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Heal Yourself Podcast
A podcast diving into all aspects of healing; from the latest in functional medicine, to nurturing your relationship with yourself, and even transforming your money story, we're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.
Heal Yourself Podcast
Episode 34: Navigating Anxiety with Self-Care and Compassion
In this episode, we explore what it means to create a life of freedom, alignment, and impact outside of traditional norms. Guest Cary Ouellette shares her journey from burnout to intentional living and how choosing authenticity led to deeper fulfillment. We dive into the realities of living and working abroad, building a business that supports your ideal lifestyle, and the importance of nervous system regulation in entrepreneurship. This conversation also touches on the difference between safety and expansion, how to hold duality in business and life, and the power of spiritual practice in navigating growth.
About Cary:
Cary Ouellette helps women overcome anxiety and emotional blocks by addressing the subconscious root causes of their struggles. Through a unique framework of releasing limiting beliefs, rewiring thought patterns, and building confidence, she empowers them to create inner peace, manifest their desires, and step into their authentic self.
Find Cary:
https://www.facebook.com/ocaryo https://www.instagram.com/cary_ouellette_/ https://member.caryouellette.com/communities/groups/master-your-mind-community/home?invite=6776e1a2f3e6d0221ae30c7c
https://releaseandempower.com/
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Welcome to the Heal Yourself Podcast, where we dive deep into all things healing. I'm Denise, a speech-language pathologist and a self-love coach for adults and teens.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kira, a traditional naturopath and functional nutritionist, and we are here to guide you through the transformative process of healing your body, mind and soul.
Speaker 1:From the latest in functional medicine to nurturing your relationship with yourself, healing trauma and even transforming your money story. We're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.
Speaker 2:So, whether you're looking to heal physically, emotionally or spiritually, join us as we explore the many paths to wholeness and wellness. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Heal Yourself Podcast. Today, I am joined by a special guest. I'm sorry, guys, denise is not here, but I am joined by Carrie Valette, and I may have butchered that again. She just told me how to say it. Special guest. I'm sorry, guys, denise is not here, but I am joined by Carrie Valette, and I may have butchered that again. She just told me how to say it. Okay, good, good. So she helps women overcome anxiety and emotional blocks by addressing the subconscious root causes of their struggles. Through a unique framework of releasing limiting beliefs, rewiring thought patterns and building confidence, she empowers women to create inner peace, manifest their desires and step into their authentic self, which is all like music to my ears. So, keri, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. Super happy to be here today.
Speaker 2:So tell us. I'm always curious how did you get into this space?
Speaker 3:It was a little bit of a journey for myself. I experienced anxiety as well, and it really came to a head for me when I had my third child and I was in a not a healthy relationship and I had postpartum, and so it was like this whole snowball of events just happening. And that's really when I started my journey on how to heal myself. I wasn't into, you know, just taking a pill to make myself happy. Well, I had tried that and it didn't work, frankly, and I knew that there was something else. I knew it had something to do with me. So I just, on this journey, just started healing myself and it's been maybe 15 years now and I just love where I am right now and I learned a bunch of tools and tricks on the way and now I just really love helping other women deal with their anxiety in a quicker way than I did. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that long.
Speaker 2:Well, and anxiety is such a tricky one too, because, yeah, I mean, there's such a mental piece Like you can very easily send yourself into a spiral. Yeah, yeah. What did the healing journey look like for you? And I know that's probably a loaded question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I I first started taking care of myself, you know, eating wise and making sure anything I was consuming was healthier, and then I gave myself some time to sit quietly, which in the beginning, when I had little kids, that was very, very difficult and I had a lot of guilt associated with taking time out for myself.
Speaker 3:So I grew into putting myself first, which you know I still have ebb and flows of that but putting myself first, doing the journaling, you know, finding different ways to calm myself down, and that took many, many years. But I would say in the last couple years I had a huge shift. I'd say in the last couple of years I had a huge shift and I found this other modality with the subconscious work, and that was really what has triggered me to do this as a business and to support other women and myself. I've been doing it on myself for a few years as well as well, and it's just a wonderful simple practice that anybody can do and it just clears my mind and it takes away that heavy load, that anxiety can have a hold on you.
Speaker 2:I'm curious too you in your bio and we spoke to, but you help women with emotional blocks, limiting beliefs. How did those tie into anxiety?
Speaker 3:Because I know there's a connection we are creating our subconscious and we're creating belief systems about ourselves and the world or just anything.
Speaker 3:And if we have these negative belief systems in our head based on situations that has happened in our lives, for example, let's just say, for an example, that you do a play when you're in school, five years old or something, and you get up on stage and you feel great and then somebody laughs at you or picks on you for that and in your mind you think, well, I cannot use my voice, I cannot show up.
Speaker 3:You know all of these limiting beliefs that stick into your subconscious at that time. They stick with you and as you go on with your life, this subconscious belief system of, let's say, feeling small or not using your voice can happen over and over throughout your life. Using your voice can happen over and over throughout your life. And as a child, you create these belief systems to protect yourself. And as an adult, it does not protect you to stay small or not use your voice. That does not protect you. So we have to get rid of those subconscious belief systems. Now, if you have this belief system of I can't use my voice and this runs in your head all the time, it's going to cause you to feel anxious, and I feel like a lot of people can relate to that one.
Speaker 2:Ah, probably everyone listening. You know people can relate to that one.
Speaker 3:Probably everyone listening, you know Right. So whatever we come up with for protection and our belief systems, and if they're negative, can cause us anxiety, which is a thought and a feeling.
Speaker 2:So this one's kind of a funny question, but Denise and I have been on our healing journey now for a while and subconscious and all of that has been very impactful on us, just looking back at our lives like gosh. Where did I learn that? Do you feel like it's important for people, just in general, to take time to reflect on all of their current belief systems, whether they serve them where those beliefs came from? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, because they prevent you from moving forward in your life. Now, journaling is a wonderful tool to use, and meditation as well, to kind of unravel where these patterns or belief systems come from. It's not always needed to know exactly where they come from, right, but it's great to see the pattern, and I always like to tell people just to step back and look at your life and observe it from a different perspective, like it's not you, and when you can pull yourself away a little bit, it helps you detach emotionally and then to say, well, yeah, I had those six bad relationships.
Speaker 1:I had those six bad relationships.
Speaker 3:There's a pattern In that relationship. Those could also be work relationships. It doesn't always have to be the same kind of thing, but the theme is the same, like where are the themes in your life that keep repeating in a negative way? Yeah, oh yes. Identifying what they are is most important and where they come from is very helpful. So you can release it, because a lot of times we will hold emotions associated with these belief systems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's such powerful work. Like. This is the realm of healing that Denise and I love getting into. Like, yes, the physical healing, but when you're holding on to all of those beliefs, yeah, it can lead to anxiety, but it can lead to physical manifestations of disease because you're just storing that. I will chime in here with something because we all have these beliefs, guys. Every single one of us will start to recognize patterns of like why is this happening? And instead of going into victim mentality of oh my gosh, this always happens to me. It's. Why is this happening? But I will say, not being an anxious person, the one thing that brings me anxiety is trying to figure out where these things came from, because I can't pinpoint. I can see the patterns, but I can't remember where a lot of these came from, and so I like that you said it's not always important, because we can drive ourselves insane with oh my gosh, where did that one belief come from? I can't track it.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, and so what the most important thing is is to think about those patterns that you have and what emotions come up when you're thinking about it. How did it make you feel? Because the feeling is probably the same each time, and that's the, that's what you need to release is that emotion that is gone? You're like, okay, I feel freer, I feel lighter, and then you'll see that that pattern won't happen again. And I'll just say that you also have to take some conscious action. You can a bad relationship and you want to end it, and you have to not contact the person like that would be a conscious action, so you do the emotional piece right.
Speaker 3:But then you also have to say, like I'm not going to call this person, I'm not going to text them, Like I'm going to not do that. So there has to be a balance. But 80% of it all is mindset and doing that subconscious work.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious how do you help people figure out some of those blocks?
Speaker 3:It's really easy because people just love to talk about their stuff. When somebody's in a safe space and I really feel like I create a nice safe space and when you have friends or family members or therapists or whomever where you can feel really safe, you'll just start speaking about the situations in your life and as somebody else who can just see what you're saying, it's so easy to find the pattern because it just comes up. It just comes up and when we really listen to somebody speak, we can hear their core messages and their core problems almost all the time Because it's in our subconscious. We just say it, even if we're talking about money, because money can, you can have a lot of trauma.
Speaker 3:If you'll constantly say, well, I can't go out because I don't have the money, or I don't have the money to pay my bills, or this person is evil because they have the money, I'm jealous of this person. Like, if we really just open up our ears and listen to each other, we can help people identify their traumas and their negative belief systems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even if they can't see them on themselves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. It is harder to see it in yourself or it does take some work because we're so used to it. It's just our way of speaking and our way of listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But one of the things I love to tell people is, if you want to do the self-discovery piece, just really pay attention to what triggers you. What's making you upset? That's it. What's making you upset? It's usually not that thing. There's a reason behind it and there's an emotion behind it, yeah, so look at. You can look at your triggers as what a beautiful gift this is that someone's making me upset or I'm becoming upset by this person's words or actions. That's a sign that you can dig into. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Denise and I talk I feel like we talked about that on an episode. If not, I don't know it's coming but we talk about triggers being lessons, and it doesn't mean that they're fun to go through, but every time you get triggered, it's a great opportunity to ask yourself why is this upsetting me? What about the situation is bringing up this emotion? Yeah, because yeah. Otherwise it's like oh, I'm upset with this person, I'm annoyed with this, I'm pissed off with that. Okay, but what good is that doing for you? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And I also like to say just ask your ask the why question. So if you have somebody who you're living with that isn't doing the dishes, and you're getting frustrated and you have to dig deeper, why is that frustrating me? Well, they're leaving the work for me. Well, why does that frustrate you? Well, I feel like I have to do it all myself, and every time you ask yourself why you can dig a little bit deeper because there's a core problem in that situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it sounds almost like there's steps. First, is even recognizing these patterns or the triggers right, because a lot of times people just brush off the triggers Again. They just I'm annoyed, whatever it is, what it is, but when you can keep digging into but why, but why, but why? I feel like you mentioned root causes. That is how you get to the root causes. You keep asking why is this happening? Or why am I feeling this?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, it's funny. It's like medicine, like I work in the space of functional medicine and I'm like the root cause is not just a deficiency in magnesium or gut flora imbalance. What is driving that? Why are you deficient in magnesium? Are you just not eating those foods? Are you not absorbing? So it's the same thing. You have to keep asking why until there's nothing left to ask Exactly.
Speaker 3:Exactly, that's like. I think somebody teaches that, like asking the seven whys to get to the root cause and it and it can apply to so many different areas in your life. A hundred percent, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, so, once someone has created the awareness, worked through the triggers or at least evaluated them, and even started recognizing these patterns, right, I have money issues. I didn't realize that. I have worthiness issues, or I always pick the wrong guy. What are some tools or strategies? I know you mentioned journaling, but is there anything else you suggest to people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, journaling is amazing because it will help spark conversations within yourself. I also love to do meditation, and just because it brings your body into a calming state and brings you to the now. We spend a lot of time looking forward, looking backward, but really all we have is the now and meditation helps us be present in the now. So meditation is great. Visualization is super powerful. It is super powerful. We could probably talk for hours about visualization, about visualization.
Speaker 3:But you can either have somebody guide you through a visualization or you can create a visualization of even going back into your past and doing some healing work with your inner child. You can visualize your goals and what you want to manifest and so much that you can do with visualization. So those are my top tools for helping with anxiety and uncovering your root causes and also supporting your healing. And, that being said, you do have to take time for yourself, especially as women, and there's so much guilt around taking time for ourselves and it's such a silly thing. I've been teaching some people how to support themselves for manifesting and all you really need to do is take 30 minutes in a day, and I hear this so often is I don't have 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I heard all the time I hear I don't have 20 minutes to sit and do a meditation or a hypnosis or yeah, right, right.
Speaker 3:And if we look at how many hours we have in a day, we have 30 minutes. I often ask people to look at your phone. How much time have you been spending on your phone Just scrolling a lot? And I I'm guilty of that too, and I that's where that conscious action has to take step in and say I am putting my phone down, I'm putting it in the other room, I'm setting a timer, whatever it needs, um, but we do have that time. We just have to prioritize it.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what it is is. It's a priority and it's committing to yourself. If you say you're going to do it, follow through and do it.
Speaker 2:I love the tools. It's funny, I'm not a journaler, I'm just. I keep trying. But I love meditation, I love visualization, I love pairing them, I love self-hypnosis, like that is where I can just get back into my body and, like you said and I say this all the time the past and the future do not exist. It's just the now and that's. I think that's a trigger for anxiety is people are living in the past, worrying, or they're thinking about what could potentially be happening in the future. Yes, so I've got a question for you, just based on things I've seen with clients over the years. Sometimes, when I do say like hey, can we just start with 10 minutes of meditation, like a guided meditation You're listening, right? I'm not just asking you to sit in silence. I'm amazed at how many women with anxiety come back to me and say I can't do that. That made me more anxious. What would you say to that?
Speaker 3:That's a really good one, because I actually just had a client yesterday. So for my clients, I would do a subconscious release session with them, because there's something around them taking time, so they have something about taking the time for themselves and there might be some guilt around it. So that's what I would work on and I would encourage somebody to journal about it. What is the feeling you get when you're trying to meditate and then try to uncover those emotions around it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that can be really helpful. Another one that's come up is it's not just the time, but it's. I'm worried about the thoughts that are coming into my head. Like there's so much that needs to be released and so many negative thought patterns that they get into. So if they get silent and they get present, even if they're listening to an audio, so if they get silent and they get present, even if they're listening to an audio, they're with themselves and they're not used to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And again, that is something I would just encourage people to do, that slowly and then also visualize the thoughts. I often will take somebody through the visualization of just watching themselves in a safe space and it's almost like a detaching, so that their mind doesn't go crazy.
Speaker 2:I love that and that's the that, and then starting slow. Like you've said, sometimes people get all excited about a new modality, right, or supplements or something, and I'm going to take 15 right now, or I'm going to spend 45 minutes in meditation. Okay, If you couldn't do 10, then start with five, start with two. Just start with something instead of saying, oh, that didn't work for me.
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah. And if you skip a day or if you do one minute instead of 10 minutes, there's zero judgment. Yes, you just start the next day. You're in the now. So what am I doing now? What did I do or what didn't I do yesterday?
Speaker 2:which is huge, because women especially men too, I think tend to get into judgment of well, I should have done this better and I could have done that and so-and-so over here did 45 minutes of meditation.
Speaker 3:They feel amazing and don't go there. Exactly, exactly, judgment gets in, it gets ourselves into a lot of trouble in our head. Yeah, yeah, because we judge, we judge ourselves and then we'll judge other people. Not necessarily judging other people like negatively, but, like you just said, um, they're better at that than I am, and there's that pattern to look for right.
Speaker 2:If you're always judging yourself, there's something to dig into.
Speaker 3:Right, Like the feeling of being judged. That's not a healthy emotion.
Speaker 2:It doesn't feel good. No, it doesn't, it doesn't Okay.
Speaker 3:So, anxiety, limiting beliefs, anything else you want to share or dig into while we have a few more minutes. There's one statement that I like to share with people to help them with their anxiety. If they're creating a story living in the future, I always ask them to say is this true? And always, coming back to that, I do it for myself, because none of us are perfect, right, we're all learning these tools over and over again.
Speaker 3:But even for myself, when I start creating a story, let's just say I'm waiting for somebody to call me back and they haven't called me back. Well, they must not want my services or they didn't like what I had to say. And then I have to like stop myself and say Carrie, is that true? And the answer is no, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just making an interpretation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if it's not true, why am I going into a negative? Why don't I just say in a positive or just let it go?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, surrendering is such a powerful tool as well. Such a powerful tool as well, yeah which I love of reminding myself that I did my work, I'm surrendering and I'm allowing. However, this is going to unfold, to unfold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that and I like that. Is it true? Because that can be a great question to ask yourself throughout the day when that judgment creeps back in, because it's going to. We're human and is this true? No, probably not. I'm creating an interpretation and so change it and move on Exactly.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and I also always like to say, too, is we have to have compassion for other people, always like to say, too, is we have to have compassion for other people. So we are all walking around with the traumas on our back and everybody's getting triggered, you know, because of their traumas, and most of the time it's not because of you, and that's another perspective, is like I'm not causing this person to react this way. It is their trauma and their journey and that also helps pull away. You know, just and not working with you. How do they find you? That is coming up on that list and how to reach out to me, and I also, if somebody's interested in working through their anxiety, I do have a free consult. So I I do offer that for people who want to address their anxiety and also experience the way that I operate and the healing modality that I do, and it's really great just to experience it. Whether better than just trying to explain it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sometimes what we do can't fully be explained, right, exactly, but I, I there's so many people with anxiety that I feel are you know, they feel hopeless and it's like, no, there are solutions, there are things you can do. You're proof of that, so it's needed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there are so many different modalities. We're in a wonderful age right now and I have experienced a lot and I've tried a lot and as I go through my life of ups and downs, I have this great toolbox of okay, I need this modality today and I need this modality tomorrow.
Speaker 1:It's just wonderful.
Speaker 3:We're in a great space for healing we really are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so much, and that's the thing. What works for someone else may not work for you, and that's okay. It is about finding those modalities. Like I said, journaling isn't it for me. Maybe it is next week, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Right, right, and around journaling people do have a lot of fear or anxiety around journaling. I just help people grab a scrap piece of paper and write something down. Yeah, it can be a sentence, it can be a couple of words. It doesn't have to be anything, you know, but sometimes in our head we think it has to be bigger than what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, true, awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on here. Everything will be in the show notes, guys, so if you want to reach out to,
