The Power of Self Love

Your nervous system might be the real narrator of your life and if it never learned safety, it will keep writing every scene like a threat is coming. We get honest about what it feels like to live revved up all the time, how that shapes relationships and self-image, and why “doing more healing” can turn into another survival strategy instead of real relief.

I walk through the turning point that changed everything for me: realizing I wasn’t actually trying to forgive everyone else, I was trying to forgive myself. The versions of me that were scared, performing, people-pleasing, overgiving, shutting down, acting tough, acting “too much,” and just surviving. We talk anger and grief, the complicated layers of family pain, and how spiritual tools can be lifelines in childhood but still need to mature into something embodied.

Then we go deep on Ho’oponopono as a self-love practice: “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” Not as a way to bypass the past, but as a way to meet your inner world with compassion and repetition until your body believes it. If self-love has ever felt selfish or fake, this is your reminder that repair is not narcissism. If this lands, subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Remembering And Nervous System Safety

0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Spiritual Shit Show. I am your Hype girl, Julie Wynn. I create these podcasts because it has just been so healing in my life to take time. To sit to be with other people in their remembering journey is I am remembering who I am. And I know that can sound so cheesy, like how, what does that mean? Remembering who you are. But this podcast was created because when I was really in the throes of. Doing all of the work. looking at my childhood, looking at my relationships, looking at, these pain stories, looking at like all of these things in my life that has made me who I am now. And then really having to dissect that and, you know, so much realizing there was so much sadness and pain and anger and abandonment and feeling alone and. experiences of betrayal and tension within the family and, being estranged from my sister who was, to me my everything like it. Having the space to sit down and breathe in the center of all that and then realize, damn, like my nervous system is jacked the fuck up. What do I do with that? And like everything in my life and how I have formed relationships, how I have oriented towards my life, how I have let certain things in, and really protected myself from other parts, whoa. That is all because my nervous system is revved all the time. And then realizing. I've never actually felt safe. When I was taking a somatic course, a somatic practitioner course last year. The whole year was about learning how to create relative safety in your body. And that was the first time in my life at 46 that I was like, I have never felt a sense of relative safety in my body. Ever, ever. And. I know when I share stories and or when I'm holding space for other people to be in their story too. For a long time I feared like, oh, we're just sitting in victimhood, or We're just sitting in healing and, or, it's too much. But really I think it's just human, And we just aren't always taught how to look at it safely or how to be with it or how to heal it, or I don't know. And I love holding space for other people when they, again, are in their story because you can just see everything begin to land. There's this realization that we don't have to hold everything, that there is something that we can do about it. And then once we know like it's almost like you have all of the boxes in your house, but nobody has told you that you can, you can get rid of the ones that. You don't want anymore that you can decorate your new house however you want, and we don't really know how to unpack our stuff and or feel safe enough to get rid of it or what to do with it. All the anger or the resentment or the fear. And I think a lot of us have a hard time also wanting to look at ourselves. It can be scary, and that's what this podcast is a little bit of, because I wanna reframe, and it doesn't have to be trembling in your body. If you look at some of your stuff, there's fear of like, I don't wanna revisit that. I don't wanna look at that. I don't wanna see that. It's easier to keep it packed away. It's easier to keep it buried.

Unpacking The Boxes Into A Life

4:01

It's taken me a really long time to unpack these things, and it feels like where I am in my life now is I'm giving myself permission to move into my mansion. I'm giving myself permission to ask for the really bougie, expensive furniture I'm allowing myself to ask for a big life and allow myself to move into it. But it has taken me 10 years to shift through all of these boxes, and it feels like the old boxes that I don't want anymore are on the lawn. I just have to call the truck to come and pick it all up.

When The Mind Starts Saying Love

4:41

What has been happening to me lately, which I think is a beautiful. Effect of doing so much healing work is I start to wake up in the morning and instead of tracking for what I have to fix, what I have to brace for, what I have to move through, what I have to try to understand my mind tracks and repeats like the most beautiful, loving mantra. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you over and over and over again. And the first time it happened, like I cracked open one eye. Like what the fuck? What? What am I doing? What am I saying? I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. For so long, my nervous system only knew how to track and look for danger. It only knew how to look for what was missing. It Only knew how to look for the ache or to orient right there to, the pain or the betrayal or the sadness. Prior to my healing journey, which actually honestly it's been forever, and I had this curious idea of, I wonder if I'm so sensitive, and I have always been drawn to spirituality because literally it was the only thing that I had to grip onto for survival in my life when I was a

Spirituality As Childhood Survival

6:15

little girl. My home was very broken and very tragic and very just disturbing. And when I have these flashbacks of me as a little girl in a dirty ass fucking room and with dirty sheets and just a, a really just, unloving home and I can look back and I was so dirty. My clothes were dirty. I was underfed, I was under loved. But the book that I read. The only book that I read over and over and over and over again was the Bible. I think it gave me hope. It was like an escape for me, religion and spirituality. And then as I grew up, then it was drugs and spirituality. it was the spiritual gifts. I think have always been there for me to help me to keep tethered to some sort of truth or awareness. And then when I had the studio. At the dance studio, again, it was a motherfucking fire to put out every single day. Like you woke up to the dread of the news of who's quitting, who's upset, who's like, it was just literally the dance studio is a total shit show in itself, I'm not gonna lie. and another podcast on dance and, how to heal and unravel from, dance. 'cause that's also a theme that comes up in so many people's lives if you're a dancer. But anyway. I regress, for so long in my own healing too. It was, I had to forgive. I thought I had to, I was doing all of this work to forgive my sister, to forgive my family, to forgive my mom for dying to forgive my dad, for not being the father, that I needed to forgive, whatever.

Anger Grief And The Ancestors

8:02

And then I was angry. Like so angry, and this is just a funny story. At the peak of my anger, At the peak of my anger, I was like, okay, I have to allow this anger just to move through me. So I sat in a meditation and I was doing breath work, and then just like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you just kept on coming out. And I was like, well, I guess this is part of the healing journey. Just like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Um, to the person who hurt me the most, and then I crack up too, because I remember one time I was dealing with so much anger and I was in yoga class trying to soothe the anger, and literally every time I was like in a squatting motion or in a, What am I trying to say here? Warrior, warrior pose. I would just imagine I was taking a big fucking shit on that person's face. So another podcast on how anger can be helpful. but yeah, I was angry. I was, I was angry at everybody and I was specifically. Angry at my family and my ancestors and I had a reading one time from this little Hindu priest and he said, you need to honor your ancestors. And I was like, fuck that. Fuck my ancestors, fuck my line up and down. Where are they? Where's my family? I don't have any family like. Why did I choose this family? I feel so alone in my family. I feel so abandoned where like I, where's the family love? Where's the family support? No. Fuck that. Fuck the ancestors. And really, honestly, that's how disconnected I felt. That's how alone I felt. And underneath that anger was grief. And underneath the grief was a version of me that just wanted to be loved. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you, and this is what shifted everything for

Self-Forgiveness Starts Self-Love

10:01

me. I wasn't actually trying to forgive them. I was trying to forgive and love and accept myself to forgive and accept and love who I have been for how I have coped. For the ways I showed up when I was dysregulated, scared, performing, trying, surviving. I had to forgive myself for the times that I was too much. Not enough. Arrogant, shut down, people pleasing overgiving, and again. Just surviving, and that's where self-love actually begins. Not in becoming a better version of yourself, but in softening towards every version of yourself that had to exist to get you here. I'm gonna say that again, but in softening and loving and making contact with every version of yourself that had to exist to get you here, there's a Hawaiian practice called Ho Ono.

Ho'oponopono As Inner Repair

11:28

It's simple. And I think I'm really understanding what it's about. Again, I practiced all of these spiritual techniques and tools and read all the self-help books for survival, and now that I'm not in a state of survival and searching for safety in my body, these tools and concepts, I'm like, oh, I've been practicing this for 20 years, but I, I think I'm finally understanding it. So the Hojo Ono prayer is, I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. And here's the part I didn't understand for a long time, that it's not just about saying these words to other people, which I was doing. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Hoping that I would sense some sort of relief, hoping that if I said it over and over and over and over, the pain that was inside of me, the betrayal, the hurts, the abandonment, the sadness, the anger, the grief would somehow go away. Traditionally, this practice was used within families and communities to restore harmony, which is why I think I gravitated towards it. I was so desperate to hold some healing around my family to restore harmony, and what I'm holding now is that it's about taking responsibility for me for my own inner world. How can I release the blame? How can I really notice that I hold a lot of shame inside? How can I hold myself responsible and now responsible enough to really create consciously my love in my life forward? The idea is that we experience the world externally, and we have to remember that its memories, its patterns, its feelings, its imprints of the past that all lives within us internally. So when we say. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. That's a deep breath here. It's not saying I did something wrong and I need to again hold or build up guilt, shame for self. What you're really practicing saying is, I am courageous enough to meet. These parts of me, again, all of these versions of me that needed, that were needed in every part of my life, and it's all these parts of me that have gotten me to where I am now. I am willing to meet those parts of myself with love. I am willing to clean the pattern. And I am willing to come back into harmony, loving, compassionate harmony, self-forgiveness, self-acceptance within myself. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And that's why this is so powerful for self-love, because it's not about fixing yourself, it's really about ending the war within yourself.

Ending The War Within

15:03

So now my practice looks different. It's not as much about the survival. It's not so much that I need to journal more and heal more and fix more and figure it out. Those are all these spiritual practices that I literally was gripping for motherfucking survival. Because my nervous system literally did not. I just did not know how to feel a sense of safety. Not in my day, not in my life. I wasn't feeling safe when good things were happening to me. I could only know how to brace for the bad. I only knew how to brace for the bad. I only knew how to, to pattern my life around. I'm bad. I'm, I'm not good enough. I'm crazy. I I am too much. I am dysregulated. I am, I am. I couldn't trust myself. And now, now it's really cool because I can look at myself and I can say, Hey, you. Oh, there you are. Julie, I love you, and I'm sorry that this happened to you, and I am sorry that you had to work so hard, and I'm sorry you felt abandoned, and I'm sorry you thought you had to earn love. And I'm sorry for every time you thought that you weren't lovable, and I am sorry that, huh. You felt like you had to be someone or prove yourself to belong. I'm sorry that you had to overgive. I'm sorry that no one has ever reflected that same love that you radiate out to other people. I am sorry that you've never had the experience of having that same love radiated back to you. I am sorry. Please forgive me for the times that I abandoned you too. Please forgive me for the times that I acted out of fear. Please forgive me for all of the times that I thought I was better than other people. Or carried myself high and put other people down. Please forgive me for forgetting that I am worthy too of love and a good life. And thank you. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for the courageous and loving and powerful work that you do. Thank you for how you always show up for other people Regardless. Thank you for not losing who you are at the core. Thank you for continuing to always believe in love and harmony and repair. Thank you for still always choosing love. I love you. And this next part I think is really important for me to say is because for me, a lot of my patterning in life and who I've become the past a podcast, I'm talking about the scaffolding that has built your life and your personality. My scaffolding was built on, you know, just like the immediate trauma of losing a mom. And then, having a stepmom, which that is a whole other podcast, to write a book about that. And then, a dad that was just trying to survive. And, you know, my dad, he lost his wife suddenly, and then he had three very young kids that he had to support and he also was grieving. The devastating loss of a, of a partner, the love of his life. Like it's so complex. It is so complex, and it kind of all spun us into our own personalities.

Self-Love Is Not Narcissism

18:37

And for me, part of my. My own personal story is then also growing up and then, being with and having one of my closest relationships with a narcissistic dynamic and having somebody continuously tell you, you are so selfish. You're the most selfish person on the entire planet. It's all about you. You're crazy. You're too much. Look at you. Nobody likes you. And that. You are selfish. You are so fucking selfish. You are the most selfish person I have ever met. You're a fucking psycho. It's all about you. All you do is think about you. That gets wired into your system, and so when I am practicing self love, or when you finally turn inward towards yourself to love, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. It can feel weird, it can feel wrong. It can feel selfish. And I am telling you it is not. It is repair. And I'm curious if this is why some people maybe equate self-love with narcissism and it's not that kind of love. It's not a love of like, look at me, look at my beauty. Look at my, look at all of my things. That's not self love. Self-love is like how it feels to hold a compassion for yourself to be able to forgive yourself deep enough to release guilt and shame. Self-love is the courage to see where you have been wrong in your life and to reach out to that person to say, I am so sorry. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. And this takes practice because your nervous system learns through the compassionate repetition. It's not a one and done thing, and hopefully. One day you two will wake up and your mind will start saying back to you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And so now where I'm at.

Where You Still Abandon Yourself

21:12

The question isn't, what do I need to heal? What do I need to fix? What do I need to work on? What do I need to brace against? It's this deeper question of like, huh, where am I still abandoning myself? Where am I still choosing guilt? Truth, where am I still creating my life from patterns of my past, from these parts of guilt or shame or abandonment, or feeling like I need to prove myself? Where am I withholding love from myself? And again, where am I abandoning myself? And what would it feel like to just be me? Not a healed version, not a better version. Not a new role, not anything. Just me. And maybe self-love isn't something you achieve. Maybe it's just something that you can build into your personal practice. May you catch yourself looking in the mirror and being like, ha, hey, you. There you are, and know what it feels like to place a hand over the heart and say, I love you. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Can you feel the power in that? And honestly, five years ago, 10 years ago, I probably wouldn't be able to feel that power because I didn't believe it. But now I'm able to see the power. That is there when you learn how to fucking love yourself, love your gifts, love your quirks, love your life, love who you are, all of it, and not a perfected masked. This is what people are asking me to be and how to show up, but to what does this feel like to truly love yourself? And to allow yourself to receive. Receive that type of love. Thanks for being here, everybody. I love you. Thanks for being a part of the journey, and until next time.