" So understanding that about our reactions to our own children. We're not reacting to our child necessarily. We're reacting to something unhealed within us and doing the inner work to actually discover what is that and healing and transforming that so we can be that better parent to our children. We can be better, but we'll never be perfect and I think that's really important to remember."
Are there days you feel you've had it with the sleepless nights, the temper tantrums, the constant fatigue of trying to keep up with an active baby? Does it feel like you're always working so hard as a parent, trying to do everything for your kids and family, and yet it never feels enough? We get it. You love your child more than anything, and yet parenting is also exhausting and challenging.
Especially when you're bombarded with criticism and pressure to be the perfect parent. Which, spoiler alert, does not exist. That's why we created Discerning Parenting, the podcast that helps you cut through the noise and focus on what truly matters in your parenting journey. This podcast is jam-packed with valuable insights and practical tips specifically tailored for parents of kids aged 5 and below.
So join us and discover how you can use the combined power of science, knowing your child, and your own intuition in making the best parenting decisions for you and your family.
Today, I am really hugely honored to have a coach and a mentor whom I've looked up to and worked with for over the past two years. And she has helped me in my own journey as a parent and as a person. In fact, I just told her before we started this interview that if it weren't for my work with her, I don't think I would have had the courage to start this podcast and speak out.
And say some of the things that I'm saying on this podcast. As you'll find out in this interview, we're going to talk about things that here where I am, we rarely talk about these things. Some of them might be taboo or might be discouraged. But if we're to truly help our kids and help our Selves heal also.
These are things that we need to talk about. So I have with us today Natasha Bray. She is the founder of Heart Healing Therapy and she is the founder and teacher at the School of Healing Mastery. She helps women unlock their ultimate uplevel and rapidly receive and hold higher levels of money, love, impact, and success without sabotage.
And while she works On love, money, success, and all of those things. I've found that the work that she does has a huge impact on how we are as people and how we are as parents. So it's a pleasure and an honor to have you here, Natasha. Thank you for joining us. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you, Victoria.
Thank you. Your success story is hugely inspiring, Natasha. I know our listeners would love to hear it directly from you. And each time I hear it, it also brings tears to my eyes and it inspires me. How did you come to be where you are now, impacting people from all over the world through your work? It's quite a big story, so I'll try and It's a little one.
So actually I grew up in in quite a lot of poverty and abuse and bullying and ended up finding a career in social work because of my experiences I really wanted to help others who perhaps were more disadvantaged in life like I had been myself and then I ended up Pregnant unexpectedly, as I thought I was actually infertile and I ended up unexpectedly pregnant and that led to, I guess, a crisis in, in some respects because I was diagnosed with postnatal depression and stress after having my first child.
But this was the moment for me when I realized I couldn't carry on full-time as a social worker. Working on my health to get well again for my child. Also, I had a business I was running on the side for a couple of years at that point too. And becoming a mum and, and, you know, seeing the world through the eyes of a mother for the first time is sometimes a stark awakening actually.
And I felt like it was a big awakening moment for me and a lot in my life had to change. Because I wanted to be the example of a parent that I perhaps never got to have myself for my own children. So that was the moment actually I decided to quit social work, handed in my notice, and went all in on my business.
And that was, you know, it was a very different business back then, but over time developed into a business where I was helping other women, especially to heal, to unlock. more success in their lives. And not just success financially, but as you mentioned, success in terms of relationships, as well, as business.
And that really comes from healing and changing who you are and the ripple effect of that. Very quickly actually, through my own journey of healing myself from all of the childhood trauma that I've been through, and also the birth trauma when I had my first child. Very quickly, I noticed a connection between healing myself and my external world transforming very quickly.
So very quickly within the matter of a few years, I became a millionaire in my business, you know, something that was very Nobody I'd ever known had earned that kind of money or made that kind of money. I, my impact was reaching 70 different countries worldwide, women in 70 different countries. I developed healing methods that were really, really powerful, not just in helping women transform, but also internally and healing themselves, but creating these amazing results in their relationships and in their lives as well.
So I went from a single mom. From postnatal depression back in 2017, to really struggling also to have loving relationships in my life because of my past trauma, to meeting my soulmate, we've been together six years now, having another child, really healing myself and becoming the mother that I always wanted to be, as well as the business leader that I wanted to be.
That is absolutely phenomenal. And thank you for sharing that with us. And I know that the first part of your story where you talked about having postpartum depression healing from childhood trauma, that is something that many people can relate with. And many of the, clients that I work with would have experienced the same thing.
But maybe there are some who are here and then they're thinking, I'm not like that, I'm not capable of being that successful, especially today, parents, especially moms they don't feel enough. I noticed that a lot. I know. Me too, I end up questioning myself a lot. We feel that we're not doing enough, not good enough, questioning themselves whether they're doing the right thing.
So do you also notice this happening in your work and where could this be coming from? Yeah, absolutely. It's actually the first thing I had to work on myself to get to where I am now. And I think everybody has those thoughts of not feeling enough at some point. Especially if you just feel that way about yourself generally, then it will transfer into all of your different roles in life.
Whether as a, you know, in your job or as a parent or as a partner, I think it will transfer across all those different roles, really. And I think especially as a parent, even now, you know, after all of the healing I've done, I still catch myself thinking, am I a good enough mum? You know, and I, what I like to tell myself is that if you ever think that It's because you already are a good enough mother to even be considering in a way, am I a good enough mom?
That's so true. And I love it. I see your posts about you spending time with your kids and how they are and how you cuddle up in the mornings. You have two wonderful and adorable little boys. Oh, thank you. You have a wonderful relationship with them and they seem very, very sweet. They are, they are. And, and, it was actually having them, really, that, maybe, perhaps, In the past, I didn't quite have the worthiness or the self love or the ability to create a lot of change in my life for myself.
But having them was like this extra motivation, this new motivation. What I found was I learned to do it for them before I was able to do it for me. Yeah, that's true. Our kids really encouraged us to heal in ways that we may not have had. Push before. Yeah, absolutely. I remember, I distinctly remember the moment when just after the postnatal depression was lifting, actually, when then I felt like I was seeing the world through the eyes of the mum.
It wasn't like when I first had my baby because of all of the trauma, it was more like after that was starting to And just, actually it really brought a lot of my childhood stuff to the surface. You know, about wanting to protect my child, wondering why I wasn't protected in the ways that I feel I should have been.
Why I might have been treated in some of the ways that I was treated. And a lot of the time, our feelings of not enoughness or not worthiness, come from the way that we were treated in the past. It doesn't mean that we're not worthy or we're not enough. It's come from, we've made that belief about ourselves because of past experiences.
When you talk about trauma, what are the usual types of trauma that you encounter in the clients that you work with or, Because usually when people think of trauma, they first, the first thing they think of would be like the victim of a crime where the person is in jail or growing up in a war-torn country, and there are some forms of trauma that now we see may have affected them.
Sometimes people don't recognize it. So what are these less-recognized forms of trauma? Yeah, you're so right there. The, the traumas that people most recognize are those big T traumas. We refer to them as big T traumas, you know, such as the ones you just described there, or the death of a parent, for example, or, some sort of serious health accident or injury, that type of thing.
But also most of the trauma that I work with actually, and I often refer to it more as wounds than trauma because people often don't realize they have trauma. Everybody has trauma. But actually, most of it comes from something we call little t trauma, which are actually everyday experiences that, Everybody has had at some point in their life where they've been made to feel a certain way.
So feel, if something made you feel not good enough, it is classed as a little t trauma. Something made you feel not worthy is classed as a little t trauma. So some examples could be, you know, maybe one person doesn't feel good enough because their parent always compared them to their sibling. So they felt like I'm not as good as my brother or sister.
But somebody else might not feel good enough because they've compared themselves to their best friend and they've done the comparison themselves. So they're two different experiences and two different causes, but the feeling is still the same, not feeling good enough. Another example is a parent who wasn't emotionally available for you, for example.
And you felt that there must be something wrong with me. I'm not good enough because they don't want to be present with me or they don't want to spend time with me. And as children, we make everything about us. We make We make it all mean something about us when something happens because we don't understand that actually the way other people are and especially our parents and other family members is actually because of their trauma and their wounds.
On the big T trauma and the little t trauma and so they're responding to their own wounds and triggers and the way they are is never actually anything to do with us as the child. That's so true. And I know that some of the examples you gave are things that many of our listeners will be able to relate to.
But sometimes when they hear something like that, okay, fine. So I was always criticized. I was always compared with my siblings or my cousins. I never measured up. They always told me I wasn't good enough. And then they will question themselves. Or sometimes other people will question them or even gaslight them and say, that's nothing.
There are kids who are growing up with nothing to eat. You always had enough to eat and you're not grateful. So there's always this minimizing of trauma, but deep down they tell themselves that they know they don't want to raise their kids that way. But they end up questioning themselves because they're surrounded by people who tell them that that is the right way to parent a child.
In fact, there are people who say that all this avoiding of trauma is making our kids too soft and making them less resilient, which we know from science that's not true. Trauma doesn't make them doesn't make them more resilient. So what happens is, they end up being confused. And sometimes responding the same way that, they see modeled to them when they were kids.
And even if they have these parenting strategies, it can be difficult to break free from how we were raised. So what could be missing besides simply knowing the strategies? I, I know the typical parent would be reading a lot of parenting books looking at all the parenting tips on Instagram, saying, Okay we need to speak kindly and respectfully to our kids.
In the end, sometimes, we end up speaking in ways that we regret later on. Like I've had parents who come to me and said, I ended up losing my temper yesterday. So did I traumatize my child? So I keep telling myself to stop doing it, but I still keep on doing it. So what could be missing aside from the strategies?
Well, the first thing I want to say is that there's no such thing as a perfect parent. And even, you know, with the, even though I've done so much healing on myself, there'll still be times that I've. reacted in a way that I wish I hadn't and I think the key difference is the repair piece. Now a lot of us who experienced that in childhood with our own parents that feel, you know, not good enough, not loved, not enough, all of these things, we probably didn't have a repair with that parent.
Now resilience doesn't come from experiencing trauma. There's two key factors that are important for resilience for children. is a parent, that loves them, that they have a loving relationship with, that they know they are loved by, and also a safe home environment. Those are the two key things that a child can weather any little thing and it won't affect them in like a traumatic long term way necessarily when they have those two key resilience factors in place.
So the key thing is making sure that even though you may have a moment where You know, you're human and you react in a way that you didn't want to react. Making sure that you do the, you, you create safety again with your child and apologize and explain, I'm sorry it wasn't about you. And, you know, just.
Being able to apologize and explain to that child that that was all me, I was wrong, I shouldn't have done that, and I love you, and reminding them that you love them. So it's making sure that those two key factors, safety and love, are still there, and that can repair any of those little human moments that all parents have.
You know, we're often juggling lots of different things, and we can react in ways that we didn't want to react sometimes. In terms of what is missing, there probably is some awareness around the, the repair side of things, which I know strategically you teach that type of thing. But also the healing of what is creating that response in them in the first place.
Because as I said earlier, the way our parents were around us wasn't because of us. It was because of something they were reacting to from their own trauma and wounding and often is found in their own childhoods and sometimes their own relationship with their parents as well. So, understanding that about our reactions to our own children, we're not reacting to our child necessarily, we're reacting to something unhealed within us.
And doing the inner work to actually discover what is that and healing and transforming that so we can be that better parent to our children. We can be better but we'll never be perfect and I think that's really important to remember. That is so true and the resilience factors that you pointed out that's Really beautiful.
And in a way that can be reassuring also for the parents who are listening to us, because if you're listening to us here, then I know that you're giving your child a safe and loving and nurturing home. You said also it's about healing. It's a deep healing of what we ourselves experienced. So can you talk about the healing method that you.
pioneered which is heart healing and it is truly revolutionary and I can talk about this because I trained with you but I want our listeners to hear about this directly from you. What is heart healing and what makes it unique? Okay, so heart healing is a therapy method that is used while somebody's in the subconscious state.
So what that means is they're usually in a deeply meditative state or hypnosis, and it means that we can access the true root cause of why they might be having anger episodes, for example, or why they don't feel good enough, and we can really really very quickly discover the true root cause of that and transform it in order to release them from the negative impact it's having on them in their parenting, in their lives, in their careers, in their relationships.
It impacts every area of life when we work on it. Now what makes it different and unique in some respects is that it works specifically with the wounds of the heart, the universal wounds of the heart, which means everybody has these wounds. Which are around not good enough, trust, so struggling to trust themselves, not lovable, not worthy, and struggling to accept themselves as well.
And what we do is we focus on healing the relational trauma aspect. So we can have experiences Negative experiences that make us feel bad, and then we have these other experiences that make us feel bad, and there's somebody we love or was close to was the person involved in that experience. And this adds a different layer of wounding to work through because that person was meant to make us feel good.
So it's not just about recovering and healing from the experience, it's recovering and healing from the person who was involved in that experience that led to that wound developing. Most people have trauma and wounding around their parents and the way that they were parented, even if you know, even if that person was the best possible parent, because parents make mistakes, they're human beings, and they can't be perfect, but also the way you can never control how a child interprets something.
So you could have done something from the best intentions or your own parent, for example, could have done something from the best intentions, but if it wasn't received that way and you've given yourself a story about what that means, the story will have created the wound, not necessarily the intention of the parent or the adult.
So we work with healing all of the hidden, well I say it's hidden because normally people just go around their everyday lives and all of this is going on on a much deeper level than the conscious mind and they just don't know it's there and they don't know it's actually affecting them in all these different areas of their lives.
So very fast very, very quickly, we can identify the true root cause and create healing on the relational and emotional level, which frees that person to have a completely different experience in all of their relationships, the relationship with themselves, but also with their children and even with their parents and just affects everything in their life positively.
May I ask you about the mother wound? What you were saying reminded me about this, and I know that this is something that I hear you talk about, that, we may have a mother wound, and this is one of the things that we can explore and heal in heart healing. So can you tell us more about this?
Yeah, sure. well, our mother was the first relationship that we ever had whilst we were in the womb, so I think some people might disagree, but I believe it is the most important relationship, actually, is the relationship that is the blueprint for all other relationships that you have in life. And we can have a mother wound for lots of different reasons.
Some of those bigger traumas that we mentioned, you know, abuse, for example, abuse or a mother that Abandoned you, like all of these bigger reasons, or we can have a mother wound. If your mother, so we talk about love languages, for example, your mother showed love through practical things like cooking your meals and making sure you, your, your clothes were always ironed and you were always clean and all of these practical, what we call acts of service.
ways of showing love. But if you actually had a different love language to your man, and you really needed words, you needed praise, you needed to be told, I love you, but that was something your own mother struggled with, you will have a mother wound there. Because you will have this knowing that I was loved, but I didn't feel loved.
And because of you, you didn't feel that emotional love that you needed. But your mum was still showing you love, it was just in a different love language. So very often it's like a miscommunication of love languages between mother and child that can lead to the mother wound as well. Yeah and I'm glad you brought up that example because that's really a common thing that I encounter also in the clients I work with.
I've had a lot of moms tell me that growing up, they actually never heard any praise. So the typical thing I would hear is my parents told me what I needed to improve and what I did wrong and how I can make it better. And the only thing, the only way I know I did it right is if they are silent.
And but. They feel guilty for even thinking that that is wrong because they will think that, Oh, my parents provided for everything for me materially. We weren't starving. We had everything we needed. They were working hard for us. So they feel guilty about feeling that there might be something missing from their childhood.
End. They know that they want to give their kids a better experience, but at the same time, they also question themselves, like, if I praise my child, is my child going to end up spoiled? So I guess these could all be stemming from experiences that have been wired into their subconscious, which is why, we do in heart healing.
It's not just. The conscious thoughts or the conscious mindset, but we go deeper. We go into what has been wired into not just the subconscious brain, but even the DNA. I remember in our Facebook group with your practitioner, Natasha. There was this time we were also talking about how doing work like heart healing actually can change.
So if we have DNA changes from trauma doing this healing work also does change the DNA and there's, growing scientific evidence for that, which is quite interesting and exciting also. Yes, definitely. There is, yeah, epigenetics where trauma can be passed down through the generations, through the, through the genes, but also energetically in the behaviors and the way that parents act.
But we can also do that the opposite way as well through healing that and breaking the chain essentially and creating a new pattern to pass down for our own children and future generations. That's true. You've done a lot of work on intergenerational healing, which is something that many of the clients I work with, they're actually the courageous ones.
They're the ones who are, want to break free from the cycle. So at the start of this episode, I said, I'm going to talk about things that are not usually talked about. Because I guess although there's growing awareness about things like intergenerational trauma, sometimes calling out things like okay, when sometimes it's still common to hear adults scolding or criticizing a child, let's say, for their appearance.
And then it's taboo to call to call them out and say, you know, you're not supposed to do that. That's not right. And then, let's say somebody calls a child stupid, or fat, or ugly, and then you call them out, you say, that's not right. And then they're going to say, well, you're being too sensitive, there's no harm in that, it's just a sense, you have no sense of humor.
So, there are all these, Small. Well, they seem small, but we know we don't know how big the effect is going to be. So there are all these everyday happenings going on that, I think I would like to call out. That's one of my advocacies.
And this can, this can be part of the intergenerational trauma also, people feel that, oh that's always how we've treated kids, we heard things like that from the older generation, it didn't affect that, why is it affecting kids today, they're the glass generation, they're too sensitive, so there are all of these ideas.
How can heart healing break this cycle of intergenerational trauma so that they don't pass it on to their kids? And I guess a little bit about affirming that indeed these are practices that we need to call out and we need to change if we're going to, raise a better and more respectful generation.
I think first of all, it's so important to know that our parents and grandparents were products of their generation. The world has changed so much since then. And also research has changed so much since then. We know what impacts children. Things like you know, where children used to be taken away.
Babies were taken away from their mum and put in a separate nursery in the hospital. We know now that that actually creates separation trauma for babies. And that's not a good thing. So in some ways, they're just products of their generation and their environment, but actually we're a different generation.
We have different wisdom and knowledge now that, and we also have our own wisdom. And it's important to trust that, that this didn't work for me. You think that that worked for you? Well, maybe you're in denial, but actually it didn't work for me. And from my own wisdom and my own experience, I will choose to parent my child differently, regardless of what research says.
Actually, that didn't work for me. And I'm not going to pass that same experience on to my children. And I think it's very important, you know, there will be some people in life who are overbearing with their opinions. And, you know, you should do it this way, do it my way. I've had ten children and I know how to Child and all of these things, you know, and it can make you doubt yourself as a parent, but ultimately you've, you've all, you've got a mother's instinct inside that is telling you when something's not right, or telling you that actually, no, that, that way of doing things.
I don't think that that is what I want to do. And it's having the courage. Like you said, your clients, they are the courageous ones. Having the courage to do things differently and be the difference in the world, that actually doesn't just impact your own child. It will impact their children as well.
And it has this huge positive ripple effect for so many more generations to come. Imagine their impact on the entire community also. Yeah, it's huge. It really is huge. And I think where heart healing comes into that is all of those wounds around the heart that have been created.
We can heal those so that we can be more open hearted parents. We can trust ourselves to do things our way, no matter what other people say or try to influence you. And know that your way is enough and that you know your child better than somebody else might. And just to share one instance that after working with you and also getting a heart healing package from one of your senior therapists also I also had more confidence to speak up.
For example, I heard somebody just saying to a group of kids, okay, fine, you're all well behaved now. In a few minutes, you're all going to be fighting with each other again. So it's like the kids can't win because when they're misbehaving, they're called out for misbehaving. When they're behaving well, people are going to say, yeah, that's just now.
Later on, you're all going to misbehave. And, here where I am, you do not. Disagree with people older than you. It's taboo. At that time, I had the courage to speak up and say, you know, things like that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so if we label them as misbehaving, even when they're behaving well, they are going to live up to it.
And I think everybody there was so shocked that I dared speak up, but I guess that's one of the effects of heart healing. And now I'm speaking up, not just in these instances, but also through the books and through the podcast and I knew that everybody can have, the confidence of feeling enough and recognizing that something needs to change and being a part of that change, having the courage and the confidence and I guess the clear path to making that change.
Yes. I love that. I love the work that you're doing, and as you say, it's so important where you are as well. But it's important across the whole world, I think. Yes. You're doing some amazing work. Thank you so much. So how can they work with you if one of our, if our listeners listening to this, they say that this is something that I need, something that I would like to experience.
How can they work with you? Anybody listening who wants to find out more can head over to my website, schoolofhealingmastery. com, and they can find out more about heart healing and what we do at the school over there. Also, I have my, my other personal brand website, natashabray. com. Thank you. So we'll also link to these sites in the show notes.
Anything else you'd like to share, Natasha? This has been such a deep and inspiring interview, and I know we touched on so many deep And moving topics today. Yeah, no, I, I think like probably one of the biggest, the most important things that you've touched on that is courage. It is actually courage is my top strength.
When I did a strength finder before courage is my top strength and it's having the courage to do things differently to the generations before us to create a different results for the generations after us. That is so beautiful. In fact, as I heard they said that we need one generation of parents to all be loving and kind and respectful.
And then after that, the kids after that, from then on, we'd have more respectful and more peaceful work. So there we have it. We have Natasha Prey and her work and head over also to DiscerningParenting. com. we have free parenting guides. We have a free parenting toolkit. I also have a free masterclass about whether an adverse childhood experience or a traumatic experience could be affecting your parenting.
You can sign up. For them for free. And you'll also get on my mailing list where I am also one of Natasha's heart healing practitioners. So, you can get on the wait list so that when I have slots available for heart healing again. You can you'll be one of the first to know. And aside from me, there's Natasha and her team and her trained heart healing practitioners from all over the world.
So imagine that ripple effect that Natasha is creating. And she also has her books and she even has a movie which is going to come out also. So if you head over to her website there are many resources there. She would have these wonderful masterclasses from time to time that are really life changing and where you can get a taste also of heart healing.
📍 So thank you. Thank you so much, Natasha. It is such an honor and a privilege to host you in the Discerning Parenting podcast today. Oh, thank you. It's been amazing. I've been really happy to be here. Thank you. Bye bye.