The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast— where the magic meets the mess.
This is my little corner of the podcast universe, where we make personal growth feel a little more human — and a lot more fun. Here, I share the ups, downs, sideways spirals, and surprising sparkles of healing, self-discovery, and spiritual misadventures — all with a wink, a laugh, and a whole lot of heart.
Because here’s the thing: healing doesn’t have to be so serious. It can be joyful, playful, messy, beautiful, and unapologetically real. Self-development isn’t about coloring inside the lines — it’s about love, connection, freedom, and daring to tell our very human stories.
I’m Julie Nguyen — intuitive channel, certified life coach, somatic practitioner, dancer, teacher, and fellow imperfect human — and I’m here to walk (and sometimes cha-cha) alongside you as we amplify the magic, embrace the mess, and cheer each other on through it all.
Come as you are. Let’s make it weird, wonderful, and wildly alive.
Your brain loves a clean, dramatic choice when you’re stressed: stay or go, push harder or give up, control everything or avoid it completely. That’s not always wisdom. A lot of the time, it’s a nervous system that’s convinced everything is an emergency and is hunting for certainty like it’s oxygen.
I share a very real, crunchy week where I swing between being lit up and totally tanked, and how that spiral pulls me into binary thinking around work, money, rebuilding, and “getting it right.” Then we slow it down and look at what’s really happening: when the body feels threatened, the mind narrows the field, turns life into a two-door game show, and dares you to pick a side before you’re even regulated. The antidote isn’t perfection. It’s nuance, honesty, and a pause long enough to remember yourself.
We explore the “third option,” the space between reaction and response where you don’t have to decide from panic or abandon yourself to prove you’ve changed. I weave in a grounding image from Buddhist teaching about clinging and the reminder that muddy water becomes clear when it’s allowed to settle. You’ll also get a simple somatic practice you can use right away: hand to body, three slow breaths, and a few questions that help you find the sweet spot between extremes.
If you’re navigating a relationship decision, a job shift, a boundary, a habit, or a creative project, press play and try this with me. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s stuck in “this or that,” and leave a review with the question you’re sitting with right now.
✨ Thank you for tuning into this episode of Spiritual Shitshow! Remember, the journey to your most authentic self isn’t always neat, but it’s always worth it. 💖
🎧 If today’s episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and don’t forget to leave a review to help more people find this space.
🌟 Let’s keep the conversation going—connect with me on Instagram @julienguyen.online or drop me a message about what’s lighting you up or challenging you right now.
For 1:1 sessions or support, go to www.julienguyen.online.com
Until next time, stay messy, stay magical, and keep showing up for yourself. 🌀
Hello and welcome back to the Spiritual Shit Show podcast. This is the place we make room for the sacred, the messy, the human, and the moments when your nervous system is absolutely convinced that everything is an emergency. That has been my week actually. I honestly feel like I have been creating and thinking and journaling and, I feel like a crackhead. I almost had to check myself into a rehab, but I could not find a spiritual rehab. Thank God for my friends who can help me to see things when I am so unable to see them. I had a dear friend who said, "Girl, you need to stop. You need to rest. And can you remember that expansion requires rest?" Phew. So as I've been resting and really practicing how can I slow down or how can I pivot in my life, what's coming to me is this idea that there's a third option. Because when I am really in the throes of panic about money or career or getting enough followers or rebuilding, the space of rebuilding my life, which has been annoyingly long, there's a little bit of a panic that sets in. What do I need to do? I need to put out more content. I need to, uh, uh, uh, I need to do all of these things. And the this or that in my life feels really draining.
And so today we're talking about is there a possibility for a third option? I'm discovering this because this week has been really crunchy. And, there are weeks when we feel like we have to make a choice. And usually it's a choice between two things. It's do this or do that, stay or go, hold on or let go, work harder or quit, speak up or keep the peace, keep your phone or throw it into a lake. And my nervous system loves this game, plays it often, this or that. Because when I don't feel safe, my mind starts searching for certainty. It wants answers. It wants to know which path will finally make me feel okay. And this week, jeez Louise, I was ping-ponging between two paths. And it was so interesting because there was this duality present. The beginning of my week, I was so lit up and so fired up, and so in my remembrance and in my joy, and, like, in my dreams. And by Thursday, it tanked. It tanked. And I felt like I've been dancing in between my past and my future. I kept trying to force myself onto this future path, believing that if I could just choose correctly or continue to commit and keep it consistent, I'd finally feel settled, and things are gonna start happening. And the truth is, neither path, this past or the future or how I was working, none of it brought peace. None of it And I was forgetting about myself, and isn't that so ironic since I keep saying I'm on the remembrance journey? Is there another way
And then I realized something. This is why I believe in pauses. Now, I'm not good at taking them, but I do try to implement them when I can. This is why I believe in getting present before we make a life-altering decision from a dysregulated body is important, and this is why I believe that sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is to stop treating every uncomfortable feeling like an instruction. Sometimes it's just a request to pause. Because when we are activated, our brains often narrow the field. Psychologically, it makes sense. When the nervous system senses threat, even emotional threat, it wants to make things simple. it wants to get the answers. It wants to protect you. It wants to keep you safe. It scans for danger and then tries to protect us through control, and so suddenly life becomes dramatic, and it's a two-door game show. Door number one, repeat your old patterns forever, or door number two, become a perfectly evolved creature who has no attachment wounds, drinks green juices, is totally fit, and, is completely regulated. Perfect. And listen, I love transformation, and I love spiritual development, and I love doing channeled messages. I love it But real life is nuanced. It's tender, it's human, it's complicated, and it is often asking us to become more honest, not more extreme. The third option, and this is what I want you to think about when you're in a place of it's this or that, ask yourself, is there a third way? Is there a third option? Because then there's the space between reaction and response. It's the moment where you say, "I don't have to decide from panic. to I don't have to abandon myself in order to prove I've changed. I don't have to choose the familiar just because it feels predictable. I don't have to choose safety The third option usually is that space of being able to access your centered truth. In between the this and the that is you And you get to choose and decide what the third option is going to be. And you get to decide, and you get to create it in a way that aligns best with who you are. And this is why the remembering is so important, because it gives you the courage to create your unique path.
There's a beautiful idea in Buddhist teaching that suffering grows when we cling, when we grip tightly to how something has to go, who someone has to be, or what we need an outcome to mean And I think binary thinking is often a form of gripping. We grip in two available choices because uncertainty feels unbearable. We want one of them to rescue us from the discomfort of not knowing. But what if not knowing is not failure? What if being in the middle is not being lost? And what if the in-between is actually where your deeper wisdom can finally be heard? There's also a line that says, "Muddy water becomes clear when it's allowed to settle," not when it's shaken harder, not when it's stirred up, but when it settles. That's the invitation. I got caught this week myself personally in the muddy waters of life, needing to commit driving myself into consistency And in this or that mode of being, and I definitely know I didn't want this, so I needed to work towards that. I was forgetting about me. That there's another possibility here, that there's another way to work, that all arrows were pointing back to me to stop, to pause, to center, to deepen my truth to refocus on what it is that I truly desire. The other thing that was really interesting was I was like, "Oh my gosh, where has been the fun? Where's been the play? Where's been the joy?" None of that has been present this week, and I think that's normal, too. I know for me, I've just been trapped into my future and literally on my hands and knees at night praying for guidance, praying for something to open up, praying for not this, so show me that And in this space It has not been joyful. And it's causing me to forget just a little bit I have to let the water settle I have to also remind myself that I'm human and this is part of the human existence And I'm also being reminded that there's a third choice, and sometimes it's a new way of standing inside the choice. Maybe the question isn't, "Should I stay or should I go?" Maybe the question is, "What would it look like to stay connected to myself while I learn more?" if you've ever found yourself in kinda what I'm describing how my week was, we can do this together Maybe it's, maybe you're trying to figure out which direction in a relationship
you need to take, a job, a boundary, a habit, a creative project. And I want you to write down what your mind is offering you. For example, should I stay or should I go? There's the pros, there's the cons. Should I push harder? Should I give up? Should I numb out or should I overthink? Should I control everything or should I just avoid it completely? Am I saying yes? Am I saying no? And then pause. Put one hand somewhere on your body, your heart, your belly, back of your neck, and just take three slow breaths. And then ask yourself, "What am I afraid will happen if I don't choose immediately?" What would center look like here? Not this or that, but what, what's in the center And what would be the decision that is most aligned with my truth? And can I give myself enough pause to just listen to that for a minute? Where's the sweet spot here? Reminding you, reminding me that we are human. And together we sometimes have to navigate the storms of life together. It's not always comfortable, but there is opportunity. There can be fun in it Thank you for being here I hope your week was not as crunchy as mine.
