, and there's a lot of geopolitical and world events that are happening as well, and a lot going on politically in the United States. And that matters, but what we're going to talk about is applicable to any time there is an overwhelming, crushing amount of information and emotion and terror and trauma that we have to deal with. 

 01:43

Because that can happen on a global scale or on a countrywide scale, I guess, but it can also happen personally. It can also happen personally. And so if you didn't listen to last week's episode, it's probably a good idea to start with that first. 

 02:00

But if you didn't, it's also going to be fine. So last week's episode was really in response to my own experience where I just felt like I was going to break. And I didn't, this is so fascinating to me, you know, this work of, you know, coaching and mental health. 

 02:20

There's always blind spots. There's always things that we can't see about ourselves. I have a coach, right? I have a therapist. And those people help me to see these things. And I couldn't, I honestly did not know what was going on with me last week, as I describe. 

 02:38

And then I found the post by the Mama Attorney, which I read in last week's episode. Great. Please go check that out. And it really helped give me words for what was happening to me when I didn't realize that my nervous system was just completely overloaded. 

 02:59

And then in today's episode, I want to build on that a little bit. I want to talk about what to do instead, because it's not enough to say, okay, just get off social media. Don't doom scroll. Just, you know, shut it off. 

 03:12

And if it were that simple, I would have stopped, right? And maybe you would have stopped already. But there's a couple of pieces that I want to name that are going on here that are part of why some of us feel like we're really hooked into what's going on. 

 03:29

And we feel like there's a really primitive part of our brain that starts to run the show. And what to do instead? I hope that by the end of this episode, you better understand maybe why this is so hard to put down and when you're ready to put it down, what to do instead so that you can stay informed without feeling like, you know, you're losing yourself in this crush of information. 

 03:54

So let's go back to where we often go first, which are what are the good girl rules that might be driving some of your activity here? If you feel guilty when you disengage from social media during a crisis, that guilt just doesn't come out of nowhere. 

 04:13

Here are just a few of some of the rules that I have been keeping track of as I have worked with clients and investigated kind of how I was feeling. And a client put it into words this way. She said, you know, I don't matter as much as other people who are experiencing terrible things matter. 

 04:36

I thought that was so fascinating because I think it's true. A lot of us are taught that if bad things are happening to other people, whatever you're experiencing, that's nothing. You should be grateful. 

 04:48

It's easy for you, right? You have privilege or you, if you look away, it's because you're selfish. And so just check and see if that is a belief that might be driving some of your behavior that if bad things are happening in the rest of the world, I don't matter. 

 05:06

Another way this shows up is I can't feel okay if others are hurting or if I feel okay while others are hurting. Something is wrong with me. I shouldn't do that. If there are bad things happening, then I should feel bad. 

 05:24

Check that one. Some other rules. If I don't stay informed 24-7 about what's going on, then I'm irresponsible or I'm a bad person or I'm a bad ally. I'm complicit if I don't engage with this and keep myself abreast of every little thing that's happening. 

 05:48

They matter more than I do. Those are some of the things that I've heard from clients this week. And I think for me personally, it's like a good person doesn't look away. And if I look away in any way, if I take a break, if I don't watch this, if I don't post about it, if I don't reshare it, then it's some kind of like moral failing on my part. 

 06:12

And so I name those just because those subconscious rules play out in real life, right? Last week, I'm having dinner with my family and one of my sons was joking about something and I was laughing and feeling pretty lighthearted. 

 06:29

And then a voice in my head literally was like, there are so many bad things happening in the world right now. How can you be laughing right now? That's a part of me that is really programmed to feeling empathy with other people means that I don't feel happy when they're sad, that I'm not okay when they're suffering. 

 06:52

And again, when I say this out loud, I know it doesn't logically make sense. I know that that's not how I'm actually supposed to live. But that's what is so interesting about our parts is that they don't always, they don't make logical sense, but they were programmed to believe things in very subtle subconscious ways over lots of years. 

 07:17

And so if you notice some of that coming up for you, it's not going to be logical. But that's why you find yourself checking your phone, right? And thinking that I need to be up on every little thing that happens. 

 07:36

You are in your social media feed and you can tell that it's a graphic video of something violent or something scary happening and you want to scroll past, but you don't because you think, oh, if I don't watch this, I'm irresponsible or I'm complicit or I need to witness this. 

 07:56

So you watch it, then you feel sick and hopeless and flooded. And then we sometimes we associate that with, okay, now I'm being a good person. These are how the good girl rules work. They equate our goodness with our willingness to suffer, our willingness to endure, our willingness to self-sacrifice. 

 08:24

And so if that is how it's showing up for you, you're in really good company because it's showing up that way for a lot of my clients. It's so hard to turn off the social media and the engaging in content because if we do, we're bad. 

 08:44

But here's the truth. And this is what I loved so much about what the mama attorney posted is that watching graphic trauma videos that have no context and no way to understand them is not the same thing as helping. 

 09:03

It's not how we actually support survivors. It actually doesn't do anything other than feed the algorithm and profit, you know, social media because it's not actually doing anything. It just feeds that trauma cycle and it is your body that is paying the price. 

 09:28

So just notice how those subconscious good girl rules might be showing up and driving some of your action. Let's talk about your reptile brain. I thought it was brilliant that the mama attorney brought that up because it's a part of our brain that we don't always realize is activated, but there are real serious consequences. 

 09:52

It's the survival center of our brain. When this part of your brain is activated, you are not making thoughtful decisions. You are not making decisions with the part of your brain that is best equipped for long-term thinking, for taking care of yourself, for anticipating consequences. 

 10:13

That's your prefrontal cortex. The survival, the amygdala part of your brain is all about just making it, just surviving. And here's what it looks like when you are in that reptile part of your brain. 

 10:31

Things feel like they're looping the same thoughts, the same images, the same memories, right? And you lose yourself in that loop. You hyper-focus on trying to have something make sense to you. And you'd think, this is so much of what she was describing in those slides, like, I just need a little, I just need to understand the next piece. 

 10:56

But that hyper focus is your brain trying to find a point of reference that makes sense. And with that, there's some urgency. There's the feeling that something terrible is going to happen, either if I look away, if I don't understand this, if I can't make this make sense, something bad is going to happen. 

 11:18

There's a lot of irritation and frustration with anything that interrupts you. I was sitting on the table watching some videos about ICE activity, and my son came up and told me it was time to take him to play practice. 

 11:34

And I was irritated with him that he was interrupting my attempts to make sense of what I was watching because that's what I was doing. I was re-watching the same video over and over again, just trying to make it make sense. 

 11:48

You might notice in your body that your jaw is tight, your breath is shallow, there's pressure and tightness or heaviness. You can't sleep. I started having nightmares. I started having a reoccurring nightmare that I was grabbed from my car. 

 12:05

I have dark hair. I have brown skin. I'm Latina. I fit the profile, right, for these, for this ICE activity that I'm talking about right now. And so that survival mechanism, I started making plans for what I would do if that did happen. 

 12:22

And all of that, that's not bad or wrong. It's a part of my brain that is trying to make sense of information that doesn't make sense, that doesn't follow the rules, the rule of law, the way things have always happened. 

 12:39

And so when it's important to recognize when you are in that survival reptile center of your brain, because you do not make good decisions there, you lose access to long-term thinking and to the tools to regulate your nervous system. 

 12:59

And here's something important to notice. When you're in your reptile brain or lizard brain, right, that just means that your brainstem and amygdala have taken control because there are perceived threats, right? 

 13:14

There are threats to your survival and you are going to experience some things like rapid heartbeat or physical sensations, sweating, shallow breathing. You might have some fight behaviors, arguing, shouting, criticizing, defending, trying to prove you're right. 

 13:33

You might have some flight behaviors, right? Avoiding eye contact, procrastination, changing the subject, scrolling social media, that doom scrolling that we all just kind of, you know, fall into from time to time. 

 13:46

That could be considered a flight behavior. You might notice some freezing behaviors where you just feel frozen and not able to make decisions, not able to do things that you know are good for you, like stop scrolling. 

 14:02

So it's important to notice when you are in that state, because noticing is what allows your thinking brain, that prefrontal cortex, to come back online. Oftentimes, it's not the only thing that we need to do, though. 

 14:22

We need to regulate. We need to give our nervous system a chance to experience peace and calm. So here are some things you can do. Go hug someone. You don't even have to tell them why you need the hug. 

 14:42

We mammals have a beautiful gift of co-regulation. What that means is if I'm activated solidly in my lizard brain, I think something terrible is going to happen. I can use the nervous system of someone who is calm to help calm myself. 

 15:01

Think about what happens when someone wraps their arms around you and takes a big, deep breath with you. Notice how even the tone in my voice changing to calm feels good to you. That is because we can co-regulate. 

 15:24

Hugging is a great way to co-regulate. Just standing next to someone or having a normal, calm conversation. Sitting down on the floor, feeling the floor underneath your butt if you're sitting on the floor or your feet if you're standing. 

 15:42

Having someone hug you while you feel your feet firmly planted on the ground is a great way to co-regulate. You can also breathe slower than you think you might need to. Slowing the breath down is a way to signal to your brainstem, we're okay. 

 16:01

We're okay. We're not being chased. We have time to breathe. One of my favorites, go outside. How many times do we catch ourselves in that hunched over position, scrolling? Go outside, move your body, touch grass, literally, touch something solid. 

 16:22

Put a piece of food in your mouth and feel yourself chew it. Experience the slowness of the taste being picked up by your taste buds as your mouth moves it around. Slowing things down is an incredibly effective way to regulate. 

 16:44

So talking slowly, eating slowly, walking slowly, if that's helpful, or sometimes you can sense that your body needs fast movement, shaking, stomping, bouncing, swaying, swinging, right? All of that signals to the body, we're okay. 

 17:04

And you have to really feel what just feels good for you. There's one of the things that the mama attorney said that really stuck with me. I think she said it like, you need to rule your own realm, which essentially just means what is actually in your control. 

 17:23

One of the beauties of social media is it allows us to connect to a lot of people around the world. And the double-edged sword of that is that it gives us access to more information than one nervous system is equipped to hold. 

 17:40

You are one nervous system, right? You are not equipped to hold global trauma, right? There are some things you do have control over or jurisdiction over, right? Your home, your children, your partner, your friends, your dog, your pet, your sister, your parents, right? 

 18:02

So when you are trying to decide how to feel better, the question like, what do I actually control? What actually is in my power? What actually is my responsibility can really help narrow things down to what is doable for you, to what is actually in your zone of influence under your control, your home, your children, your pet, right? 

 18:29

Your vote, your donations, your phone settings. We're going to get into that in a second. You can rule that realm way more effectively from your prefrontal cortex when you're able to make those really thoughtful decisions about how to take care of yourself. 

 18:48

So regulating is really, really important. Choose one or two of the things that I just mentioned, experiment with them, try them on. You might find that one works really well and other not so well. Great. 

 19:00

We're each individuals. Choose what works for you. Now I just want to get really practical. It might be time to purge your social media feed. It might be time to mute or unfollow accounts that are sharing these really traumatic fragments of information. 

 19:23

In one of the Mama Attorney's follow-up videos, I didn't know you could do this. You can turn off suggested posts, right? All the posts that social media is suggesting that you follow based on your viewing activity. 

 19:37

You have to do that every 30 days, but you can turn it off. You can also turn off autoplay on videos. I had to completely delete the app for a reset. That might not be what you need, but some of these other really concrete ideas, purging, muting, unfollowing, turning off suggested post, turning off autoplay, maybe even deleting the app. 

 20:05

Those are concrete steps you can take to give yourself a break. Because when you are dysregulated, it doesn't help anyone. You watching those videos doesn't actually help the victims and you do not have to absorb the horror. 

 20:25

Your goodness as a person is not predicated on watching endless reels of the same videos, of the same horror. Those videos are for people who don't believe that bad things are happening. You already believe it. 

 20:40

You've seen it once. You know it's true. You know it's happening. You don't have to keep re-traumatizing yourself in the name of your goodness. If you want to actually help victims in the Epstein files, victims of ICE raids and their terror, if you want to help victims in global worldwide, in Gaza, in Iran, in these places that are engulfed in violence and oppression and the types of things that we want to help with, 

 21:17

there are actual routes that help them. If you're in the United States or if you're in countries where you have access to calling your representatives, call them. Encourage them to pass laws that protect the vulnerable, that expose the predators. 

 21:36

Find organizations to donate to that are doing the actual work of helping these people. Volunteer locally, vote, build strong community. Talk about this with your children in a way that helps them contextualize and understand what's going on. 

 21:55

You can support journalists who are doing careful recording and reporting so that the people who are involved in the perpetration of these horrific acts will be brought to justice. It's really hard, but I think we need to hear it. 

 22:12

Scrolling is not activism. Scrolling does not actually help the victims. If you are one of the people who have already been convinced that this is bad and going on and should be remedied, scrolling is not going to help. 

 22:29

It leads so often to that collapse that I experienced when I was no use to anybody. And these systems that thrive on chaos, they benefit when we are too overwhelmed to take thoughtful action. So the best, the most powerful form of resistance and response is to be regulated. 

 22:56

It's not possible all the time, right? Let me just say this. I don't know anyone who is trustworthy who would ever say that we are always going to be regulated. I don't think that's the human experience. 

 23:10

When we learn how to regulate ourselves so that we can take thoughtful action that helps to create the world we want to live in, that is when we really win. So if you feel restless when you take a step back from social media, that's normal. 

 23:29

It's your system looking for calm when there's been a lot of chaos. If you feel guilty, then that's one of those good girl rules doing the talking. You do not have to self-destruct in order to prove your goodness to anyone. 

 23:47

You can care deeply about what is going on in the world without sacrificing your nervous system. You can demand accountability and that action be taken to protect vulnerable people without absorbing like every video that is out there. 

 24:06

And the more we choose to self-regulate and to hug and to touch grass and to feel the earth beneath our feet and that regulates us, the more we are able to take the kind of thoughtful action that is going to help not only create the world we want to live in, but get actual justice and compensation and resources and help for the people who need it. 

 24:34

Thank you for listening. Thank you for being in this with me. Your messages and DMs are really, I'm so grateful for the time that you take to reach out and to share about your experience. I'm right in it with you. 

 24:49

I'll talk to you next week.

Episode 151 - Your Body Was Never Meant to Hold This

Over the last few weeks, the constant exposure to human suffering, injustice, and horrifying information has felt like an avalanche. If you’ve been taking this in through social media and the news like I have, you might notice yourself swinging between obsessing and shutting down, or believing that if you look away or take a break, it means you don’t care. In this episode, I share what helped me understand what was actually happening in my nervous system and why feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your body was never meant to hold all of this. Here’s what I cover:

• An Instagram post that helped me understand how the overwhelm we’re living through impacts the body

• How flooding ourselves with horrific information without containment destabilizes our nervous systems

• Why empathy and good girl conditioning can turn caring into self-sacrifice

• Three things to pay attention to so we can stay connected to the truth without losing ourselves

• What it looks like to give yourself permission to decide what level of engagement is right for you

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Transcript

00:59

A little bit of a different episode today, because one of the most valuable parts of being in a community, and this podcast listening audience is a community, is being able to learn from and feel supported by and connected to each other's experiences. 

 01:20

I love it when you DM me and you email me your experiences, your stories. I feel connected to you. I feel like I know you better. And I'm going to share a little bit about my experience over the last couple of weeks, why there almost wasn't a podcast episode today, in the hopes that the conversations that I've been having with my friends and with my clients about these things can offer you some relief as well, because it is, it is a really taxing, chaotic time. It is horrifying from one day to the next, what we learn in the Epstein files. It is horrifying what we learn about human suffering around the globe. 

 02:16

It's horrifying what we're learning about how people are being treated in our own country. If you were in the US and other countries, some of those same things are happening. It's an avalanche of information. 

 02:30

And about middle of the week, last week, it felt like I just could not go on. And I don't have that experience very often. I am generally optimistic. I'm happy. I can find the good. I love dancing and singing and being funny and laughing and finding the humor. 

 02:51

And I just, it felt like I was cement. I couldn't think. I couldn't move. I was angry. I was sad. And by the middle of the week, I just felt like I was almost completely shut down. I got into bed with my husband and I just cried and cried and cried and cried and listed like all of the horrible things that were going on in the world. 

 03:20

And it felt like I was, I was hopeless and helpless. Couldn't stop it. I couldn't do anything about it. And I have not felt like that broken, that absolutely grief-stricken and powerless in a long time. 

 03:43

And so I went to sleep, which sometimes that is really just the best thing that I can do, maybe you too. But the next morning, I still didn't feel any kind of like resilient sturdiness. And then I read this Instagram post. 

 04:03

So I'm just going to read it to you. I think there's about eight slides. This comes from a creator. Her name is the Mama Attorney. I'm going to link to the post in the show notes so that you can go read it because it just, it gave me context. 

 04:22

And here's what's amazing. I know about the nervous system, right? It's something that I coach on and do, but I didn't see this happening. And so I was so grateful that she wrote this and that it showed up in my algorithm because when we are in moments of extreme stress, we forget what we know, right? 

 04:44

It's not always front and center. And then you pair that with a lot of other good girl rules that show up for me around being informed and not looking away from human suffering and the rules of being a good person. 

 05:03

And it was a lot. I forgot completely about the nervous system. And she lays it out so brilliantly. So here we go. Here are the slides. Lawyer here. The method with which the Epstein files are being released is deliberately designed to put you in a psychological trance. 

 05:27

This is their strategy. And here's how I know this. In trial practice, when there are exhibits involving violence, children, or extreme harm, we do not simply dump information into the room. We go back and forth extensively about how and when something is shown. 

 05:49

The judge guides the process. Experts contextualize it. It is a container equipped to hold this content. Courts understand that when the brain is flooded with horror, your system gets hijacked by the primal brain. 

 06:09

You go into hypervigilance, rage, obsession, and collapse. We have a name for this, reptile theory. Reptile theory is a trial strategy built on this premise. If you can bypass the cognitive brain and activate the primitive survival brain, which is the oldest or reptile part of the brain, you can control outcomes without ever persuading on facts or law. 

 06:43

This strategy is not allowed at trial. This is why trials involving extreme harm rely on structure. The law does not do this to protect perpetrators, but to protect the jury. What is happening now is the opposite. 

 07:04

There is a massive document drop with no categorization, containment, or guidance. The onus is placed entirely on the reader to make sense of chaos. There are random redactions that force the brain into constant guesswork. 

 07:23

You have to deduce, infer, fill in the blanks. This keeps the mind spinning, searching, and looping. So, number one, you become consumed. You deep dive. You push to get more information. You stop sleeping. 

 07:43

It takes over your life. Your focus narrows until there is nothing else. Gradually, they frack all of your life force. They keep you locked in an endless energy loop in their sick mind games. You become one of their victims. 

 08:02

Or two, you disengage completely. You decide it's too much, too confusing, too overwhelming. You walk away. It implodes from your exhaustion. And either way, they win. Same here. We received events frozen in fragments. 

 08:26

There is no arc, only horrifying snapshot after horrifying snapshot. A nervous system can hold horror only if it is sequenced, paced, and contextualized. If it's not, it will oscillate, fixate, or shut down. 

 08:49

What you are being fed is exposure to terror without containment. Make no mistake, this is psychological guerrilla warfare. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, it seeks relief. This looks like outrage, doom scrolling, obsessing, or wanting to throw your phone in the ocean. 

 09:12

Time starts to collapse. Days blur together. You check your phone compulsively. You think, I just need to understand this piece. But there is no final piece. There's always another fragment, another horror dangling just out of frame. 

 09:31

And you lose your agency. When the trauma cannot be held by the people who caused it and cannot be processed by systems designed to contain it, it looks for somewhere else to go. It looks for nervous systems capable of carrying the terror. 

 09:56

Mothers are particularly vulnerable to psychological warfare because of our protective instincts. I would probably just say people in general, but that's just me. I know plenty of men and non-gender binary people who would fit that description. 

 10:17

Back to the slides. So your body begins to alchemize what the children could not because they were in a shock state. And what these men responsible refused to metabolize. So you feel it. You feel it all. 

 10:37

You feel it in your jaw, your gut, your chest. You're weary around your kids. You rage at your partner. You cut out relatives. You feel irritable and you have a headache and you can't sleep. You feel crazy. 

 10:51

This is the trance and it's where they want you. Please know this. Super important. You are not crazy. You are having a normal biological response to abnormal psychological warfare. Oscillating between being completely consumed and enraged and wanting to turn away and burn your phone forever is a healthy response. 

 11:20

That swing is your nervous system trying to protect itself. The risk is not the oscillation. The risk is not noticing it. Noticing is the rupture to the trance. It's how you peel away. The moment you observe the pattern, instead of being inside it, the spell weakens. 

 11:44

When you name the wave, you start asking, what is being done to me and why? Noticing restores agency. Agency to engage or disengage, to step back, take breaks, to only review synthesis instead of fragments. 

 12:02

Agency to refuse to become a landfill for unprocessed violence. You can demand accountability without sacrificing yourself. Justice does not require self-destruction. You are allowed to survive this intact. 

 12:25

In fact, that is part of the rebellion too. So when I read that, it was like the light went on. And I was like, that's right. Exposure to terror without containment. Yes. And how she names oscillating back and forth between obsession and shutdown. 

 12:55

Yes. That's what I was experiencing. And a really quick review of some really important things that she says. The nervous system needs containment. Humans can, and we have to be able to process horrific things. 

 13:17

But we need pacing, structure, and meaning. And flooding without that just destabilizes our nervous systems and thus our bodies. Another thing that she said that I thought was really important to highlight, obsessing and shutting down are not failures. 

 13:39

I went back and forth between I have to know everything about this particular point to total and complete shutdown. And those are protective responses. Nothing was wrong with me. My system was overwhelmed. 

 13:54

But when I was in it, and I'm still in it, let's be real here, but I'm not as totally in it. When I was totally in it, I couldn't see it. And I was looking around at other people who seemed to be going about their day normally. 

 14:09

And I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand like, how am I supposed to care about what we're eating for dinner when these horrible things are happening? And I just couldn't make sense of feeling obsessed one minute and then totally shut down the next. 

 14:27

And then the third point that I think she makes that is really important is that the real danger isn't that we care too much. The real danger is that we don't know what's happening to us. It's the loss of agency that we experience in that avalanche because we don't realize that we can choose how and when to engage. 

 14:53

And choosing is so important. So when I was in that obsessive part, it felt like I could not look away, right? I was reading. I was checking. I was trying to just understand this one other piece. I was looking for somebody else who could give it context, who could put it into some kind of sequence for me. 

 15:16

But I felt like I was unraveling like my sleep, my patience, my body, it all just felt like complete and total breaking. It was really hard for me to switch back and forth between the mundane and the massive uncertainty because I didn't have any kind of context. 

 15:41

There was no buffer. There was no time. And so my nervous system was really struggling to know how to hold both of those things. All of these horrific things are happening and what's for dinner. And that's not, that's not failure. 

 15:58

That's a nervous system that hasn't been given adequate support. So a lot of that is fueled for us by some of these good girl or good person rules. And I named a few of them. Maybe you identify, I have had the thought, like I need to stay informed because that's what good people do. 

 16:22

If I look away from this, I'm bad or I'm somehow complicit. If I don't participate, then I'm part of the problem. If I take a break from this, it means I don't care. We are wired for empathy. So it makes so much sense when some of those beliefs sneak in and start driving, especially our social media consumption. 

 16:48

So many of us, me included, were taught that goodness means self-sacrifice in some way. And we know that bearing witness to brutality, to violence, to injustice has mattered historically. That's what's turned it around. 

 17:08

And so it becomes hard to figure out where do I show up? Where do I witness? How do I witness in a way that actually matters? Because for a lot of us, that just turns into a lot of scrolling on social media, which doesn't actually create an impact in the world, right? 

 17:29

We've liked a reel or we've shared it, but that hasn't actually done anything for us. And sometimes it doesn't do anything for the communities of people that we want to help by watching reels and being informed about what they're going through. 

 17:49

But it contributes to the problem because that constant exposure, when you're driven by those beliefs, the constant exposure without any kind of a choice, that is what is overwhelming. Compassion without choice just becomes self-destruction. 

 18:10

And I didn't see it. And I felt totally destroyed. I didn't understand. And I had to remind myself that absorbing everything had nothing to do with my goodness as a person. Nothing to do with it. That I could and should and needed to find a way to rest from the information so that I could resource, so that I could pull my joy and my pleasure and my community and my reasons for living back online, front and center, because I lost, it's like I lost connection to all of that. It actually brought up one of my experiences in the past in a really interesting kind of parallel way. When I was leaving Mormonism, there were massive amounts of information being shared about historical claims the church had made, claims of truth, claims of where things had come from and what had happened that were not true. 

 19:27

And so if you can imagine, you know, it was me with, you know, a couple of friends and social media and people who were posting, but no real shared container. There was no like trusted authority anymore. 

 19:45

It's just like, you know, the wild west of social media with whatever people want to put out there. And it was incredibly destabilizing. There were days when it felt like the ground was moving underneath my feet. 

 20:02

I couldn't find it like what was solid anymore. What could I believe? Who could I trust? All of these things that had felt so real and so important to me were just like dissolving and dismantling in front of my eyes. 

 20:17

It was too much, too fast without support. And I noticed that same feeling. It was multiplied this time around, but that same feeling of like obsession and then collapse, deep dive and then complete exhaustion. 

 20:41

And so seeing that again gave me a chance to take a deep breath and say, okay, all right. I felt this before. And although that information wasn't dumped on me like it is being dumped on us now, that same destabilizing too much too fast without support was very familiar. 

 21:08

And so noticing that and then reading this Instagram post helped me to close the loop. And here's what I mean when I say that. Traumatic experiences create these open loops in our body that want to be completed. 

 21:28

But we look for completion a couple really important ways. Number one, to have it explained to us. It's the context. It's exactly what she was talking about. To have someone help us to process it, to know the purpose of something, to be able to see it in a broader picture where we know that it's going to be okay. 

 21:51

And so recognizing that feeling in my body that was very familiar after leaving Mormonism, and then the context of this Instagram post really helped me to give myself the loop closure of the permission to step away. 

 22:12

And that's what I want to end with here. If you're feeling completely overwhelmed and spun out and angry and rage ball one minute and then collapsing in tears the next, they're not broken. That is exactly what a healthy nervous system does when it is trying to take in too much too fast. 

 22:40

And if you need to look away, that does not mean you don't care. It means your nervous system needs a break. We have to learn how to stay connected to the truth without completely losing ourselves. And so as you kind of decide what cadence is right for you, I want you to pay attention to a couple of things. 

 23:08

Number one, pay attention to your body. Your body will tell you when it is too much. And you can give yourself permission to take a break. Maybe you tell yourself, taking a break is how I prepare myself so that I can stay engaged the way I want to. 

 23:31

Everyone needs breaks. No one is meant to exist in this avalanche. And no one can exist in this avalanche without context, without help, and without soft places to land. So you have permission. I needed permission. 

 23:55

I'm passing it on to you. The way that we remain human throughout this is by recognizing where our agency is, recognizing when we get caught up again in that either obsession or collapse pattern where our nervous system is trying to make sense, taking a step out of that into resting, into doing something else. 

 24:22

Guys, I went to a local craft store and I bought stuff to start cross stitching again. I never in a million years thought I would do it. I was like, I need something that is fun. I didn't used to think it was fun. 

 24:40

That's so interesting. But I totally found a pattern that I think is adorable doing something like that. I have a friend who's crocheting, right? Lots and lots of crocheting. I'm reading some books that are Theo of Golden. 

 24:52

That's what I want to recommend to you. Theo, Theo of Golden, reading some books, right? That take us out of some of these spins that we get in. It's essential that you do that because if we're going to be here for the long haul demanding accountability and showing up in any way that we can, in any way that we deem useful and right for us, to help the people around us and to help ourselves, to help our families, to help our clients, to help the people we work with and for, whoever it is, you have to take care of yourself. You have to be able to use your agency to decide when you engage and how. I wish there were another way, but there isn't right now. 

 25:49

And so what we can do is take care of each other, share how we're feeling. If anything from this episode has resonated for you, I would love to hear about that. I would love to hear about what's hard, what's working, what's not working for you, because together is how we get through this. 

 26:05

I really, really believe that that is true. And we will. I'll see you next week.

Episode 150 - Erotic Wholeness with Darshana Avila

In this episode, I sit down with erotic wholeness guide Darshana Avila to talk about embodiment, authenticity, and coming home to the body. Darshana was featured on Netflix’s Sex, Love & Goop, which was one of my early introductions to a broader idea of eroticism as I began to unravel my good girl conditioning. We explore what happens when women don’t know what they want or don’t trust their bodies—a disconnection shaped by the systems we were raised in, not personal failure. Darshana offers a different path forward, rooted in compassion, nervous-system safety, and learning to listen to the body. Here’s what we cover:

• How Darshana defines erotic wholeness and why it’s not limited to sex

• Why “I don’t know what I want” is a common and understandable starting point

• What compartmentalization looks like in real life and how conditioning keeps it in place

• How authenticity begins with sensing what is and isn’t for you

• Simple ways to begin reconnecting through your senses and the four allies of erotic embodiment

Darshana Avila is a trauma-informed somatic educator, practitioner and international speaker who helps people reconnect with the most essential aspects of themselves — their truth, their desires, and their capacity for profound pleasure and power. Her work has been featured on Netflix’s Sex, Love & Goop, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and numerous leading podcasts.

Find Darshana here:

darshanaavila.com 

instagram.com/darshana_avila 

youtube.com/@darshana-avila

linkedin.com/in/darshana-avila

https://darshanaavila.com/podcast/ 

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

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https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

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Transcript

Sara Bybee Fisk 00:57

Okay, Darshana, I will say I have seen you before today. I have, because I watched your Goop episode, girl. That was one of my introductions as a recovering good girl who comes out of a very religiously conservative background, but was one of my introductions into this kind of broader idea of eroticism. 

Darshana Avila 01:23

Mm hmm. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 01:24

And it was really, really helpful for me. And you can tell I'm chomping at the bit to jump right in, because I just did. .Or we'd go much further. I would love for you to introduce yourself to people. What would you like people listening to know about you? 

Darshana Avila 01:38

Well, hello, Darshana Avila here. I call myself an erotic wholeness guide, and that is a totally self-styled job title that I got to give myself. Really what I am is an intimacy junkie, an embodiment junkie, which is to say I have always been curious about what my body is capable of, what our bodies are capable of, and how two or more of us, or even us with our own selves, can truly be in relationship in a deep, profound, intimate way. Small talk makes my skin crawl, literally. I've always been drawn to these depths, and sex and intimacy and relationships in general have been playground and laboratory and crucible for growth for me in so many ways, and at a certain point in my life, I decided that in order for me to go on my own journey of ex-good girl-ing, I was going to cut ties with a lot of the very mainstream trappings of what life is supposed to look like and what success is supposed to be measured by and follow what my heart and my body and my intuition were pointing me toward, and that's why we're here having this conversation. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 02:57

Okay. There is so much in there.I was writing a few things down because when we think about the line that you kind of drew there from embodiment and intimacy that kind of took you to leave behind some of what our modern capitalist patriarchal, you know, world would call success. Yep. There's a very clear through line for you there. 

Darshana Avila 03:28

Yeah, there's a departure from that mainstream definition because it is my assertion and I know I'm not the only one. Our mainstream culture, what you just named patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, we could add a whole other list there. It is fundamentally a culture of disembodiment. It's fundamentally a culture that in implicit and explicit ways has severed us from the wisdom of our bodies, from a connection to our emotions and our sensations, to really being driven by this intrinsic well of wisdom that we all have. And the reason why that's happened is pretty straightforward and simple. You are a far more compliant cog in the wheel, feeding those systems of power when you are not feeling yourself.So to do what I've done is radical, truly. It is radical activism in the world that we live in to say, I'm going to prioritize getting to know my body. I am going to pay attention to my impulses, my desires, my boundaries, and figure out what's authentic for me because we are not compliant cogs in the wheel when we do that. And we're living in a moment where we're seeing this. I mean, it's kind of exciting. We're seeing this grow and grow and so many more people are waking up to this realization. And I believe this will be our tipping point. The more we are feeling our grief, the more we are feeling our longing, our desire, our hunger, our passion, our frustration with the status quo, that is what actually creates cultural change. And that's really what I'm here for. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 05:17

Well, me too. Yay. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation, because the thing that I hear most often from the women that I talk to is I don't, I'm not even sure who I really am. And I have them fill out this little intake form and the word authentic, or I want to live with authenticity, which can we please save authentic from becoming, from going the way of the live, laugh, love. I really, we need this word because that's the word that I see over and over again. And I really want to hold that word as hopefully something special and not kind of the trite way that it gets used and abused because it is a source of deep pain.Yeah, I feel that. To the women that I talk to, like, I don't know, like what do I want to do with my life, my time, my energy? I've spent so much time letting the machine tell me what I should be and who I should be and what my body should look like and what my body should do and who my body is good for that I don't know that I have much of a connection to it. 

Darshana Avila 06:29

Yeah. I mean, and my version of that is the most common thing women coming to work with me say is, I don't know what I like. Yeah, I don't know what I want. Yes, I might find myself in a partnership with someone super loving and well intentioned who would really love to know the answer to these questions. I don't know.And that's because at 40 something at 50 something sometimes at 60 or 70 something occasionally I get a 20 something or 30 something like, they're, they're just looking around and saying, Wait a second, there's really never been a moment in my entire sexual experience. There's really never been a moment in all of my years of being in relationships of many forms, when I've ever truly stopped to consider me at the center. What is true for me? What do I enjoy? What's a boundary? It's really a transformative moment. And to your comment about authenticity, I agree, like let's let's preserve that word, please. Here's a few synonyms that I'll toss out there. Wild. I love reclaiming the world the word wild when we think about like we use it to speak about like wild flowers or wild forage this that or the other, which is to say something that has not been cultivated on a farm and messed with by humanity. Who are we in our wildness then? Who are we before this conditioning before all of the things that society and culture have told us, as you said, who we could be should be how to be what to look like, do it this way, do it that way. So what is our wildness? What is our naturalness? What is our state of being before all of that conditioning and all of that acculturation gets heaped on top of us. And my my mission is to help as many people figure that out for themselves as possible. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 08:28

Well, I would love to help you get this message out because I feel like it's the same thing that I'm teaching in a different form. Yeah.So let's start with some definitions. So you are an erotic wholeness guide. Yes. What would you want me to understand about what that means and what it would look like for me to go through the journey with you to erotic wholeness? 

Darshana Avila 08:53

Fabulous questions. Okay, erotic. Let's define this in its broadest term, which to me is also its simplest term, life force energy. So eroticism is that vital animating force, creativity in its purest form that we can channel into our sexuality, but that's not the only place we get to channel it. And this is where our dominant culture has really screwed up our thinking. Because most of us hear the word erotic, and we think of it as a direct synonym for sex. And some of us actually hear the word erotic, and we think of it as like a very sensationalized, like, oh goodness, clutch my pearls kind of version of sex. And this is a way of really reclaiming what is truly our vital life force.And I need to give credit where credit is due. I stand on the shoulders of giants, chief among them, Audre Lorde, who was an integral, integral figure in the black intersectional feminist movement. And if you have never heard of her, go Google uses of the erotic. It is a beautiful essay written by Audre, and it is gonna go into a really gorgeous explanation of what I mean when I talk about eroticism as life force energy. So it shows up, yes, in your sex, but it's also there in your sensuality. It's in your art, it's in your activism. It's in anything and everything you're passionate about, from the way you tend relationships to the way you do your work in the world. So there's nowhere that your erotic nature is not, because you are erotic by nature. When we reclaim that term as something that's more about our life force, we are then stepping into a tremendous source of power. Because if we're channeling that with intention and we're bringing it with us everywhere, you know, like you hear about this concept of a well-fucked woman. Like I hear about this concept anyway. Like what does that evoke for you? Someone who's in her pleasure, someone who's in her power, someone who feels confident, who's creative and dynamic. So that is what your erotic energy gives you, whether you're getting it through fucking or not. And that's a beautiful way to get it. It's just not your only way. And that's really what I want people to know. And that's a beautiful bridge to defining what wholeness is. So wholeness as a nod to the fact that as we go through life, particularly modern Western life where we have to continually compartmentalize and fragment pieces of ourselves and okay, this has to get contained over here. And I show this part of myself here, but oh, and now this protective strategy is coming out because the only way I know how to stay safe is to people please. And all this chaos is going on. We tend to take this on as a personal failing because that is how our individualistic culture treats this and pathologizes any of us for really just doing our survival dance. So the fragmenting, the compartmentalizing is part of how we've survived. Wholeness is a nod then to what gets to happen, the process we go through when at certain times in our lives, whatever that is, middle years for many of us, sometimes a little earlier, Saturn return maybe, You look around and you say like, wait a sec, there's a different way to do this. 

Darshana Avila 12:15

There's a different way to be. There's a different way for me to relate to myself and to move in the world. And that's to gather up all those fragments. That's to open up the compartments and figure out what integration looks like. And get in touch with the part of you, call it soul. Call it capital S self. Call it your higher self, whatever you wish. The part of you that has always been and always will be fully intact, overflowing with wisdom, clear in direction. And when you can get in touch with that part and let that part really be the one that leads and holds all those fragments and all those compartmentalized ones, you stand in an embodiment of your power, unlike anything else. And so guiding people toward their erotic wholeness is about understanding your erotic nature, stepping into the whole full power of your being, and really living a life that turns you on and contributes to something greater than yourself.For me, one of my little darshanisms, my slogans, is erotic wholeness is about personal liberation and service to collective liberation. And what I mean when I say that is each and every one of us getting free contributes to the totality of us getting free. We can only begin where we are. So for many of us, it's I got to look at myself. I got to do my work, not because you have to do everything by yourself, but because the more you've done your own work and you are piecing this together for you, the more effective you're going to be in creating broader change.And that collective liberatory action really gets to unfold. So that's the first answer. I have a lot to say here. Do you want me to pause for a sec or should I get right into what the journey look like? 

Sara Bybee Fisk 14:12

So let's pause because I should have known I was going to want to jump in. And so I love thinking about things like granularly. So my question is, how would someone know if they were compartmentalized? What would their life look like?What would their... Because some people listening might be like, am I compartmentalized? 

Darshana Avila 14:37

Yeah, yes, you are. That's the answer. Yes, you are. Yes, you are because we all are, myself included.I'm sure you would self-identify it that way too, Sara, because any of us who has begun to pursue our healing and our wholeness, whatever that path looks like, whatever it's called, I use the term survival dance, protective strategies, adaptive strategies, things that we do that oftentimes actually curry social favor. So for a woman to be accommodating and pleasing, a good girl, a people pleaser, to be the one who's the peacekeeper in her family dynamic, to be the martyr who's forever overextending herself so long as everybody else is taken care of, this has been bred into us. Those are not our authentic ways of being. Those are not the only ways that we are being. And I assure you that if that's how you're moving through the world, you are compartmentalizing a lot. You are, by very nature of living with those strategies at the forefront, your relationship to your own sense of agency, to your preferences, to your desires is being sublimated. To an extent, we could say, sure, this is the nature of what it is to parent, for instance. One of my best, best friends is a single mother by choice. And it was her child's birthday over the weekend, so her birth-a-versary. And she leaves me a voice memo, and she's like, my mom kept her overnight last night. This is the first time I've woken up in my own house without my child, and I don't know how long. She has to sublimate every one of her impulses, her needs, her rhythms, but she's the solo parent of a six-year-old.Like, it makes sense when you put it into that kind of context. But many of us are playing out these patterns even when it isn't an absolute necessity, and we're doing it because culture teaches us to do that. So learning to recognize these strategies for what they are, learning to create that sacred space, and it is a sacred, sacred thing to get curious, to be in a degree of self-inquiry that might lead you to find, like, huh, do I even like fill in the blank that I have been doing on repeat? That could be the way that you're having sex with your partner, that could be the food that you're eating, that could be the clothing that you're wearing, it could be the exercise class that you're going to, you know, like, do I even like these things that I'm quote-unquote choosing? Or am I doing these things out of a certain habit or conditioning, cultural incentivizing that just has me going on a degree of autopilot without ever questioning what's true for me? So that's a great way to signal to yourself that there's compartmentalization going on. And like I said, we're all doing it. So welcome to the club. You're not the only one. It is not a personal failing. Please hear me say that. If you hear nothing else, we need to stop pathologizing this as if I, Darshana, you, Sara, you person listening are the sole one to be responsible for this and at fault for this. 

Darshana Avila 18:03

What we do each have is opportunity. And only we can take advantage of our own opportunities for ourselves. So while it may not be a personal failing that you're doing this thing, it is a personal opportunity and responsibility to do it differently. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 18:20

Yeah. Especially if you want a different experience, right?Which by the time you get to midlife, that's just beautiful kind of natural time in a lot of women's lives where they look at the first half of their life and they think, is it always going to be like that? Am I always going, are there always going to be parts of myself that I don't know? Are there always going to be emotions that I'm uncomfortable feeling or talking about? Are there always going to be places in my friendship where I don't feel like really seen and heard because those are some of the common things that I hear from women? And that to me looks like the compartmentalization in their own lives is that there's parts of myself that I don't know and parts of myself that I can't share. 

Darshana Avila 19:00

Exactly. And in my world, it picks up there and goes into is this as good as sex is ever going to get? Is this all it's ever going to be in my partnership? Am I now that I'm divorced and have a chance to do it over? Am I going to keep making the same choices that old me made or am I going to try something different for myself?And so what you know, the journey that I take people on, it's rooted in two main professional modalities that I work with. So I'll name those first and then kind of explain what that looks like. I am a somatic experiencing practitioner and I am a sexological body worker. Somatic experiencing is a beautiful modality that focuses on how we tend to our nervous systems and heal trauma through the body. Sexological body work is very niche and we could a simple way to describe it is erotic therapeutic explorations. So I do hands on hands in work with my clients. Yes, hands in because most of my clients have vulvas and vaginas and I put my hands in them. So it's definitely out of the box for a lot of people. You mentioned the Netflix show that I was a part of sex, love and goop, which was incredible. And in that series, you see five experts and five couples working together, going on a journey together. The couple that I worked with, Chandra and Camille, a young lesbian couple, one of whom was dealing with much like you mentioned about yourself, Sara, like a lot of religious conservatism that was living in her body in such a way that she couldn't even be open to touch and penetration from her partner. You see me work with them episodes three, four and six. If you want to go and watch it, you see me work with them individually and jointly. And the example of Chandra, who started out not being able to receive any penetration, we were able to do work together that brought her to the place where that could happen, not just without pain, but with pleasure. So that's me kind of like, like I'm going straight to the happy ending. Haha, pun not totally intended. But the work that I do is very much about embodiment, nervous system tending. How do you actually come out from behind these habituated patterns that generally keep us either very dissociated from ourselves or so accelerated, busy, doing, doing, doing constantly that we just don't have to notice because we're not really available to pay attention because, oh, my God, I've got to check 17 things off on my to do list. And that's how our energy feels. So slowing down, cultivating presence. That is where we then begin to learn what your preferences are. We get to explore in a very experiential way that is rooted in consent that moves at a very deliberate and slow pace. What actually brings you alive? What feels good in your body? How do you learn to cultivate this awareness so that you can say, I like this, not that a little more this way, a little less of this element, so on and so forth. And we begin to craft experiences that ultimately can include having a really delicious sexual encounter where you are at the center. So as a practitioner, I don't receive touch from my clients. My clothing stays on. 

Darshana Avila 22:25

I've got gloves on my hands. Like there's a lot that's in place to create a very clear container of integrity and professionalism and the roles are very well defined.But I am there as a facilitator of my client's pleasure. Or when I'm working with couples, some of what I might do is guide and teach and then help them relate with each other in those ways. And this is really outside the box for most of us. And I completely get it. If you're listening to this and you're like, are you kidding me? She does what? Like, yeah, I do. I'm a professional pussy stalker, y'all. It's pretty cool. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 23:00

I love it. 

Darshana Avila 23:01

And I wish we lived in a world where this was not so rare and with the acknowledgement that it is that it is very outside of the box for us to consider that we might step into a professional setting. That's completely above board it's not like you're going you know like through some back channels to find someone like i work in the full light of day everybody knows what's going on it's not all that different really from going to well that's not sure it's very different from going for a regular.But you know like think of it in that kind of framework where you are trusting someone to help you be in your body because you don't know how to or you cannot do these things for yourself, the difference is, unlike a massage therapist who you need them to go and get the knots out what I want is to give you everything you need to not need me anymore to be able to source for yourself this sense of personal power to have clarity about the things that bring you closer to what you need to be in your body.

Sara Bybee Fisk 24:40

Okay. I have so many questions and so many comments. First of all, I am not a somatic experiencing practitioner yet, but I've done my first two years because my guess is I was running into the same maybe thing you were, which is if we can't feel safe in our bodies, we can't feel the different kind of discomfort that comes from asking for what we want or we can't work through the shame. We can't work through the guilt that comes up when my clients are trying to set and keep a boundary. For example, the same thing that your clients need when they are going to ask for something that they want from a sexual experience that feels so dangerous or feels so forbidden. It's such an interesting overlap to me that being able to feel safe in our bodies is, I think, one of the main things that patriarchy does not want for us because we are taught in so many ways that our bodies from the very beginning, if you are in any, you know, everyone, whether you are religious or not, you grew up under the shadow of Eve, right? The one who made the wrong choice and allowed herself to be tempted and fucked it all up for the rest of us and her body became the bad thing. That was cursed. That's why we, you know, it is never endingly fascinating to me the million ways that we are taught to be scared of our bodies, to not trust our bodies and to think that our bodies are actually bad. 

Darshana Avila 26:22

Mm hmm. You're 100% correct. And there's another thing that you said that I want to touch on, which is feeling safe in our bodies is also the anecdote, the counterbalance to our experience of safety outside. And that's a mindfuck for a lot of us because you what you said is 100% true, we're, we're taught to vilify and distrust our bodies to shame our bodies, all these things. We're also taught and add this to the list of things that make this make sense because they're so contradictory. We're also taught that other people should know what is good for our bodies. So it's this message of like, you can get safety from for instance, your male partner who will know how to touch you and please you and love you. But you know, actually, really, it's not about you feeling good. It's about you making them feel good. So hot, like, and this confusion plays out, this direct paradox plays out in so many places. So safety is never guaranteed on the outside. Never.I don't use definitive words lightly. So when I say that it's because it's true, no one can guarantee you an experience of total safety moving through life. What you can learn to do is cultivate a felt experience of safety within which is to say be at home in your body. Be so connected that to your point when you get a signal that tells you Spidey sends hackles on the back of my neck or going up. I'm swiping on this guy on the app and I'm like, yeah, I don't know about this one like follow that or you're in bed with your partner and your partner asks you like to do something that maybe feels a little outside the box, but actually you're like, you know, I think I am curious about this. What happens if I decide to lean in with with gentleness with caution like it empowers us to walk away from what is not for us just as readily as it empowers us to then be able to lean in to good growth to generativity to expanding our capacity and we are not taught these things.You know, we are taught like I said like the world is horribly unsafe, but there's probably somebody out there who you could partner with that'll make you feel safe and like all that crazy conditioning that goes on. This is the answer to that. This is the anecdote. It's about cultivating your own personal agency so that you can be discerning about what is and is not for you. If there's I don't know what else could be a more like apt definition of authenticity back to what we were talking about earlier than that. It's you discerning for yourself. This is my authentic. Yes, this is my authentic. No, I desire this. I do not desire that my boundary lies here. My preference is there. Boom boom boom. I'm in my power. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 29:17

Yeah, I love that definition of authenticity, knowing in my body, what is for me, what is not for me. What instantly comes to mind is just the hundred million ways in which we are separated from our bodies and we are told to override it from childhood.And I've talked a lot about that on different podcast episodes. I'm sure you have talked about that a lot with your clients and where you kind of share your ideas as well. So then getting back into our bodies has to be something that we feel comfortable doing. Tell me a little bit about how you begin to help a client get back into their body when that is not familiar to them. 

Darshana Avila 30:03

Yeah, yeah. Well, we go slow for starters. And that right there flies in the face of how most of us are living our lives most of the time. Right? Like, like we are so sped up. So slowing down to the pace of presence.What that means to me is that we're really creating spaciousness and time to be in a deep listening. I do a practice with my clients fairly early on, like, once we get past some initial sessions are usually like subtle bodywork, more energetic type tendings where I'm basically they're borrowing my nervous system, they may or may not realize it, but I'm the co regulating force and helping them to settle things down so they can start to become receptive. You need to be receptive for any growing to happen, right? Like you can't, if a vessel is full, if there's no room to pour into it, what are you going to do? Like you can pour, pour, pour, it's just going to splash out all over the place, right? So think of yourself that way, we have to create the conditions for receptivity in your body, in your nervous system, before any of this good growth can begin to happen.So I start my clients out at that end of the spectrum and depending upon what they're walking in the door with, for instance, if it's somebody with a very complex or significant trauma history, we might spend a lot of time on that piece of the journey before we move on to anything remotely sensual sexual type of intimacy. As we progress, no matter where they are, we're like we're always starting with in addition to that foundation of tending to the nervous system and creating receptivity, we start to explore the building blocks of safety. What does it actually feel like? And how do we constantly in ways me and another person in this case, I'm that other person that they get to be practicing with distance and proximity, the pace of connection? How do we, you know, animal to animal, do I come at you front to front body? Do I come at you alongside like we actually like play we do experiments, I'm looking out at my office space as I'm talking to you like, we walk all over this room, we do weird things in here that are fantastic to just play around with like, what is it like to be two bodies in space together and choose how you want to bridge connection.So few of us ever slow down enough to think about this, because we're so used to just people invading our space, or going into other people's spaces. And we have certain social norms that you know, here you shake hands, here you hug, oh, go kiss your grandma, like it's so deeply rooted from childhood through adulthood. Again, it's like other people telling us how to be in our bodies. So we slow things down. So you get to figure out how it actually feels for you to be in your body, and begin to identify when you're bracing, when tension and vigilance are coming into your system, and when you are relaxing. 

Darshana Avila 32:59

And when there's openness and receptivity available for a genuine connection to happen. Once that's online, we explore in a really nuanced way around touch around consent, all sorts of vocabulary that gets built up to really create a more empowered dynamic where if you are my client, you can be assured that if you say the XYZ word, I interpret it the same way you intend it, because that right there is a place where a lot of us miss the other person in our interpersonal relating.So for instance, we might say very nebulous words like, hey, sweetie, I want you to rub me or touch me words rub and touch are super vague. But if I say, I really would like for you to give me a shoulder massage, medium pressure, nice and slow, and really focus in like up to where my neck connects with my skull. That's a very, very different set of instructions. And can you give me a shoulder rub? Now, if all you asked for is a shoulder rub, and that's all your partner has to go on, and they're just giving you their best approximation of that. Is it really their fault if you're not getting what you want? No. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 34:18

It's not. Okay.And I can just hear the collective cringe of women out there, but like, if I'm that specific, that's going to come across as too needy, too demanding, too bitchy, too bossy. Right. And so I can feel like on the one hand, when you are talking about the deliberate, detailed nature of communication, I start to feel that life energy. Like, yes, that is, I want women to be able to speak as freely as they want to about anything they want to, whether it's, you know, where to put the groceries in the fridge or how to give me a neck rub. And that conditioning about don't be too needy, don't be too bitchy, don't be too bossy. 

Darshana Avila 35:04

Yep, yep, yep. What would you say to that? What I would say to that is, fair point, well made, Sara. Also true, the reason why that all feels so cringy to us is because we have not created a culture in our relationships that is a departure from that dominant cultural conditioning.So in my space, when you come into my office to work with me, we have a very different culture in here. A culture that celebrates being explicit and thorough and giving direction and feedback as gifts to our relationship. It's going to enhance our mutual sense of safety and satisfaction, so when somebody is taking the time to say, this is how I want it, I'm like, thank you, amazing. I don't have to guess now, woo-hoo. And so you have opportunities, and I absolutely coach my clients around this, whether I'm working with them individually or as a couple. You have the opportunity to create culture in your own personal relationships.All it takes is two or more people agreeing on a certain set of norms for it to be called a culture, so that's why I'm using this word. So if the culture in your partnership is one where in moments of neutrality, when you and your partner are sitting down, checking in about the health of your relationship, maybe it's because you just went through something really frickin' rough together and you're like, okay, we gotta figure out a better way. Well, that might be a great moment to say, hey, I would really like to create a norm for us of being more explicit with our feedback and noticing like, yeah, sometimes we're gonna take it as like a rejection or it might feel a little bossy or demanding, but what happens if we start to think about this as like a gift to the relationship? What happens if we choose to say thank you? It's really great to know what it is that you're needing right now, so I don't have to sit here and try to mind read, or I'm not over here wondering, am I doing it okay? Do they like it? Is this working for them? When we are more generous and clear, we really are creating win-win dynamics. Your point, like I said, was a really fair one where if the culture does not exist to hear these things as a gift, to celebrate and receive them as such, then yeah, the bossy, the too much, the too demanding, all of those narratives, those cultural tropes, 100% makes sense that those would come online, but the thing is those are not objective facts.They are not truth. It is a conditioning that just as it was handed to you, you can toss out the window. It takes practice. I'm not acting as if this is like a one and done situation. It's a lot easier for me to narrate the possibility than for each of us to make this transformation, but that's why you've got people like you and me to help, like you don't have to go this alone. Like those of us who have devoted ourselves to this work, if we're doing it well, it means it's because we've also been unwinding these very patterns in ourselves. Let us help you. Let us help you. That's what we're here for. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 38:12

And so many times what I have found is that when someone is feeling in this like really stuck, disembodied, I don't like my life. I don't know what I want. I don't think that this is how I want to keep doing it, but I don't really know any other way. Helping them understand what's on the other side of that journey is really, really helpful because they can point to it and say, yes, I do want that.So when I hear you say, you know, one of the benefits of embodiment, if we're going to reduce it to that, or one of the conditions of living an embodied life is that you know what is for you and what is not for you. You know that from the inside out. That gut feeling that you have about things is true for you. You can be another benefit. The explicitness in communication is a benefit to your relationships. It means that you have more intimate, more deeply connected relationships when you can say exactly what you need and want to say. 

Darshana Avila 39:17

And then we become insisting on permission to do this for ourselves. We are also extending that permission to whoever we're in relationship with. In that way alone, it is such a tremendous gift.You just said it. It's like sometimes we need to be shown the example of what is possible. Well, what happens if you get to be the person who's showing your sweetheart or your child or your friend or your sister or whoever it is? Like, hey, guess what? There's another way to do this whole being human together thing. We can actually celebrate feedback and we can take the time to be a bit more thorough. And look, it does not mean that this is carte blanche. You just get up on your soapbox and start finger pointing. You need to da da da da. That's not the vibe. The vibe, if we're talking about this as a gift that's being given and received, is to really be in a loving centered place of like, okay, like here's what feel really amazing to my body right now. Are you down for helping me to make that happen? Like that's what it comes down to in the realm that I'm often talking to people about, right? Like when we are speaking of sexual preferences or sensual ones, the way we wanna be touched, the movements and shapes and so on and so forth that we wanna make with our bodies, who else but us really is gonna know how it feels from the inside? Nobody, right? So if I'm with a lover, I absolutely wanna know what is gonna have my lover feel great in their body while we're together. Why? When? They feel good. It enhances my likelihood of feeling good. We have more fun together. It's like it's a zero sum game y'all. So when we really take that down to its basics of that we're speaking about agency, you in your personal power. And I'm imagining that most people who would be listening to this podcast would be the sort of folks who say like, yeah, our body, our choice. We deserve to be the ones who have a say over what goes on. Well, this is just an extension of that. If we can't tell our partners what feels good to us in the bedroom, what business do we have being in bed with them? Or are they with us? What are we perpetuating when we refuse our authenticity and just keep performing? Like, is that what you wanna do? Is that the culture you wanna uphold? Or are you ready to maybe break out and create a new culture in your relationship? Again, I understand it's easy for me to say it, not undermining that this is deep growth, big transformational work, but what it also isn't is rocket science. It's so complicated, you know? It just takes some practice. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 42:12

love that. So what's a simple way that someone who is listening to this can begin their journey toward being more embodied and connected to their eroticism? 

Darshana Avila 42:25

Yeah, you've got these beautiful friends. They're called your five senses. And I want you to start getting to know them. So what I mean there is take a little more time, be a little more present with what you are feasting on, literally and metaphorically.What does it taste like? What does it feel like in your mouth when you sip that first coffee, or in my case, your chai latte in the morning? You know, like, what does it feel like? The example I'm often giving is how many of us, and you can raise your hand unless you've got both hands on the wheel right now, how many of us shower fast as can be, moisturize like we're doing like some crazy, like rapid dance, like what if you took time to soothe the spread lotion on your skin and you spent three minutes doing that instead of 13 seconds? Go for a walk and really open up your eyes and ears and nose. What do you smell? What's blooming? What's falling off the trees? How is the light playing? Is there a pop of street art or color somewhere that calls to you? Is there a birdsong? Why we want to start paying attention to our senses is because they are the vehicle. That is how we are perceiving. Well, technically our body is the vehicle. Through our senses, we are perceiving our world and it is giving us information about what we do and do not like because you're gonna have pretty clear preferences of like, that sound is delightful to me. That sound is nails on a chalkboard to me. So we start learning about preferences when we're paying attention to our senses.Then I'm gonna want you to move in the direction of indulging in what feels good. So listen to the beautiful music, eat the delicious morsel, take the time putting your moisturizer on, those kinds of things. That is where you get to create simple accessible practices. It doesn't require money. It doesn't require a lot of time. Your senses go with you wherever you are. And if somebody is listening to this podcast who has a limit to one of their sentences, or senses, excuse me, not sentences, if you are blind, if you are deaf, like you still have your other sense faculties, use them. It is the primary way to get in touch with what your body needs, wants, is asking for. And then I'm gonna give you one more little nugget. And these are your four allies of erotic embodiment. They are also free and very readily accessible. They are breath, sound, movement, and touch. And with those four, with breath, sound, movement, and touch, you have tools available to you to modulate and regulate your experience anywhere, everywhere. Taking deep breaths in through the nose, out with a vocal exhale, three, six, nine of those, you're gonna feel your nervous system tone start to shift downward. You will get more relaxed. Touch, sound, movement. You can do these in little micro ways. Like if you're feeling tight, you might shake your wrists or roll your shoulders. See, you just did it, Sara. Like you're like, oh yeah, I'm gonna roll my neck out. 

Darshana Avila 45:43

Self touch, a beautiful simple practice. You can rub the palms of your hands together to generate a little bit of heat and then bring those warm palms to your jawline, over your eyes, a hand on your heart, a hand on your belly. Give yourself a big squeeze if you're needing to feel a little containment and your edges are free and you're like, whoa, I gotta gather it back together. So through breath, sound, movement, and touch, we have ways to soothe ourselves when we need it.We also have ways to amp ourselves up. Boost your energy. Get yourself a little more activated. And these are the fundamental things that we're always going to be playing with when we talk about embodiment. Your senses and these allies are what come with you everywhere. So any which way, even in tiny doses, if you spend one minute today paying attention to what I just gave you guidance around and that's more than you did yesterday, high five babe. Good job. Those are the building blocks that you get to then construct with. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 46:49

Thank you for that. And I want to ask another question, because you talked about, you know, if there's one of your senses that is either impaired or not fully accessible to you, then there are still some other senses or ways that you could work on embodiment.What about someone who's experienced trauma? And they either it could be sexual trauma, it could be other types of trauma where their body doesn't feel like the safe place that it needs to be. How can they create a satisfying embodiment experience? 

Darshana Avila 47:22

the same tools as it were, so it's still your senses, it's still these allies and embodiment, really small doses. In the world of somatics, which is body-based wisdom, and as specifically applied to trauma, we have a notion called titration. And what titration means is that wherever your growth edge is, wherever that limit presently lies, you move toward it, you touch, and then you move back to where it's safe. So a nervous system of human, let's talk about the whole human, the whole human who is still really actively in a trauma response. That trauma could have happened three decades ago. If you are still experiencing the impacts of that trauma and being in your body does not feel like a safe place to be, and for instance, if your default strategy to manage that is constant busyness, thus the thought of stillness is terrifying and feels like more than you can do.Three seconds, like if, okay, like be still for three seconds, great. That's then go back to being busy. Okay, kind of come back again tomorrow. Four seconds, oh, okay, there I did pat on the back. So we've really, really got to lower the bar here. All of us are carrying trauma of some sort or another. Some of us are navigating very significant trauma responses in our bodies. And that may or may not, to my opinion, to your opinion feel correlated to the thing that happened to us. Like we're not here, it's not a competition. It's not a judgment. What it is about is your subjective experience. And if being in your body does not feel like the safe place to be, teeny little micro doses of being there repeated over time, you are going to grow your capacity. That being said, get a guide. Get a guide, get a therapist, get a somatic healer. You do not need to do this alone, really. And look, I would love for anybody who is listening to this and is like, I want what Darshan has got. Come work with me. Here's what's also true. I know I'm not accessible to everyone. That's fine. Go find someone who is. Like let yourself be helped. You do not need to do this alone. Pretty much every single trauma out there happens in a relationship. So it stands to reason that we need relationship to help us resolve and move beyond that. Let it be a relationship of your choosing with someone who's really qualified to join you for this chapter of your journey. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 49:57

I love that. Let yourself be helped. Let yourself be held. Let yourself be witnessed. Let yourself be heard. Yes.So important. So if people are interested in working with you because they love, as I have, every sentence that's come out of your mouth on this episode, where can they find you? 

Darshana Avila 50:16

You can find me on all the socials, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, I'm kind of sort of there sometimes if that's where you hang out, if you're a business-y type. My website really is the best hub and that's my name, darshanaavala.com. I do have an online community called Galgasm that is basically just like a free repository of a ton of resources that you can dive in with straight away. And then if you wanna work with me, it's totally an option. I am based in Oakland, California, a lot of my clients come from other states and other countries and work with me in addition to people who happen to be local. So if you want what I'm dishing out, then I would be delighted to hear from you and to discuss how we might be able to do that together. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 51:01

Darshana, do you have anything exciting that's coming up that you want people to know about? 

Darshana Avila 51:05

Yes, actually, I am I've been hard at work over here in a quiz and archetypal quiz, which is the embodied protector quiz. So it's very apropos of what we've been talking about here.And it's a really beautiful way to gain insight into what are your go to protective mechanisms? What are these patterns that you've been playing out? How are they showing up personally, relationally, culturally? So you get a frame of like, okay, this is what I'm up to here. Here's where I maybe have been a little bit blind to some of my stuff. And that's a beautiful place to begin to unwind it and to step more fully into your erotic wholeness. So this is going to be available on my site. And you all might be some of the first to get to experience it and take this quiz. And I welcome you in so that you can learn more about you and what your path to erotic wholeness would be. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 51:56

Oh, I love a good quiz. So I will be going to a website to take that immediately because I do think it's so helpful when someone can point out pieces of the puzzle in a different way for me to see myself.So I, yes, go take the quiz. 

Darshana Avila 52:13

Awesome. Thank you. 

Sara Bybee Fisk 52:16

We'll put all of those links in the show notes and I just want to express gratitude for your willingness to come and share just some really, really beautiful, helpful ideas. Is there anything as we kind of wrap up here that you haven't gotten to say that you really want to make sure gets added to this conversation? Oh my gosh. That's a dangerous question. 

Darshana Avila 52:38

No, I'm gonna reiterate something that I did said because it bears repeating and I think I even said if you take nothing away. But this one thing and that is whatever is going on for you dear listener like none of it is a personal failing We have so much cultural heat nonsense Pathologizing making us feel like it's all our fault and then it feels really really hopeless and we feel really really helpless inside of these things No No, right here right now. We're gonna just set that narrative aside You are not at fault and you absolutely are not beyond being helped So let that happen let yourself shed the layers of shaming and blaming your precious self Let yourself be helped as we've already said like that is what I want y'all to know.

Sara Bybee Fisk 53:28

Amen. Perfect note to end on. Again, thank you so much for this conversation.

Episode 149 - We Need To Talk About Codependency

For a long time, codependency has been framed as weakness or passivity—that’s why so many strong, capable, high-functioning women hear that word and immediately think, that is absolutely not me. In this episode, I explore where the concept of codependency actually came from and why that original definition often doesn’t fit. When we widen the lens, codependency starts to look a lot more like over-functioning and organizing your time, energy, and identity around other people. When we can understand it in that way, it opens up a much more honest and hopeful path forward. Here’s what I cover:

• Why the original addiction-based definition of codependency misses how it shows up for high-functioning women

• How control can turn into codependency and start to replace your self-connection

• What it looks like when your identity is built around being needed or emotionally steady

• How codependency costs you your time, energy, and brain space, whether it feels like over-functioning or under-functioning

• Questions to help you notice where you’re managing others in order to feel okay

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Transcript

00:59

We're going to talk about codependency and specifically where we got that word and why so many strong, intelligent, high functioning, highly capable women hear that word and think that is absolutely not me, but what we can actually learn from what it actually is. 

 01:20

Because for so long, codependency has been framed as weakness, as passivity. You're not able to say no. You stand by while someone else's chaos and shenanigans cause all kinds of negative results and you just don't do anything about it. 

 01:36

And when I bring this up with clients that I'm working with, a lot of them share that definition and they don't identify with it at all, right? These women are not passive. They're capable, they are competent, they are endlessly resourceful, often the strongest person in the room. 

 01:57

But I think if we understand codependency from a different lens, it actually opens up a really beautiful opportunity for growth and how to have a better experience. So let's start at the beginning. The concept of codependency actually came out of work in addiction recovery spaces in the late 20th century. 

 02:20

And one of the most influential books in that movement was Codependent No More by a woman named Melody Beattie. And for the time, it was an amazing book because it cracked open this very confusing behavior pattern that was observed in groups or families where there was one person who was addicted to alcohol, whatever, and what the other family members did in relationship to that addicted person. 

 02:53

And it named patterns that were invisible and oftentimes really confusing. Because in addiction, codependency was described as staying with someone when they're harming themselves or others. Enabling. 

 03:10

That's kind of where this enabling language comes out of where you enable their destructive behavior. You are losing yourself through constant over-accommodation. And you're not able to detach from this other person, even when what they're doing is something that is clearly unhealthy. 

 03:32

And that framing made a lot of sense inside of those addiction systems. This was a really important book that mattered a lot because it helped people understand why loving someone with an addiction could slowly kind of erase you. 

 03:49

And it gave language to pain that was just kind of normal and had been normal for generations. But the problem was, is that that model framed codependency primarily as under functioning, not setting limits, enduring clearly messed up disruptive behavior, this chronic self-sacrifice, avoidance, collapsing or being helpless emotionally. 

 04:20

Someone who didn't believe that they could survive without the other person. And they were constantly just hoping that the other person would change. Now, a lot of those behaviors are true of us when we are stuck in people pleasing. 

 04:35

I'm not trying to say that that definition doesn't work and doesn't have value because absolutely we can each see places or situations in which we do that. I just think it's incomplete because when the only image of someone who is codependent is someone who is powerless, who is overwhelmed, who's unable to act. 

 05:01

That feels very weak and it feels very passive. There's lots of distress and hand wringing, but nobody ever intervenes or asserts themselves or says, I'm not putting up with this anymore. This has got to stop. 

 05:18

And that's what makes the definition feel so alien to high functioning women. Because that's not what's happening, right? What gets missed or what I think needs to be added is that the old definition frames codependency as under functioning. 

 05:40

And I think we need to include what happens when the woman doesn't collapse, when she doesn't disappear and she's not powerless and feeling confused and wringing her hands. The original definition really assumes the problem is a lack of action. 

 05:57

But for many of us, the problem isn't passivity. It's too much action, taking too much responsibility, inserting, doing, planning, analyzing, controlling too much. When I first ran into this first definition, it was through my participation in a 12-step program. 

 06:21

If you've listened to some of my earlier episodes in the beginning, when my husband and I are talking, we talk about the time when we were still attending church and he was looking at pornography, which in Mormon land is a big no-no. 

 06:35

And so the response from our church leaders at the time was to send us to these 12-step addiction programs, because obviously, if you're looking at porn, you have a sex addiction or a porn addiction. 

 06:46

That's not always true, but that was the assumption. And then I went to a separate 12-step for codependence and we read codependent no more. And I just kept thinking, this is not me, right? I'm not passively standing by wringing my hands and afraid to bring this up with my husband. 

 07:07

I was strong. I was keeping track of everything, right? I was very observant and I had an endless ability to critique and to adjust and to plan and to try and control outcomes. I had scheduled check-ins where, you know, we would talk about his progress. 

 07:25

I had all of these systems in place for figuring out if he was looking at porn or not looking at porn. And so I was not like losing myself quietly over in the corner, crying tears and wringing my hands. 

 07:41

I was over functioning. I was holding everything together. This is what I was telling myself at the time, like, like, I am going to fix this, right? We, we are going to do this based on all of these outcomes in this spreadsheet. 

 07:56

I don't know that I actually have a spreadsheet, but I wouldn't put it past me for it to be the one time that I did make a spreadsheet. Like all of these markers will show us that you are moving in the right direction. 

 08:07

And I could come up with that stuff all day long. And so I didn't think that codependency would be my issue at all. But a really beautiful change has happened over the last little while as therapists and other thinkers have begun to apply the concept of codependency outside of just these addiction spaces, the definition has changed. 

 08:36

And so there's a lot more discussion of control disguised as taking care of people. And maybe you can think back to what I was just doing with my husband and his quote unquote porn addiction. Like, did I want him to think I was caring for him? 

 08:54

Sure, but I was controlling the hell out of him, right? Identity built around being needed. That is a really beautiful addition to this codependency discussion that we're having where, okay, what happens when your whole identity is built around being indispensable to other people? 

 09:15

That's not under-functioning. That's not quiet, tear-stained hand-wringing in the corner. That's over-functioning, over-responsibility. And then the third really important thing that has been added to the conversation about codependency is that we used to look at self-abandonment as some kind of moral high ground, right? 

 09:40

That I am so strong. I am so good. I've completely given myself over to solving this problem. And I just want to shout out authors like Terry Cole, who's the author of Too Much, and Pia Melody is a different trauma-informed thinker who have really helped us expand this codependency lens a little bit larger. 

 10:01

So here's what I want you to think about. Codependency, how I have found it to be most valuable to define for me and those I work with. It's not about not being able to set limits or not being able to say no. 

 10:17

It is about organizing all of your time, energy, and identity around managing others so that you can feel better and your own needs become optional. Because if you think back to what I was doing with my husband, my feeling better was dependent on him acting the way I thought he should be acting. 

 10:44

And I think you could think, if you slow down right now and just ask yourself this question, do I have a relationship where I insert myself, where I organize my time and my energy and maybe even my identity around them doing or feeling better so that I can do and feel better. 

 11:07

I think a lot of us have that type of relationship because what this looks like in real life is someone who's codependent, they know exactly how someone else is feeling and they don't always know how they're feeling. 

 11:22

They spend a lot of time mentally rehearsing conversations to prevent disappointment or conflict. They know how to automatically adjust their body language, their tone, or their needs to keep things running smoothly. 

 11:37

Sometimes they're the emotional processor for everyone else. I have a client who serves this function in her office. Everybody is always coming into her office, closing the door and wanting to talk through office stuff going on with her, right? 

 11:52

She processes emotions with and for everyone. People who jump in to fix problems no one asked you to fix. Staying in relationships where you are essential, everybody relies on you, but you are not supported the same way. 

 12:09

It's the person who remembers everything and anticipates what's going on and can kind of plan and organize around what other people need, not always knowing what you need. And here's the biggest one that really kind of hits me between the eyes. 

 12:27

Taking responsibility for outcomes that aren't yours. Caring about something more than the other person does, so much so that you have the plan, you have the resources, you're the one that's going to make it happen. 

 12:43

And what's confusing is that that looks like success from the outside. It's what we were taught we were supposed to be doing. The strong one, the smart one, the one who keeps it all running. We were taught if you do those things for other people, those things will be done for you. 

 13:03

And that's not the case because that's not how it works. Codependency is expensive. It costs so much time, hours spent thinking about other people's needs, moods, their reactions, and planning for that. 

 13:23

The energy output is incredible. That constant hypervigilance, the emotional labor that you're doing for other people, the way that that is just exhausting. Yeah, that's part of the cost. It costs brain space, managing relationships instead of being in your own life and solving your problems. 

 13:47

And I mean, resources, that just goes unsaid, right? Overgiving, overdoing financially, professionally, emotionally, while sometimes undergiving to yourself. It's not free to be codependent. It's just what we expect of women. 

 14:08

And whether your codependency feels a little bit more like the underfunctioning or the over functioning, it doesn't really matter. It's costing you your life, your time, your energy, your brain space. 

 14:23

And that's why it's so important to talk about. There's another part of this that I really want to address with some compassion and understanding because it makes so much sense. We don't hold on to these codependent behaviors because there's something wrong with us. 

 14:38

We hold on to them because they worked at some point in our past lives. And for many of us in our present lives, being competent, hopeful, all that emotional attunement that we learned was how we felt safe and belonged. 

 14:57

We weren't setting out to manage other people strictly to control them in the beginning. It was actually about preventing bad things from happening. So many of us had this little voice that said, listen, if you stay ahead of this, if you always know how to anticipate what other people need and want, that's how you control bad things from happening. 

 15:20

And for a lot of high functioning women, codependency becomes then part of our identity. We are the one who gets shit done, the strong one, the reliable one, the one who can handle it. And so the identity risk is real here. 

 15:38

It's not just about changing our behavior. It's who am I if I'm not always showing up in this capacity for other people? What do I do then? I think that was a question that I literally asked. Well, if I'm not going to spend all of this time managing and controlling what my husband is doing so that I can feel better, what am I going to do? 

 16:01

I have no idea. It's not just a behavioral change. It's a change in how I see myself. It can also mean disappointing people, right? All these people that you have been kind of smoothing the way for, they are going to feel some of the discomfort that you have been removing from their lives. 

 16:22

What is that going to be like? That's not nothing. And so if it feels scary to let go of some of these behaviors or to even think about it, that makes so much sense, right? It just means that this thing that used to keep you safe and might still in some of your relational situations be how you feel valuable, how you feel recognized and good. 

 16:47

Yeah, that matters. That means something. I just want to leave you with some questions, not as diagnosis, right? Nobody is doing anything wrong here. You are simply showing up in your relations the way you were taught to that got you safe and connected, right? 

 17:04

There's nothing wrong with you. I am curious about the energy expenditure, though, the time, the resources, the brain space, the way that this is showing up in your day-to-day life in terms of costing all this energy, you might want to have a different experience. 

 17:22

So here's some questions. And I want you to just consider. And if this episode really resonates for you, I want to talk to you about it. I want to talk to you about how you can make the switch from spending all of this time and energy managing other people so that you can feel better to just feeling better. 

 17:40

So here are the questions. How much time do I spend tracking other people's moods, needs, or reactions? And do I spend that much time checking in on myself? Question number two. Do I feel responsible for keeping things running smoothly or staying stable or okay in my relationships? 

 18:10

Meaning, when something feels off, do I feel an instinct to fix, to manage, or to somehow compensate for that? Question number three. Do I earn my place in relationships by being useful, competent, or emotionally steady? 

 18:33

So that gets to like, how am I valued? Am I valuable for what I can handle or for who I am? Question number four, do I rehearse conversations in my head to avoid other people feeling disappointed or to manage conflict or misunderstanding? 

 18:54

So am I planning how to say things so that no one gets upset? And last question, when I imagine expressing my own clear need or truth, what does my body feel? Do I feel fear? Do I feel pressure to soften it? 

 19:17

Does it feel risky? So you begin to get a sense of how codependency might be showing up for you. And that's where the work begins, right? Being aware and then wanting to have a different experience. Because what I can tell you now is that the amount of time and energy that I spent trying to manage and control other people's outcomes and congratulating myself for being the person who cared enough to do that, right?

 19:58

All that time and energy, all it created in my relationships was distance and contention and lack of trust. So what I want for you is the same thing that I want for me, which is I want to have relationships that feel mutual and feel reciprocal. 

 20:17

Are there times when people will need and want my help because I'm amazing? Yes. Same with you. You're amazing. You're capable. You have great instincts, right? You know what needs to be done. Is that valuable? 

 20:30

Yes. But I also want you to be able to show up as you with your needs, with your wants, with your dreams, and have there be place for both of those. Because the price of this codependency is that so much of your time and energy gets invested into other people that there's not a lot of it for you. 

 20:51

And that's what I hope you'll get curious about. And if you want to talk with me about how we can work on that together, use the link that's in my bio to set up a call. Because what is on the other side of codependency in your relationships is confidence and secure connection. 

 21:07

Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.

Episode 148 - You Can Get Good at Conflict

Improving your conflict skills isn’t about finding the perfect words—it’s about understanding why conflict feels so hard in the first place. When your body believes that speaking up could cost you connection, of course it freezes, softens, or stays quiet. In this episode, I talk about how our nervous systems learned early on that conflict wasn’t safe, and why that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. When we slow down and get curious about our conflict response rather than judging it, that’s when real change becomes possible, and you can actually get good at conflict. Here’s what I cover:

• How shifting from “what’s wrong with me?” to “why does this make sense?” helps eliminate the self-criticism spiral

• The early lessons your body learned about conflict, compliance, and staying connected

• How people-pleasing and staying small function as intelligent survival strategies

• The questions I offer to help you look backward and make sense of your conflict response

• How attachment patterns shape what your body expects will happen when conflict threatens connection

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Transcript

00:58

The longer I do this, the more convinced I am that the way we are able to handle conflict, the way we are able to have difficult conversations that name our needs, our wants, our desires, what's working for us, what's not working for us, what hurt our feelings, what made us experience uncomfortable emotion in our relationships. 

 01:24

It really is freedom and it really is the linchpin in what makes you feel close in a relationship, what makes you feel like you can really be seen and heard. And so for a long time inside of Stop People Pleasing, which is my six-month group coaching program, we have spent a lot of time working on having difficult conversations. 

 01:50

And I recently expanded that section or that module, I guess, of our program to be a month. And I call it conflict month. And I laugh because when I say conflict month, I'm sure some of you are thinking, hell no, like there's, there's just, I am allergic to conflict. 

 02:12

I don't like it. I don't feel like I do a good job. And I totally get that. Conflict is the thing that feels like kryptonite, right? We hold back. We try to smooth things over. We disappear altogether. 

 02:28

We hold it inside. We don't rock the boat. And that response actually makes so much sense. And it is why we spend an entire month on conflict inside of Stop People Pleasing. Not because I think in a month we can have all the conflict solved and you can have all the skills and tools you'll ever need, but because beginning to understand how our nervous systems react in conflict, I think is the key to being able to live truly free. 

 03:00

It doesn't mean that hard things will never happen. It doesn't mean that there won't ever be rupture in relationship. But what it means is that we can talk about it. And if we're going to talk about it, we have to understand first why we can't talk about it. 

 03:17

Conflict isn't just about communication skills. If it were, I'm sure most of you who are so capable and so thoughtful and so incredibly intelligent, you would have figured it out. If it was just about figuring out the right words, done, right? 

 03:33

We would figure those out. But it's because whenever we think about saying those words, it's the nervous system response. This isn't safe. This is dangerous. Conflict is also about safety. And it's about the way we find connection. 

 03:52

It's about the way that our nervous systems learned a long time ago about what happens when you speak up or disagree or tell the truth. So that 's why we start with the body and we slow it way down. We start asking a different question because a lot of the women that I get inside of Stop People Pleasing, they come in and they're very self-critical. 

 04:20

I am a 40X year old woman or a 51X year old or a 30X year old. And why can't I just say the thing? Why do I freeze? Why does my stomach clench and my throat close up? What is wrong with me? While I understand where that question comes from, it just keeps you locked in this cycle of self-questioning and self-criticism and doesn't actually help us make sense of why you're having that reaction. 

 04:48

So I like to start with a different question. How did my body learn to react like this when conflict shows up? This question really matters because before we try to change something, we want to understand it. 

 05:05

So many women are stuck in that self-criticism and they can't see past the question of what's wrong with me to the better question, which I think is, why does this make sense? Conflict feels dangerous. 

 05:23

It feels dangerous to relationships. It feels dangerous to belonging, to being loved and included and connected. And when we can first start with how does this make sense, it softens that critical self-judgment piece of us that we've been locked in for so long. 

 05:42

And that alone creates some space for change. So let's start there together today. There's something important that I want you to remember about when you were younger. We all depended on the care of bigger, more capable adults. 

 06:00

Our parents, our caregivers, our school teachers, our coaches, religious leaders, all of those people kind of formed this protective net around us that allowed us to get what we needed to continue to survive. 

 06:13

And in that system, especially in the time that we grew up, we didn't have power. And often we didn't even really have a choice. We couldn't leave. We couldn't set and enforce boundaries. We couldn't say, I don't like that. 

 06:31

This doesn't work for me. I don't want to do that without some repercussions. And even when the adults in your life were well-loving or well-intentioned, the message was often very, very clear. If you do not comply, if you are not agreeable, if you're not obedient, if you disrupt this system, there are consequences. 

 06:54

And sometimes those consequences were small, right? I remember when I taught kindergarten, if a child was being disruptive at their table, I would remove them. That was a consequence, exclusion, being separated from your peers, being separated from your group. 

 07:14

Sometimes the consequences meant abuse, withdrawal of love. Even just weathering the disappointment or the silence or the emotional distance of those adults that we needed so badly for survival, that was a punishment. 

 07:33

And our nervous systems learned very, very early what is safe to do and what is not. And that learning made sense in the context of being young and being dependent. We had to do what the big people wanted. 

 07:51

Quick interruption. Thank you so much for listening. I asked this client a question today that I want to ask you. How long are you going to let yourself go unseen and unheard in your most important relationships? 

 08:05

This woman is so capable and so intelligent and also so lonely and resentful. And I know so many of you are as well. So I have a workshop coming up. Say what you need to say. And it's really important for two reasons. 

 08:19

Number one, it's going to teach you how to find the exact right words. I know that's something we all struggle with. What do I say is such a common question. But number two, it's also going to teach you how to work with the fear or the overwhelm or the anxiety that comes up when you actually go to say those words because we need both. 

 08:40

We need the right words, but we also need to be able to regulate our nervous systems so that we can actually say them and get to the connection and the vulnerability that we want and deserve. You deserve to be seen and heard in your relationships. 

 08:56

Check out the link in my bio. All the information you need about the workshop is there and I can't wait to see you. So I want you to hear this clearly. The problem is not that we learned to do that. That was brilliant. 

 09:13

That was an incredible survival system that we learned how to abide in. The problem now is that that adaptation, that survival strategy is still running. And so now, as an adult woman who is capable, who is articulate, who has some resources and can develop new skills, your body still believes if I'm not nice, if I don't smooth things over, if I rock the boat, something bad will happen. 

 09:48

And so you keep making yourself smaller. You keep editing and performing and paying the price. This is not weakness. This is not something wrong with you. Again, this is that brilliant, intelligent survival strategy that protected you for a long time. 

 10:07

And the only thing we need to do now is update it. In adult relationships, we really need to be seen. Not in all our relationships, but we need at least one or two where we can feel honest, where we can feel there's some reciprocity, where we can feel that there's intimacy, we are seen and we are known. 

 10:33

But that old strategy, performing and minimizing and staying silent, it doesn't create those things. It creates protection, right? You feel safe, but it's at the expense of honesty and vulnerability and connection sometimes. 

 10:53

And that's why so many women that I talk to are full of resentment and loneliness. We are so busy worrying about other people. And there's that voice inside that says, but what about us? What about me? 

 11:10

When will I get to be seen and supported the same way I do for everybody else? Or that voice of resentment. I am busting my ass day in and day out to do this for everyone else. Why are they not doing it for me? 

 11:26

So resentment and loneliness and frustration and sadness and grief, those are all, those make so much sense. And so during conflict month, we actually look backward before we look forward. And these are some of the questions that I ask inside the group that I want to ask you now so that you can do some looking backward in a way that feels helpful. 

 11:53

Question number one, what were you taught to believe about conflict? Maybe it was dangerous or disrespectful, or maybe it was just completely useless. Maybe you learned, I'm going to have a need, I'm going to speak up, and nobody's going to do a thing about it. 

 12:10

I will not be thought of. I will not be considered. Disrespectful. I'm going to bring up something I want and someone's going to get mad at me for having the nerve. Dangerous kind of covers a lot of the things that we felt, right? 

 12:26

I'm going to be abandoned. Nobody's going to want me. So think about the answer to that question. What were you taught to believe about conflict? Question number two, who was allowed to be angry in your family and who wasn't? 

 12:43

That'll tell you a lot about who gets to express their needs and who doesn't. What happens when you express needs or wants or preferences. And then question number three, what happened when someone challenged authority or named a need or said no? 

 13:03

Just think back to those answers because they will give you some really important data about why your current conflict response is what it is. And it makes sense. And when we start with, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. 

 13:23

Of course I feel like this. Of course I'm not willing to speak up. Of course this is hard for me. That is a place where change can happen and growth can happen. There's another layer that really shapes how you show up in conflict and that is attachment. 

 13:41

Attachment describes how we learned to stay connected to the people that we needed and what our body now expects will happen when we feel that connection is at risk or there's conflict. If we lean anxious, conflict can feel like if I say this, I will lose the relationship. 

 14:05

I will be abandoned. So we stay quiet, we soften, we manage, we pretend, and we perform. If you lean avoidant, conflict can actually feel very overwhelming. I'm going to lose myself. I'm not going to know what to say. 

 14:20

This is going to be too much. So you shut down, you detach, and you disengage. Those two styles, anxious and avoidant, describe a lot of people out there. There's more nuance there. I have a podcast episode number 43 that goes into some of that nuance. 

 14:39

But both of those responses make sense. There's one other attachment style, secure attachment, that holds a different belief that even if it feels really aspirational and like not what you're able to believe today, I still want you to hear it. 

 14:58

Secure attachment believes we can disagree and it's actually going to be okay. Conflict is actually going to bring us closer. It doesn't mean something is wrong. It's normal in human relationships. And as we go through this conflict together, we're going to better understand each other. 

 15:18

We're going to be able to see and honor each other as individual better. And we're going to be more connected. Connection isn't threatened by conflict. It's facilitated by it. And that belief changes everything because we can then start to help your body not react to conflict as a danger anymore. 

 15:45

It's not something that happens overnight, but over time, working with the parts of you that become very activated, the anxious part, the avoidant part, we can actually help your body not have the same reaction to conflict. 

 16:02

We also do a lot of working with our conflict avoidant parts because almost always there's a part of you that says, don't do it. Whenever there's conflict, don't do it. Don't say it. Just keep the peace. 

 16:17

This is going to blow everything up. You're going to get in a lot of trouble. You're going to lose the relationship. You're going to be overwhelmed, right? Whether that part is inherently avoidant or anxious, their solution is the same. 

 16:29

Don't say it. And so instead of fighting that part, we listen. We learn to ask, what are you afraid of? What are you trying to protect? And what do you need to know about who I am now so that we can have a different experience? 

 16:49

And that's where real change happens, not through forcing, but through partnership. The adult you, the adult you are now, learns to lean in to that younger part who learned that conflict was dangerous. 

 17:08

And instead of saying, what is the matter with you? What is wrong with you? Why can't you just say this? To say instead, I actually understand. This is scary. I hear you. You were right back then. And I'm here now. 

 17:24

That kind of partnership builds trust and it lays the foundation for our bodies to have a different experience with conflict as adults. All of this brings me to the workshop that I'm offering in a few weeks because Stop People Pleasing is not open right now, but I want you to have the opportunity to learn how to work with your nervous system in conflict. 

 17:51

And so I have a workshop, say what you need to say, because two things are always required in conflict. Number one, you do have to have words that feel good to you, the right words for you and for your situation. 

 18:04

And number two, you have to have a regulated nervous system. You have to be able to say the words and deal with the discomfort that comes up when you do. You need both. There's no point in having the perfect language if your body goes into full survival mode. 

 18:21

So inside this workshop, we're going to work on finding the language that is honest and grounded and true for you. And we're going to learn to stay connected to that little part that is scared. And we're going to learn how to say what needs to be said without abandoning yourself. 

 18:39

And if this feels like work you're ready for, the link is in the show notes and in my bio, and I would love to see you there. Before I go, I want to leave you with a few questions to gently explore over the next couple of weeks. 

 18:53

I find that the practice of just letting myself sit with a question and telling all my parts and my nervous system, like, it's safe to answer this. I'm not going to judge you. I'm not going to get mad at you. 

 19:06

I just want to know a little bit about what's going on here. That's the spirit in which these questions are offered. So question number one, when conflict begins, what is the first sensation you notice in your body? 

 19:21

Number two, what does your nervous system seem most afraid of in conflict? Number three, after conflict, how long does it take your body to settle and what helps? Number four, if your conflict response is protecting something valuable, what might that be? 

 19:46

Your answers are some really, really great information. Because if you can notice, for example, in answer to question number one, when conflict begins, I immediately just feel sick in my stomach. That points to a way that you can support your body. 

 20:04

If, in answer to question number two, what does your nervous system seem most afraid of in conflict? Well, it's being abandoned. Then that gives you a little bit of information about what your nervous system needs to feel supported. 

 20:17

It needs to know that you will not abandon you. It needs to know that no matter what, you will be there and just feel whatever needs to be felt. If you're answering question number three and you say, oh, it takes my body a day to settle and I need to walk and I need a bath, that points to some beautiful supportive things that you can do for yourself. 

 20:42

And if you say, it takes my body days and I don't really ever settle, it just kind of goes away. That points to a need for more skills and resources so that you can have a different experience. And maybe in response to question number four, if your conflict response is protecting something, what would that be? 

 21:03

It's protecting my relationship. It's protecting my ability to even be in relationship with this person. That's just good to know because what it says is that that young part of you doesn't have any other resources or skills and really wants to keep this relationship. 

 21:23

And right now they're doing it through self-abandonment. Again, really important information to have. Because when we shift from self-judgment into curiosity, that's what creates the space to change and do something different. 

 21:39

I would love to know what came up for you when you answered those questions. DM me, email me. I'd love to hear. And if that workshop sounds like something you're ready to do, I would love to see you there. 

 21:50

Thanks again for listening. Let me know what landed for you in this episode, and I'll see you soon.