(#114) Healing the Inner Critic with Somatic Tools & Self-Compassion Practices

Self-Love is Brain Training: Somatic Practices for Rewiring Your Inner Voice

In this soulful episode, recorded in Costa Rica 🌴, Rae reflects on self-love, inner compassion, and the powerful journey of healing your relationship with yourself especially during seasons of change.

Blending storytelling with somatic wisdom, this episode explores how self-love is not just a feeling… but a practice. A brain-training. A rewiring of your inner voice.

✨ You’ll hear:

• Why “self-love is brain training” shifted Rae’s perspective on healing
• Personal stories on perfectionism, the Enneagram, and inner critics
• Somatic tools for navigating new beginnings, change, and inner pressure
• How to respond to your mistakes with self-compassion, not self-judgment

This is a grounded, vulnerable, and expansive invitation to return to yourself when life feels uncertain and to meet the most tender parts of you with presence and grace.

Resources Mentioned:

• Enneagram as a self-awareness tool

💌 Want to stay connected? ➡️ Sign up for Rae’s monthly newsletter and get free access to her Breathwork Resource Library, including 20+ guided meditations for nervous system support, emotional regulation, and seasonal healing.

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Scene In Costa Rica
• 1:33 Trip Vibes And Healing Energy
• 3:03 Classes That Sparked A Self-Love Insight
• 4:16 From Athlete Mindset To Somatic Healing
• 5:34 Enneagram One And The Inner Critic
• 7:12 We All Carry Past Selves
• 8:23 Brain Training And Gentle Self-Talk
• 9:43 New Beginnings And Compassion In Action
• 11:03 Rescheduling, Responsibility, And Grace
• 12:05 Boundaries, Authenticity, And Follow-Through
• 13:05 Healing Means Loving Every Part
• 13:45 Newsletter, Resources, And Farewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Ray. I'm a schematic coach and a work facilitator. And if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you are tuning in for today's episode. So for today's episode, uh disclaimer before I get started, I am recording this in Costa Rica. I would not plan it on staying here. But I got stuck here from Snowstorm. So the audio might be a little bit different. There might be you might hear stuff in the background. I don't know what the disappearance is gonna be like, but we're going for it because I really wanted to put an episode out this week. I didn't want to miss it. So that's where I'm at. It has been such an amazing trip. Um, I've just been having the most amazing time. Costa Rica is such a special, special place. It's so healing. It the energy here is like just so powerful. And yeah, I don't feel like all of the shifts that I experience really settle in until I get home usually. Uh, and I have a few more days till I get home. Um, I'm excited to be back soon, but also just like soaking in every second of like the warmth and the sun. I think when I land, it's supposed to feel like two degrees Fahrenheit, which is crazy. So today I'm just gonna kind of riff on this idea of self-love and self-compassion and the relationship that we have with ourselves. Um, I was while I've been here in Costa Rica, I've been taking all different like breathwork classes and yoga classes. And uh they're just kind of like around where I've been. I was in Nasara, which is in the Guanacaste region, and now I'm in Playa Grande. And so both are both places are very different, but lots of uh in Nasara, especially lots of like different like classes and workshops and just like a really big wellness community there. So it was a lot of fun for me. I went to you know a lot of different classes while I was there, and then here in Playa Grande, I think I'll go to maybe like one or two yoga classes, which should be really fun. Um, but yeah, I was in a breath work, a chakra breathwork class um earlier this week, and the teacher said that self-love is brain training, and I thought this was an interesting quote. It's something that stuck with me from the class. You know, I wrote it in my journal, and I was just like kind of reflecting on it, and it had me reflecting on my own experience of self-love and my inner critic and the relationship that we have with ourselves. And this is something that I talk about a lot on the podcast, and it's something that I feel really passionate about. Um, you know, I have had a lot of work that I've needed to do on my inner voice. I feel like that is one of the reasons why this topic resonates with me so much. Um, I grew up as a competitive athlete. So a lot of the narrative that I received was from some coaches, and I had two coaches in particular that were just like really, really awful. And, you know, thank God for this kind of work that I was able to discover eventually because it has truly been just a gift for myself and my my personal life in terms of like the somatic healing, meditation, breath work, movement, really listening to your body. Another thing that I experienced as an athlete was a huge disconnect between like listening to what my body needed and just like pushing myself to the extreme. So it was really one of the biggest shifts that I experienced, you know, post being a competitive athlete of just like, oh no, like I don't need to push myself past my limit. Like it's okay to have a boundary, it's okay to have a need, it's okay to have like a preference. And so I think that one of the biggest shifts for me has been around my inner voice and what that used to sound like versus like what that sounds like currently. And one other piece here for me, personally, that I've learned over the years is and something that I've recently kind of like gotten back into is the Enneagram. I've talked about it a few times on the podcast recently. And so if you are familiar with the Enneagram, or if you're not, you can look it up. Um, they have all different sorts of like free quizzes that you can take. Um, but it's basically like these nine types that you can be. And everybody is a little bit of each one, but there's usually one that it's kind of like uncomfortable to really look at because oftentimes it can be our strengths, but it's also a lot of our shadow and a lot of our challenges too. And so I am an Ennegram one wing nine. So that is good times. That is the perfectionist. So, and there's other a few other names for it as well: the reformer, the idealist, there's the a few of them. But I would say, aside from like anxiety in general, perfectionism has real was one of my first like core wounds that I've been able to process. And that has absolutely affected the relationship that I've had with myself and that inner voice because it's our point of view. So the expectations that we can put on ourselves and that inner narrative um is all you know connected. So for me, mine can be a lot of like looking at how things can improve and things need to be just so. And can you imagine like what that inner narrative might have been like? And maybe you relate, like maybe there's you don't have to be an Enneagram one to relate, but if you do look into the Enneagram, everyone's gonna have their own flavor of like what that looks like, and yeah, we all have an inner critic, and so sometimes when it gets really loud, we can feel alone, but that's not the case, and sometimes we can find ourselves comparing like our inner experience to what things look like on the outside for other people, and maybe we feel like we're doing it wrong, or um, you know, so-and-so doesn't struggle with XYZ, but I struggle with XYZ. But nope, you are not alone. I can guarantee you that we all are all putting one foot in front of the other, and we are all learning and growing as we go. And something that also kind of this whole self-love is brain training thing got me thinking about as well. Is we spend our whole lives like gathering these life experiences, and all of our past versions of ourselves are still inside us, like they're we still have that experience. We can integrate it, we can metabolize it, and you know, grow and heal. I'm not saying we have to live in the past or anything like that, but you know, it is part of our story, it's part of our journey. And I think a big part of it is learning like those parts of us don't have to define us. And although sometimes we can be hard on ourselves when it comes to inner critic, there is this quote I think by uh Malcolm Gladwell, and it's he says that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a skill. And so we put these like massive expectations on ourselves to have like all of this positive self-talk, or to like be a certain way, or you know, in challenging moments, maybe we can be hard on ourselves. Um, but why do we do that? It's funny that we do that because it can take it can take time and effort to re-jigger, recalibrate our self-talk, and really make that relationship with ourselves one that is nourishing and kind and beautiful. And that can take time, just like Malcolm Gladwell said for a skill, it can take 10,000 hours. So the question I would say, like the thing is like, can we not turn on ourselves when things get hard and when things feel a little bit more uh challenging? Can we stay with ourselves in it and not yeah, not turn on ourselves? And I've talked also a little bit about this on the podcast, but for me, sometimes like new beginnings can be hard, like those that change and like the change, whether it's like in a routine or an environment or a chapter, that transition for me can be challenging. Um, and so one example that I could share is like maybe you're starting a new chapter or you're starting a new job or you're moving, or it doesn't even have to be like big things like that, but just like the beginning of something new and allowing yourself to be a beginner, um, allowing yourself to, you know, move through the harder parts with grace, with compassion, um, you know, allowing yourself to not know and figure it out figuring it out as you go. So that's one way that we can like bring compassion into yeah, something that could be challenging, like a new beginning. Um, another example I can share is something that actually just happened for me. So I am in Costa Rica. I was planning on being home like a week ago, I want to say, or no, maybe like a few days ago. Um, but because of the snowstorm, I'm still here. And so I had to reschedule a workshop. And I was so like in the beginning when it happened, I was so upset about having to do this. I felt like I was letting people down. I felt like I was not showing up. I felt like there was like I was being really hard on myself. And then I realized that you know, part of me wasn't really taking responsibility for how I was feeling about it. I was kind of like trying to trying to like, for example, I'm with my husband, like trying to get him to make me feel better. And so I realized like I wasn't actually taking responsibility for how I was feeling about this thing that had happened. And so I allowed myself to be a bit more gentle with myself, a bit more graceful, and got some new narratives. I was like, people reschedule things all the time, like things, these things are gonna happen. There's gonna be so much canceled and rescheduled from the snowstorm, things that are beyond my control. So I was able to get to that place, but in the beginning, it was really hard. So, can we not turn on ourselves when things get hard? And I think the second part of this relationship with ourselves and self-love and self-compass happens in those moments of showing up and taking action. And I don't mean like you know, scheduling a massage, like self-care kind of action. I mean like a different kind. So I mean like what it actually means to change your behavior in action. So a form of taking action in the form of self-love might be like being your authentic self. It might look like being vulnerable in your relationships, it might look like having boundaries or um exploring boundaries if that's something that you struggle with. It might look like trying on a new behavior, trying on something new outside of like what your norm would be, in the form of like really showing up for yourself, keeping promises to yourself, actively practicing self-compassion the next time you make a mistake. Like if the same scenario happened a month from now, how would your actions be different? And then to wrap up this episode, I want to end with this quote, which is healing is not becoming the best version of yourself, healing is letting the worst version of yourself be loved. And I think that is a lot of the work that I am passionate about. It's about meeting those parts of ourselves that can feel uncomfortable, sitting with discomfort and expanding our capacity for safety, um, really embodying that self-leadership and that self-trust and that self-compassion that ultimately leads to greater self-confidence, greater self-knowledge, and really creating your life with intention in a way that feels really, really good for you. So that is what I have for our Costa Rica Riff Self-Love episode. And I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the audio is okay. Um, yeah, and if you want to stay connected, you can sign up for the somatic healing newsletter that is in the show notes, and that comes with access to about 25 20-ish uh breathwork meditations that I add to throughout the year. So I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, an incredible rest of your week, and I will talk to you soon. Thank you for being here and tuning in to Thematic Healing Performance Focus Women Podcast. If you were moved or inspired by today's episode, please take a moment to leave a reading and review on Apple Podcasts. Opportunities to work with me and ways that we can stay connected. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram to follow me at Ray the Somatic Coach. Send me a DM. I'd love to connect with you, and I answer each note that comes in. I am so happy you're here, and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the podcast.