One Degree to Victory
Welcome to One Degree to Victory, the podcast where we help navigate life's toughest challenges while building the emotional security and freedom to live their best year yet. Each episode provides practical tools, heartfelt stories, and expert insights to guide you through day-to-day experiences and chart a path toward new possibilities.
Whether you're overcoming trauma, pursuing self-care, or redefining your future, this show will empower you to turn adversity into adventure for both yourself and your family.
Tune in to unlock the strategies for lasting success, and let's create your BEST year ever!
One Degree to Victory
How to Heal When You Hurt! With Natalie Bedard
In this heartfelt conversation, One Degree to Victory sits down with Natalie Bedard of Lift OneSelf to unpack the subtle ways trauma shapes our nervous systems and everyday behaviors. We explore how protection can disguise itself as avoidance, and how true healing begins when we create space to feel what was once too overwhelming.
If you’ve ever wondered why certain emotions feel unsafe or why quieting your mind feels impossible, this episode will help you reconnect, reframe, and return home to yourself.
Connect with Natalie below:
Natalie Bedard (NatNat)'s Website
Lift OneSelf -Podcast
Natalie is also a podcast host.
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🌐: One Degree To Victory
I pray that the roots of setbacks, storms, satanic attacks, and even self-sabotage erode, crumble, and wither away, to be replaced by the incorruptible strength, peace, and joy that only heaven can give that will neither change nor fade.
Today's conversation is one of present thoughts and possibilities. You will feel both fit and challenged to face your fears, question old assumptions, and open yourself to abundance. Take a deep breath, settle in, and let this conversation guide you back home to yourself. Joining me today is Natalie Bedard. Be sure to visit Natalie at liftonself.com and connect with us on the One Degree to Victory website on the other side of this podcast. How are you?
SPEAKER_01:I'm well. I'm well. It's Wednesday. Uh breathing. It's uh space.
SPEAKER_02:I'm good. I'm breathing. Learning how to make space. It's not easy because I'm always ready to go, go, go. That's just a part of who I am. And so I have to be very intentional about making space for myself.
SPEAKER_01:Well, if you'll allow me, I'll I'll uh do a mindful moment with yourself, myself, and the listener so that we can learn to cultivate that in our everyday and give ourselves permission. All right. So will you um for the listeners? We have to be mindful that a lot of times they're driving or needing their visual. So when I ask to close your eyes, please don't safety first. Yet the other prompts you're able to follow to take this mindful moment uh and be as present as you can. So is it Nalita? Is that is that how you pronounce it? Okay. So Nalita allows you to get comfortable in your seating. And if it's safe to do so, you're gonna gently close your eyes or soften your gaze, and you're gonna bring your awareness to watching your breath. And if you're able to do so, you're gonna breathe simply through your nose. You're not gonna try and control your breath. You're just gonna be aware of its rhythm, allowing it to guide you into your body. There may be some sensations or feelings coming up, and that's okay. You're safe to feel, you're safe to let go. Surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be. Now there may be some thoughts or to-do lists that have popped up in your mind, and that's okay. But gently bring your awareness back to your breath, creating space between the awareness and the thoughts, and dropping deeper into your body. Being in the space of being. Again, more thoughts may have popped up. Gently bring your awareness back to your breath. Beginning again, creating even more space between the awareness and the thoughts, and completely surrendering into the body, into the present moment. Just always bringing that awareness back to your breath. Allowing there to be a little bit more opening, more space in your body. You may be aware of maybe certain pains or aches or certain sensations. Just hold this moment for yourself. Take a deep breath in all the way down to your belly. Letting your whole body be oxygenized and do a big exhale out of your mouth. Just let everything go. Take another deep breath in and exhale, letting it all go. Now at your own time and at your own pace, you're gonna gently open your eyes while staying with your breath. So these mindful moments are things that we can do while we're doing dishes, while we're sitting on the toilet, while we're in traffic, while we're even speaking with somebody. A lot of times we use language for communicating and we don't allow a lot of silence and listening. And really doing a check-in with ourselves of how are we interpreting the information, what is coming up for us. That might be putting a filter and not really listening to what another person is communicating to us, and also being aware of how is this making you feel and not just going into the performative and the mass that we've created in this world to finally allow ourselves to be authentic with ourselves and check in with ourselves, and that leads us right into our conversation for today.
SPEAKER_02:We have met a couple of times before this lengthier conversation we're gonna have. And you introduced me to a new way of reframing my trauma. And I want to start there because a lot of the times the mindfulness and the coming back to who we were and the centering ourselves is overrun by our emotions and our inability to move beyond the pain and the grief and the loss and the suffering and the the stuckness, for lack of a better word, that trauma leaves us with. So, what is your reframing of trauma, Natalie? And before you answer that, how is it that you came to that realization? How is it that you're able to re to um to share, to share that reframing with yourself in the world? How did you integrate that?
SPEAKER_01:You see, since I've been young, I've had a kind of knowing, a kind of insight that I thought everybody knew. And it's been kind of my North Star of guiding me. I experienced a lot of different types of trauma. And for me, trauma is separation from self. There's an experience that ignited the nervous system to be in a lot of fear, then to not be able to process the emotions. So it shut it down, and that's where we get disconnected from our body. What brought me, there were three instances that really brought me into it. My firstborn of motherhood that brought me into worth, back into my worth. Even though it was external, I didn't have any motivation for myself. But here was this little one that brought motivation that I could see for him and do for him. I couldn't do it for myself yet and be in that worth. The second one was with my twins that came into this world to disrupt. So I wasn't able to run away from myself. And then the third one was when I had the lesions in my brainstem and in my cerebellum, which I was told I was gonna die. And that gave me a front seat to the nervous system, understand you know, these chemical dumps, these belief systems, these emotions that are coming up, and these kind of masks that we put on to perform in a sense of safety. When I first discovered it, it didn't feel good. It was a lot of defensiveness, a lot of attacking, self-loathing, that inner critic was very loud. Yet I learned how to integrate that and learned that, oh, you're coming up to try to protect me from feeling deeper emotions that I never had the ability to process. Because some people will tell me, oh, I know how to feel emotions. And it's like, yeah, you know how to emote, yet do you know how to process? Do you know how to listen to those emotions and allow them to pass through and not drown in them? And that's the thing that a lot of people feel, and then they drown in it and they get in the looping of the storytelling and the negativity and the darkness of it, the self-loathing, because that feels comfortable. That feels predictable. When we open ourselves up to abundance, you can't predict abundance. And so the nervous system and the mind doesn't like that. It gets intimidated by that because it's too vast. And I need to control by predicting. So if I stay somewhere that's predictable in comfort, then it feels safe. But our work is to come back into our body, create safety so that we can allow ourselves to receive. Because a lot of people that have experienced trauma, they're great at giving. Yet to receive feels like a threat.
SPEAKER_02:You're calling me out, and myself too. So two things you said, three, but two things you said the trauma is a protection. Then you extend that to say a protection from abundance. So we are limiting when we allow ourselves to drown and in those emotions, we are limiting our abundance, our potential for abundance. Is that what I hear you say? Okay, and I consider myself to be on a healing journey, and I I can honestly say yes, it is very difficult for me to receive. Why is that?
SPEAKER_01:Because it's unsafe. You're putting yourself in a vulnerable situation of either feeling rejection because somebody might say no and not be able to help you. So you can feel that emotion, because that will trigger up possibly some abandonment. And then most of us, when we were young, we were told to figure it out. So there's hypervigilance, and that feels more safe for yourself just to do it, so you're not disappointed and you can just get it done. Because to open yourself up to somebody else means you have to allow them to have some control of what their process is and also reveal your vulnerability of not having it all together. So it's safety.
SPEAKER_02:Let's go back to processing those emotions immediately after the trauma to even be able to get to the place to say, I'm I'm ready to open myself up to abundance. So when I'll just use my my trauma, for example, when I went through that entire season of loss and grief and I did not know who I was, and the the out of body is spot on because I felt like every day I was waking up in this vast nothingness in space, and I literally was trying to hold on to myself and bring myself back. It was a time where I could not figure myself out and I had to go uh into myself. What is that messiness? We talked about that before, but share with a listening audience what is happening in that trauma and in that messiness.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the messiness is that you're no longer gonna use blame as a safety mechanism internally and externally, that you're going to take accountability of what you want to do in the present moment. A lot of us want to go backwards and think that that's gonna fix it all. And it helps to process the charges, yet you can go all the way back there and lose a lot of time of what's present right now. What are the actions you want to take to build? And when the emotions surface, how are you going to process them now? Mm-hmm and develop that it's a muscle, it's a skill because your nervous system is still in protection mode of no, we don't feel these emotions. They're unsafe. So, how can I feel this emotion and not lose my sense of time and not lose my sense of being hijacked on my behavior and not being able to take the actions that I want to do now rather than what it was to be reactive. So, you know, when explaining this, there's a lot of nuance. And when we explain our inner experiences, it can be very challenging to put it into words for somebody to really understand what that means. You know, when people are going through the where they're like, oh, I know exactly what you mean. And it's like it's so profound. And I try the best in my ability to simplify that because it's not just one thing that's happening, there's several things that are going on. And so it's like a negative and a positive polars that are attracting. Yet it's like two sides of a coin, but it's still the coin. It's not to look at one side or the other side, it's looking at the coin as a whole. And we haven't been taught that. We've been taught to do the all or nothing to try to get rid of stuff rather than do the integration. So when you're doing the integration of messiness, it's being able to be accountable to see, well, like I did that or I really did that. A lot of times people think messiness is only about self-loathing and criticizing and finding the wrong in you. No, it's also recognizing you didn't cheer for yourself, you didn't champion for yourself, you had a lot of mistrust and you doubted your intuition, you doubted your skills, you doubted your ability because it didn't measure up to what the world said it needed to be. And when you start going inward, you see that there's a different power to be carried with.
SPEAKER_02:So when you're wading through that messiness, it's not necessarily about cleaning anything up. It doesn't have to be. It can be a part of that. But in my experience, the greater part is the integration. It is all of this stuff has gotten jumbled, all of who you are, everything you were, your past life experiences has all gotten jumbled, and it's lost the meaning or and it's discovering. So for me, I realized it's kind of the messy middle was kind of a learning experience, but I did not realize that until I got to a certain point, until there's a growth journey, and I and that's gonna be different for everyone, I think you'd agree that we're gonna arrive at that point in different spaces as we're going through and growing through that traumatic event. But you said something about that, and it was it's not the event, it is the processing. We did not have the space or the tools to process the event. So the trauma is what, and that's part of that nervous system, right? So, what is that? Tell talk to us a little uh more about that processing and that nervousness, because that's so fascinating to me.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so many of us as children, even as adults, we do it because it's just ingrained that emotions are a la carte. So there's only certain emotions that are acceptable and can be felt and uh witnessed and experienced. Say you had um a traumatic event and you were emotions arised, okay? It could be that you felt helpless, yet your protective mechanism had to come in and bring anger or bring fight or bring whatever there was frozen, fawning in the experience, okay? And then in that, you started to interpret what those emotions were with a mind that had no experience. And if there wasn't somebody outside of you to help co-regulate and talk through what those emotions felt like, how you identified the definitions you created, a script started to happen. And most of us say, for instance, you know, you were beaten as a child, and then you cried, and then you were told, I'll give you something to cry about. So then you swallow your crying because you don't want more beatings. And so, and they're telling you you have nothing to cry for. You started listening to the lie outside of your body that, oh, this emotion is invaluable and it's unsafe. So I can't feel this because people outside of me are telling me that I am not to feel this, I am not to express this. And so then you start to create a space away from self, a space away from the body, from feeling these emotions. And then it creates this kind of barrier inside. So the nervous system programs it of, oh, if this starts feeling, we go into this mechanism and we just swallow the tears. And it creates even more space from self because you're not able to feel your authentic emotions and your authentic expression. You're going into the performative of the lie that was told to you. So to break those lies that were scripted into you, and many of us can can relate to being told when we were young, stop crying. What are you crying for? Yet nobody really asked us really, why are you crying? What are you feeling? Let's get underneath that. What is causing all of this? And a lot of children, you know, we're invalidated for their sensitivity. They see the world exactly how it is, and that can be very overwhelming to a body. And if you don't give enough proper space to contain that and give it language, then they start to create, you know, this division and these other characteristics and this splitting in the mind to be able to fit into a world that doesn't make sense. And so the returning home, as I always say, is coming back into the body and coming back into self and feeling these authentic emotions. And they're going to be big because they've been stored for so long. So it feels like a tsunami. And emotions are chemical dumps. So there's a lot of chemical. That's why physically, when you feel anger or you feel sadness or there's a numbing, there's chemical releases that are going on in your body. You know, neurologically, we know that, you know, emotions are 90 seconds of a chemical release. Yet when you're going through those tsunamis, five seconds can feel like a lifetime. So you want out. I want to push the button. I don't know how to feel this. I gotta many parents can relate to if your children are screaming and it just irks you just a little, you start to scream back at them to stop, stop. I can't, I can't. Rather than being able to breathe or remove yourself from there until that sensation is diminished, and then you can come back into language and articulate what you were feeling and how what they're doing is creating inside your body, not blaming them that they're the problem. It's taking responsibility of what it is instilling and igniting in me.
SPEAKER_02:I saw a mother on an airplane recently that that story you, that example you gave brought this story back. And the small child, and we were on the airplane, and the baby was crying, and everybody on the airplane was like, No, this child's gonna cry like for the entire ride. But what got me was the mother kept telling the baby to stop. I I wanted to help, but I didn't know how to let that mother know this baby doesn't even really know what's going on with itself right now, right? We've got all these pressure changes, these people, you know, all of these things, this this overstimulating environment for this child is probably what's causing that. And so you telling the child to stop. I mean, I showed like 15 minutes, just stop, just stop, and doing all the things the baby eventually just cried itself to sleep, you know. From infancy, we are told to stop, to stop feeling and to stop the emotions. The child obviously didn't have the language, and that's no fault of the child, but how as parents, and that's part of that mindfulness, though, are we going to be able to recognize when we're doing that to our child and being able to create these safe spaces for them so that if a trauma or an event, a life-changing event happens to them, they don't do the spiral. My kids, they knew that I was in pain. They knew they left me, they would leave me little notes. My daughter once wrote, Mom, we can get through this. We have faith in you. And I was like, Well, Lord, I don't have faith in myself, so I'm gonna have to have faith in you. I did not have anything else to to grab hold of. I was completely lost in who I was, and all of my focus was on I cannot let my children down. Like that's the only two things, God and my kids, much like you. So, what are some, if they don't have that relationship, if they they don't have an anchor to anchor them, what are some ways that parents can recognize, you know, whoa, you're you're not giving this child space, or I need to be able to create this space and change this environment in my home.
SPEAKER_01:You see, your mind, uh, when you were telling the story, I know many listeners were probably like, yeah, the mother's so wrong. Like, how could she not see? And it's our mind wants to find the guilt and the innocent. And it's I when I was hearing that, I was like, Oh, I'm sure the mother felt like an inconvenience around everybody else and didn't want other people to be uh, you know, any baby crying really activates nervous system of high alert that there's something wrong, and how do we nurture? And many of us haven't learned the skill of being with crying too, of not giving it language, but holding space and just helping to soothe.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Of just it's a you're safe to feel this and let it process through, not trying to feed it, not trying to coddle it, like get it's like just be with it and not pull away from it because it's very activating in the nervous system. You can have knowledge, you know. Many of us know what to do. It's just to get in our body. Like you mentioned, you're like, I wanted to help, but I just didn't know. So, us in a society also, we haven't learned to be community and and be like, How can I support you? How can I help? Because sometimes when you go to ask somebody for help, like offer help, you get bitten because again, because they have to be in that. And so we have to learn not to take those things personally, yet that's its own work, also, to not get activated by like I'm just trying to help you and you're pushing all of this on me. It's like, let it pass through, recognize that they don't have the ability to receive or articulate what was going on. The main thing about parents, I think, you know, what I always champion and advocate is that what they don't tell you is that you're going to have to witness pain in your children that you can do nothing about. And your work is to be with your own turmoil and not try to project and soothe it out from your children. It's like, how can you hold space for yourself so then you can hold space for this human's experience? Because it's going to be different than yours. They have a different nervous system, although it's very similar because their nervous system came from your nervous system, which came from a plethora of other nervous systems. So recognize children can read frequency. You can say everything's fine, but like you said, your daughter was like uh writing new notes, we have faith in you. Even though she could feel certain things and not maybe she could verbalize it, but didn't feel safe to bring that to you. And a lot of our children are not given a space to be truth tellers yet. So for parents that are listening, it's it's the work is being able to feel your emotions. Yes. And especially if you've experienced trauma, your children are a mirror for yourself. Say if you were physically abused or sexually abused, or there was a significant trauma at a certain age. When your children turn that age, say at the age of two, something happened, all of that's going to be like, oh, we have a space to actually process this now. But you're looking at the child saying, like, why are you like this? Why? And it's not being able to ask, what am I actually feeling inside? What is being activated by what this experience is? But we're told mostly to fix the child, that there's something wrong with the child, and it has to fit into society to feel safe.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Where we have to do the work of what's coming up for us internally, that we're not really seeing a human being. We're seeing our role as a parent and that we have to be perfect in the world, that this can't be messy and be able to work through of what are the emotions, what are they experiencing, and creating some emotional intelligence with language and that it's it takes time.
SPEAKER_02:I wanted to come back to you talk about emotional sobriety. I saw that term. What is that? That is that is that what you're leaning toward right now?
SPEAKER_01:No, emotional sobriety is what I would love everybody to come into. A lot of us numb our emotions. We don't know how to feel our emotions in the raw state. And unfortunately, when our emotions come up, they usually hijack our behavior into reactive patterns of protecting and to defending. Yet the more that we can expose ourselves into what we're feeling and not go externally, then we have a more ability to process and to listen and recognize this tightening of the chest or this warm or this intense feeling that's coming up. I can be with it. I don't have to yell, I don't have to run away, I don't have to numb. Yet it's exposing yourself little by little. It's like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought that up. The the emotions and the behavior. I was gonna ask, well, I have another story for that one too, that in the moment as we're moving through and we haven't, or we're trying to learn to deal with the trauma and all of the emotions as we have to, we still have to go to work. I was at one point so overwhelmed or so irritated. I don't even know what triggered me. I went off on that man. I was so ashamed of myself. And I I went back to the truck and I was like, oh my gosh, Lord. And the spirit spoke to me and said, You're gonna have to go apologize because you can't even find a reason. That man just works there. He is not responsible for the other person bringing the truck over. That person isn't responsible for the person getting the produce. You know, I mean, it's just a larger chain at work here. And sometimes, and I've noticed for me, I have to take a step all the way back. I have to fall way back and give yourself space to. To see the chain. That person, they have a limited amount of power, just like you do in that moment. And I had to go and apologize. And there was no excuse for it. I know where it came from. My kids are in the hotel. Like, I need this money. That's what truck driving is all about. Let's get this hustle. Still, it was so embarrassing. That's part of that messiness that you have to move through and you have to own it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And that was huge safety. When we feel unsafe, and just like you said, your children are home, time, money, finances is our biggest safety. And so to go through that with our nervous system is a big storm. And so when it gets to the pressure where it feels like we don't have, we're going to go into our reptilian brain and I call it my pit bull comes barking out and biting and everything else. However, what you had was a self-awareness of being accountable and recognizing your behavior. Many are not even at that level. And to be, you know, perfect is no such thing. We're going to be imperfect. And so to be able to catch ourselves, that is the work. Because a lot of people think that once I do the work, I will be perfect. I won't make any more mistakes and everything will be peaching and we'll be kumbaya and sailing. And it's like, have you seen the world? Do you know how difficult it is to human with other humans? And when things don't line up, what comes up within yourself? And when life is lifing, how you have to surf the tsunamis of waves and everything else that go on because of, you know, the scripts and expectations that are created in our mind and everything else. And so when those things come, you know, kudos. Because now you're recognizing just like me, some people aren't even aware of what they're doing. And sometimes I'm not even aware of what I'm doing. So let me be as mindful and as self-aware of when my triggers are happening, when something's coming on, so I can talk myself off the ledge before I jump and I'm not aware of what I'm doing. But we're gonna jump off the ledge. Like to think that once you already know, it takes time for the body to feel safe to can we trust this? Can we trust to take a breath? Can we trust to take a pause? Can we trust not to just go with emotion? Because impulsivity is very, very strong. To detach from the impulsivity takes a lot of mindset and mindfulness and body awareness of, oh, you're trying to pull me into this pattern that I'm used to thinking that it will protect me. Let me breathe. Let me hold space. Let me take a pause so I can slow it down so that I'm aware of my action and choices. Doesn't mean you don't still feel the frustration and anger and sadness. That's not what emotional sobriety means. It's that you're not allowing it to hijack your behavior anymore.
SPEAKER_02:So another term for that would be like your your emotional intelligence. When we take those moments of safety and mindfulness, it has to be intentional. And how what are some strategies that you can share with the audience to get to that point of intentionality with their emotions?
SPEAKER_01:I want to make it clear being direct with people, there's nothing wrong with that. Some people have to be told about their boundaries and their behavior, okay? A lot of times people just want to be like, oh, nothing affects me, and I'm just passive and everything. And you can do that. Great. Yet the reason why we have anger is because there is injustice and there's things that are not there. So we can use anger in a proper way. It's just most times we use anger to offload our fear, and we don't know how to be with that. So I just want to, and you know, I'm very clear about befriending anger and finding out what is the psychosomatic, the thoughts that we're creating that are that is instigating fear. And fear has a a good charge to it. So it's very easy to feel anger, and it feels like uh we don't realize we've created home in that. And so it's learning to unpack and come out of that chaos. So tools, as you said, you're self-aware that there's certain mechanisms like that's coming on. It's like, whoa, I'm activated. Let me pull back and check in with myself of what am I actually feeling? What was just processed and whatnot. Because people don't realize sometimes it's a smell, sometimes it's a sound, sometimes it's a season. Your body interprets in different sensations. It's not just always the way that you think it's gonna be. So that's why, you know, it's very nuanced and it's having to be aware moment by moment of what's going on within and checking in. So one tool that I, you know, we did the mindful practice of focusing on your breath. So even in doing that of checking in with your breath and going in, what are you feeling? Is there tightness? Is there rigidness? Am I numb? Am I not feeling? So that you get some body awareness that way. When you're going through transitions, say, you know, a lot of us are like, if your parents get the kids to school, then get to work and get this, we don't even know how to take a moment to transition from experience to experience to off-charge whatever there may have been of high intensity of stress, or we got into an argument, or we were really happy and something else happened. So taking moments to check in and uncharge and come into this new moment, this new experience with transitioning. If you know that you are agitated, put a hand on your heart, put a hand on your belly so that your body can be grounded that you're here because you're present and you're feeling. And a lot of us need a human touch to help that oxytocin and co-regulation. But a lot of us feel like we can't do that for ourselves. It's somebody else. And don't get me wrong, it feels very soothing when somebody else can witness us. It's very, very powerful. Yet we also have that power of witnessing ourselves, of being there truly for ourselves and holding and allowing our body to communicate with our us that you know what, that felt really uncomfortable or that was really intense. So that you can start having some language of what's going on internally in the interactions with people. That's good. But that breath, if you can always, and you see, a lot of people are like, oh, I'm gonna use it when it like, you know, the building's on fire. No, this is not when you're gonna use the tools because your brain's not gonna be able to, and your body's gonna hijack because it's gonna want to protect. It's not safe right now. I don't know what to implement. You implement these when you are in a safe place so that it's not something that you just like, I'm gonna use this tool. It's in your being. Times, you know, languages that I use to remind myself, I tell everybody, remember to be kind to yourself. And, you know, when somebody hears that for the first time, there's tears and they're like, How did you know? And I'm like, it's because I have to tell myself all the time. When I'm telling somebody else this, it's a reminder for myself because when my inner critic comes up, when I feel unsafe and the defense mechanisms come up, whoo, it doesn't feel good inside. The language doesn't feel good inside what's going on. So it's reminding, come meet it with kindness. Find out what is underneath this activation. And also the simple phrase that I tell everybody is I appreciate you. And a lot of people are like, Well, what did I do? And I'm like, you don't have to do anything for me to appreciate you. So creating language so that we create a world that feels more open. And even if somebody rejects it, it's not about looking at the rejection, it's looking at how is this helping me to walk in a world that I don't feel activated and dysregulated all the time. So creating some language for yourself. The healing really is being in self and when your nervous system gets dysregulated that you regulate it. See, a lot of people think healing is going to be I'm healed and my nervous system will never get dysregulated. And it's like, that's an unhealthy nervous system because it needs to get dysregulated in this world. There's fear that happens, there's activations that have to happen. It's recognizing I've left home, let me return back in. And so that's what the healing is is coming back in. And sometimes it takes a long journey to come back in. Sometimes it's like right away, it's we recognize, oh, wait, we we lost ourselves for a minute. So being able to understand your biology. Many of us don't understand our biology, and we want to be something other than what we are. Yet if you don't know where you are on the map, you'll always be lost. And so it takes some honesty and trust. The reason why we put our hand on our heart and our belly is so that we can invite vulnerability to be seen and witnessed. When you have experienced a lot of trauma, vulnerability feels like a threat. And intimacy feels like a threat. And though we're craving it so much on the outside, what we're really craving is the intimacy with ourselves and that we can be seen fully, not the parts that look all nice and polished, that we can integrate all of our parts, the ones in the shadow. You know, that shadow work that people talk about are the places that maybe you are people pleasing and you don't want to admit it, or you feel helpless, or you make mistakes, or you're unorganized. And when you bring it to the light of your awareness and you have understanding and compassion for it, and then you can see, oh, you're unorganized because of this, that you allow context, that you bring the light of your awareness to those shadow parts so that they don't hijack because it feels unsafe and nobody can see this part of us. Because if it does, it's gonna smash the role, the mass that we have in the world. And then that's gonna feel unsafe because people will disconnect, money might leave, our integrity might go, like all these different thoughts and beliefs that are in our mind. And those things are very powerful. Yeah. So when we speak about this, this isn't it's very simple, yet it's not easy to apply. And that's why it's always suggested to work with somebody so that you have that co-regulation with your nervous system. Because if you are going in there and you have no idea, that bad boy, which I call a wild stallion, is will buck and kick and drag you all over the place. And you're like, what the heck? And then you'll think that there's something wrong with you, where it's like, no, your nervous system's protecting, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Yet let's start recognizing that we're not here to tame the wild stallion. We want to be able to ride it and guide it. Oh, I like that. So, how can we use that power for our benefit, not just be asleep to it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I like this whole idea of integrating our experiences and not closing them off because I think that's part of the abundance of life and living. And I'm I'm finding that out as I move through uh my whole journey from from the trauma forward. I had a question about fear. Can perfectionism be born out of fear?
SPEAKER_01:You answer it.
SPEAKER_02:Mind us. I guess yes. Why would we have to be perfect? I want it to be the best in whatever I do, not necessarily for everyone else, but for the value that was instilled in me. My mom, I was horrible at math. Just I always needed a tutor for math, like from junior, well, not junior high high school, all the way through high school, I needed a math tutor. My best was a C, even with a tutor. But I was so proud of that C. You know what I mean? So so I wanted to be like the best for me. Now, do I have high standards? Probably. Yes, yes, I do. But sometimes, Natalie, I get caught in a trying to be perfect loop. I get caught in a perfectionism loop. Is that born out of fear or just habit? Why do you get caught in that perfectionist loop? You know, I wanting to be it goes in and then it goes back again, wanting to be the best. But in this new experience, what is the best?
SPEAKER_01:Why do you need to be the best? It's just for me. Oh deep.
SPEAKER_02:It's just that I know that I put my best foot forward. So when it's related to me, does that when you do your best foot forward?
SPEAKER_01:Why does it not meet that standard of your best?
SPEAKER_02:Why isn't it the best? Ah, that's good.
SPEAKER_01:You see the conflicting information.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, yeah, I'm I'm showing a real life so that people can understand the conflict that goes on inside because it's hiding. The part that I I'm trying to draw out is hiding.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it is. So, what happens when you don't meet the perfectionist? What does it feel like in your body?
SPEAKER_02:I get angry.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. What else?
SPEAKER_02:I get angry, and then I go into what I thought was lacking that caused me to believe that the best wasn't already presented. Does that make sense? So I go and I find another tool, another strategy. I go and read another book, I go and listen to someone else. Like I try to feel whatever I think was lost, even though I don't know what it is. I don't know. That's interesting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:How were your how was you said your mother? So how was your mother with your math?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, she just hired me a tutor. She was like, I'm gonna get a tutor for you.
SPEAKER_01:What was your demeanor? What was her demeanor, I mean?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, she's an educator, she was fine with getting a tutor.
SPEAKER_01:She took me to how did she how did you interpret how that was like her motives behind it? How did it make you feel that she got you a tutor?
SPEAKER_02:Supported. Like, yeah, because she said you, you know, do your best. So my best ended up being a C. So isn't that interesting? So maybe I'm looking for another tutor if I fit if I don't feel like my best is there. I eventually started getting A's in math in college, but that's because I got it. It clicked late. I was a late bloomer in math. So I'm wondering.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know that you were a late bloomer, or it's that it didn't feel safe. I don't know. That's a good question. When we go into the perfectionists, it's because perfect means there's no mistakes. And everybody's gonna adore and value us and look up to us, and then we don't have to ask for help from anybody. That's the that's the key.
SPEAKER_02:Not asking for help. That's the key for me.
SPEAKER_01:And when you don't know how to ask for help because it doesn't feel safe, and there's emotions trying to arise that you haven't been able to integrate fully. Yeah. And that might be something that you experience your lifetime because your nervous system is so intelligent. And so it's like, oh, here you are again. It's like, okay, let's do this opening. Yet the more that you do the practices and recognize it, the more it feels safe. Okay, like I I got armed again, and it's like, no, no, this is okay.
SPEAKER_02:And so you're telling me and the audience, and that it's to make mistakes. I cringe even not mistakes. Say it. It's okay to fail.
SPEAKER_01:And no, say the other word. What other word? Mistakes? Yeah. Fail and mistakes, which which one feels more? Makes me cringe more. Okay. So that's your work right there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Why can't you make mistakes? That's a good question. What happens when you make mistakes?
SPEAKER_02:Again, I go back to figure out why I made the mistake. I try to close the gap between what I wanted and what I missed. And in that gap is the mistake.
SPEAKER_01:You're analyzing.
SPEAKER_02:Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01:I no, you're analyzing, and I want you to come into your body. Neck up is safe. I want to bring you into your body. What happens when you make mistakes? How do you feel?
SPEAKER_02:How do I feel when I make mistakes? Disappointed.
SPEAKER_01:What happens when you feel disappointed? Put your hand on your heart. Feel into it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, let's see. So the question is what ha what happens when I feel disappointment. That feels funny. Breathe. I go into I'm going to fail at this endeavor. That's what happens. Like I feel not worthy. Or like something is holding me back. However, in order to prove that voice, that limiting belief, and that voice wrong, that's when I start being that's when I go all in. And that's the beginning, which is interesting because we're kind of going back to the beginning of this podcast. When you had me breathe because I couldn't find space. And I can't find space today because I failed at something. And the attempt to rectify that failure and that mistake, I was going to do it all today. Ooh.
SPEAKER_01:So you're going into hypervigilance.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And so we want to interrupt that hypervigilance and recognize because when you fail, there's no future.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Yes. That's it. I'm tunnel vision. That's tunnel vision, isn't it? Like I can't see another way around except this way. And I will not be denied this way. Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01:And so there's no ways of different possibilities. And curiosity is tethered. You're not letting curiosity to come out. So that's your biology protecting you in that what that feeling and that scripting is. So your work, as you just saw, it's like, oh, it's just one or the other. But where's that space of me feeling more and allowing that feeling to come up? That, okay, I failed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I be just with that for a moment? Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't feel good, as you saw. Right. And we, and if the listeners were tuned in, they could feel it in their body also, what that feels like. Yeah, we don't hold enough space for that to arise so that it doesn't hijack us into the script of hypervigilance and get rid of this. Yes, yes. Like solution base isn't a problem. Finding solutions, but many of us don't find a solution. We're trying to find a way to soothe and cope and make this feeling go away. So if we go busy and go hyper-vigilant, boy, we run, run, run and we get rid of it. Rather than let there be a space to feel that. It feels like failure right now. It's not your identity, but we feel like it's our identity when we're going through the feeling. And it's starting to use language because many people are like, I'm a failure. I'm no good at this. It's like, no, I'm feeling like it's a failure. I'm feeling disappointment. So you create a space because if it's your identity, there's nowhere to go.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's who you are. Yet that isn't who you are, but it surely feels like it when you're going through the experience and the sensations and feelings. And that's why when you are in a regulated state, it's creating this language so that when these storms come up, you're like, oh, wait, wait, wait. I know there's space somewhere where I can reach. Use my tools to regulate this big beast. And you're gonna go into your patterns and you're gonna see, and then you're gonna come back and you're like, oh, it didn't last so long. And or it did, or I got to learn a little bit more of this. And then it's like, oh, and then you'll notice certain people activate it because you have this scripting and you've put them on this kind of pedestal and it activates something. So then it's being aware of let me be mindful when I'm around these interactions, all this stuff can come up. So let me slow it down for myself so that I'm aware of me and don't get drawn out. So that's why I'm saying breathing through the hypervigilance and the impulsivity, it's warrior work. Because that thing will will make you feel like that's the holy grail and that's the only way that you can get out of this, which is true. That was what the nervous system did to protect you. Yet to interrupt that pattern, it's like, ooh, that doesn't feel too safe to do that. Yet once you do, you see there's more space, and then curiosity can come out to see other possibilities. And the big thing, allow context. You didn't allow context for yourself. Many times when we were scolded about mistakes, no context was brought in. You should just know better. Yeah, where learning is about making mistakes. Learning is not about perfection. Learning is about making mistakes. If we know it all, then what the heck are we doing? The world should be in a much better state. But academia makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:People refuse to learn.
SPEAKER_01:And that's making mistakes. Wow. Because it doesn't feel safe.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So they stay limited. Natalie, thank you. I didn't have my regular avenues, and that's that space you were talking about. I didn't have that space to process that trauma. I didn't have my regular avenues to get me out of the loss, the losses that I was going through at the time, because those things are not what held me. They didn't keep me. If they could have kept me, they would have. They didn't. Yeah. And so I had to find other avenues.
SPEAKER_01:And for the listeners, you know, I just said the hand on the belly and I showed the breath. Yet I have a free gift on my website, liftoneself.com forward slash free gift. And it's a seven-minute type of meditation that will walk you through eye movement, which can help you help regulate that vagus nerve so that you can come into presence and process. It has the breathing exercises and it has some visualization to be able to integrate with that nervous system. So you can go on there and get that free gift so you can get some tools. And then you can see what it is to work with me. And if you want to further go in, I have that workshop, the emotional sobriety workshop. And I also have the private sessions, the return, which are one-on-one, so that we can dive in specifically on what you have and what you want to engage in. The biggest thing about this work is your willingness. If you have willingness, there's so much that can open. Yet if you're not wanting to be willing, then the nervous system's going to like hijack and just like, nope, there's no need for this. Because it will just justify and argue its stance because it wants to protect. So your willingness allows a space that we can release this armament and we can explore internally. But it is, it it has its parts. And, you know, it's not about going full force, it's being able to integrate, reset, rest, pause, and go through again. But the rest and the pausing is really important for integration. You don't need to catch up. You don't need to go finding what the work is. Everything's right in front of you. And once you start going within and you build that self-trust within yourself, there's things intuitively that start to make sense and that come very naturally and very easily. Where other things it would have been so long to get done. Yet that self-trust is the biggest part that we've been led that we don't know and not to listen internally, and that it's not safe to make mistakes. Did I say it right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, you did. It is always a pleasure. Thank you for being our guest conversationalist today on One Degree to Victory.
SPEAKER_01:I want to thank you for doing the alchemy. You are taking those impurities and you're turning them into gold, yet you're not keeping that gold for yourself. You're sharing it with others, with this platform, with the way you're being, the way you're doing your work, because we, you know, transfer energy to each other. So just when people are in your presence, they can read, you know, what you're doing and the change and the spaces and stuff like that that is going on. So thank you for the work and your light and what you bring into this world. It's been an honor to connect, and I am very grateful that we have this connection.