Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Hello, hello, everybody. It is lovely to be back with you all this week. Um, I am still in process shocker, right? I keep having this like moment of being like, and life, when are we gonna be over this and like back to our normal regular programming of like I have all the answers and I um confidently get to share them and I'm a badass and I feel great. And what life keeps uh handing me is um a lot more emotional processing and a lot of the tower card again, y'all. So as you can tell from this week's episode, When Life Doesn't Go as Planned, and uh detoxing from our favorite drug control, this episode is gonna be me really from the messy middle in between of my process right now. Um just sharing some of the thoughts I've been having, some of the things I've been digesting, all um with this tender edge that I get to work right now in my own life, in my own work of still showing up, still contributing to who I want to be, how I want to be in the world, the things that matter to me. And one of those biggest ones is this podcast, while getting to do that from places of uncertainty and uh moments of really looking to the future in my life and going, I don't know. I don't know what that's gonna look like. I don't know what's gonna happen next. And what a gift it is to get to be able to uh get on and kind of digest and talk through all of that with you, especially because if you are in the process of considering divorce, you know this place intimately. This is uh, you know, when I say when life doesn't go as planned, you are like, I'm sure you're raising your hand right now. Like, yeah, that is me. That is the place. And even as I'm and I'm sure this is gonna happen a lot through this episode where I'm gonna be like kind of digesting in the process of sharing, but I'm realizing as I'm saying all of this, you know, this is why so many of us don't speak about or really share from this place. We have in the world a real preference for and liking of the answers and clarity and certainty, and ooh, that feels so good when it's just this is it, and I and I know it's it, and I know the way the world works, and this is what it's like. And as I know, because I've heard from many of you, especially um women in my community, that is not for many of us, where life is landing this year. And for me, I know the the political realm in the US has exacerbated that tremendously for me. I think for some of us, it's really been making me think even like what we experienced while we were going through COVID of just what is the world going to look like in the next year, much less the next five years. So, of course, as I've been going through this, I've been trying to understand okay, when life doesn't go as we've planned, when our normal coping mechanisms, our favorite drug of choice control, is no longer available, where do we go instead? What can we rely on? Where is our refuge? And we're gonna be discussing that in the episode today. Also, before I drop in, I just want to express love to those of you that took some time to reach out to me last week after that episode that I dropped. I I think it genuinely is like a surprise and a gift for my psyche when I am so nervous about showing up vulnerably. I mean, last week's episode really genuinely was you guys. It was just like I cannot force myself to do anything else but this. And I care about this relationship, so I'm gonna show up. And then to have so many uh reach out and say, actually, that was what I needed was to see you not so put together and not always um having all the answers. Y'all, that's the like neural rewiring I need. That actually, contrary to what we've been taught, that being perfect is what will keep me safe, that actually vulnerability and being honest and open about what it really looks like to be human is where it's at. Uh, which is totally, I just have to vibe with you all about this real quick. I was on a community call just a couple days ago where I was talking about this. K-pop demon hunters on Netflix. If you have not watched it, go watch it. I balled, my sister was the one that messaged me and was like, you have to go watch this now. It's not something I would have probably otherwise thought of, but so many beautiful themes along the same line of what so many of us as women, I think, have internalized, maybe not even just as women, just as humans, that we need to hold it all together and be perfect and not really be honest about maybe how genuinely like scared we are deep down that we're not going to be enough. And how it's actually the opposite of that that makes the magic. So if this episode really lands with you, if you're like, fuck, I am in this right now, there is an incredible visual representation with lots of amazing K-pop songs to take you through that journey. Um, and really beautiful visuals. It is like very, very colorful. I am obsessed. So with all of that shared, with kind of that beautiful, I think, heads up on where we're headed, I want to drop into the heart of where the episode's gonna start off for us, which is that what I have seen over and over, like consistently in my life, is that often it doesn't go as I planned in my mind. Like even with my best laid plans, the big process I've been digesting these last three weeks, two, three weeks, has come directly out of something that I had some of like the best laid plans around. Like, really, really thought I knew exactly what was going to happen, how things were gonna turn out. And life had different plans in store for me. And when that happens, when that certainty of what you think is gonna happen is taken away, what remains is this it's like structures are collapsing in your mind. You know, this future vision, this path that you thought you were on, those are collapsing. And I see, even see it as like buildings when they have explosive placed at the bottom and they just are like structures are collapsing, and at the same time, you are still having to function and show up, especially if you have work or you have children, or I'm thinking specifically too. Like uh, there's a couple women in my community right now who I think had done an incredible job of really trying to prep and be ready to share with their husbands that they actually, you know, decided that they wanted to get divorced. And even with the best-laid plans, they are going through this process of watching it implode and go very different directions than the way they thought. And so you end up in this space of this like middle ground, not yet known place. It's it's like you're in a whole bunch of fog and yet you still need to be functioning. And because you're an adult, right, still showing up to some extent, wow, navigating this collapsing and this dissolving of all of this scaffolding in your life. And I tend to, when this happens, I think it's a little bit from my religious programming. I tend to think, oh my God, something has gone wrong. Like I have made a mistake, that if there is this much pain, this much confusion, this much disorientation in my life, it must have meant that what I did was wrong. And often I've noticed that that's me kind of going into, okay, if I don't have control, then what will I use instead? I'll use self-hatred. I will attack myself. I will start thinking, if I could have just done it differently, if I could have done it a different way. So that's kind of where I have found myself over the last two weeks. A lot of ideas that I thought were certain about how life works, about what I want, about the path that I'm on, um, collapsing and trying to navigate my brain wanting to really come after me. It's like it in order to escape all of that pain of the collapsing, it wants to go to my childhood coping mechanism of self-hatred. Well, it just must have been me. And instead trying to come back into the middle space, this space of whoa, okay. This was not what I thought was going to happen. And it is what is. So let's be with it. Let's see if we can feel into and be in this middle. And for those of you that have listened to the podcast for a while, you'll know, right? I mean, I'm sure some of you are like, Britta, like your life not going as planned. That's like been the standard. Um, because if you look back over my journey, you know, growing up, I knew from a very young age who I was gonna be, what I was gonna do, and the life I was going to live. Like, that is one of the things that religion gave me was a path that extended all the way into like my, you know, 80s, 90s. Like, I'm gonna get baptized, and then I'm gonna eventually get married. And then once I get married, I'm gonna have kids, and then I'm gonna serve in the church, and then eventually I'll have callings, and I'm gonna be a stay-at-home mom. Like I knew the path. And there was no, I did not think I was gonna get divorced. I absolutely never dreamed I was going to leave Mormonism. I think of my life right now, where I am like an entrepreneur pursuing, you know, my own work that I am like so passionate about, living with a partner that I am not married to, that I adore, not interested in having any more kids. Like the script has completely flipped. And looking back on what drove that change, it really wasn't necessarily something where I was like, and I want my whole life to change, as much as life just demanded it from me. Because what showed up was that in going against, like continuing to ignore all of the symptoms that were showing up in my body, the depression, the yelling and screaming at my kids, the disconnection, the suicidal ideation, and continuing to ignore that, I was getting more and more sick. So there was a type of momentum. And I really do, that's what I mean when I'm talking about soul calls. There was this momentum from my soul calls saying, this is not it. There's something else. And as I continued to ignore that, life started to really drive it home for me. Right. And thankfully, even looking back now, like I look back now and I'm like, thank God, I ended up instead of continuing to try and drown out all of those feelings, getting resources that could help me to go towards them, which was when I, you know, started therapy. And really, if I look back at that process, it was a lot of relinquishing the control that I had fed off of my whole life up until that point. And y'all, that I am still waking up to how much is like still a huge piece of how I function and move through the world. But back then it was even at a much higher pitch, but it was relinquishing that control and going, okay, whoo. Obviously, what I'm doing isn't working because I'm getting all of these symptoms in my life that aren't what I want, that aren't truly connecting me and making me feel like I want to be alive. So let's try something else. And that something else was choosing to listen and respond to what was going on inside of me. And as you guys know from the podcast, that led me to a very different life, just 180 degrees. And I am now singing that this year I am at another big moment of navigating, I would say, a similar revolution on the spiral staircase of growth. So I think I've mentioned it in the podcast before. I talk about it with my clients that what I've seen about life is our growth happens cyclically. So, like a spiral staircase, we will see these patterns and these themes coming back around at different periods of our life. If we're doing the process of actually leaning in and, you know, the deeper work of honestly examining and having awareness and being vulnerable with ourselves, we go through that revolution. And the next time it comes back around, yes, they may look similar, but it's not. It's like, you know, the first round we were on the fourth floor, and now this next round we're up on the seventh floor and on and on and on. So, y'all, similar to where I felt five years ago, where it was a huge, massive moment of I have no idea how this is gonna work, but my soul calls say this, and I'm going to trust them and I'm going to take these leaps and keep leaning in and not, you know, turn around because I'm afraid. That has been what this year has felt like. And in so many of these moments, which I'm going to share some of them in a second, as I've been examining this week, I realized why this year has been really tough for me is because it has been an exercise once again in relinquishing control and relinquishing the ideas and the plans I'd made in my mind of how my life was going to unfold and having to be with my ego as it goes through withdrawals. Because there is nothing that my ego loves more than thinking I know what's going to happen next and predicting the future and getting to kind of live in this feeling of certainty. And really, I've come to realize that our ego has this need to pre-plan our life journeys, our processes of growth and individuation. Like it wants to feel in control of that journey, to control every variable going through it. But this is what seems to just keep coming up for me, y'all, is that the self, and I'm gonna say, you know, self with a capital S, I'm thinking of like the version of you that is wanting to be created through this experience of your life, the most expressed, like fullest version of you. So that self, y'all, it does not follow strategy. It does not follow a script, at least not a script that my ego is feeding it. Instead, I've seen my life unfold almost like a dream, in that it is disordered and I cannot anticipate often at times like what is going to happen next. But at the same time, in hindsight, when I look back, I'm like, holy shit, that was perfectly orchestrated. Makes me think so much of how I've been having a lot of dreams lately, y'all. And I will wake up from the dream and I'll be like, I have no clue, like what on earth was that about? And then I will drop it into the Chat GPT Union Dream interpretator, and I will be like, oh, this makes perfect sense. Like all of it makes sense. Welcome to what life can feel like at times, where we are going through this dream and we are like, who holy shit, I don't know what's gonna happen next. I don't know if it's gonna work out. How is this gonna play? And then looking back, like I am here, right? Five years post-divorce, I think I'm coming up on six, y'all. Looking back, I'm like, oh, that was absolutely how it had to happen. I see all the moves. Now, where I'm at right now, though, is I'm not in a space of hindsight. I am in the middle, the moment of your stomach dropping and you being like, ooh, okay, we made some choices. Things have happened in ways that we weren't anticipating. You know, where do we go from here? How do I support myself in this space? So I'm gonna go to that more in the rest of the episode, but I want to come back to just sharing a little bit of some of the things this year that this week, as I've been looking back on, I've been like, oh, yeah, that happened. And that makes so much sense why right now I am feeling a little more in the dysregulated, discombobulated, disoriented space. So as you all listening to the podcast remember, I mean, this spring I had my son move in with his dad. As much as I like handled that and moved through and like things have been good, I am still realizing that, you know, that is not the plan my ego had. I will just say that clearly. Like coming out of divorce, my ego and you know, me, I don't know how to just separate the two, right? But we really thought, like, I'm gonna be everything to everyone, and I am going to crush so hard, and no one's ever gonna, you know, be disappointed. Um, God, and even as I'm saying this, I'm like, yep. This is, you know, that childhood fantasy of hoping that I will no longer be human, that I will be able to do it all. And admitting that I couldn't and having my son move in with his dad, which I do believe and I've seen has been so. Much better for his mental health. Still hard. Still a tough uh grappling in my inner parts, feeling like, God, why couldn't I be enough? And I am getting emotional at this moment because I'm like, I know that this is what so many of you do to yourselves and what you think and feel when you are considering divorce and when you are looking at the ending of your marriage. And, you know, like I said, that part of our brain that when we are faced with the grief of acknowledging our humanness and that some things just didn't work out the way we had planned, uh, sometimes it feels safer to go to the self-judgment and the self-hatred, right? Like, why couldn't I be enough? So that's one of the moments this year, and we're just acknowledging that like some of you may also relate to that feeling, and I want you to notice that extra little piece, right? Of when we lose control and we realize life isn't happening the way we planned, we may pop over into the self-judgment. I had a lot of big moments, like uh, especially I would say career-wise, moments where I thought, like, yes, this is gonna be the breakthrough I've been waiting for. This is gonna be the like next level that um did not end up being that, that I've had to feel some disappointment and confusion around for sure, of like, what the fuck, universe? I thought this was it. As I mentioned earlier, like politically watching things unfold that really, really, really don't fit with my hopes for the world, my version of the world that I want to see. You know, I mentioned in a couple episodes ago that I had a mentor that came in at the beginning of the year that I really thought was going to be a fit in a way that I had like longed for and never really had. And then ultimately that ended in me having to, you know, cut that relationship off and disconnect after realizing the amount of narcissistic abuse that was tied into all of that, which was another big like kind of moment, right? Of hoping and thinking it was one thing, realizing, wait a second, it actually isn't, having to make some hard decisions there. I've also had a lot of like personal growth experiences this year that I went into hoping and really believing were going to open me to a lot more connection and love and abundance. And instead, y'all, they brought up and exposed for me massive childhood trauma wounds, which when you go into something expecting like abundance, love, and connection, and you walk out with severe trauma being exposed and you know, brought up to the surface, it's just it can be a lot. And once again, it's it's so important in that moment. And I've been having to help myself. And thankfully, I've had great support from people in my life, like Quinn and Joe and other friends, who are like, you can still trust yourself. Just because this is what showed up does not mean you made a mistake in bravely venturing into new experiences that you hoped would go one way, but that led this way instead. So I want to make space and be very real about how intense this is. Especially, you know, I'm thinking of, like I mentioned earlier, the women in the community that are going through this right now of when you have done a lot of work, when you have tried to be very aware, very conscious, very open, coaching yourself, watching your brain, going into something, thinking you understand and have a handle on what's going to unfold. And then you don't, and that control and that feeling of certainty is stripped away, that is a massive CPTSD trigger, I am realizing. Because for many of us in childhood, control, controlling ourselves and believing that we had control over life was the drug that we had to use to survive our trauma. And then, of course, that potent combination of using control and the self-judgment and self-hatred when we couldn't control, those become our two most programmed tools that we use for navigating the world, and especially when the world starts to feel unsafe or unpredictable. And damn, like, damn, is it hard to start weaning yourself off of those tools? And that's what I mean. Like, I'm on another revolution of the spiral staircase of this theme that really started, you know, that I got to see most strongly when I got divorced and when I left Mormonism of really stepping away from the plans, the ideas that I had in my mind of what my life was going to be, and the illusions of control that I had and having to really surrender and trust. And here I am five, six years later, realizing, oh, it's another layer. Like I think it's just what we do as humans. We go through difficult things, we surrender in those moments if we're doing, you know, the work that I talk about on this podcast. And then what do we do? We go and we dream and we create all these ideas of what the future's gonna be like. And then life sometimes has different plans. And we get another opportunity to go, okay, life, I'm going to keep trusting myself. I'm going to keep trusting you, that this is still good, even though it's not what I had in mind. And that's really where I want to take us for the rest of the episode, which is understanding that this back and forth that we have, I think it's it's at its heart, it's us navigating like, how much do I have free will? You know, how much am I in control of my destiny? And how much is life leading me through it? And y'all, what I'm seeing is I don't have a clear answer. I just, I don't. As much as I have tried, I mean, you know, I think of when I've really gone deep into like manifesting practices and really trying to make life subscribe to where I want it to go to. And honestly, um, that's just been really rough on my mental health because my particular journey seems to be one of that not being the path for me. That's the easiest way to say it. And I am softening into approaching that with more curiosity rather than my typical past response of like, okay, well, that just must mean I'm not doing it right because, you know, I should be able to see the future, like plan what I want and go get it, instead of making that mean I'm doing something wrong, going, maybe that means that life has something far beyond what I can imagine. And this leads me to this thought that a coach once gave me that I remember just being like, oh, I really love that, where he said, when we are thinking about our future and the things we want and the things that we desire, we approach it from a space of, you know, bringing it to the universe with the phrase, this or something better. And then when the universe does not bring us the this we were thinking of, we get to practice gentling and softening into the okay, it must be something better, and then supporting ourselves through the middle ground of the unfolding journey, leading us into the better. And y'all, you know this is the case for me, because I definitely felt that when I got divorced. I mean, that was the plan. I was leaving something that I thought, like, okay, this is what I thought I wanted. And I was like, okay, well, I hope that there will be something better. I don't know, but that was what life was bringing me. My body, my heart, my mind were all leaning in that direction. And it took years to unfold, right? Especially I'm thinking specifically in the like partnership piece, right? Like the I got married wanting partnership, wanting to have somebody that I got to build a life with. And so letting that go was a real like, okay, I have to let go of this in the hopes that there will be something better, with no guarantee that there is. And now, five years on, I can, with hindsight, say, okay, okay, universe, here's the better. I see it. I am now in a partnership that is so much more aligned with what I wanted so deeply back then, but couldn't even imagine. Like in so many ways, the relationship I'm in now wasn't even fathomable to me. I had no framework. I'd never seen anything like it. And now it's just my everyday. So, perfect example of how when we feel this desire for something in the future, and we make these beautiful plans of what we want. Ultimately, though, we want to remember this. Okay, let it be this or something better piece. And when life, even with our best-laid plans, gives us something else, we develop our trust with ourselves and with life that even though we don't understand it yet, this is something better. Now, in the past, I was so afraid, and honestly, I'm still rebuilding my trust with life. Um, in fact, over the last months, with this like deep, deep trauma coming up from my childhood, I've realized how much my initial trust in life was like really, really obliterated when I was younger. And so, because of that, I didn't have a deep feeling of like, I can trust life, it will be better. So when control started to be stripped away, when things started to break down, instead of listening, I would press on blindly. I would just, I'm sticking with the path, this is what needs to happen. And I would disregard all the signals from my body, really ignoring my feelings and my needs. And along with that angle of the self-hatred piece, that's where I would go to sacrifice my relationship with myself to try and lock everything back down and get myself back into that greater arc of the planned life story I had mentally and really trying to keep myself on track to write it the way I'd been programmed to want my life to be. But y'all, at the heart of everything I've been doing in my personal work over the last seven years. And then I think really in this podcast, I mean, I've had people reach out and be like, it's not just about divorce. And I'm like, yeah, it's about this work of steadily shedding our childhood coping mechanisms to ultimately come into deeper and deeper self-trust and trust with life. And so when we ask the question, right, at the at the title of this episode, around the lines of like, how where do we go? How do we detox from our favorite drug being control? Where is our refuge when control is no longer available? I want you guys to remember that the antidote to this is trust. Now, such a simple five-letter word, like just trust. I want to acknowledge that this is complicated work building trust with yourself. And as I've kind of acknowledged multiple times already, that's because usually trust with yourself is the very thing that you had to sacrifice in your childhood. You know, that was the cost to preserve the story of your parents and to protect you psychologically from dealing with their emotional immaturity or their lack of being able to really be there for you in the ways you needed most. And that served us in childhood. That is what gets us through and, you know, gets us up into adulthood. But y'all, as you know, self-abandonment in adulthood leads to a very dry, lonely, empty existence and a life where you feel like you are showing up for everybody else but yourself and at times just going through the robotic motions. So the biggest relationship of all that I am recovering and trying to strengthen is the one with myself. That I can listen to how I'm feeling. That has been one of the biggest ones, right? That I can just be honest with myself about how I'm feeling and not have to abandon myself to preserve certainty and safety for others. Now, for many of you in the process of considering divorce right now, as I think back to where I was back then, that was such a big leap. It was such an incredible leap. And at that time, it was a lot of leaning into the like baby trust I was developing with myself because I didn't have a lot of proof yet that things were gonna work out, and having key people in my life. So back then it was my therapist at the time and it was my best friend. Both of them were who I heavily leaned on to bring me in to kind of strengthen that trust in myself, to be like, you got this, Britta, you can trust yourself. Now, six years later, I have even more people in my life that I can trust, including most of all myself. And I realized this was something I was thinking about of like, okay, because part of what came up in the recent work that I've been doing was realizing people that I trust are still human. And I'll have to maybe explore this in the future of like everybody has their shadow sides and their shadow work and their pieces that they are also working through. And so just because you love somebody and you have a relationship and you trust them does not mean they are not going to make mistakes. And even as I say this, I'm like, and I have done the same. Even when I have like really loved and wanted to show up for somebody, I have had shadow aspects of myself come out sideways where I have hurt others and made mistakes. And negotiating for myself, does that mean I don't trust them or trust myself anymore when I make mistakes? And where I landed was realizing that when it comes to other people, you know, the people that I choose to trust, and even if they make mistakes, that that trust remains are individuals who, as we go through the messiness of being human, the messiness of making mistakes, they never end up trying to sacrifice my relationship with myself to preserve their image of themselves or to hide from their own work or to get what they want from me. And this is definitely hearkening back to those covert narcissism episodes of, you know, when somebody needs to really attack your sense of self or attack your trust with yourself to try and avoid their own work. That for me is a no-go. That is somebody that I just can't have in my life. But filtering that out now from realizing there will be people, though, that like me are also working through their shit, that also have trauma, that also have CPTSD. And mistakes will be made. And when those mistakes are made, coming back to the baseline, like the heart of that relationship, which I think is a really important piece for so many of you, trying to decide if you want to stay or go. Because as you're evaluating this partner across from you, you know, as I was doing this recently in my own relationship, what I came back to was like, oh, yeah, but like what we have outside of this moment is connected, is stable, is healthy, has been all of these amazing things. And so this moment was out of the ordinary. It was not the normal experience for us. And that was big because as you'll notice, and for those of you, you know, as you go on and you date post-divorce, rebuilding trust with other people, especially if you had narcissistic dynamics in your marriage, it is a process. This is where I think of when I've mentioned like my disorganized attachment styles and just navigating all of these pieces of our childhood trauma, our shadow behaviors, their shadow behaviors, their stuff. So where I landed though was that piece of understanding, trust really comes down to are you going to try to turn me against myself or convince me that I am something or pathologize me in order to avoid your own stuff. And thankfully, what I have realized is in the process of the last six years, I have found key people in my life that do not do this. And what a gift that is now. Because in this moment of this revolution, right, this next circle of having to let go of control, of having to trust life again. In some of this process of my own, you know, getting really afraid of myself and wondering again, like, can I trust myself? Did I make the right choices? Am I on the right path? What a gift it is to have people who love and know you. And I didn't have that fully. I had it to some extent when I got divorced in my therapist and my best friend. But wow, has that deepened and improved over the years as I have continued to trust myself and to lean into my path? It has led me more and more into people who really, really do see me and love me and can help me when I'm in these moments of spiraling out and um kind of losing myself in the self-judgment to come back to it's okay. This is the process of being human and really admitting to myself too that trusting someone is very different for me than loving them. So, what I mean by that is like I look back over all the relationships I had, and I have loved many partners, but I have only trusted, I want to say probably I've only trusted, truly trusted one of my partners over the span of my life. Like trusted to the level I'm talking about. And with friendships, I have a much better rate with friendships of finding women that just genuinely I know I can trust. But that is a piece that I want all of you understanding when we're talking about how do we start letting go of control, especially for those of you right now. Like, I guess I'm sharing this piece here to be like, this is where it can get. In the future, just know there will be more people that you can trust as you continue trusting yourself. And if you're in the process of considering Doris and really watching so much of that collapse and crumble away, where do we go when we don't have control, when we don't know what the future is, when the pre-planned life we thought was going to be is falling away in front of our eyes? We come back into trust with ourselves and trust with those that we know love us and really want us to trust ourselves. And some of the things that I have been learning through this next revolution of the staircase is that it is safe to slow down and to do this deeper work where my coping mechanisms in childhood say, I've got to be perfect, I've got to show up, even in this mess, I've got to be producing, I've got to be putting out. So, with all that in mind, I did want to share like six beliefs that have started sinking in even deeper for me going through this process, because that's the other part, is I was thinking yesterday, you know, what do I actually have control over? And I realized, you know, I have control over supporting and regulating my body. And I get to, through awareness and through my coaching tools, have control over my thoughts, which can help in creating feelings for me that are more grounding and more stabilizing. So some of the beliefs that I am sinking into and trying to support myself with are the following. The first one is it is safe to do the deeper work. So, like I mentioned, some of the shockers for me this year were going into experiences that I thought were going to take me into like more light feelings and that have actually taken me into darker. And as terrifying and difficult as it's been to go feel and you know, step into those rooms of my childhood trauma, trusting that if this is coming up, if this is wanting to be seen, it is safe to see it, that I will not lose myself in the examining and opening to these feelings. Often when we find these rooms, they can be so intense and so overwhelming that there is a lot of fear that I'm never going to leave this room. I mean, that's a huge aspect of the CPTSD when we're in a flashback, is we go into a state of feeling like I'm hopeless, I'm helpless, this is never going to change. And I'm learning that it is safe to do that deeper work and having people to do that with is key. It is key, y'all. You know, I used to, in my journey, try to do a lot of that work on my own. And now I've learned to really reach out and ask for help. To have, I have coach friends that facilitate for me. And my partner also does a lot of holding space for me. This is where a therapist is invaluable. So do not try to do this alone. You're not meant to. I don't think we were ever meant to. And so find that person, that space. And if you don't have access to those resources, nature, y'all. Remember Sarah Blondon's podcast? That was a huge place for me of somewhere I could go to do the deeper work. Second, is it's safe to slow down and feel your feelings. I'm probably gonna do all of these through the lens of like some of it through the CPTSD, because that's been the other huge thread weaved through all of these, is that it's really hard to feel safe trusting when you are in a CPTSD emotional flashback. And one of the biggest tools that in Pete Walker's list of emotional flashback support is slowing down, is letting your brain come down off of the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and drop back into feeling your feelings. So that's something I've been really trying to remind myself that as much as my brain says, if you don't run, if we don't rush, if we don't stay on top of everything, you won't be safe. That no, actually the opposite is true. Third is it's safe to be honest with what you're actually feeling and going through. Um, I've noticed it actually most with myself. Like, first off, with myself, just being it's I think our nonviolent communication workshops or camp that we did this summer in the community really helped me with realizing, like, oh, just knowing for myself what I'm feeling and what I'm needing is so big for just clearing out some of the confusion. So I'd say first and foremost with myself, being more honest about what I'm feeling, like actually saying, like, wow, I am feeling really afraid. And I need to know that I'm gonna be okay, that I'm gonna make it, you know, and even just admitting that. Maybe I don't know how I'm going to get that, but at least I can admit that I'm needing that as a vulnerable, real human. And then I would say the next piece of that has been being honest with those I love. It makes me think of one of the women in the community recently mentioning how, you know, previously with her friends, she had kept hidden a lot of what she was going through, and that recently, with all of this big, unexpected turn of events in telling her husband about their divorce, that she started to be more honest with them and how much more support she's receiving through that honesty. Fourth is it's safe to invest in your healing and your reconnection with yourself. We are taught in our culture that, you know, we need to be investing in things that look good on the outside, right? We need to spend money on our faces, on our bodies, on our cars, investing in stuff that's gonna help you with work, or only invest in stuff that's gonna help you make more money. And we really miss the mark in understanding that in healing and reconnecting with yourself, everything else that comes out of that benefits. So for me, it's been, you know, as much as I'm like, I feel this pressure to really show up and do more in my business and to give more, that it is safe to instead invest in me. But I know so many of you, I know my business coach, if she's listening to this, would be like, yeah, duh, Britain because I am like, it's so obvious in my instance because I am the heart and soul of my business. Like, if we don't have me, we don't have anything, but still it's something I'm I'm working to overcome, that deprioritization of my mental health and my healing. And then finally, and biggest, it is safe to manage your CPTSD first. So much of my suffering, this these last weeks, I think, has just come from not managing my CPTSD as well as I could have. And kind of going more into my coping mechanisms, I tend to be someone who freezes a lot when I'm going through traumatic processing. I freeze and then I like hyper uh spin in my head and I analyze and analyze and analyze, and I really try to find safety through the control of my mind and trying to understand how everything works, how it all fits together. And I will tell you what, in a CPTSD flashback, which by the way, you know, if those keep happening, which they they did for me over the last three weeks, they compound into what's called a regression. And when you're in a regression, this is where we start to like, oh my God, this is never gonna change. Uh, you start to really lose perspective and like remembering what it was like before all of this happened. That's where our suicidal ideations come up. That's where our feeling completely overwhelmed by life. I think of it as like it's the moment where you still have all the adult shit you have to do as an adult human, but you feel so deeply like you are a child trapped in an adult's world with all of those pressures that it just makes you want to collapse massively. So that's another, like, I need to write a bunch of sticky notes and just put it everywhere, which is like, you're probably in a CPTSD flashback. Let's slow down. Like what you don't need to do right now is talk a ton and overanalyze and uh be spinning out in your mind about how we're gonna figure this out, because typically I would say like nine times out of ten, what that's what's actually the the root is that I'm just dysregulated. I am flashbacked, I am out of my body, and if I can get back into my body, which I hope to, I'm like still developing out. I mean, what really got driven home for me over these last three, four weeks and really this year, is that I need more practices, physical practices in my body to help me daily manage and support my CPTSD. So I don't have those yet. I've got some ideas, I'm working on some things and I'm testing out things that I hope to roll out in the future to really give you guys resources in this specific area, right? Of okay, I know I've I'm in a CPTSD flashback. How do I get access back to my body? That is one of the most difficult things for me so far. I have only really been able to do it best with other people helping me lately at this moment. I mean, granted, the flashbacks I went into were like really, really big, but I want to be able to develop more consistent daily routines that help me in managing the CPTSD and ultimately get to see how that plays out then when bigger flashbacks come through. So know that that is in the works, that is something I'm thinking about and um that I feel is really important. Through all of this, though, I feel like something I just want to share, like something that I am really proud of, though, throughout this process, is that even though it's been really, really dysregulating, you know, super difficult in my body, I have noticed more so than ever before in my life that I have not abandoned myself going through it to try and make it smoother for the other people that were going through that process with me. And that is a huge win for me. That is a huge, huge win to choose me first and always. And what an incredible, like also gift that it turns out, you know, the people that I went through it with also didn't need me to abandon myself for them. And I'm coming into through just lived experience, realizing that even when I have no idea what is next or or how things are going to end up working out, I am still safe in that I ultimately have me. And like one of my coaches helped me with this last week. I can pull back when my brain goes way out into the future and you are in CBTSD flashback, that is the worst. Like you're either in the future or the past, and neither one is safe. Instead, I can pull back into this exact moment, like right here, right now. And I can come into this moment where it's like I am sitting in my chair, I have my headphones on, I am recording a podcast. Even as I'm doing it, y'all, I can feel my brain like chilling the fuck down. Like the sun is shining, I can see some grass. I'm breathing in and out of my belly, I'm breathing in and out of my nose and out of my mouth. And in this exact moment, I am safe. And in this exact moment, I am safe because a lot of my fears right now are about uh stories that I'm scaring myself about in the future. But if I actually come into this exact moment, like I'm safe right now. Um I'm also realizing that contrary maybe to what I thought five, six years ago, that you know, someday in the future I was gonna have all this certainty and like was gonna know what was gonna happen next in my life. I have no more certainty now than I did back then. But the difference is that I have a lot more trust in myself now. And I can look back on the journey I've walked over the last five, six years and go, oh fuck yeah, life has got my back. I see it. I see how it's been showing up for me. And I can see how it has led me through moments where I was definitely like, I have no clue how this is gonna work out into something that was even better than I could have imagined. And that helps me land in the space of going, okay. Ooh, even though this can be a lot, especially for those of you that are in it right now, this act of letting go of control and leaning into trust, I truly believe it is worth it. And why, especially I think it is pertinent and important for right now is because I just don't see our world, y'all, I don't see it externally becoming safer or more stable at the moment. And control can only take you so far. Many of us, I know, are having to grapple with that right now, that when our external realities don't seem certain or safe anymore, where do we go? Who do we trust in? And I see a lot of people right now still trying to put it in external places. And I get it because it's like a short-term thing that feels safer, but long term it's gonna come back around. So to finish out this episode, for those of you that feel like, yep, Britta, I am in this phase as well. I am in a moment of realizing the life I planned is not the life I'm going to have. I want you to know that these tower moments and the like echoing silence and the I don't really know what the future holds afterwards, I really believe they represent necessary destruction of our previous foundations, you know, specifically thinking about like my ego, like the ego constructs that I've had, the roles that I built up that I thought I needed to play to be safe, beliefs and you know, childhood safety mechanisms, none of that can support you if it's happening for you. None of that's gonna support you in the next phase. And this isn't punishment, like so many of us have been led to believe, but rather I want us reframing it as a sacred breakdown. And hopefully, this episode for myself, especially, you know, I'm realizing I needed to really do this episode for myself, but also for all of you reminds us that we thought and we were taught that safety would come from control, things like our plans or being able to people please others or navigating situations perfectly with no conflict. But actually, our real safety comes from trusting our truths, those deep soul calls inside your body, even if they lead us into lives that we couldn't have planned and that we don't have perfect maps for. And when you are in that part of the journey, this moment is not about fixing or figuring out everything. It is about compassionately supporting yourself through really allowing the collapse. This is the being honest with yourself about how you're feeling, being gentle in the not knowing and the not having the answers, and being curious about your role in all of this. And often when we are the ones that are a part of that collapse, right? For those of you like, okay, I'm the one initiating the divorce, allowing yourself to be curious about that role you had in creating the fire without blaming yourself for the burn. And what I mean by that is that piece of, you know, I had these experiences this year that I went into hoping like this is gonna lead to this. And instead, it led to like a lot of burning and watching out for that move of blaming yourself and thinking that you have done something wrong or something has gone wrong. And instead watching with curiosity and wonder at the phoenix that is emerging, that is you. Y'all, this episode is the parts of the journey that no one teaches us how to do. I did not receive this manual in childhood, nor did my parents ever talk about stuff like this going down. And I want you guys to know that even, you know, this far on post my decision to get divorced, I am still right there with y'all, which leads me to believe this is a reality of living a human life where there are no guarantees. And as I have seen in the past, and I do believe I will see again in the future, where the safest bet is to trust in life and how it will lead you to magic and solutions and openings that you really could never have dreamed of. So that feels so I'm like having a moment of like, ah, that's where I am. Okay, that's where I am. Uh, just remembering some of the magic and the solutions that my life has led me to. Oof, and as I say that aloud, I feel this just like immense opening and like burning and excitement in my chest at the bravery it takes and the immense like payouts that come from that kind of bravery, the remarkable life that you get to lead when you navigate and um embark on journeys like this. So with that excitement for the future and the magic that is to unfold for all of us ahead, coming back into the present, but just breathing really deep in this moment and making space to keep trusting even in the fog of the in-between, even as control is being stripped away and finding refuge in our bodies, in our breath. I am safe in this moment. Y'all, thank you for coming through that episode with me. I do have to say, some of you, I know as you may be hearing me going through this difficult period of my life right now. Um, I want to, I want to also, I realized like last week, I was like, oh, everybody may be like, I don't want to, I don't want to reach out or work with her because that might, you know, put more of a load on her. And I just want to also acknowledge that like actually I have found getting to coach, getting to still show up and give and you know, really shine in the ways that I have spent years and thousands of hours of my life developing is also a crucial part of this process. So here at the end of this episode, I want to encourage and make clear that I am absolutely still so open to my 90 minutes. I had an incredible woman that I met this last week that I'm gonna get to one-on-one coach with. And it was really wonderful to feel that as well, that like even in the heart, even in the unsureness, there are still places where I can give back and give back powerfully. Um, and especially in the community, that has just become such an incredible refuge for not only the women that I created it for, but for me as well. I told them on a recent call, I was like, oh my God, y'all, I built this thinking, I'm building this for, you know, these women. And now I'm seeing how it's absolutely for me as well. So it's a very symbiotic relationship. And if you have been feeling called to the community or called to do a 90-minute session with me, please do not hold back because of where I am at at this moment through understanding that that fuels and feeds me as well. It truly reminds me, even in the heart right now, of my greatness, of the gifts that I have and the impact I can have in the world, even when I am human. I love that my perfectionistic brain is like, wait, what? Even when I don't have it all perfectly aligned, I can still show up. Yeah, those are the neural pathways that I am rewiring. So just wanted to include that here in case some of you had been worried about that. Know that that is a huge part of my life that I love and am still super devoted and here for. If you have been considering that 90 minute, remember you can text 90MIN to 33777. And if you've been wanting to join the community, you can text stay or go community all one word to three three seven as well. All right, y'all, till next week, sending you all so much love. Bye, babes.