151. Feeling Our Feelings for Safe Emotional Experiences with Cathy Williams

Why is it so hard for women to feel their feelings—especially when something inside us whispers that something isn’t right? In this episode, JJ talks with movement and expressive arts therapist Cathy Williams, who helps women reconnect with the body’s wisdom through somatic and creative practices.

Cathy shares how ignoring her intuition in a past relationship led her to this work and how many women are conditioned to override discomfort, minimize their emotions, or talk themselves out of what they feel. Together, they explore the body’s subtle cues, why emotions must be felt rather than bypassed, and how unprocessed feelings can build into overwhelm or shutdown.

Website: https://www.intuitiveself.com.au/ 

IG: https://www.instagram.com/intuitiveself__ 

YT: https://www.youtube.com/@Intuitive_Self 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/IntuitiveSelfCathyW/ 

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathywilliams-intuitiveself/ 

Her book Body Wisdom and upcoming oracle deck invite women to rediscover their inner signals and create compassionate space for what’s rising. 

Topics:
• How women learn to override intuition
• Body cues that signal truth
• Somatic tools for real-time emotional regulation
• Rebuilding trust with yourself after self-abandonment

Bio: Cathy Williams is a Melbourne-born and based Award-winning Author and trail-blazer in the world of body based healing and creative arts therapy. 

Disconnected from her body and fractured from her mind, Cathy had lost herself at the hands of a psychologically abusive relationship and system that failed her. Through somatic and expressive modalities, Cathy regained her discernment, returning to the wisdom of her body, re-learning how to trust in and follow her intuitive knowing. 

From this place of strength, she has built a life for her and her daughter, founding Intuitive Self in 2016 where she supports women to foster a relationship with their body and reclaim it as a source of wisdom and resource for inner guidance.

Known for her compassionate empowering approach, Cathy encourages deep yet playful exploration for self-discovery, healing and personal growth.

@Intuitive_Self

#SomaticEmotionalHealing #BodyWisdomAwakening #ExpressiveArtsTherapy #IntuitiveMovementPractice #FeelingOurFeelings

JJ DiGeronimo is an award-winning author, speaker, and intuitive guide dedicated to helping people trust their inner wisdom and align with their gifts. As the host of the Together WE Seek Podcast, JJ creates sacred spaces to explore light, energy practices, and ancient wisdom with healers, mystics, and spiritual leaders. Through her authentic conversations, she empowers listeners to remember their intuition, embrace their unique gifts, and elevate their frequency for a more enjoyable journey.

SEEKING - JJ's 3rd Book: Seeking: 74 Key Findings to Raise Your Energy, Sidestep Your Self-Doubts, and Align with Your Life’s Work

Website:  https://jjdigeronimo.com         
IG: https://www.instagram.com/jjdigeronimo/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjdigeronimo/
Together We Seek: https://www.togetherweseek.online/                                                               

Transcript

Feeling Our Feelings for Safe Emotional Experiences with Cathy Williams

Hello. Hello. JJ here. I'm excited to be with Kathy Williams.

So thank you, Kathy for joining us today. Uh, so nice to be here, JJ. Thank you So I'm really excited to get into this because I feel like so many women are in relationships or situations where they're detaching themselves from their inner knowing. And, you know, I feel like our bodies hold our messages, but oftentimes…we sidestep that or we have been taught not to listen to that.

So how has…feeling our feelings come forward for you in regards to body based methods of…emotional experiences…

I think it is such a common experience for…women…

who live in a Western society…

to learn ways to override our emotional experiences. Whether we have been told that expressing emotion we aren't being too much…or…

where we don't feel safe enough to feel our feelings…or we are put in a position where…we might sense that something is off. We might sense that something doesn't feel right, and our body is…communicating something to us, signaling something to us, whether that is that that gut pull…that tightening in our chest, that, you know, little little tingle on the back of our neck. We all have these little signals that our body is communicating at any one time, but we have been taught to override that, to…preface the…

analytical over analyzing logical mind…and put that on the pedestal rather than our intuitive felt sense that might not necessarily make sense to other people or be convenient for other people, but that is our intuition…And when it comes to being in relationship…

I feel like there are so many…different factors that are competing for our attention here. We want to feel worthy. We have a strong desire to feel love, to feel connection, to have that sense of belonging. And…

it was my experience of…

I guess, being quite…naive and innocent in entering a relationship where, uh, my self worth wasn't great. My self esteem wasn't very strong. And…I…really set myself up for…

entrusting, you know, very vulnerable detailings of my heart to someone who I was entering an intimate partner relationship with. And…

I didn't follow…

the signals of my body where, you know, I was getting I was hesitating a little bit, and I was like, oh, can I actually trust this person? Is is there safety here? is there enough evidence that I can trust this person with this part of myself…

And instead, what I did was I…basically, you know, laid out all of my insecurities and vulnerabilities on a on a glorious buffet platter for this person…

and was…yeah, heavily taken advantage of that naivety and that trust and that innocence…

And in hindsight, I can see and feel and remember all of the ways in which my intuition and my body was speaking to me in those moments. You know, my my body wanted to pull back. I…had seeds of doubt come in where I was like, oh, I don't I don't feel good here. There was a really strong sense of…

feeling anxious and wanting to protect myself. And in those moments, I felt…them…

but I allowed my my intellect, my mind to override them and be like, no. No. Give this guy a chance. And, oh, there's so much potential here. Or, oh, no.

Like, let him, you know, let him compliment you. And all of these all of these ways that I talked myself out of listening to my intuition. And, ultimately, there was all these mini microaggressions where I started to betray my intuition and

slowly let…let his words become the stronger narrative rather than my own in a knowing…

I know people do this all the time, and sometimes it happens slowly over time. Sometimes it's right out of the gate. But let's jump forward and we'll jump back. But tell us the work you do today because I feel like we could talk about the situation for a while, but tell us how you have used…

your leaping pad of learning and insight to really help women now…

So…my business is called Intuitive Self, and…

I named it that because it is this through line of all of the ways that we can return to self and foster that relationship with our intuition through the body, through movement therapy…

and through finding ways to express the feelings within…

make meaning of them, learn ways that we can feel safe in our body again, and be able to regulate ourselves so that we can actually have a really strong sense of self, a really strong relationship with our intuition, and use that to navigate life with

So I work online mostly as a movement expressive art therapist. I'm a community facilitator and trainer of how to connect with our body intentionally in this way…

And what I loved about, yeah, the title of our connection today, feeling our feelings, that is one of the biggest things that I advocate for. So instead of

going straight to feeling something that might be uncomfortable or that we're not familiar with, instead of going straight to the analytical mind of wanting to problem solve or bypass the feeling or bypass the emotion…

I support women to actually sit in their feelings, learn how to support themselves and regulate themselves to feel strong enough to feel those feelings that might be overwhelming or uncomfortable or scary. And I know that I know that myself…

And learn ways that we can actually get curious about what's happening within us, how to be with that emotion, what does that emotion want us to know, how can we express it in healthy ways, and then learn to…

transform it so that it doesn't bog us down. It doesn't make us catatonic or unable to function and show up in the many roles that women need to show up in in our lives, but actually supports us to get a deeper understanding of who we are and how we are responding to any given situation. If our body has a particular…emotion that's rising, let's get curious about that and see what's there to be known…

I love that because even when you're talking to friends and they're describing a situation, they'll tell you something. They may tell you how they're feeling about it, but then they logically try to talk themselves in or out of it without really just being with the emotion. Like, I was scared. I was hurt. My feelings were hurt.

I didn't feel good. That hurt Whatever it is, they try to blow by it because they're like, oh, I'm fine. I'll figure it out. I don't need to be upset.

And I think a lot of times when we do that too often…

we get to a point where we make ourselves sick or we get in situations where we just all of a sudden can't take it anymore. And we self implode or explode either which way. Yes…

And it's this, um…

I understand that fear of not wanting to go into the feeling because…we might, you know, fear of overwhelm, fear of collapse. It's really uncomfortable to be with some of these emotions and these feelings, and we wanna go straight to solving the problem. But what I really advocate for is, you know, our feelings are there. They're messages. They're here to tell us something so that we can gain perspective on a situation, that we can really know how we're feeling about something and act from…an aligned place and not ignore those signals and those messages.

So say we're in a situation. Say we just get in a disagreement or something happens and, like, there's some kind of exchange of some sort, and all of a sudden we get an emotion, right, comes over us. Maybe I feel slighted. I don't feel good. This doesn't work for me.

Why am I doing this? Whatever. What is, like, the first step? Should we stand there and sort of feel it? Do we walk away and feel it?

Like, what do you encourage people to do to sort of even just get in the present moment? Yeah. So if we are…

with someone at that time and we need a moment and we want to…take a pause, we don't have the capacity to be in conversation or to be in the argument or whatever the whatever the context is I would really encourage us to…

be like, okay, I'm feeling some big things right now. I need to be with them. And remove yourself from that situation so that you can…

give space for whatever emotion is rising. And…this is when instead of…

reacting from a place of an emotional state…or going straight to ignoring…that emotion. Actually creating space and…intentionally going into the emotion. Giving yourself permission to get curious about what's here. Okay. Okay I'm feeling very uncomfortable.

There is like there's heat rising in my body. I feel like there's there's anger rising. I want to clench my fist. I want to stomp my feet. I want to yell out.

Can you give yourself permission to express the emotion in a way that is releasing

but also intentionally contained. So we're not we're not freaking out about something, but we're actually being curious about an emotion and giving it space to be heard. And it might just be it needs a quick fire release so that we can, you know, bring ourselves back down and ground ourselves. Or it might be that we need to cry. Whatever that release looks like, it's gonna be unique to everyone depending on the situation and the context.

But what I'm really encouraging here is that we allow ourselves to have that release. We allow ourselves for the emotion to rise and get curious…Yeah. And and actually be with that part of ourselves. Okay. Okay, sadness.

I hear you. What do you need from me right now? You know, do I need to…hold myself? Do I need to, you know, do some somatic touch and release it? How can I support myself in feeling this so that I can come back to a grounded place to then have this conversation…

So good. So good. And this really differs than therapy because therapy you're talking about the emotions. You're really getting into the emotion with some really specific trauma informed tools…

Yes. So it's very different to traditional talk therapy, but it does complement talk therapy in that as a movement and expressive art practitioner, I am bringing in a somatic lens. So I'm presencing the body. We're tracking the body at any one time. how does that feel in your body?

What's the loudest part of your body in this? Where is that emotion stored? These kind of inquiry questions where we're actually bringing the body into the picture because we know that…our body stores all of our experiences and is a avenue into feeling our emotions so that we can make sense of them

But also so we

don't get necessarily caught up in a talk loop where we're in the story over and over again. We're actually processing it in real time as it rises within our systems, within our bodies…

That's so beautiful. And you wrote a book, body wisdom, which I think is so beautiful that…through your own experience through your own…

Relationships and sidestepping your own intuition, you have learned to emerge and be the Phoenix for so many. Thank you. That's so beautiful to hear. Body wisdom was you know, it's a four it was a four year project to be birthed into the world. And…

yes, I share…

different parts of my lived experience, but it's a really colorful, vibrant journey. There's lots of illustrations throughout. I've got handwritten notes throughout, and there's over twenty invitations for the reader to take on these practices that I have cultivated over years using body based therapy, using creative arts, and get curious about how that is in their own body, and then start to feel inspired from my practices that I share and try it out for themselves. So different ways that they can connect with their body and to creatively self discover

Such a beautiful thing, and it gives people permission to create the space for themselves…and start to understand. Because I have people in my life and even things that have happened in my own life where you just keep pushing it down, pushing it down, and you know how that goes…

I do. You know, we we can become, really, really good at suppressing our emotions and numbing ourselves and…keeping ourselves so busy that we don't stop to feel and distracting ourselves. But, you know, we're we're great at that. I guess what body wisdom offers is really gentle entry points to being with ourselves in a different way that is more compassionate and more loving and not judging what's coming up, but actually learning ways to support ourselves. Yes.

Yes. And so did you learn the movements, the somatic breath? Did you learn that while you were in that relationship, like pieces and parts of that, or did you emerge out of that relationship and find these tools? Great question. So I have a long history in community development and came back from many years overseas working in different projects on the ground with people.

So I always had that, I guess, humanitarian connection

and the the desire to work with people in that capacity building, empowering way

And I was studying movement…movement therapy and dance movement therapy…during that relationship. so it was a really interesting parallel between being in this relationship and starting to realize how disconnected I was from my body. And then being a student of this work and these these two worlds sort of colliding where I was realizing what my body was actually saying underneath all of the anxiety I was feeling in this relationship…

Then I, yeah, developed the strength to leave that relationship and started piecing myself back together, continuing my studies, and continuing to bring in expressive arts therapy and creative arts therapy. So for many years, I was a student, and these practices became my own pillars for my own healing. And now I have developed ways and invitations to support other women who might be going through that as well…

I love it. And I you know, your Instagram and your website, you have gatherings. You have things you do online and in person. you're such a beacon of light for so many that honestly don't know where to turn. I've done talk therapy before and others, and I feel like has to be more because a lot of times that stuff is buried so deep.

You have to have ways of getting it out and flushing it out to create more space for love and light. Yes. Absolutely. And I find that, you know, there's there's so many ways that we can…

be connected to a new modality or a new practitioner or someone else who can support us in this way, whether that is reading a book or listening to someone on a podcast and really trusting those signs and those signals if you're resonating with someone or someone's message to connect and to follow that curiosity because that is how I…found my way into this work and now live this from a embodied place, and it is really beautiful to know that your intuition is guiding you…

I absolutely love it, Kathy. I love the work you're doing. I love that your work has come out of your own need in your own life. I feel like so many as my friend Veronica would say, so many of our messes hold our messages…Oh, that's beautiful. Isn't that beautiful?

And so many of the people that have been on the Together We Seek podcast, their gifts have emerged from those crossroads, those situations that thought, you know, the end was coming, but in reality, it was really the beginning. Yes. And that is, as you said, the phoenix rising again. I love that. So all your links are below, your website, your YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn.

But tell us what's on the horizon for you. Oh I have a new campaign starting where I'm bringing out some oracle cards to go with the body wisdom book so people can have something that they can hold and be part of their daily practice. I'm starting some new facilitator training and practitioner professional development training in twenty twenty six for other fellow…

workers in the women well-being space that want to learn different ways they can bring in the somatic lens and body therapy and creative arts therapy into their work with clients…

And I'm finishing the second book. So there's a few exciting projects on the horizon…

Oh, I love that. Will you be sure to come visit us when you put out that second book, and I'd love to share oracle cards inside the community. Together, we seek that online. As many healers, light workers, and seekers come together in there and share books and ideas, spiritual locations, and up and coming events. So I'd love to include them in that community too.

Yay. Thanks, JJ. Thank you so much for your love and support. I love it. Kathy, thank you so much for joining us, and everyone else, thank you so much for continuing to join us and be part of these conversations.

And if you feel like Kathy's message has resonated with you, please reach out to her. All her links are below. I feel like her work is so powerful, and I'm excited to be part of it. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you