SPEAKER_00 0:02

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. Welcome back, everyone. So before we dive in to today's episode, I was taking some time before I started recording. And I was just sitting here at my desk trying to drop into my body and really visualize and connect in with you all, my listeners. And imagining seeing some of you perhaps, you know, riding in the car, listening to this episode. Maybe you're making dinner or grocery shopping and you got your earbuds in. Maybe you are out for a run. I remember meeting one of you on a 90-minute session, and you told me that you listen to the podcast every day that you go running, and you had run like miles with me. And as I was just taking the time to feel into all of you, I realized what I want to say most is just this little moment of checking in with you here at the beginning and saying, Hey, sis, how are you feeling? How are you doing today? Yeah, just feel me reaching out across these sound waves, maybe even closing your eyes, and knowing I'm like right there next to you right now. If you are needing a hug, if you are needing just a moment of someone seeing you, this is that moment. This is me seeing you, feeling you, letting you know you're not alone. Yeah. Hi. There you all are. Hello. Thank you all for sharing your energy back with me through this incredible medium of podcasting. Oof. Okay. I just needed a little drop-in here. Wow, y'all. It has been an incredible month of May for me. I'm actually recording this on Sunday, June 1st. So the month of May has just finished, and some really big things happened for me during May, both in my personal life and also in my more public life, getting to be on my embiolics breakdown, which so many of you have reached out and just been so kind and supportive and excited for me. Thank you. Thank you. It was an incredible experience. And I think honestly, I mean, I loved the experience with Maya and Jonathan, but boy, did I really love that episode that I got to record with Quinn afterwards. That is just probably one of my favorite episodes that I've created thus far. There were just really important things and concepts that we talked about in that, y'all. I actually edited that episode myself. You know, I have an assistant that normally edits for me, but that one I just felt like I needed to have every inch of it kind of something that I looked back over and worked, and I did a lot of beautiful edits on that. So that is an episode that I am just like really, really proud of. There was so much editing that went into it. Especially love the YouTube version of it where you can see our faces. So if you haven't gone over to the YouTube channel yet, you really should and give that one a listen in that format. It's just been so neat to start seeing the podcast in visual form. And I have to say, I'm pretty hooked, y'all. I really love having now the podcast available on YouTube. So very big month. And for today's episode, I have a couple different things that I'm wanting to take you guys through. So, kind of two different sections. In the first part, I want to briefly talk about some of that personal work I've been doing behind the scenes and this metaphor that is coming out of it that I'm developing around this deep shadow work I've been doing. I'm not gonna like give you the full breakdown of all of that, but it's super fresh. It's been coalescing in my brain in the last couple days. And y'all know how I love to get you things like hot off the presses. So we're gonna talk about that a little bit in the first half of this episode. And then for the second half, we will shift into something really exciting that uh dropped in the community today and some fun summertime magic that we're gonna be having over there that I am just really jazzed about and yeah, like giddy with excitement around. Okay, y'all. So, with that said, let's dive into this first part of the episode and prefacing this by saying this, like I said, is still very in the rough. So it's gonna be messy as I describe it. But I'm hoping to kind of plant these seeds right here, right now, and in the future be able to do an episode that really expounds on all of this. But basically, what's been coming through for me and my beautiful, like neurodivergent mind is this new way of viewing the way what we are, like the consciousness of our soul, operates and experiences the world we live in. So, as a coach, one of the things that I am constantly fascinated by and seeing all the time is how our thoughts create our realities. And from that and some recent experiences I had in my personal work, I have started to view our internal landscaped basically as almost like a imagine like a mansion with me, okay, with all these different wings. And in those different wings, there are dozens of rooms. And at any point, our consciousness can go into these rooms. And when you open the door to a room and you go in, that room is like a mini-reality unto itself. And that reality within that room is shaped and created by a big overarching belief. That's like the theme of that room. And then experiences that, you know, either created that room or that we've had since then under that belief structure and a bunch of thoughts that support it. Why this is important for your life, why this is affecting you is a lot of us are living the majority of our lives in rooms that we have not built, that we have not consciously chosen. For a huge amount of the population, I believe this wing that is built in childhood, that is mainly created by other people's ideas, concepts outside of us, that is what the majority of people will live in the rest of their lives. They will never unlock the power that is within them to go and create rooms of their own making, to go and create whole other realities, entire other wings of this mansion that get to be theirs and get to be built on the concepts and the ideas and the world they want to live in. Is this landing? I hope you all are following me. So I think this imagery, this metaphor is landing so powerfully for me right now. Because as Joe and I were talking about it yesterday, oh guys, whew. This is why it's so hard for me to talk about this because it's like that feels so heartbreaking to me to think of individuals being kind of their consciousness being trapped in these rooms, in these realities for their entire lives that weren't actually picked by them. And to just give you like a quick idea of those rooms, like those rooms can be a room that's built on the belief like I'm not worthy of love. And in that reality, when you step into that room, when your consciousness gets that belief triggered and it goes into that reality, it then views everything within that room through that lens. And like I said, I'm gonna dive deeper into this in the future. Like, okay, how do we get out of the rooms? How do we get back our power? But even just knowing y'all, even just starting to think and notice for yourself that depending on what room you're in, your consciousness is in at any time, life appears differently to you. And for those of you that have listened to the entire podcast and have heard me talk many times about CBTSD and emotional flashbacks, I think this is kind of what we're experiencing when we go into a CBTSD emotional flashback. And we go into that, I feel hopeless, I feel helpless, I feel like a little child again. I think what's happening there is a belief is getting triggered, it pulls us into a room, and then the illusion of the room in front of us becomes so strong, the feelings become so intense that we forget that we are actually the consciousness that at any point can turn open the door and exit that room. And so many of us, even though we are adults living adult lives away maybe from the trauma of our childhood or our parents, those rooms still exist in us, though, still experiencing that trauma within you, like those feelings coming back so intensely because the room is still inside of you, even if externally the people that created it or the situations are no longer there. I mean, you guys know a huge example of this for me is that I'm no longer Mormon. I don't go to church, I don't have any like external connection to that world really at all. So I don't have a ton of exposure to Mormon stuff, occasionally on my Instagram feed from people who've left. But y'all, do I still have some gnarly, gnarly rooms in my psyche that are a hundred percent directly created, built from Mormonism. And just because I'm no longer Mormon and I no longer go to the church or participate in anything there, does not mean I don't still, in many ways, often like unconsciously feel that influence of that room often. So here's the tie-in with like what I've been experiencing personally for me, is over the past month, I'm just I'm really proud to say it, like really intense shadow work in the service of opening to more abundance in my life. Because I know that when you want expansion on the more positive end of the spectrum, right? I want love, I want financial abundance, I want security, I want safety, that often requires opening and going and being with the equal and opposite end of the spectrum. And boy, y'all, has that been the reality for me this year? I, New Year's Eve, like opened a portal for myself by setting a very strong intention that I was like ready this year to open to abundance and to being supported. And this year has rung my bell emotionally, opening to those things. So part of this work has been this shadow work I was doing this month. And actually, it's directly out of the shadow work that I developed this metaphor and this idea of, oh my God, there are actual rooms in my psyche that I can go walk back into. And in doing this work, I had the opportunity to walk into a few of the rooms in my psyche that are so terrifying. Um, that I think honestly, in a lot of ways, probably my conscious brain has suppressed and hidden until this moment, where I have enough tools and enough support and enough guides and people that can really hold me through the process of acknowledging the amount of pain that is in those rooms, the amount of grief and terror. And y'all, for some of it, like existential dread that came out of the trauma I experienced, being birthed, being born to a family that I didn't understand me, being born to parents who empathically could not connect with me in the ways that I needed. And my consciousness having to grow up in a world where I felt alone ultimately, deeply, deeply, deeply alone. And the shocking thing about all of this work was realizing, oh my gosh, I, as much as these rooms kind of were suppressed and I didn't fully see them, now that I've seen them, I'm like, oh my God, I've been living with this pain every single day of my life, running in the background. And I didn't even realize it. And that unconscious pain is the thing that is in our daily life. That is what is shaping deep down our sense of safety, our sense of worth, our sense of control. These rooms, all of these rooms that we have from our childhood, from, and it's not just childhood, y'all. I've got rooms, I've got multiple, multiple wings, right? I'm 36 now. I've actually got quite a build out on the rooms of consciousness that I can inhabit at various times. But these rooms, you know, some of the rooms that I'm starting to acknowledge and see are rooms that hold really painful beliefs for me, right? Beliefs that I have to do everything alone, that in order to be loved, I need to be perfect. And you can kind of in your mind imagine stepping into that room. Maybe on the door it says, I have to do everything on my own. And you step into that room. And when you go into that room, like if that's what you believe, if that's the the way you think reality is, what's that room gonna look like? A room from the belief, I have to do everything on my own. I can like feel it in my body. When I go into that room, my body gets tense. I feel the pressure. I get kind of like a paralyzed sensation in my chest and my stomach. There's lots of thoughts in there, like, you got to keep going. You can't slow down. If you slow down, everything will fall apart. Oof, oof, oof, right. I had a room that was like, I have to earn love by performing. And honestly, one of one of the rooms that I think is also really hard for me to admit and see, and that I wanted to share with y'all the most in this episode is this room that was like, I can't trust others to be there for me because they will disappear or they will take advantage of me. Oof, right, y'all. So, of course, if I ask at the beginning of the year for abundance and opening to being supported, and I have this room inside me, there's gonna be a process of going and seeing that room and realizing what's in there. So, y'all are gonna be left a little bit on a cliffhanger with this piece of how do I go in the rooms? How do I work with these parts of myself? Don't worry, that will come in the future because I'm super into the this work and ultimately getting to share it with you guys soon. But the other amazing piece that I realized with this whole metaphor of the rooms is that okay, I've been given this wing of rooms that in many ways from my childhood, from my religion, are really fucking scary rooms for me, y'all. Like those are realities that don't actually speak to my heart, that don't make my body feel good. And over the last five to seven years, I am realizing I have absolutely been building new ones. And part of the work this month was coming up from some of those scarier rooms that I went and visited after seeing them and realizing, oh my God, I have entire wings now in my mansion of consciousness that are built on self-trust, wings that are built on play and fun and spaciousness. Uh, there's a whole wing around sisterhood. Um, I have a whole new like romance, romantic partner wing. I am building a completely different and brand new wing around motherhood, right? And realizing that I now spend the majority of my time in these wings. And wow, if that wasn't just a moment of like, oh my God, even though these other rooms and these, you know, wings are still in me, I have through the immense work I've done, reclaimed the power to be able to go and consciously build new rooms for myself that I now get to inhabit. And a huge piece coming through last month was finding this gorgeous wing to my consciousness that was built all around support that actually genuinely loves me and support that is there for me, no matter how I show up. And y'all, that has been really humbling, honestly, because this last few weeks, this last month, I've really had to let go of control. I know, even as I say it, I'm like, I'm sure a lot of you are like, no, Britta, what? This is hard for you to let go of control. I often don't see that in myself, how much I need. And like just control is my drug choice, y'all. When we talk about buffers, control is mine. Um and I've really had to stop trying to do it all by myself and actually let others help me. And the gift is in knowing like I actually can do that now in so many ways. I have cleared out the people in my life who built those old painful rooms. Oh, I just feel like a huge amount of relief as I admit that to myself. And I have consciously chosen to fill my world now with these new relationships, these new communities, these new individuals that support my truth. And they really fucking showed up for me this last month, y'all. Maybe this episode is also just like a shout out to all of the amazing people in my life, including like in the community, those of you that have emailed me just saying like what you're doing matters. And then, of course, my close friends really just showing up for me this month when I kind of had to step back and go, man, I'm wiped out. I need help. And that is, I can't even describe to y'all what an incredible like rebirth of my psyche it has been. And it's continuing to be. There's still a ton of integration I'm having to do, but almost like being reborn from those rooms of my childhood and waking up and finally going, oh my God, this is my life. This right here is my reality now. And those rooms that yes exist within my psyche. Sometimes I get pulled back to them, but I can, with the tools I'm developing, come back out. I can always realize, wait a second, I'm just in a room and this room has a door, and I can open that door and I can walk back out and I can choose to go to the rooms that I've built where the reality is love, where the reality is trust. Yeah, y'all do. Do you feel it? It's like, ah, this is so exciting, this work. And I'm really, really looking forward to in the future being able to take you all, hopefully, deeper into this metaphor and the work of how do we reconcile these painful rooms in our minds? How do we reclaim our power enough to not be spending our entire lives in these rooms to be able to leave them and then not only leave them, but build new rooms and ultimately come into a wholeness, a wholeness. It's not like I have gone and, you know, walled up and blocked off that wing of my childhood, and now I'm pretending like it isn't there. Like newsflash, y'all, that's what people in the world who are out committing some of the worst atrocities, I believe, I believe that's what they've done. They have cut off their shadow parts, they are not addressing the pain within themselves, and then they go and they project it out on the world around them. So, takeaway from part one of this episode is just this little quick drop-in with me on this metaphor and hopefully planting the seed of you knowing that these rooms are inside of you, that as you regain your power, you do not have to stay and live your entire life within them, and that you can build an entirely new world of rooms. You do not have to live the rest of your life in the rooms that you were handed. Okay, y'all. So now let's shift gears a little bit. That was some deep, oh, that was really hard. I hope you guys can like feel and see how hard that was for me to kind of wrangle with language to try and describe something that I haven't fully fleshed out yet. But it also was thrilling for me. One of my recent goals, too, is to show up a little bit more, like everything doesn't have to be scripted. It can be imperfect. So oof, I'm like giving myself a little hug. Good job. I was just really excited to share that with you all. Now, second part of this episode, I also want to talk about something, as I mentioned at the beginning, that just dropped in the community that I'm really over the moon jazzed, y'all. Um, it's something new I haven't tried in the community that kind of came to me this month as I was coming up with the theme. Each month we do a different theme. And in the flavor of summer, right? Summer just feels like this time that life moves really fast. And sometimes by the time you get to the end of summer, you're like, wait, what just happened? I wanted the women in my community to be able to go through this summer learning a toolkit and deepening their connection to themselves and learning real skills that can help them in communicating. Enter this amazing idea that I had to do a summer camp, y'all. This summer for June and July, we are doing a summer camp in the community. It is called Camp NVC. And for those of you that don't know, NVC is short for nonviolent communication. And why I chose to do a summer camp on this, I mean, it's probably gonna like shock some of you because I've never talked about nonviolent communication before. I'd heard about it from a couple different coach friends. And then I swear it was something in the conversation, it may not have even been in the episode with Mayam that was live. We kind of talked a little bit before and after. I know Maya mentioned something about nonviolent communication. Maybe I did in that episode. My dear friend Carmina Becerra, who was on the podcast a couple episodes ago, she also is very well versed in it. And when she did our workshop in the community, I was like, whoa, this is big. This is what my women need. And I kind of had four different main spots that were the reasons why I chose basically to do the nonviolent communication. The first one is that I am really seeing this everywhere right now in the US. We have, as a society, really lost this ability. I don't know if we ever had it to begin with, but it seems like it's gotten worse lately of just really polarized inability to hear each other, inability to respond empathically to each other. So that was a big one. The second was what I already mentioned with, you know, on the MyM podcast, I just thought, oh my God, there have got to be, I mean, on that podcast, we kind of got into the nitty-gritty of how tough this is. And I was like, oof, we've got to have better ways to communicate about these tough concepts with each other. Like in your marriage, right? Jonathan brought up so many great examples of like what's kind of going on on the other side. So we need better ways to communicate across the divide there. Third reason was my women in the community. In a couple of calls that we had done recently, there was this theme coming up of them being like, I just get so angry. And when I'm angry, my communication is just really like burn it all down. Um, so that was a big reason. And then the final one was wanting to explore more resources that would be really, really helpful on both sides, whether you're gonna stay or you're gonna go. I know I've mentioned a couple of times recently on the podcast that I want to focus even more than I have in the past on those of you that may be staying. And holy shit, is nonviolent communication absolutely crucial if you're going to be staying. So let's do a quick, I'm not gonna do a full deep dive on NBC, but let's do a little sneak peek into what it is. So the man who created nonviolent communication is named Marshall Rosenberg. And he wrote this book called Nonviolent Communication, a language of life. And that is the book that I have built out the two months of camp around. We're reading various chapters for each week, we're focusing in on certain aspects, but the four main steps that he teaches are first observation, second, feeling, third, need, and fourth request. And what I love about his work is a lot of what he's teaching really overlaps with tools that I was taught in coaching. He just is kind of using different words for them. So I want to share a little mini-example to kind of give you guys a framework for how nonviolent communication like boots on the ground, shifts how we are able to speak and listen and relate, not only to others, but also to ourselves, because it's something that you can use with yourself as well. So let's say you are feeling frustrated with your partner, okay, and frustrated that they never check in on you emotionally when you maybe are mentioning, like, I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed. And instead of responding or checking in with you, they just kind of ignore you. In the old way of communication, you might say something to them like, you don't care about how stressed and overwhelmed I am right now. Like we can even see how oof, right? I mean, but this is just how most of us were taught to communicate. But in NVC, you would actually slow down and you would use this four-part flow in your communication. And I think month one for us in June, we're going to be focusing heavily and doing a lot of work around these pieces. All of our chapters are around these first four. But let me give you that reframe on the conversation. So instead of saying you don't care about how stressed and overwhelmed I am right now, you would start by giving an observation without evaluating. Okay. And that would sound like, hey, I notice that when I share how overwhelmed I've been, you don't ask me any follow-up questions. Do you notice we're kind of, and this is where I've talked in the episode about like facts versus thoughts. You can see we're staying in the observation. We're trying to stay in the facts. When I share, you're not asking any follow-up questions without giving a judgment or kind of evaluating the behavior. Okay. With the whole like you don't care piece. So that's the first step. Then we would move into a feeling. I feel really sad and alone in that moment. I love this part because the way Marshall Rosenberg teaches it, it is like the piece we're all missing, the vulnerability part of being honest about how we feel in that moment and staying in our bodies with the feeling, right? Like what is my experience from the feeling? We then go into the third piece, which is the need, because I have a need for emotional connection and to feel seen. So let me tie those two together so you can hear them correctly. Second is feeling, third is need. So you would say, I feel really sad and alone in that moment because I have a need for emotional connection and to feel seen. And then the final piece is moving into a request. Would you be willing to ask me how I'm really doing once a day this week, just so that I feel supported? And why I'm like mind blown about this is because I think this part at the end of knowing our needs and communicating them clearly and asking for what we need, I can just feel it in my body when I read through the examples in the book. I'm like, oh, that's where somebody who loves you and wants to change or wants to help you, when they know clearly what you need, there is a much greater chance of them being able to deliver on it. Now, all of this may sound simple, but y'all, it really is revolutionary. Now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it. Let me put it that way. Now that I've like seen what's available and seen how most of us communicate, I'm like, oh my God. I mean, that is why I am devoting two months of our community work to these concepts. And in this framework, you get to take full ownership of your needs without having to blame or shame anyone else. That is so key if we are in the process of considering divorce. Like we all have to be able to slow down, actually hear what the other person is saying, actually hear what we're saying back to them. So this is going to be a very real, like in the community, we really haven't done it this way, where we're actually in a book, taking it week by week, but we're gonna get to be reading it together and then practicing for the next two months. And I think it's gonna be really magical. I mean, obviously, reading the book is an incredible way to learn a lot a lot of the tools, but I'm like really, can you feel? I'm like, oh my God, I can't wait to see what it's gonna be like when the women in the community are doing it all together at the same time. I think there's just gonna be a lot of next level healing happening there. And on top of that, y'all, I made it so absolutely fun. It was a blast getting to build it out with ChatGPT's help. Because when I first came up with the idea, I was like, oh my God, I want to do it summer camp style and I want it super campy, super themed. So it is like a whole vibe and experience. It's just different than what we've been doing and super fun. Like one of my favorite things that we came up with was doing this animal quiz. So at the beginning of this first week, everybody's gonna take a quiz and based off of their answers, they'll get a certain animal that like represents their typical communication style. And everybody's putting that animal by their names. So we're all we'll be able to see each other's animals throughout the next two months. We created up these adorable badges. So in the community, this is a part of the community that I've never used before, but like been itching to for a long time, is that you can earn badges within the community. So we created these really beautiful ones that will only be available during this summer camp. And when you get them, they go on your profile. And it's just like the little girl in me that loved stickers is dying. And then on top of that, like we're doing all these great, you know, we usually do a one workshop each month, but instead at the end of each week, we're gonna be doing these campfire circles, which will be these check-ins where we get to reflect and talk about what's going on and really hold space together in a more regular format. So yeah, I am vibing hard over here, y'all. As a as a kid who never got to go to summer camp, but watched what is that Disney one with the twins? Oh, y'all, I can hear you all like screaming it through the sound waves right now. There we go. The parent trap. The parent trap. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. That I just couldn't, I could not get that together for y'all. The parent trap is the thing that I was thinking of. So, okay, as a girl who watched The Parent Trap growing up, this is totally my vibe. I'm very, very excited to have you all get to share in it with me. Um, and on top of that, this is the other thing that I'm obsessed with right now when it comes to the community, is let me just vibe for a second that it is truly popping off hardcore right now. Like we have so many deep, one-on-one connections forming. I jumped on a live last night and some of the women that were on the live had just gotten off of like one-on-one chat that they were doing. So, not only is the community like there's this incredible space where everybody's together, but a lot of the women are finding deeper connections in that one-on-one way that I really hoped for when I started the community, but had no idea what happened. And it is another incredible thing going with the community is we've had the opportunity from an amazing community member that is putting together a retreat for us. We already have our first retreat, y'all, in October, and it is full. We actually only released it to community members because it was, you know, a community member putting it on. And within like a couple days, it was full. So depending on how this one goes in October, I really hope to be able to do more of those in the future. It's it's been something my community members have been asking about from the beginning and now it's happening. I was telling Joe last night, I can't believe that two months ago, I was like, oh my God, the women want to retreat, wouldn't that be amazing? And here we are, and it's happening. So all of this is to say that if you have been listening for a while and you have been doing your inner work in isolation, and if you are just like you've been listening and you're like, maybe, maybe I don't know, or you're craving like not just the insights you're getting from the podcast, but actual like dropping in, talking to other women about it, that sisterhood piece. This is my call to you that Camp NVC is for you this summer. And I really want to invite you to join with us because I don't want you to just watch this summer go by when you could be investing in your inner transformation. And some of the things that you're going to be able to gain over that summer are tools to be able to be speaking your truth. Obviously, that connection in with the community that sees you, and hopefully this foundation within yourself that's going to carry you beyond the summer, right? Where you can actually have tools to start making shifts. So if that is sounding like a fit for you, you are like, yes, I'm ready, take me to camp. I want you to text stay or go community to 3-377. Okay, final piece, y'all. Closing out this episode. I'm so glad I got to share just a couple, like, I feel like these were a little bit behind the scenes peak for you, and then a drop-in with really just, I'm so excited to invite all of you into this camp this summer. Um, those of you that feel ready for it. But I want to finish by saying, coming back to what I was saying in the beginning, you don't have to stay in the rooms that you were handed. Okay. You are allowed to build a new life and one that really feels like home to you. And I want to also offer that I am so here to help you do that one room at a time, whether that is through the podcast, whether that is through the community. Remember, if you're needing more of that one-on-one support, like drop-in, help me, give me the next steps, Britta. You can sign up for the 90 minute by texting 90MIN all one word to 33777. Or Alex has also added at the end of the podcast notes now, you'll see a link in the show notes that says deep dive. And that's where you can be taken directly over to my three-month one-on-one coaching intensive. Along with all of that, y'all, remember please to go and subscribe to the podcast. Drop a rating, if you will. I also am obsessed with and love seeing your reviews. So know that I read all of them. And if you haven't yet, like I said at the beginning of the episode, go pop over to the YouTube channel and maybe watch our next episode there and like and subscribe on that platform as well. When you guys do this, when you subscribe, when you like, you help other women that are looking for me be able to find my work easier. So it makes an actual impact in other women in the same spots that you are in. I had a woman get on uh this week on the 90 minute, and she said, you know, I typed in divorce, and your podcast was the very first one that came up on Apple Podcasts. And I was like, fuck, yeah, that is thanks to all of you. That is thanks to you guys subscribing, to you rating. That puts my work in front of more women more quickly, and it gets them the resources they need, and together we change the world. So so much gratitude for y'all listening and for walking this journey with me. I really hope to see a lot of you at camp this summer. Till then, I'm gonna be able to do that.