Body-Centered Therapy with Dr. Emily Fox

If Somatics, Transformational NLP, and Internal Family Systems all sound like alphabet soup for psychology, read on.. 

Dr. Emily Fox, clinical psychologist, healer, and guide joins Health University to break down three modalities that address the root cause of an imbalanced emotional pattern.

If you’re interested to learn how healing old patterns can reshape your relationship, your future baby and your family's legacy, this episode is for you.  

Especially  if:

• you being told  "just relax" and feeling dismissed for your experiences
• you want to understand why you keep squaring off with the the same triggers 
• you're curious what are Somatic Therapy, Transformational NLP, and Internal Family Systems 
• you're navigating fertility, IVF, pregnancy, or postpartum and feel disconnected from  your own body
• you want practical modalities that work faster than years of talk therapy

Support your fertility journey with Preconception Plan at Health Youniversity. Learn more here: https://healthyouniversity.co/programs

Learn more about Dr. Emily Fox's practice, Reveal and Remember, by clicking here. 

Schedule a Free Consultation call with Emily here

💻 About Susan Fox: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/about

Take your 5-Element Fertility Quiz:  http://yourfertilityquiz.com/

Detox to De-Stress:  View the FREE Masterclass on the importance of detoxification to prepare for a healthy pregnancy:  https://susanfox1.easywebinar.live/gentle-detox

Learn about our program entitled Your Fertile Health: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/programs

Schedule a Fertile Health Assessment: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/your-fertile-health-call

Let us journey with you as you navigate your fertile health. Connect with me:

🎧 iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/health-youniversity-with-dr-susan-fox/id1592763186 

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08U9QJf...

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 1:25

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Health University, where we cover the walk of life from fertility through pregnancy and perimenopause, and then every step between. We can sometimes be concerned about postpartum. And I'm delighted to have with me Dr. Emily Fox, who is an amazing clinical psychologist and healer. The topic of the conversation is finding yourself. Somatics, embodiment, healing, and coming home. And I think that's really going to resonate and land just in a lot of hearts who are listening and viewing right now because when we're struggling with fertility or pregnancy or postpartum, we can sometimes feel really like we're listening to the cues of an external environment and not to the cues of our own. Dr. Emily Fox is a clinical psychologist, a healer, and a guide. She's trained at Berkeley, Stanford, and multiple alternative schools of healing arts. In addition to being a practitioner, she's an avid yogi, meditator, and dancer. And in her own personal journey, Emily came home to herself through a combination of somatic practices, which we'll discuss, subconscious healing, and internal family systems parts work, as well as spiritual embodiment. In her work with clients today, she combines these modalities to help women free themselves from the myth of their own disempowerment and come home to their embodied sovereignty. Emily is also my daughter, so I'm delighted, delighted, delighted to have this conversation with her as professionals in the healing arts. And she has so, so much to offer the this this group and this conversation. So welcome, Emily. Thank you, Dr. Susan Fox. It's so fun. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah, you can call me Susan if I can call you Emily. So let's let's take it from the top. I mean, we've got some words here that are that people may not have heard. Somatics. What is somatics and why might someone listening or viewing say, oh, this is something I should take a deeper dive into?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Absolutely. I love this as a starting place because I do feel like even in the land of traditional therapy, it can become an alphabet soup. It's like, okay, there's CBT, there's DBT, there's art, there's act, and people have no idea what these things mean, nor should they. So I'll speak to what somatics means generally, as well as my particular lineage and how I practice, because there is sort of a broader category. And then there's the particular way that I practice and the way that I've been taught. So somatics writ large is basically working with the intelligence of the body. Lots of people have heard of somatics, have probably heard of somatic experiencing. That is Peter Levine's lineage. He's one of the first people, if not the first mainstream person, who really brought somatics into the land of psychotherapy and sort of said, Hey, we're holding things in our body. That is a way to get into the subconscious. That is a way to heal things more directly that are stuck. Body keeps the score is also probably a book that many people have heard of. Um, that's more in the theory than the direct practice, but somatics is basically like how do we work with the intelligence of the body to actually unlock and work through through the physical body? Trauma, stuck energy, places that need to move that haven't moved from previous experiences. Please interrupt me if you have any questions.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Um the only is I have not a question, but but I would but an ad lib for this in that it also seems a way to tap into our own innate wisdom that we tend to put on the back burner while we listen to the external experts, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Exactly. You set me up so beautifully for the sort of wing of somatics that I studied. First, I just want to give credit to my primary teacher, her name's Stacey Matoulis, really gifted practitioner. And basically, her way of working and my way of working when I'm bringing somatics into my work is there's so many ways to put it, and I want to put it the most simply. When you said it's about tapping into one's own kind of wisdom, inner knowing. Exactly. And to me, there's basically two steps. It's what's in the way, and then what are you not hearing underneath that? So basically, we use breath, sound, and movement to clear stuck energy in the system so that you can finally feel yourself. Another metaphor I like to use is like clearing the noise so you can hear the signal. Because I think a lot of people get tripped up when it's like, listen to your body, your body knows you're like, my body just knows it's scared. My body knows it's scared. Is it scary because this thing isn't for me, or because I learned to be scared, or what's going on? Like, how do I listen to my body? So, somatics, and realistically, all of these types of work that I do that we'll talk about are just these beautiful ways of like following the soma, the body, as the doorway. You don't know if it's a doorway to, ooh, there's that old packet of trauma you never touched, or if it's the doorway to that is your deepest yes and your deepest no. So that's the kind of thing we work through. It's like following the body, working through the stuck energy from the past, because once we've cleared out the noise, then the signal's just there. It's almost like you have two things going on in the background. There's the scream of, oh my God, oh my God, every challenge you've lived through in your entire life. And then the whisper of, and this is what you'd like to do. And the whisper is just so hard to hear through the noise. So we use these embodied practices, mostly reliant on breath, sound movement, to clear some of the noise, the old stuck energy, the old patterning, so that it's much easier to recognize that whisper that just says, yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

I love that. No. Yeah, I love that. And I can't imagine but that anybody who is old enough to be listening to this podcast, which means you've lived at least, I don't know, 20, 30 years or something like that. Um, it's it's a combination. Like we, we, we, we can't uh well, I shouldn't say I suppose it's possible if someone has lived in a bubble on a mountaintop.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Um they're gonna have some weird stuff in the body from that. Well, I mean, we've lived enough life to accumulate.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah, it's the human experience that whether that there will be some trauma, if that's the word that is fitting, or some obstacles or some stuck energy that is in the way of that, as you say, whisper. I like I like that you call it the whisper, yeah, because it's the it's the whisper that sometimes wakes us up in the middle of the night when when our when our defenses are down. Okay, so that's that's somatics in general. And then within somatics, there are practices or modalities. One of which you have you have mentioned is neurolinguistic programming. Tell us about that and again, why it matters. Like if if someone were to choose NLP over parts work, like what does that mean? Um, so that they can get a sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Great question. So I'm gonna go slightly out of order, but catch me if I haven't addressed anything. One is just to kind of close out our last piece on somatics. I think you said something really important of like, well, everybody's probably gonna have had some trauma, if you even call it that. And I do want to speak to that because when I use the word trauma, we distinguish in like traditional psychology land between big T trauma and little T trauma. Big T trauma is you witnessed a murder, something really threatening to your physical health or life has occurred. That perhaps has not happened to every listener. But then there's what we call little T trauma, which is just these moments of misattunement, these moments of too much, too fast, the body couldn't take it in at the time. And everyone has that. So I wouldn't want somebody to be dissuaded from following this line of work, so like, oh, I've had a great life. You probably have, and nobody gets through the first seven years of their life without having these little tea trauma moments of just a miss, a misattunement, a misinterpretation from little brain trying to understand big world. So I wanted to speak to that really quickly. Really important. Then to your next question, I do want to note NLP is actually not a part of somatics. So somatics is its own frame, it is working directly with the inner wisdom of the body through primarily breast sound movement to move stock energy and get clear. NLP is its own entity. It stands for neurolinguistic programming. And I want to make a distinction because traditional neurolinguistic programming, now this is one where I have to say, these are my opinions. They're not the opinions of Health University, they're not the opinions of anyone else. But my personal opinion is kind of old school NLP had a little bit of like car salesman manipulation energy. It was a bunch of tactics for what is the structure of our subconscious experience and how do we work with that to create a new outcome. Now that can be used to create the outcome that whoever's talking to you wants. Ah, danger, not what we want. But I'm trained in what's called transformational NLP under a really wonderful teacher, Carl Bukhite. If we want to, we can link all of these people in the show notes. And basically, he married developmental psychology and NLP to be like, hey, you human over there, you've lived a whole life and acquired all of these little T traumas, all of this programming, all of these difficulties. We from NLP know the structure of experience. We can help you determine in a moment what are you actually experiencing? Because we're never experiencing the moment as it is. We're experiencing the moment as we are with all of these subconscious programs running.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Oh wow. So NLP, sorry, Hank, we never experience the moment as it is. We experience the moment as we are with all of our little T traumas or big T traumas that are part of the basket we're carrying around. And I think that that is really worth pinning, repeating, you know, reminding ourselves on a regular basis. So sorry, sorry for the interruption, but boy, that one just stuck to my heart.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

I appreciate that. It's so true because like we're looking through the world, looking through the world, looking at the world through whatever lenses we have. And sometimes we have total awareness of them. We know our preferences, we know what we're paying attention to, but then there's also these subconscious lenses. Like if I were looking at the world through pink lenses, I'd go, oh my God, that's pink and that's pink and that's pink. I get it, the world is pink. No, you are experiencing the world in that way based on your pattern. So NLP is really a way of kind of decoding what are the subconscious kind of programs running that are influencing how you're experiencing the moment. I'll give an example. Say somebody was working for, say there's a woman and she's working for kind of a high-powered, dominant, masculine boss, and he sits her down for a meeting and goes, We need to talk. Now, 17,000 ways you could experience that moment. I saw the reaction and I would probably feel that way too. Many people experience it that way, but it's entirely possible that he's just going, like, we need to talk. You've been doing excellent work, and I can't wait to give you a promotion. But whatever subconscious programming that person has going on from their lived experience will color the moment. Say they had a relatively dominant masculine father who was wildly supportive and sat them down to help them empower themselves and go to their next step. That woman's gonna experience that moment of like, wow, I'm here and I have a partner in this next step. Say she had a dominant father who was frightening and scared her and made her feel small. She's gonna experience that moment differently. So, transformational NLP is really about working with somebody, usually one-on-one, to track what's actually coming up either in this moment right here now, or more importantly, in whatever domain they're having difficulty in in their life. Wow, I can't figure out what to do with my boss. Okay, let's talk about it. And we'll basically track from that moment what they are experiencing from the past, go back and rewire that early memory, bringing in new context, new resources, new information that wasn't available to them, but that they know now. And then suddenly the experience with the boss doesn't feel as scary because it's just the experience with the boss, not boss and dad.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Right, right, right, right. And it doesn't need to be dad. Like, I mean, we are we have we're enculturated with those four words mean you are in trouble. We need to talk. We you know, has has been translated in our in our modern society to mean you are in trouble. So that thus my response is when when I heard those four words. Um so may my father rest in peace. He was he was not he was not that guy. So you blend, you you'll take these these uh these learned cues and and help your your your clients understand that these cues are influencing their felt sense, their somatic sense, and their response to the world. Am I making the leap too far?

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Nearly. Let me say how I think it is, and you can let me know if it's making sense. So in an NLP style session or in using some of these tools to support someone, it's basically helping them track what old imprint, what old program from the past is playing out now and influencing the way you're experiencing the moment. So again, say you're seeing the world through those pink glasses, NLP is helping us look, take off those glasses, like, ooh, those are pink. When did those pink lenses get put in? Ah, it was then. And then we basically, in the mind's eye, go back to that early experience and bring in new resources. And what my teacher says about NLP that I love is what's nice about after an NLP session is you don't have to remember to be different. So it's not an insight, it's a healing. It's quite literally activating that old memory network, that old imprint, that place where the pink lenses, so to speak, got installed and adjusting the environment so that it doesn't feel that way anymore. I think I can give one more small example that'll make this make sense. So, again, to go back to this made-up example of somebody is having the experience with the boss that reminds them perhaps of their scary dad. We'd go back and it's like, okay, and like, wow, so you're feeling that experience right now on your body. And how old is this little one that's having this experience of dad? Just the first number that comes to your mind. I'm getting seven. Okay, you're seven. And just inside, like, look around. What room are you in? And we basically find this moment, this memory where a belief got encoded that was not the full truth. So something like she experienced her dad is angry and it got coded as men are scary and will hurt me or something. And now we can bring in new information that was not available to the seven-year-old that's available now. Like some men have been very safe in this person's life, or you're not seven anymore. You survived, even simple things like bringing to that seven-year-old, hey, good news, you made it to 35. You're still here. So it's really about bringing resources to an old memory and from the root, healing what happened then so that it is not influencing now to the same degree.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I love this because it seems really efficient. It's so efficient. And again, the viewers and listeners to this podcast are either going through fertility struggles and andor including IVF treatments. They're going through their body is now no longer their own because their pregnancy or postpartum hormones are are and the baby's needs are a priority. And so to be able to not have another homework assignment is so relieving.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah.

unknown 17:23

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

I've heard this phrase, I really don't know. So so teach me. Let me get me smarter about what is this internal family systems part work and is it as efficient as NLP?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Um, yes. Okay. Um so parts work, similarly to sematics, it's like parts work's a relatively broad frame. And then internal family systems is probably the most popular and most known school of thought specific modality way of doing parts work. So lots of people say they do parts work. They might have been trained by a whole host of different entities. I will speak specifically to internal family systems because it's what I know well, it's what I'm trained in, but I will say this is broader and all includes some of the same elements. But basically, internal family systems is a framework of understanding oneself that holds. We basically are our own internal family. There are a whole cast of characters inside one being, many parts, if you will. So maybe people have heard about like, oh, they're inner critic or their inner child, or these different kinds of archetypes. So internal family systems basically presupposes that we all have these different parts of us. And think about it, we use it even in our language, like, I don't know, a part of me really just wants to like go for this next round of IVF, and a part of me is terrified and thinks it won't work. Okay. Let's work with each of those parts. Okay, which of those parts wants your attention first? I think the part of me that's really scared. Okay, well, can we is the part of you that really wants to go for it willing to just step back for a moment so we can talk to this part that's really scared? Yeah, yeah, that would be okay. And basically we get to learn about these different parts of ourselves and how they all, without any exception, have a very positive attention for us, a very positive intention. So, like basically all of our patterns are protect protective parts. So, like the part of you that'll like push help away. Sometimes we get so annoyed with ourselves. Like, why do I keep doing that? Like, that's not useful. This is just an example pattern. Everyone has their things that they do that they recognize. This is not helpful, yet here I am doing it. But it comes from somewhere. It's just outdated. So this is where there is a bit of crossover between kind of NLP and parts work, in that it is these things learned from the past, but the way you're working with it is a bit distinct. So again, it's getting to know these specific parts of you that show up in very particular ways with a particular mission. So again, I'll maybe go with this example of like, I don't know, you notice pushing people away when you actually really need help and support.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

So like you'd basically, by the way, the the issue with the to the people who are listening and viewing this episode.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Um yeah, totally. I mean, I think it's such a common thing with women with the side note of we've all been conditioned as women to like do things ourselves and not be the helpless woman. So there's cultural pieces, they're all of that. But on like the parts level, basically I would support somebody in like working directly with that part of themselves, almost like you were having a conversation with another person, because you are you're having a conversation with a part of yourself, like, hey, like what are you trying to do for me? And without fail, every time it'll be something helpful. It's like, oh, I'm trying to make sure nobody lets you down. Whoa. Okay, and when was the first time you learned to do that? And similarly, it's we'll get basically an inventory of these different parts of us that are pretty much like different ages frozen in time that got assigned specific roles. The seven-year-old who learned to just collapse because the only time that she'd get attention from her family is when she was helpless. The 12-year-old who learned to be a super high-functioning perfectionist, because if she just did everything first, then nobody would let her down. The 25-year-old who learned, oh, you know, if I just drink a little bit more, then I don't have to feel all these hard feelings. So it's basically getting to know and then working directly with these parts of us to one, sometimes it is the same where we're kind of like going back to an early wound. And once that's healed, it kind of becomes irrelevant. But other times it's actually kind of just taking command as your truest self, your capital S self, as like, hey, like I'm here now. I can make these choices. You work with that little seven-year-old who's scared, like, nobody's gonna take care of me, people are gonna let me down. You're like, hey, I'm here now. Like, what would you need to trust me? So it's really just developing like self-leadership through actually getting to know these different parts of you and learning to be a good parent to yourself. Like a parent, in my opinion, a good parent is not just like, I'm the captain of the ship, I don't care what any of you think. It's doing that deep listening because like we care about the seven-year-old's feelings. The seven-year-old is not going to be in charge of running our life. So we want to figure out like, what are the wounds? How can we sit with the emotions so that there's attunement, it's felt through, it's complete. And then, like, what's the new up-to-date way of getting that need met?

SPEAKER_00 22:48

I love this. It and it as I'm listening, I'm also envisioning or experiencing that healing these parts uh heal not only the individual who's going through the the the uh the the modality, the the the therapy, but also healing the the people around them, also healing the future baby and the future family and the future, you know, legacy, if you will, because the once once these these healthful and helpful um practices are set in motion, you've got a new reality.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Completely. It's it's quite miraculous. And I haven't done as much of this personally. I've done some, and then many people have, but like internal family systems will be used in couples' work. And it looks very different than what people typically think of as couples' work. Because it'll basically be one partner being in witness of the other partner tracking and learning about this part that their partner's been having such a difficult time with. So say I'm just going to make an example where there's a heterosexual couple, wife, husband. Say wife has been dealing with this stonewalling husband. Like, I need you, I need you. This is one of the most important times of our lives, and I can't find you, I can't find you. The practitioner can help that husband character, this person figure out like, what's the part that's stonewalling? Oh, that's actually protecting a three-year-old who used to scream his head off and nobody would listen. So that protective part came in and started going, cool, I'm not letting anyone in if nobody's going to take care of me. And not only can this husband then go and heal the three-year-old and have that stonewalling part develop a new role, take on self-leadership and start showing up better, but also like it creates such incredible empathy because when we see like what's leading people to do what they do, we experience it really differently. So, yes, I think it's healing on many fronts. There's the healing of that when one has done this work, they get to show up differently in their relationships, and that is healing. And there's also something so beautiful about whether you're actually in the session being in direct witness or just learning from your partner, your family member, your loved one who's doing this. Like it's such a different thing to have somebody who's been critical of you forever, and then they show up and go, hey, like I'm learning that like I took on this role of like this kind of critical part of me that comes out when I'm feeling scared and sad. Then suddenly there's a doorway to talking about that. It's really quite exceptional.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Please connect with us for a fertility assessment call at the link below. We'd love to learn a bit about you and share our resources. And make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you never miss an episode. Um, boy, I I I'm feeling very emotional just listening to it. And then the next question that I have with regard to any of these modalities is you know, efficiency, time efficiency, because again, we've looked the people that's part of our paradigm in our world right now. How quickly can I get you know my needs met? And there literally is a time-space continuum when people are going through IVF, for instance, you know, they're they're immediately into appointments, medications, you know, an external set of experts and calendar. How what is your recommendation, I shall I say, for someone who is, you know, either struggling with fertility now, considering IVF, considering egg freezing, is pregnant? Like what would you say have this realistic expectation for yourself so that we don't add yet another small T trauma?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

And the question is, how long would somebody anticipate waiting before C meaningful change? Yes. Yeah. So what I'll say is it's, and again, this is my opinion, but it's also grounded in both personal experience as a client and professional experience as a practitioner. This work is so much more efficient than talk therapy. Like it's so much more efficient than talk therapy. Somebody could have an excellent talk therapist and, like, yeah, I've been working with them for 25 years. It's great. I get my patterns now. Things are mostly the same, but like I get it. So I'll say it's definitely more efficient than talk therapy because again, it's in these direct ways going in and rewiring the root problem. It is either feeling through the stuck energy through somatics till it's complete. Wow, that thing is now just done. It is going back and rewiring that early imprint through NLP. Wow, that pattern is now just done. It is going and working with these parts, debunking their myth of how they need to show up in the world to get their needs met, healing that, okay, that work is just done. So I'll say yes, wildly more efficient than something that's more at like a cognitive level because you're going to the root, not working with the symptoms. I really don't work with symptoms with people at all. It's a doorway. The symptom is the alarm going bing, bing, bing, something's here. And we take that as the doorway to the root. So it's definitely wildly more efficient. What that actually means for when somebody's like, things are different is going to depend so much on the person. I'll say a couple things to not keep it that vague, but what I'll say is like maybe like four to nine months to be like, holy moly, my life's different. Like my life's things have changed. Not for everyone. Of course, like the other thing about this work is well, any work, but this work in particular that's so deep, so profound, it's like it can only go as far as the client is open to going. Like if they can go there, it can be miraculously quick. If there's a lot, a lot, a lot of internal um protection. It's gonna say resistance, but I don't like that word because I don't think it's real. It's like if there's many, many layers of protection, it can take a little longer because we're not quite going to the root, we're going to the third level, then the second level, then the first level. But I would say like it's on the order of months, not the order of years. And also like individual sessions can be transformational. So you don't know. Like, is your transformational breakthrough session going to be session one? Maybe. Maybe do three sessions, like, cool. That's what I needed here. That's entirely plausible. Maybe the architecture of your internal system is like we're actually doing work with more of those protective parts that don't even quite let you get in there for like a couple months to create enough safety that we can really go to the place, so to speak. In which case, maybe those breakthrough sessions aren't coming until like month three, month four. And then there's like mini breakthroughs at the pace of safety for that person's system that then kind of slowly get them to where they want to go. So, what I can say with assurance is it is wildly more efficient than something that's kind of dealing at the cognitive symptom level, because like these are root wound modalities. But whether your life's gonna change on session one or eight months into the work depends on the person and what they're working with. But yeah, I'd say like if you're doing this kind of thing weekly in presence with an open heart, like you're gonna be seeing things differently and experiencing things differently really quickly. And within months, it might be like, wow, like this isn't how I lived before.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Wow, that's beautiful. And you you made a quick reference to as a you know, you've experienced this as a client as well as a practitioner. To the extent that you feel comfortable, would you share with us what you know your experience of transformational work using these somatic therapies? Totally.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

And again, I'll just make the asterisk of I would not call all three of these somatic therapies. I know. As soon as I said I realized NLP and parts work, all of them I'd say do have the cohesiveness of um cohesiveness is not quite the word I'm looking for. The umbrella that makes all of these modalities um really well suited to working together. What's the same between all of them is like they all presuppose like you over there, you the client are whole, well, and unbroken. You are good. We're just siphoning off all the crap that made you lose track of that. We are, and this is why I called my practice reveal and remember. We're not building something new. We are revealing by sloughing off all these layers of conditioning and trauma and body holding, we're revealing what's underneath and remembering who we truly are. Because who we truly are, like when the sun goes behind the clouds, there's not less sun. Right. It's just behind the clouds. So um in my little soapbox, I've completely lost track of the question. Right. My journey. You, your, your journey. My journey. So um, yeah, I took a relatively traditional path in psychology. Like I did my undergrad at Berkeley and I went to grad school at something called the PGSP Stanford PsyD Consortium. Real mouthful, but it's this joint program between Stanford and a psychology-specific university. And yeah, like did the whole thing. Like, cool, I'm a clinical psychologist and I know the stuff and I'm doing the thing, and I've got the partner, and I'm at the fancy school, and we've got a house, and it's all good, right? It's all good, right? It's all good, right? And just basically realized at the end of six years of grad school, five years plus postdoc, I was like, I'm not happy. I'm not happy. I'm trained in how to be well, but I basically got trained in a model that's like how to fix surface level symptoms, how to cope. And my interpretation myself is I'm like, wow, I got so masterful at coping that again, I lost that whisper. It's like I figured out how to like tolerate a misaligned life, manage through, be well enough, even in circumstances that didn't actually suit me. And then really it was just one day I was like, ah, like none technically all of this is working, but on that kind of inside rumbling level, I'm like, none of this is working. The whisper became a little bit more of a shout. Exactly. Exactly. It was just like something's off, and I cannot continue forward until I know what on earth it is. And I think so many people can resonate with this. Like, I know something's off, but what is it? I know something's off, but what is it? Absolutely. And that's when I dove into my lineage of somatic work. I did an eight-month healer training that really just dove deep of like, hey, again, like your body knows, your body knows. And what I'd say was also really important about that was it included spirituality and not religion, not dogma, but this knowing of like, hey, you're not just a brain, you're a soul, and your soul knows. Like your soul knows what's going on. And that was so powerful for me. So I was doing an eight-month healer training in somatics. And at the same time, I revisited, I'd actually already trained in NLP before grad school and really loved it. I joke with family and friends. I'm like, that's what tricked me into thinking psychology was gonna be for me. Because I was like, this must be the stuff. We do all this deep healing work, and while we're doing it with others, we're doing it with ourselves. Like, that's totally what grad school's gonna be like, right? No. Um, but I returned to NLP, got deeper in that. And yeah, I'd say like those returning to those two modalities. And in grad school, although I wasn't trained in the classroom in internal family systems, that was the modality that made sense to me. That's where I was seeking out workshops and side trainings. That's where I was actually like basically like seeking my own opportunities to learn how to do it. So I'm like, this is what works. That's what I actually saw like work with clients. So yeah, over the past year and a half, it was really like finally, finally getting the modalities on board that felt truest to me and finally applying them to myself. Cause I wouldn't say that I was like a false practitioner. I helped people through meaningful processes, but it feels dissonant when you're like, I haven't given myself the time and space to fully walk through this. It just doesn't work as well. So um, yeah, I'd say, yeah, using these three modalities and getting practitioners to like work with me one-on-one and being in group spaces where I could really do this and really be held, it completely changed my life. I left a nine-year relationship that didn't feel right. I'm now with I think the love of my life. I left the Bay Area where I'd lived my entire life. I now live in New Mexico and just feel so aligned with the spirit of this place. I see the mountain every day. It speaks to my soul. Like when I did the internal work, my 3D life completely changed. Almost nothing is the same as it was before. Truly almost nothing. And yeah, I still get self-doubting and go through challenge. Like I'm a human. This is a practice to a degree, but my capacity to feel myself and know what's in alignment with me and what's not is radically transformed. And I feel like I can actually say, like with authority from lived experience now, like you do the internal work and your external world changes. And now I feel much more capable and desirous of bringing people through that. I'm like, come on, like, I don't know what your path's gonna look like. I can't decide if you're ready, but I've walked it. Like, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

I promise it's possible. And and I I imagine having gone through all of this yourself, while someone is going through the discomfort of going, you know, deeper in that that's a mild word. I know it should probably be neon lights, all caps, exclamation points, discomfort of going into that, the those subconscious layers. You having done this already, it's it, you're you're familiar with it. It's like you're like, oh, you're here. And which also then allows for the person going through it to feel less like they're in, I don't know, the bardo or you know, a hell realm because they they they have you as a witness saying, oh no, this is this is exactly where you need to be, or you're in, you know, that's this is the healing moment for you. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Yeah, having the embodied context of like this is just right, these things surfacing means you have enough safety for them to surface and they're here to transform is so different. And again, that's actually a really key piece that feels different from these modalities that I've now learned, now embodied, now practiced to what I had been taught in more kind of formal grad school. Like a whole swath of psychology sees a symptom and they literally call it a symptom. They're like, this is a problem. They diagnose it and they diagnose it. They diagnose it. Look at these list of symptoms that shows you that this you have this problem and we'll fix it because when the problem's gone, you'll be good. No, one of the most foundational elements of the school of somatics that I've learned that really apply across all these modalities is like, oh, when difficulty, pain, challenge is surfacing, A, it shows you I have enough safety to feel this. We're not gonna feel all of the intense pain. We're not gonna be able to go there unless we have enough safety to feel it. So one, basically we can already go, wow, if I'm feeling this tough thing, amazing. That means I'm in a place where I actually have the safety ground and stability to feel it. And then the second assumption is it is surfacing to compost. Like these are the raw ingredients for the alchemy. You can't get your, I was about to say you can't get your gold without your coal, but that's mixing metaphors. You can't get your diamond without your coal. You can't get your gold without the initial ingredients. So yeah, holding that frame. Yeah, holding that frame and helping people see. And again, knowing, like you say, from that felt experience of like this really challenging moment is just right. It's coming up because you're safe enough to feel it, and because we're actually getting into the exact place, the exact wound that wants to be cleaned out, excavated, and healed. Um, that makes a huge difference. Actually, reframing symptoms is like doorways to precisely what is up to heal, what is there to be addressed. It's it's such a game changer.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Yeah, amazing. And then is this might seem a silly question, but is there a sort of a time, a space, uh a place where in which you would say, this might not be the time for you. Maybe we start with with cognitive, you know, uh throwing before we go into the the you know the the more profound yes, um, not a silly question.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

I think it's a really important question. And I don't think that this work is for everyone at every moment. I think it is for many at many moments, particularly if you feel the call. Like if something in you is saying, like, oh yes, yes, that, yes, yes, that, then it's probably for you. That's like your innate knowing. But I'd say who it's not for or not for as a starting place is like if you're really feeling like quite unstable, quite unwell. And I'll speak to this with a metaphor because I feel that that's easier. It's like if you're in like the choppy, choppy, choppy ocean and you don't know how to swim, this is not the time to learn like your truest form of like, this is how you swim, and like let's find your movement and the way that's most authentic to you. No, no, get you a life vest, get you back to land, and then we can start. So, like, that's not to say everything has to be hunky-dory amazing to get started. Like, of course, there kind of needs to be some difficulty that's showing up of like, hey, this is where you want to work, but on a foundation of quite a bit of stability. So, like, this work is best for people of like maybe already done quite a bit of therapy, or they're like, yeah, no, like technically life's good. Technically, I'm doing all right. I've got stable income, I've got stable housing, like things are kind of okay, but I'm not sure what's going on in my relationship and I don't feel safe and aligned there emotionally, or there's this place I'm really wanting to expand and I can tell that I'm stuck. So I'd say it's like not for people who yeah, have like serious big T trauma, PTSD going on, somebody who's in an acute mental health crisis, somebody who's dealing with a lot of instability in their 3D world, like there needs to be enough safety to do this work. And if you're not feeling stable, well, safe grounded, then it's not a good time.

unknown 41:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Does that answer the question clearly enough? Absolutely. But but that person doesn't have to, you know, kind of go away. They can begin with cognitive behavioral therapy kind of work. And I'm saying words that I really don't even know what that means, but but but more of the traditional talk therapy work to just exactly put a framework around where they have where they can begin, put an infrastructure, if you will. And then the next question I have, because again, a lot with this population that we're speaking to and having a conversation with, um, you know, it's it's couples, either, either heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, you know, there are some single parents by choice going through fertility struggle, but would you would you envision a time or place where a couple, because their life is having them at this crossroads together, do this work together? Or is it much more individuated that it that it's better suited to individuals? I love this question.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

I think it's both. Okay. I think that there's something really wonderful about people going into a space on their own, especially if they haven't yet. Like if somebody's never had a space to be like, this is just for me, I can go to the tricky places, I can say the thing, and I'm not worried about my partner being there. Like, it's probably wise. And I say this with an asterisk. I could see there being places where just starting with the couple's work is totally perfect, but I just kind of intuitively feel like, yeah, like people having their own space to get started where they just feel a bit more unfiltered. Like, who cares what I think? I'm not their partner. They can say the scary thing. They could say, like, I don't know, as we're going through this, it finds, I find myself like wondering if they're the person for me. Like maybe they wouldn't feel safe bringing that up in a couple's context. So I'd say it's like beautiful to do the individual work, and it might be wise to do some of that, whether it's this type of work or just your own therapy, but like some space that's just yours. But then, oh my God, revolutionary things can happen doing this in a couples context. Right now, I'm not working with couples. In the past, I actually had a specialty in couples when I was in more kind of like traditional psychology. I was specialized in emotionally focused couples therapy, which is sort of like the um primary evidence-based practice for working with couples. That really works on the pattern level of like what is going on interpersonally relationally between these people, like what attachment wounds are getting activated and what's playing out here. That is beautiful. It is so important. It's a band of experience. And I think it's really stunning when couples are already kind of good on that level. Like they have their good communication strategies. They know what kind of activates their partner, they know how to be sensitive. They are teammates, but these deeper things are coming up or in this new phase of wow, we're trying to be parents. What does that mean for us? Or we're trying to be parents and we don't know how it's going to go. Like then going to this deeper work, but like with one another as witness, I think can be really powerful. Um and yeah, I would actually say, again, I'm I'm thinking about if I'll work with couples in this context. I'm not at this time, but I probably will at some point. But something that I think couples would not think of that I actually think can be really useful is Tantra. I think, well, this was my experience at least. Back a year or two ago, somebody said, Oh, Tantra, like, oh, that thing that's about like sex and sexual positions. No, Tantra is a much, much, much wider frame and basically is the dance of relationship, like how to be in polarity, how to keep a romantic flame alive while also creating deep, deep safety, how to switch roles between being the seer and the feeler and having those defined containers of right now, you just be in your feelings and I will just witness you, and that's so healing. And now we can switch, and I can be in my feelings, and you can witness me, and that's so healing. So for couples who are like, cool, this type of work sounds amazing. How on earth would I start? I'd say, like, getting an internal family systems therapist who does couples could be a great way.

unknown 45:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

When I am ready and seeing couples, that would be a great way. Or Tantra, and I'm specifically thinking about a book that perhaps we could link that's called Playing with Fire. It's by these um sacred intimacy teachers who taught sacred intimacy. Taught Tantra, taught healing couples work for many, many years, and then had a child when the wife in this couple was much older. I think she was in her late 40s. They had a surprise pregnancy and they learned how to keep their romantic and sexual life alive while parenting. And it's it's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

And I think that that again, we we we are aware that it is it is not uncommon for when people are going through struggles, especially as it relates to family planning, to have the intimacy take a back seat, whether it's you know, we'll we'll get back to it to our relationship intimately after IVF or after baby's born or after baby starts going to preschool. And and and what I'm hearing you say is no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

No, no, no, no. And the primary ingredient for well-being. And again, that's not to say, like, don't hold that with fear, not like, oh my God. So if we haven't been having sex or if it's gotten charged because of our fertility struggles, like, oh no, no, but like having that as a central tenet, like how to keep our romantic, sexual, and sensual life dead center as we are creating this partnership that will then be the holding place for this family. So dead center. And really, I would so recommend this book, Playing with Fire. The authors are Justin Pierce Patrick and London Winters, and they're a couple. And um, it's like a little saucy. It has its saucy moments to basically show, like, no, really, like we have kept our sexual flame alive, but it's so much broader than that. It's these deep practices for how do we stay with each other as sensual partners, as lovers, and use that as actually one of the ingredients for us being strong, well, and held enough to be able to do these hard things.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

Love it. And and I'm I'm seeing the time all of a sudden and going, you know, you you and I can talk for days. We can talk for days. Yeah. Topic is so important and so often overlooked, especially in this realm, this paradigm of fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, when you know it's it's there's a lot going on externally, so we need to be addressing internally. Two questions for you. How can people work with you? Because I I I'm aware that you have your doctor of clinical psychology license for Californians, and then there's there are other ways in which you can work for those who are not in California. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

So if people want to work with me, it's true. I am a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of California, but these days, for some of the reasons that we've been discussing here, I'm really taking more of my energy away from that band of my work and feeding it into what I call guided healing. And this is for the person who, again, like like on paper, I'm good, like I'm well. I've I'm I'm I'm married, I've got the job, and it's all okay. But like there is that rumbling inside of like, but something's not quite right. Going through this fertility journey is just bringing up all kinds of stuff I didn't even know that I had. Or I know that I'm like longing for more in my life. It's feeling okay, but I don't think I signed up for a life that's okay. I want one that's beautiful and enlivened. I want to bring a baby into the world, being delighted and knowing like why I'm connecting with this soul and how to move through this with them. So guided healing, it does use these three modalities, sort of infused and integrated as it makes sense for a client in the moment. And yeah, it's just kind of a psycho-spiritual dance.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Me and this person. People can reach you, they can have online sessions.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

They don't have to go to Taos New Mexico.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Uh actually, such a great point because I feel like when I first learned about especially somatics, I'm like, so presumably that's bod. I have to go into the office. No, no, no. This is all online. Uh, we'll link this in the show notes too, but I can be reached most easily at my website, which is revealandremember.com. Yep. If anyone's interested, the most by far the easiest way to get in contact with me is just to schedule a consultation. I book 20-minute consultations to just learn about what's going on with you. Does this seem appropriate? And yeah, for guided healing, people can be anywhere because that's not part of my formal psychology practice. It's not licensed work. It's really just, hey, you're well-ish, but you want to be thriving. You're well-ish, but you can tell that some stuck pattern that you can't even name is keeping you from making a really important decision. You're well, but you're looking for a vital life of expansion. Like it's it's personal growth work through healing all of these littlet traumas, patterns, stuck places. And yeah, just scheduling a consult with me is definitely the easiest way to figure out if this makes sense for someone.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

And I would say for me, for me, having learned what I've learned in sort of closing out this conversation, is that there's an of course, there will be a time in life when of course you will be, we will, any one of us will be squaring off with there's more that I want, or or I want to assure that I'm that I'm creating a safer uh future fit for my family and in by by healing my my own past traumas. So that that you feel compelled to delve into this is not a sign that anything's wrong. Quite the contrary, it's a sign that something's ripe. I'm not gonna say right, but ripe for improving your life experience. So I you absolutely will have all this information in the show notes. People can reach out to you at any time. Um, and it's it's been wonderful having you on the podcast. I hope we get to do this again sometime because, as I said, I've I have a particular fondness for this particular doctor. And viewers, listeners, thank you for your time. We know it could be held anywhere. We know time is pressing for all of us. So thank you for sharing this time with us. If any of this resonated with you, please reach out to Emily, Dr. Emily, and then please share this. Please share this with at least five people, because especially insofar as fertility is concerned, one in five is struggling. And there are so many subtle areas beyond the struggling get me to an IVF center that can and should be addressed, not necessarily prior to, could be concurrent with your life process right now. So thanks for spending this time with us, and we will see you next time at Health University. Until then, class dismissed.