(Ep. 70) These 4 Beliefs Stop Emotional Healing (Objections to The Compassion Method)

What if the emotions you've spent your whole life trying to avoid are actually trying to help you heal?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese tackle one of the most common objections to the Compassion Method: "Shouldn't I ignore my feelings instead of paying attention to them?" 

Together, they unpack why so many of us fear our emotions, where that fear comes from, and why learning to feel your pain is essential to emotional healing—not a threat to it.

Laura explains that most of us didn't learn to distrust our emotions as adults—we learned it as children. When our feelings were ignored, shamed, or met with disconnection, we naturally came to believe that emotions were dangerous. 

But emotions themselves aren't the problem. They're faithful messengers, revealing what's happening in our hearts and pointing us toward the places that still need compassion and comfort.

Rather than letting emotions "drive the car," Laura offers a healthier picture: your true self stays in the driver's seat while your emotions are finally welcomed into the conversation. 

Healing begins when we stop fighting what we feel and start understanding why we feel it.

In this episode:

🔹 Why so many people believe feeling their emotions is dangerous—and where that belief usually begins

🔹 The difference between letting emotions guide your decisions and allowing them to reveal what your heart needs

🔹 How childhood experiences of shame and disconnection teach us to suppress our feelings instead of processing them

🔹 Why emotions are reliable indicators of what's happening inside you—even when they aren't telling you what to do

🔹 How the Compassion Method helps you feel your pain, receive comfort, and respond from your true self instead of your triggered self

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hello and welcome everyone to this episode of Triggered and True. We're having kind of a difficult start to today because Laura can't stop laughing. It's true.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I know. Hopefully it's not too triggering, but I am enjoying it.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

No, it's not triggering. I'm just having a hard time getting my feet underneath me today. Yeah. So but we're getting there.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

It only took us about 15 minutes of to get to the point where we are right now. So we're having fun, which is really good and really important. It is because today we have a serious topic to talk about. So it was good to have fun first because now we have to be serious.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yes, now it's serious time.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

So we are today we are talking about objections that people raise to Laura's process, the compassion that she created called the compassion method. And there um these objections kind of fall into a couple categories. So we're going to kind of split off one uh element that has a lot related to a lot of the people in Laura's sphere of influence come from a Christian background. So some of the objections are very much connected to people's faith, and particularly the Christian faith. So we're gonna make that a second episode, and that'll be uh next month's episode. So for this episode, we're gonna talk about some objections, or sometimes these aren't really even objections, they're just places where people struggle.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah, exactly. Which can create an objection because we're struggling in it.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Right, right, yep. So um the first one I wanted to start off with is one that that I battled and uh we we kind of put a survey out. So how we how we assemble these some of these objections or struggle points is we put a survey out to Laura's uh the people that Laura trained to become consultants through the Compassion Method School. And um got some really good feedback.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Because these people are actively practicing it. You know, there are consultants themselves, they're practicing it. So we thought it would be great to see hear firsthand what some people have struggled with or had objections with.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yep. They're in the field, they're in the trenches. So this first one is one I had as well as that some other people had. So uh I have written down that uh your emotions, a common objection to this process is that uh a belief that your emotions can't be trusted and that they should be suppressed or not listened to. And in Christian circles, sometimes they call that killing the flesh, but we'll talk about that next week, next month. And uh we should rule over them. Whereas your process teaches us to kind of really listen to them, the opposite. So talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yeah, I think you know, often it feels like if we feel our emotions, which a key thing with the compassion method is feel your pain, get comfort, go play, let go. And a big part of it is we have to feel that pain to the degree that we felt it in our early childhood development. And so, like you said, we are actually actively, I mean, I've spent a whole session often with people just feeling their emotions because for so long, starting in their childhood, there was an objection to them feeling emotions. So now this becomes our personal objection to feeling emotions because our mom and dad didn't allow us to feel when we were younger. They either got scared by our big emotions or they felt like it was wrong and it needed to, you know, stop. And so they ended up not allowing us to feel to the certain, to the extent that we needed to feel it, to heal it. Because so now our emotions feel like they are out of control. People often say, don't let them drive, you know, don't give them, you know, attention, don't um give they're going to lead you astray, they're going to take away from it. But the fact is, even in Christianity, Jesus felt emotions. We as humans were created to feel emotions. But unfortunately, we've decided, not God, not, you know, we've decided that certain emotions are okay to feel and certain emotions are not okay to feel. So it's really that objection stems from the shame that we are we are bad if we feel these emotions. So think about if your whole entire life you weren't allowed to feel emotions or there were consequences to it, now we're saying it's okay to feel your emotions. So of course we're gonna be like, oh no, this is dangerous. This is gonna make us go off the deep end. This is gonna cause us to make irrational decisions because emotions are going are bad. But imagine if you were raised in a home where emotions were actually accepted and encouraged and supported, and a mom or a dad or both was able to be with you in your emotions, we wouldn't feel the opposition and the objection to emotions. We would actually feel the benefit of it and the comfort that comes from it. You know, it says, you know, blessed are those that mourn, that feel their pain, for they will be comforted. It's so valuable to feel it, but if it wasn't okay for us to feel it, we're gonna object to feeling it. Mostly because we don't know how to navigate it. We don't know how to feel it. We don't know how to land the plane. It feels like it's just taking off and we have no control over it, and we we're not, we're not able to actually feel the emotions because it's gonna take over.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

And I would imagine a big part of that too was in early childhood development, many, practically probably most. Most, yeah. It brought disconnection. Yes. If you were, if you were in an emotional state, it brought disconnection from your kids.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Yes, exactly. And that is hell. That is the most devastating thing for our hearts to feel that if I get angry, if I throw a fit, if I cry too loud or too long or too much, my mom or my dad is gonna pull away from me, send me to my room, separate from me. So I do not want to feel those emotions because then my friends are gonna separate from me, my spouse is gonna separate from me, others are gonna separate from me. So I'm going to control that, just feel safe. But emotions are actually very intelligent. We just don't know how to navigate them. So we think that they're just this chaotic, these are just chaotic feelings or feeling, and it's out of our control, which that would actually stem from a trigger. Triggers are out of control because they're coming from that child brain. But when our sophisticated adult brain feels emotions, we're able to feel them and accept them and process through them, even if they feel big at times, because we're not processing it through our triggered brain. We're processing it through our frontal lobe, our sophisticated adult brain.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah. And one of the things that I've jotted down about this is that emotions are 100% reliable and accurate to tell us what our heart is feeling. Exactly. But it doesn't mean what we're feeling is rational or logical, or that we should make decisions from that place.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

But we should listen to our emotions. So it's like we have our emotions in the trunk, you know, we shut the trunk, we put our emotions in there, we're driving this car of life, and we're not gonna let those emotions bother us. I see it as yes, we do want our sophisticated adult brain driving, but we wanna be have our child brain, our emotional brain in the passenger seat, helping us drive, navigating, supporting, showing us things that we couldn't see if we were just driving by ourselves and we put our emotions in the trunk.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, and I think the whole part of it that gets mixed up is we have not been taught how to listen to the signal because it's our heart crying out for we're hurting. Yep, we have pain. It's just like you broke your leg, your leg hurts, your leg's telling you, hey, hey, go to the doctor.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

We need help. Exactly. It's the emotional side that's telling us just as much as our physical side. And to use the car analogy again, we have our dashboards all lit up with lights, and we're like, there are no lights, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

We'll just pretend they're not there. You know, have you ever gotten in the car with somebody and they just for whatever reason have all their lights on? And you're just like, wow, how long has that light been blinking? Exactly. I don't know. It hasn't, I haven't exploded yet, you know. But we have all these check engine lights that are trying to always start protect us exactly.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

It always starts. I keep driving, but these check engine lights, these brake lights, all the different things that are cut flashing on the dashboard of our life, we're not paying attention to because it scares us to look at them. But if we could look at the check engine light as an opportunity to take care of something that's not working correctly or not functioning correctly, it actually is a gift. But instead, we look at it as a threat. So we ignore it and suppress it and pretend like it's not there until we are breaking down on the side of the road.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think this leads us to uh another objection, which is very closely related, and that is that people are very scared to feel. In many cases, they feel that if they let themselves feel this, they'll get stuck there.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard people say, if I start crying, I feel like I'll never stop.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

And that talking about it'll just make it worse. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

And they're right to a certain degree. Initially, when we feel pain that's been suppressed for years, it's potentially going to hurt. It's going to feel uncomfortable. But until we feel it, we can't heal it. So indirectly, we are as you know, as stuck avoiding it as we are with the potential of feeling it. But the beauty is, once we feel it and get the comfort, we can let go. The check engine light can go off because it's been taken care of. But we don't know it. Our our brain says danger, danger, danger. And that's why the practice of receiving compassion and comfort and nurture helps soften our hearts and gives us the experience that if we do cry, eventually we will feel comfort and we will let go. But if we've never had the experience of going through that process, our brain says it's a dead end. The compassion myth gives the roadmap to not only feel the emotion, but to walk through the emotion. And really, that's the only way, the only way out of our internal emotions is through. Suppression will never work. Suppression will just create infection within us until we're forced to face what we're so scared of.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah, that's one of the things I jotted down as I was going through this process. If we're fortunate, the circumstances of life will force us to deal with our pain. Force us to deal with our emotions.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

It really is. And even though we look at it as like, oh no, this is a horrible thing happening to me because I'm now feeling all the emotions that I thought I was so doing so well hiding, now it's all out. But better out than in, even if it's uncomfortable. That's the beauty of learning this process because there is a way. It's not just some people think it's just like chaotic. You're just gonna feel all your emotions and then you're just gonna, that's the end of it. But the compassion method helps you feel them to walk through them to reconnect with who you are and reconnect with comfort.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, and the the feeling and comforting is such a foreign language to people. That's why it's like it seems so intimidating. It's like, yep, I don't know French. You're gonna tell me. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

You know, yep. And we have all of our history, our historical evidence, that whenever I did feel, someone shut me down, someone disconnected, someone told me it wasn't okay. So we reinforce the story and we use these taglines, you know, of like, you know, don't let your emotions, you know, control you. Don't let your emotions take over. And everyone like smiles and nods and says, Yeah, we're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

But yeah, because we're all scared to death.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah, the person encouraging you is as scared as you.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And also, we're all just scared of our own shadow here. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

So um the next one that that came up uh from a from a gentleman that does a lot of uh one-on-one uh learn your process, does a lot of one-on-ones, is that you know, so many people he said um say it's not about the past. They want to talk about like a current trigger, maybe somebody that currently wronged them or their current situation, like, no, this has nothing to do with my past. This has everything to do with right now.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Yeah, that's very common. You know, we we think it's just a matter of getting over it. But again, like I said, you have to go through it, and going through it means you have to feel it. And if you go back to neuroscience, not not my science, neuroscience says that when you have felt that pain, you have to be able to feel the comfort that goes with it. And what happens is that pain is your coding that's determining how you're gonna feel the rest of your life. So when we say, oh, it doesn't matter, it was in the past, it was in my childhood, you just have to move on, accept it, you can't change it, you just have to get over it. We're actually working against neuroscience that says, when we were little, that is how it's gonna, how we're gonna determine how we're gonna process pain. And nobody realizes that. So they're just trying to be big adults with our sophisticated brain just ignoring it. But the problem is, whenever we get triggered, we're back to being little again. So if we don't take care of where the system broke down in the first place, which is in childhood, we're not going to be able to make those changes as adults.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, and I think the challenge for your consultants always is, as they're meeting with people one-on-one, is to not be disrespectful or minimize the because what they're going through is real.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Very real. It's as real as it feels. Yes. You've taught me that. Yeah. It's it's painful, it's traumatic, but it's being made so much more painful and traumatic because of this train wreck that happened way back.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Way back. And that's become our lens, and that's become our perspective. And you can try to mind over matter it, but you can't change it until you recode it. Your brain will keep sending you the signal over and over again until we actually take care of it.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

And just focusing on the current thing is just gonna send you in an endless.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

No, the current thing is just most often avoiding those emotions we just talked about. You know, we think it's the current thing, we think it's what happened today. Sometimes I'll ask people, you know, how old do you feel? And someone will be like, I feel 38 years old. And I was like, okay. And I, and then we'll talk through what they're feeling. And then they'll recognize that their feelings are not proportioned to what's happening. And so they're recognizing, oh, yeah. And especially sometimes I'll even like, like, say, for example, if it's like a wife and she's struggling with her husband, but her husband's like, you know, this doesn't, this isn't a big deal to me. And then the wife's like, this is a really big deal. And we recognize, oh, even in our present circumstances, our filter and interpretation is coming from our personal history, not from the present moment.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Well, and I think closely related to that was another one that was brought up is that focusing on yourself is letting the villains off the hook.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So they still have villains in this example. Exactly. And that what you were describing before, too, or what we were talking about, just focusing on the present day trigger, whatever the issue is. You know, that that has you stuck very much in blame.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And that's that blame is blocking your healing.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

It is, because it's keeping us from feeling. If I can blame you and not recognize how it makes me feel and how it's affecting me, then I don't have to face those emotions. I get the relief of it's your problem, not mine, so I don't have to feel.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, what a nauseating cycle.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

I know it really is. And and that's the thing. One of the one of the things sometimes when someone's very insistent, like it's not about the past, it's about today. You know, one of the things that I'll do sometimes is just kind of help, kind of talk through it a little bit, you know, to help them see how how often has this circumstance come up throughout your life? They're like, pretty often. You know, how many jobs have you experienced the same thing? All my jobs. How many people have you felt this with? Most people. So, like you just said, a nauseating cycle, it's a cycle. So sometimes it's helpful to recognize if this was just today, it wouldn't have been repeating itself throughout your whole entire life. This had to start somewhere for you to continue to cycle through the same thing over and over again. So it really can't just be about what's present day, because you'll see a thread, a theme, throughout your whole entire life, all the way back to zero to 12 years old. So sometimes it's helpful to do like a reverse linear to get to the child self, because we'll say, nope, it's just now. And then we'll be like, what about five years ago? What about 10 years ago? What about 20 years ago? What about 25 years ago? And we're in childhood now, where it first begun.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Mm-hmm. It's kind of a sneaky way for you to get that in there.

unknown 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

It kind of is, but you you gotta work with it because that that avoidance of pain is so strong, which I understand, that we'd rather prove our case about how it's not about childhood.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

I used the wrong word. It's not sneaky. It is you meeting them where they're at, taking them by the hand, and we're like, we're gonna walk through this one step at a time. Because going right back to childhood is not where you want to go.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

We can't jump from here to there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

We're gonna go on a so it's like more like let's walk through this together, and all of a sudden they're like, oh, this isn't the first time.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, it's so much easier to blame, though.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

It's so much easier.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

I always tell people it's so nice to blame that I don't have to deal with anything with myself, and I can just make it all about whatever the circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Right, right. But then blaming themselves.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

But then it's also powerless because if it's all about the circumstance and all about the other person, then I'm I am a victim to it. I'm subject to it because I won't take care of myself, my circumstance, and that person has more power, or I feel like that person has more power than me. But if it's really about me, I have all the power to take care of me. So at first it's annoying because we just like to get rid of it, displace it. But once we actually yeah, but then that keeps leaving us. Every time you blame, you still stay stuck in the same thing because you never took care of it. So after we jump the hurdle of the discomfort of feeling our pain, now we feel powerful. Because if I feel my pain, my circumstances, other people can't impact me the same way.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Right. I know when you say there's no victims and no villains, that can sound so harsh.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

But I always frame it with people: I'm like, okay, we're not saying you cannot be victimized.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

No.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

You absolutely people are victimized all the time.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

That do hurt you and that you would be a victim to that behavior. But who you are is never a victim if you're connected to yourself when that behavior is happening.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Yeah. Yeah. Very, very important distinction.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

That actually leads me. Can I chime in or can I start an objection that I just remembered? Would that be okay?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Here we go. This is all this is off the script, guys. No, just not that we really would have a script, but um. One thing that just connected to you, because you just said, doesn't mean that people don't do things to us that hurt us, doesn't mean that we don't become a victim to someone's behavior. And that leads me to one of the common uh quotes that I use is what you do matters, but you matter more. One of the objections that I've heard is that because we're emphasizing that you matter more than what you do, that what you do doesn't matter. That's what people feel. They're like, well, so then I just need to be like a doormat. Like I just have to be okay within myself, and they can, they can physically, mentally, emotionally hurt me. And I just have to be okay within myself. And that's where I emphasize that what we do or what another person does to us matters. It's important. It hurts us, it affects us, it impacts us. No matter how okay we are within ourselves, it still affects us. But the difference, I would say, is that when we are okay within ourselves and someone does something wrong to us or hurtful towards us, it doesn't get inside. It still hurts, but it doesn't become my identity. It doesn't become this is happening to me. I'm hurt by it, but I'm also okay even in that behavior. So I one of the objections is that what we do or what others do doesn't matter. Even though I'm using the quote, what we do does matter.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

People are like, but all they hear is that last part. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

So they're like, okay that they do that? And I'm like, nope, it's not okay that they do hurtful, wrong things to you. But how you interpret it, how you receive it, how you perceive it is going to impact you differently if you're full versus if you're empty, having that same behavior will look different. So we're learning how to be okay within ourselves, even though that behavior is 100% not okay. And that doesn't mean you don't say something about it, but you say something about it from your true self, not from your triggered self. Or at least that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Well, and I think sometimes when people first hear it, it feels disempowering.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

But it's the exact opposite of that. Yes. If you can really grasp what Laura just shared, this is the most empowering thing that ever liked it.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

You don't have to worry about the world around you and because you can't control how people treat you or how they act.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

People are going to hurt us. Like it's it's inevitable, intentionally or unintentionally. We will be people are difficult, man. Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

I mean, let's become some people, man. Let's go through the list. We have all these difficult people. Exactly. A lot of times it's the one looking at me right now in the reflection in the mirror, you know?

SPEAKER_02 25:34

But yeah. Yep. That's usually our biggest critic and our hardest person to please and impress.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah. Yeah. People can be difficult. So along the lines of blaming, kind of a very similar-ish objection is when people go back to their child self, there's reluctance because they don't want to blame their parents. They feel like identifying the gifts or the things they didn't get is blaming their parents. But if they can really grasp there's no victims and no villains, we're not making villains of your parents. We're just like doing an inventory.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Exactly. You know, and when people can look at it more objectively, because the end result, which is one of my favorite things about the compassion method, there's so many healing modalities that end up encouraging, because they say, like, parents are toxic. You have to get rid of them. You know, their behavior is wrong. It's ultimately saying they may matter to you, but what they're doing matters more. So we need to get rid of them. And the one of the beautiful things about acknowledging without blame, but acknowledging what your parents were able to give to you and were not able to give to you actually empowers you to love your parents more. I love that byproduct. We don't have to get rid of anyone when we're okay. We may have a preference of how much time we want to spend with someone. We may have a preference of how we want to have a relationship with someone. But I, you never have to get rid of anyone in your life when you're okay within yourself. So that initial acknowledgement of what you'd got or what you didn't have is the gateway to actually being able to have a stronger love for your parents. Because if I have lack and I'm protecting my parents by not acknowledging that lack, I am going to trigger. Because remember, the two reasons we trigger is unmet need and pain. So I can be like, I don't want to acknowledge what my parents do because that will be villainizing my parents and blaming them. So we're not going to look at that. But guess what? Your trigger will find you, and you'll end up reacting to your parents from that lack and potentially hurting yourself or hurting them more than acknowledging what you what you experienced.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Hurting them or just hurting somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

You may not ever lash out on them, but you're going to lash out on your own kids.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yes, that's so true. Even if we protect by not lashing out at them, it's going to come out in some way. So in the end, you're actually hurting yourself and potentially your parents or others more by not acknowledging what you didn't have. But you see how like when we acknowledge what we didn't have, it's not blaming our parents. It's just saying they didn't give it to me. But it doesn't have to be that they're bad because they didn't give it. They just didn't know how to give it to me.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

They didn't have it to give.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

They didn't have it to give. And if you don't have it to give, you're not going to be able to. Even if you want to, you're not going to be able to.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

I like how you talk about this when you do the inventory. You're like, did they teach me Spanish or not?

SPEAKER_02 28:49

Yes, exactly. I try to remove the emotional side of it and just say, matter of fact. And you wouldn't go to your parents, how dare you? How I can't believe you didn't teach me Spanish. It's just a fact. They did or they didn't. And that makes it take away some of the emotional charge that's with it.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

I've also used the example, like inventory. If we fake our inventory, so for example, if we I was in a coffee shop and I was taking inventory, come eventually.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

And then I just said I had coffee, but I didn't have coffee, it that's going to come and affect me later on. That's kind of what we're doing. We're taking inventory, pretending like we got things, but at the end of the day, we don't have them on our shelf. And so if we don't have them, we're not going to be able to be able to give that to others.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Yeah. Well, another another big one that uh was identified, and I know you've mentioned this in your own practice. You know, there's there's a lot of people that are looking for something that's more along the lines of talk therapy.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah. Which has its benefits for sure. It's just the compassion method is not that.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, you're not talk therapy. So let's talk about what talk therapy is as you would define it. And what compassion method is and how it differs.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

So I think talk therapy is helping because it gives us, it helps us feel heard. It gives us a place to be able to process. But just like whatever's going on right now, present day, isn't what it's really about. If we only do talk therapy and we never get to the roots, which would be our early childhood development, we're going to continue to talk and talk and talk and talk. And at the end of the day, we don't actually feel hurt.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

It's just another way to avoid.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Exactly. You get that relief almost like a drug or something. You go, you talk, you're like, Whew, I feel better. But then two days later, you're in a situation, everything you talked about comes all right back up again. It never went away. We just talked about it. So there are benefits of talking about it, but eventually you're gonna have to do something about it. You can't just talk about it. And that's the difference. You know, one of the main things, just even in our class uh last week, we were talking about struggles that um students are having as they're learning how to become consultants. And that was one of the number one things. They're like, I don't know how to interrupt because they just want to talk the whole entire session. I don't know how to help redirect to what's really going on. You know, how is that impacting you? Back to early childhood development. So we were talking about the nuances of recognizing that a lot of times when people are talking, it's similar to what we talked about in the beginning of this episode. It's an avoidance of pain. I'd rather talk about the pain than actually feel the pain and get comfort.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

So, how did you teach them to interrupt?

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yeah. So, what I would do is gently, because we don't even know we're doing it. If I've been doing talk therapy my whole life, that's all I know. So it's not necessarily like don't talk, because that's not gonna work. And we want to hear people to a certain degree, but we also want to help redirect from whatever's going on present day to what's going on, um, what's actually going on from our past. And so one of the things is um talking about the neuroscience. That's really helpful for people to understand. I have my students have an opening statement where they're able to distinguish the difference of talk therapy versus the compassion method consulting, of being able to tell people ahead of time this is what we're, this is what we're doing. So they have a good idea with it because a lot of people don't know. They're doing the best they can because this is their experience. So being able to educate and then being able to help redirect by using emotions versus just what people are talking about. So we're helping helping them get out of their logic and helping them connect to their emotions.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Well, and you're you're teaching a process.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

And you want people to as quickly as possible get to the point where they don't need to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

They can take care of themselves.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Yes, but that's definitely an objection often because you're like, but I want to talk. But the thing about it is we could talk and talk and talk, or we can give you the gift of being heard, and you don't need to talk as much as you thought you needed to talk.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Or help you help you find the gift of being heard.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Yes, to help find, yeah, to find your gift giver, to be able to find where you didn't receive it, help you receive it. Because most that most people are wanting to talk so much, whether it's in the therapy or just in life in general, because they're wanting to be hurt. And so we're constantly doing that. And even if the person listens with attentive eyes and, you know, his body language says I'm listening, it's never going to be enough. That's why often people think talk therapy doesn't work because they're just talking and talking. They're never getting to what's really going on, what's really bothering them, what's really hurting.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Well, they might feel it works at first because they're getting it.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Yeah, initially it does feel good. And there's benefit to it. So I'm not like disregarding the benefit, but it's important to recognize that it can't just be talking about it. It has to actually get to a place where we're applying it by feeling it and getting comfort and going to play.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

And from all your years of experience, like how long this process takes, I think, I think you've said before, if I remember right, like six sessions is kind of your Yeah, I mean, it varies with different people.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

So I don't have a set number, but most people are.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

You haven't ran the analytics, Laura, to see like Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

I really see that.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Hopefully, this is gonna take you 6.3 sessions to mastery of the compassion method process.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

But whatever that number is, it's gonna be a lot less than what typical therapies or counseling is going to do because we're actually learning how to walk through it. So it's not just talking about it till you feel better, it's actually teaching and equipping you to be able to walk through it yourself, which I love so much because I can only be with people for so much time. One hour once a week or one hour every two weeks, that's not very much time. And if that is the only way that they feel helped, that's a lot of hours that they're not feeling helped. And so my goal is that any time, any moment, a person will be equipped to walk through pain on their own, which is amazing. It takes help at first because we're not, we haven't been taught, just like learning Spanish. We need help at first, but eventually we'll speak it ourselves. We will do it ourselves, and that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Well, and I can definitely give a testimony to that because I definitely you empowered me.

unknown 36:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

A hundred percent. Like I definitely at first I felt like I needed you.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Yeah, of course. You know, it's foreign. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

But man, if there would have been a podcast out there I could have listened to, actually, it's true. You had one, you were a guest on one podcast that I listened to like a lot. And I remember when I we before we got ours going, I gave that podcast to one other person, and the guy told me he listened to it like a dozen times in one podcast, you know.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

You know, it is so helpful to have the podcast, this podcast, to be able to walk through. And the more you apply it for yourself, you know, I want people to listen, which is great and to understand what we're saying, but also I hope that as you've gone through these different episodes that you're able to start recognizing I can do this for myself.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Right. And that we're not just talk therapy.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, reach out, reach out to me, reach out. We have other consultants reach out to actually have the time to apply everything you've been learning. Because that is what is as important as learning about the compassion method.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

But I do remember at different points as I was learning the process of being like, oh, I really need to talk to Laura about this. But I'm like, my session with her isn't for two weeks. Um I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna just randomly email her and you know, try to, you know, do that. And I was like, because I knew that like that's you're not the crisis counselor. Like that is not what that is not what you're doing. It's like you teach us to be our own crisis counselors. Yeah. And that was the empowering part where I was like, you know, I just be like, yeah, I I don't, I don't need her right now. I can do this. Yes, exactly. And it was so empowering.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Mm-hmm. And I I love that because you're almost setting people up to have more pain when you only get to talk to them once a week or every two weeks. And you stir everything up. Exactly. You stir it all up, and you're like, okay, bye. See you in two weeks. I like, I feel actually so much compassion for people in those situations that I'm like, oh wow, that's really difficult. Sometimes that still happens because we, as we're learning, we don't know the beginning. Yeah, the beginning, because we get a lot that comes up and we're still learning, so it can feel a little uncomfortable in the beginning. But after a short amount of time, we start to recognize, no, I can do this for myself. And that's what the homework I always give homework to clients because I'm teaching them how to practice doing it for themselves. And then when I re-meet with people, we'll go over the homework and we'll go over what's working and what's not working, fine-tune it, send them back out for a couple of weeks to practice it until they can ride the bike on their own for life.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Yeah. Yeah. And definitely, I'm sure you meet with some people that aren't ready to go do that. They're not ready to do the work.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

And that's and that's why, yeah, exactly. And that's why I say it's very loud enough yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so sometimes people will go and come back, but they're always creating an opportunity through this podcast, through the content we share, of you being able to, when you're ready, to come back to feel, come back to learn how to get comfort and get your needs met. And it's okay if it takes time. There's times when I didn't want to do it either. There's times when I bumped up against my pain and I'm like, I don't want to do this. I remember specifically thinking, I can't believe I make people do this.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Not that I'm making them do it, but I remember thinking, like, this is terrible. I don't want to do this. I can't believe I make other people do this because it is so uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

It is normal. And you're like, this homework sucks.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I can't believe this is terrible until I finally got it for myself personally.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

And then I could see it even more differently than even seeing another person get it. And it's so valuable, but resistance is going to happen. I like to use the example of when you go to the gym, resistance happens. You can't breathe, you're sore, you can't lift very much, you can't do very much in the beginning. And most people want to give up because it hurts and it's uncomfortable. But what happens when we push through it? What happens when we say, no, I'm going to keep going, even though this hurts and even though this is uncomfortable? We have endurance. We get strong. That tension that we feel with our bodies creates strength. The tension you feel emotionally that says, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to give up. When we push through that, we're able to actually get strong emotionally. You're learning a new language. It hurts the brain. It's hard. But we have to push through it in order to be able to actually get what we need.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

I was talking to someone this week about they were talking about how exhausted they were feeling emotionally. And I recognized, I remembered back to what was actually the most exhausting was trying not to feel.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Yes. It's way more exhausting than we realize. It takes a little bit of a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

When you finally just let yourself feel, yeah. It was like even though it hurt, it was like relief. It's like I quit fighting this. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Yeah. Yeah. So it's okay to be scared. It's okay that it's uncomfortable, but keep pushing through it. If you've stopped listening to the podcast because you're like, oh, I just don't know how to do it, go back and listen to some of the first ones. Go back and remember this. Even if you hit some, you know, times where you're like, oh, I just don't want to do this anymore. Come back to it. Your heart still wants it, your heart still needs it. And just because it's uncomfortable doesn't mean that it's not for you.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Yeah. No, those are really good. That was really good uh clarification. The difference between talk therapy, which has its place, uh, versus what what you're endeavoring to do with the compassion method.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

Yeah, knowing the difference. They both have benefit, but it's knowing the difference.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you, Laura. This was all incredibly insightful. And uh next week we'll or next month we'll tie into the uh questions and some of the objections around people's faith, particularly the Christian faith. But what would you like to leave uh from just what the kind of the things that we've talked about today? What would you like to leave as a parting message to our listeners?

SPEAKER_02 42:30

That's funny because I was just actually thinking about something. Sometimes I don't have anything to say, but I do today. Um don't let your objections keep you from being with yourself in your pain, learning and understanding what you need, learning and understanding how to get what you need. There may be parts of the compassion method that you're like, oh, I don't know about that part. But take the rest of it, every part that you can take, and make sure that you're still taking care of yourself and still connecting to yourself, even if a part of it's hard. It makes you sad sometimes when there'll be an objection that people go, oh, I'm just gonna stop. You know, and even if it's a different modality, even if you end up doing a different type of healing process, don't give up on taking care of yourself and walking through the process to heal just because you have an objection with the compassion method or even objections in other ways. Keep taking care of yourself regardless.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

And go back to what you said at the very first. Don't let your objections stop you from being with yourself.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Yes, because a lot often, because this is the whole at the core of this, it's about coming home. And that's what makes you so happy. Pain is just the doorway we walk through to come home to ourselves. But sometimes when we have those objections, we stop before we walk through it to come back to ourselves. Don't let that objection be a um a wall or something that keeps you from being able to say, I'm gonna be with you. Even if this part of me, this part of this process is hard for me, I'm gonna be with you in whatever ways that I can be with you in this process.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah. Well, I think that's a great point you bring. This isn't the only way to do that.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

No, there's other healing processes. If this doesn't fit for you, that's okay. But make sure whatever you decide to do, it's taking care of your child self. It's helping you bring the things that you didn't receive to your heart, getting your needs met, learning how to feel, learning how to get comfort so that you can heal from the roots to present day.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Laura, I know that I speak on behalf of a lot of people, thousands of people that have been, and I'm sure you have no idea how many people you've met with between one-on-one and but it's thousands. Um, I speak on behalf of many, many people when I say thank you for teaching me how to empower myself in this.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

You are so welcome. And everyone listening, I am so happy that I've been able to discover this process to share with you. And I'll keep sharing because I keep wanting, and I know there's so many people that still need to hear. So if you're listening or you have been listening, share this with friends, share this with family members. It's not about us, it's about other people that haven't been able to have a chance to learn about this being exposed to it. So share.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Absolutely. Well, thank you again, Laura, and thank you, listeners, for uh taking the time to be with us for this episode. And until next time, goodbye. Bye, everyone.