Beyond the Surface: Deep Emotional Healing

Transformation starts when you go beyond surface-level healing. In this episode, we explore why quick fixes like affirmations and mindset shifts often fall short, and why addressing the root of your emotional patterns is essential for lasting change. Learn how deeper healing reshapes your inner world, business, and relationships, and discover practical tools like the TRM method to help you break free from cycles of self-sabotage and embrace true transformation.

Transcript

00:01
Hey you, welcome back to the emotional revolution podcast. I'm Kayla Birch and today we are digging deep, like really, really, really deep. And we're going to be talking about why surface level healing just doesn't cut it when it comes to creating that real lasting transformation that you're looking for, both in your life and of course your business. So sure, those journaling affirmations, quick mindset shifts, all of those things are important and they have their place. But if you are still feeling stuck, it's

00:31
truly a sign that something deeper needs your attention. So in today's episode, what we're going to do, we're going to explore what deeper emotional work looks like, why it's so important and transformative for you, and how it can change not just your inner world, but your business and relationships as well. So if you're ready to stop putting band-aids on big, big, big wounds and start experiencing real change, this episode is absolutely for you. So let's dive straight into it. So when we think about

00:59
this aspect of surface level healing. Like what even is that? What am I even talking about when I talk about surface level healing? So I mean things like journaling every once in a while, or maybe you are journaling and you're not doing anything with the information that comes up. There's just quick affirmations. You just say this affirmation like I am powerful. I am this, I am that, but it's not backed by the true belief.

01:26
There's a lot of work that needs to be done there with that. Or you're just too busy focusing only on external results. And that is a lot of that surface level healing. And it's also really prominent in the personal development space to continue to learn and learn and learn and learn and learn and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. And yes, while that's important, if we're doing that by suppressing what's really going on by going deeper inside of ourselves, then we just keep repeating same patterns. They may look a little different.

01:53
the package that they're presented in may be slightly different than how it was before, but really it's just a lot of motivation without a lot of deep understanding of self. And so we're likely going to sabotage ourselves in the future. So it's really important to recognize that this surface of our healing, it sounds really nice like, okay, I can lose this belief so quick and I will never think it again. But that's just not simply how it works.

02:19
I say that all the time. We have to go deeper inside to understand why those patterns keep repeating themselves over and over and over. Those emotional triggers won't go away. Those patterns won't go away. Or that constant feeling of being stuck won't go away until you go deeper. And so it's such mind candy to think that we can just go out there immediately.

02:44
flip a switch and everything that we've ever thought and we've conditioned and we believe will change. And we're told that, right? There's lots of gurus out there. There's lots of different spaces that tells you this course, this workshop, all of this will change your entire life. You can manifest the life you want in this 15 minutes. And although those things are really useful, if you're not addressing deeper than that, I promise you, you're gonna stay stuck. I see this all the time in clients.

03:12
I saw this for myself. It is something that I find to be so incredibly powerful and overlooked and honestly, just not cool, right? It's just not cool that this is part of our society where we're selling these quick fixes instead of being willing to go deeper. So you're getting tricked into a quick fix and then you are like you invest all this money into something, a program or a person and then you come out very much the same as when you went in.

03:40
There was no fundamental shift. Those fundamental shifts have to come from going inside. So that's what you really have to focus on here. And affirmations aren't going to do that. Affirmations aren't gonna change your entire life. Now, affirmations are wonderful because they are replacing a belief, but until you understand why that belief was generated, you will continue to fall into the same traps. And so I think that's really important. So what is that deeper healing that I'm talking about? And

04:07
Why and how does it differ from surface level approaches? Well, deeper healing means we're digging into the root. We're going to the root of those emotional patterns. We're looking at like your childhood conditioning, your limiting beliefs, past experiences. We're really diving deep into all those different things. We're looking at why you're the person you are today. What do you think the way you do? Why did you land?

04:28
in the area that you're in. What leads to this? What are the thoughts and conditions that create your current external experience? That's what we have to look at. And we have to be willing to go there. We have to be willing to dig that up. And that deeper work really leads to that transformation, personal life, business, relationships. It's that complete emotional honesty and self-compassion in the process where we're not judging where we come from, but we're willing to look at it.

04:57
So you have to be willing to do that. One of the things I hear so often is that I'm scared to dig into the past. What if it's too painful? What if I don't know what to do with what comes up? Can I get to the next level without going into the past I'm looking? And I'll say this, no, right, you cannot.

05:17
You have to be willing to look at why you are where you are or you will continue to repeat the same patterns and I cannot stress that enough. You have to understand you don't have to go back into the path pass and say

05:32
Very specifically, like this happened when I was this age and it was at the result of this that it created all of that. We don't have to go that specific, but you have to be willing to take responsibility and say there were things that happened to me in my past that have created my responses. And the reason why that's important is because if you're not willing to be honest, if you're not willing to look at what's happening right now in your current reality, then nothing can change with it because you won't actually understand the complexity and the totality of why you think.

06:02
the way you think or why you're taking the actions that you are or why you're avoiding the things you want to be doing. Because they it plays a role in our past. Our past 100% shapes our

06:13
current reality and that is solely based off of our thoughts and our memories on that past experience. So what we have to do is we have to change our relationship with that past experience and those beliefs and then we can shatter and dissolve them and create different foundations for the way that we operate today. So we can't be scared to dig into the past. We have to be willing to go toe to toe with it.

06:35
understand it and realize it's not happening to us today. That's one of my favorite things to share is yes, what happened to you in the past was real and painful, but it's not happening to you right now. You can you can remind yourself that you're safe and it's not happening to you right now. And so when you go back to visit you can look at it much more objectively and say what do I need to know from this? How can I separate from this experience and how do I use it to shift what's going on with me today?

07:04
And how am I willing to do that? And before we even go any further, I think it's really important for you to stop and actually make the commitment to yourself that you're willing to shed, that you're willing to shift, that you're willing to.

07:17
recreate this reality that you have because unless you commit to yourself, then there's really no point. There's no point in doing this because you'll just falter back to these old habits and behaviors and these conditionings that you've always known. And so when we really think about surface level healing, we think about it in a way that it is so much it feels so much safer because it's like, oh, yes, I've got that. I'm doing something for myself. I'm journaling. I'm meditating. I'm doing breath work. I'm doing all of these things.

07:45
But then you go out into the world and you're not equipped to handle the challenges that come your way. Or somebody doesn't somebody rejects rejects you and you immediately push back and you feel a certain way or you crumble or you quit or you self sabotage. And so that's why their service level healing is because they just make us feel better. It's like this. We're putting a pretty bow on a package instead of looking at what's inside the package.

08:10
And so the pretty bows on it. But then when we open it up, it's like, I didn't want this. This isn't what I wanted. And we're too scared to look. So we have to pull back from that fear of being scared to see what needs to be seen. And it will be uncomfortable, but you have to be willing to step into that. So you have to make that commitment to yourself. You have to say, yes, I'm ready to shift. It's your emotional revolution. You're the one that steps into this, not me.

08:38
I'm not here to take your beliefs. I'm here to challenge them and have you look inward to challenge them, to see if there is something different, to see if there's another possibility or a solution for you and another way of being. And we can't get there unless we question it and surface level healing modalities keep us on the surface. So now I am not saying don't do breath work. I am not saying don't meditate and journal. Those are all part of the picture.

09:06
But you have to be willing to let go and see what needs to be seen. You have to be honest with yourself and stop waiting for a savior or a solution outside of you to come because it just definitely is not coming. It's not coming. Nobody's coming to save you. You are your own. You are your own person who's going to get you out of the space that you're stuck in. And for me, I was always looking outside of myself. You'll hear this story so often because it's so deeply rooted.

09:34
in my experience is that I was always looking outside of myself to be something different or to experience something different because I just simply couldn't understand how I had that power within me. I couldn't see and experience the power that was within me. I couldn't generate it. I felt I felt I was very much suppressing it.

09:55
And so I had to be able to look deeper. I had to be able to question why. So I questioned everything in the external world. This is what's so interesting about my experience is I was always questioning everything else. Everyone, everything, all the different modalities, the things that people thought, the traditions that we have, all these things I've always questioned.

10:18
But I spent so much time questioning the external world and completely avoiding my internal world because I did not want to look at what was going on in me. I did not want to take that radical responsibility to say I'm responsible for my life. I didn't want to question it. I didn't want to challenge it because I was safe in my self-doubt. I was safe in my

10:39
personal rejection, I was safe in my self-sabotage. And so it was a lot easier to be distracted by looking at the external world and challenging and questioning that. But it wasn't until I started going inward, which is the whole point of this, and started challenging my beliefs and my understanding, and I got past the just meditating to meditate and check it off, just doing breath work to do breath work to check it off. Like if something came up,

11:08
I'd be like, oh, that was released and then I'd move on, but I never integrated that into my life. Integration is massive. Whenever you have something that comes into your awareness, a lot of times we just leave it there.

11:23
And we just maybe push it back a little bit. We were like, well, I actually didn't want to see that. So I don't want to do anything with it. But when we have these experiences and we have these breakthroughs and we have these insights to go deeper than that, it doesn't just stop at oh, this is why the way this happened to me. This is why I react the way I react and say no, no, no, we have to go deeper. What are you gaining from this action? What are you gaining from this reaction? What are you gaining from this state of being? And then we go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

11:52
and also looking at.

11:54
Where is it showing up in my life? If it's showing up here, it's showing up somewhere else. So where is it showing up and how can I go deeper and deeper and deeper into myself? Because I know I'm safe by going deeper and deeper into myself. How do I do that so I can experience myself on a more intimate level so I can change my external environment? And for me, when I got to know myself on a much deeper, intimate level, instead of just completely rejecting and ignoring all that was coming up for me, that's when things started to change.

12:24
when my relationship started to change. That's when my personal confidence went from this fake confidence on the outside to a real confidence on the inside that I knew I could do whatever I wanted to do. I knew I was capable because I was no longer following these stories, these surface level stories. I didn't have to slap an affirmation of I am enough or I am capable because I actually felt that because I removed what prevented me from feeling that.

12:49
That's why affirmations don't always work. That's why you can say them over and over and over, but you stay stuck in the same habits because you're not evaluating why those habits are there in the beliefs that create the habits. So it's absolutely vital for you to start paying attention to that. This is deep work. This isn't surface level work. So incorporate the meditation. And then after that, begin to understand what it was integrated. When you learn something integrated,

13:18
Watch for it in your reality. Look at how in your everyday experience, something is pushing back and showing you how you can go deeper and how you can integrate what you now know and you've learned about yourself. But you can't keep doing that by running away from the challenge. You have to run into the challenge. You have to be able to trust yourself enough to go deeper and deeper into that emotional healing work and not stay on the surface. It's not just this.

13:46
show that we put on. It's not this, you know, expression or this mask that we put on that we're healing, but it's just on the surface. I see so many people like this, that they talk this game of how they are, you know, deeply healed and working, but they are triggered over and over and over and over again.

14:05
And this isn't to judge them, it's to use this as an example, because I was the same way until I really allowed myself, until I was really honest with myself to set into.

14:16
The truth and the truth was is that I was avoiding so many of these things and I was blaming so many people and circumstances in my life. And until I went deeper and I stopped hiding behind meditation or breath work or any of these or mindset work or any of these other modalities that we like to label. And I was saying, well, I'm doing enough. I'm reading. I'm doing this. I'm coaching. I'm doing all these different things, but I was still a disaster. Right. I was still reactive. I was still crumbling. I was still.

14:46
pushing back and that was because I was pushing back on myself. I was avoiding what needed to be seen. I was avoiding that deeper work because I really didn't know what it would be like. It's such a hard thing to step into this work or you are so unfamiliar with it. And really when you have the expectation that it's going to be terrible like it's like I don't know how I'll make it through this. How could I ever make it through?

15:10
knowing or taking responsibility for the challenges that I'm facing right now in my life. How can I be the owner? How can I take ownership of creating my own suffering? That's really difficult because we never want to do that. We never want to take ownership for creating our own suffering. But I'm here to tell you, you're doing it. You create your own suffering. Your reaction to external events does that. And until you start to go deeper into that, you will continue to stay in these cycles of suffering.

15:39
We have to go past the surface. You have to be able to do it. And you have to take a moment right now and ask yourself why you're not willing to. What are you scared of? What are you scared of finding?

15:49
What are you afraid that's down there? Once you start to look, what do you think you're going to open up and then ask yourself, why do you think you're not strong enough to work through it? Because if you keep reacting to the same stories from the past and you keep reliving them over and over and over, they still have power over you. Whatever horrific event happened to you, whatever that story is for you, it still has power over you if you keep allowing it.

16:13
If you keep giving it this power to disrupt your ability to manage today, if it's still your operating system, if you still make decisions based out of fear, if you still make decisions based out of self-doubt and self-loathing.

16:29
then that still has power over you. So you have to be willing to step into this version of you that is so empowered, that doesn't shake, that does not operate out of our past experiences and operates from today. So we're not overlooking, we're not overriding, and we're not dismissing what's happened to us in the past, but we're recognizing that we are more than that. We are more than what our experiences that have happened to us. And this...

16:56
Reality today can be different by you making that shift and that ripple effect of you doing this deep emotional work from you allowing yourself not to keep reliving things that have happened to you in the past, then you really make a firm commitment and belief in yourself and you go from decision making to boundary setting because you're setting boundaries with the external world, but you're also setting boundaries with yourself because you're saying I'm not doing that.

17:26
I'm not going backwards. I'm not allowing that to be my operating system anymore. And one thing that I hear a lot is, you know, I'm just gonna work on my mindset. If I just believe I can, then I will, which is true. But if you say you believe you can, but deep down, subconsciously, you don't think you're going to be able to do it or, you know, all these other thoughts, boom, boom, boom, are pinging up.

17:52
then you're not going to make the progress. And so very specifically in business, this is such a highlight of a place we need to work on. Because some people are like, I'll work on myself after my business is a lot more settled, but don't do that. Don't do that. Work on yourself and then your business will grow. So how does healing your emotions actually help your business grow? It's a really great question. And...

18:17
It is because our business is a reflection of us. Now we'll go further than business. Our relationships are a reflection of our interstate. Our entire reality is a reflection of our interstate. So when you start doing this healing work, you allow things to flow. You allow your bias. You allow your experience. You allow these things that are hindering you the ones that you don't want to be present anymore. You allow those to open up so you can move through them.

18:47
And it's a really powerful aspect is that you have to be able to relate to, oh, I want to heal emotionally so I can grow in all areas of my life. So my business, my relationships, my relationship with myself and the relationship with the external world can deepen as well. But people don't like to do this work. We avoid it. It's just something that we just don't want to.

19:10
step into it, something that we don't want to experience. And I think it's because we live in such a society that everything gets rewarded right on the surface, and so it doesn't feel like a reward when you sit down and you start to do this work or you're in the middle of a grocery store and you're extremely reactive to your child because they're screaming and people are looking at you and you want to, you know, maybe yell at your child because they are just disrupting everyone around you and that's not how you really feel. You actually want to comfort your.

19:40
child but our society conditions us to want to reprimand a child for being loud because we're not supposed to be allowed we're not supposed to take up space we're not supposed to be these things so that's when you have to question all that you've known everything that you've known and where did it come from and how can I go deeper to say I don't want to stay on the surface

20:04
I don't want to have this false sense of confidence. And I want to just act like I'm really confident that when I get to the car after that experience of my child melting down, then I melt down. I want to really believe that it's okay to express ourselves in these different ways. So whatever this is for you, wherever you are not showing up, wherever you know you have to do this deep work, wherever you know you're avoiding it and you're putting these band-aids on it over and over and over.

20:30
and you're not really experiencing this depth of who you possibly can be. Until you really allow yourself this opportunity, you're going to stay stuck. It's always going to be a band-aid. It's always going to feel like you're coming from behind. It's always going to feel like you are stuck in repeating patterns. And so you have to be able to identify that. Where are you avoiding that depth? What feels too scary for you to go into? Where do you feel stuck?

21:00
What are the patterns that you keep repeating? What are the emotions or experiences that you avoid? Are you avoiding conflict? Are you a people pleaser? What does this look like for you? And how do you really need to be honest with yourself as well? And then you're gonna take a step further and you're gonna commit to going deeper into it.

21:18
What does it look like to dig into the root of your emotions rather just addressing the symptoms? That's what we do all the time. We just address the surface level symptoms and oftentimes and we're doing that we are pointing the finger and blame and shame at other people instead of looking very deep within us and saying, oh, this is my responsibility. Oh, this is what's really coming up for me. Oh, this is actually the belief behind the behavior. So you have to commit to going deeper. You have to be able to look at.

21:47
What is there? And so, of course, my favorite tool for this is my TRM, my trigger response method, right? But you can go to therapy. You can have consistent emotional practices. All these different things can also support each other. Right? So download my TRM and understand how you can work through this for yourself. It's a free resource that I always share in every podcast episode, because it's fundamental in moving through what it is you're working on.

22:15
So dive deeper into that trigger response method. Understand where you're being triggered and also how you can get to that different response that's a lot more peaceful. And then another thing with this is embrace the process. Right. It's not perfect. While deeper healing isn't linear, it will never be. You will feel like, oh, I'm making so much progress. And then, boom, wham, bam. The universe shows you another area that another layer just needs a little bit more of your attention.

22:44
Right. So this doesn't require you to fix everything overnight. You can't expect that. You can't expect to just have all of these responses. You can't expect to have all of these things that need to be seen and then you wake up tomorrow and it's completely gone. Right. It's so subtle. It's such a subtle experience. It's such a subtle process that unless you're really looking, which oftentimes we're not.

23:08
So I really challenge you to look, look for those little moments, oh, I would have responded to that so much differently, six weeks ago, a year ago, three years ago, whatever it is. Look at the difference in my reaction and my response. Let me notice my inner state. Yes, I was a little bit more reactive than I would like, but man, I didn't take that as personal as I did before.

23:33
Or yes, I might have leaned a little bit more into people pleasing, but I also recognize myself a lot more than I normally do. So it's not about perfection within it. It's about noticing those consistent steps. Those small consistent steps is what creates that lasting change. It's what changes our paradigm. It's what changes our foundation. So really allow yourself to look at that. So another thing I want to challenge you to do is just find an area in your life right now where the surface level healing hasn't worked.

24:03
It's a thing. It's your business. It's in your relationships. It's somewhere in your life, whatever it is with your parenting. Where has surface level modalities not worked for you and then start to challenge that? What's the deeper root of that? Where is that coming from? Go into the TRM, start to understand it and understand what you're gaining from keeping it around and why did this pattern start? What are you avoiding within it and how can you get out of it?

24:30
Right. So just get into journaling. I love automatic writing. So automatic writing is when you have a prompt or thought in your brain and it's just as simple as it sounds, then you automatically write your response. And as soon as you start to consciously think about what you're writing, that's when the practice is over. So it could be 30 seconds. It could be 20 minutes. It's somewhere somewhere in there. Whenever your conscious thoughts start to happen, you start to think, oh, I don't know if that's right. That's when you're not automatically writing anymore. But what you do in automatic, right? You write until you can't anymore.

25:01
And then you go back and read it and you get this nice little message from yourself that you didn't necessarily know was in there. So I really challenge you to do that. I challenge you to find something in your life that you do it consistently and it creates a practice for you and you go deeper and deeper and deeper. And as always, I'm always challenged you to go beneath the surface.

25:22
Service level healing will not get you to the next level. You have to be able to understand that for yourself. You have to be aware of your patterns. You have to be aware of your behaviors and you have to be willing to get uncomfortable to go deeper. So all right, friend, that's a wrap for today. I feel like we got deep. I hope that this inspired you to move beyond the surface and really start exploring that deeper work.

25:43
that real deeper work that leads to real transformation and sustainable transformation. So my challenge for you is take some time to reflect on where you might be avoiding that deeper level of healing where you can commit to one small action whether that's journaling, seeking support, diving into the TRM, or using those tools that we talked about today, really understanding it, just making that commitment to yourself. That is what I challenge you to do.

26:07
And so share your breakthroughs, share your insights using the emotional revolution hashtag and let's create real change together. So if this episode resonated with you, do not forget to hit subscribe, leave a review and remember that true transformation happens when you're willing to go deeper and I'll see you in the next episode.