Healing Beyond Health Anxiety
A calming space to explore recovery, resilience, and life beyond health anxiety. Guiding you from fear to freedom, stories, insights, and support for healing health anxiety.
Healing Beyond Health Anxiety
Unveiling Inner Trauma Through Somatic Intuition with Lesley Turner
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In this episode, I sit down with Lesley Turner, a somatic practitioner and intuitive coach who previously worked for 11 years as a naturopathic doctor before finding her calling.
We explore what somatics really means, moving away from logic and into the body to notice sensations, emotions, memories, images, or even phrases that may be connected to symptoms. Lesley talks about the importance of slowing down, approaching the body with compassion, and using simple “allow” statements rather than trying to fix or push things away.
We also discuss the idea that anxiety and physical symptoms aren’t random, and how they can often reflect deeper emotional or energetic roots. Lesley shares her perspective on trauma too, not as something literally stored in the body, but as patterns created within the nervous system, often shaped during early childhood between the ages of 0 and 7.
We talk about anxiety as a protective response, how it can actually feel safer to stay anxious, and why rebuilding self trust comes from learning not to abandon yourself or your emotions.
Lesley shares common themes she sees in her clients, including overwhelm, perimenopause, and what she describes as carrying “suitcases” that don’t belong to you, often inherited patterns or expectations from family.
You can contact Lesley here:
@thelesleyturner
www.lesleyturner.ca
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Welcome to Healing Beyond Health Anxiety, the podcast for anyone who feels stuck in fear, disconnected from their body, or exhausted from constantly monitoring symptoms and sensations. My name is Amy. I'm an ex-health anxiety sufferer, turned health anxiety coach. After my own health diagnosis and years of living with health anxiety, I know what it's like to feel betrayed by your body, to live on high alert, and to struggle to trust yourself again. Each week we'll have honest conversations about health anxiety, fear, symptoms, and recovery with practical tools and gentle shifts that will help you move forward without pressure. So take a breath, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello everybody, and welcome back to my podcast. Thank you so much for being here. So today I am joined by the lovely Leslie Turner, who is a somatic practitioner and intuitive coach. Thank you so much for being here, Leslie.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me, Amy. This is fun.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's so nice to see you all the way across the pond. So, Leslie, can you tell me a little bit about what somatics means?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, soma, if you break down the word itself, the soma is your body. So, what somatics does is take you kind of out of the logic a little bit, out of the head, drops you more into the body in order to see what sensations are there and what those sensations are potentially telling you about your current circumstances, about some something you've held in the body, something you've rewritten in the body. And so I go in with clients one-on-one, virtual or in person, and really kind of a lot of people will get kind of stuck in their story. And so they'll be like, this is why I'm having this. It's because of X, Y, and Z. I'm like, okay, beautiful. I like your story, but let's not get lost in it right now. Let's go into the body and see just what's coming up, what wants to be seen today? And that could be, I have an ache in my shoulder. Okay, beautiful. Let's just sit with that for a second. Um, describe it to me. So it's sensation-based. And then I ask, is there an emotion attached? Is there a memory? Is there an image? Is there a phrase? Anything that wants to be seen has been kind of screaming. We've gotten so busy that we've buried it or medicated it and just avoided looking. And I slow it way down to see what's actually there.
SPEAKER_01Wow, amazing. And that part about being stuck in our story, that resonates somewhere with health anxiety because you know, we can create the most amazing stories, and they are you know created by our minds and so convincingly true. Um what I know is that you know our minds want to they want to problem solve and they want to fill in the gaps. So if we have a sensation, we will want to to find the solution. So, you know, oh I've I've I've must have pulled a muscle when I was doing whatever. That's a story that we tell ourselves, and it makes us feel better in that moment. But for you, coming in there and looking at it from a different angle is so super interesting in terms of you know the work that I do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and from my perspective, so I was a naturopathic doctor for 11 years, and what I found was that there is typically an emotional or an energetic route to physical pain, to physical issues, to the anxiety that's coming up. It's it's deeper than that. So I'm always looking at more the root of it, the very root, not just, oh, you're deficient in this supplement, but something a little older than that.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And so, and so when you find that then, what what how would you work on that thing? You've you found the the route to that particular thing, how would you then focus on that?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we give it space to actually be seen. And sometimes that's 90% of it, because if you're someone who is very busy, if you're someone who is so kind of lost in that story or doing the day-to-day and doesn't have time to have that conversation with the body, with what the body is holding, and having it with compassion, as opposed to layers of judgment, or I shouldn't be feeling this, or oh, that's probably a rotator cup, you know, making meaning out of it. Um, sometimes just seeing it, bringing your awareness to it is enough to shift it. The other piece is allowing it to be there. So instead of trying to like shift, again, I go back to the shoulder. Um, instead of trying to like shift it or get adjusted or um massage it out, just allow it to be there. I allow pain in my body. So when that layer comes up, sometimes we can see then underneath, oh, that's kind of that weight of the world on my shoulders, or my heavy level of responsibility in my world is feeling very heavy these days because of X, Y, and Z. And we don't have to get lost in the reasoning of it, but we have to kind of make space for, ah, okay, I'm allowed to be overwhelmed right now. And those allow statements are kind of the crux of my practice in the sense that most of the time we resist. Oh, well, I'm not that overwhelmed because everybody else is doing more than me. Like we make these stories that, you know, diminish what's actually happening or second guess what's actually happening. Oh, well, I got it. I just have to push through for another week. And what the body is trying to tell you is please slow down. Please listen to me. Please create that safe communication pathway so I can tell you what's going on without having to scream at you with pain.
SPEAKER_01And I think that's so important that the body is always, you know, trying to communicate. It's always but it, you know, in the case of anxiety, we often want to jump to that worst-case scenario. We're not looking at things that are much closer to home. It's really fascinating. How did you how did you get into this work? I know you did touch on it briefly then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I have a very convoluted background. My first degree was in forensic biology. So um I loved crime scene investigation and dead bodies and learning about that. And then I switched gears and I went into naturopathic medicine. I was a naturopathic doctor for 11 years, and I really loved getting into the stress response in the body, like the adrenal care, um, looking at nutrient deficiencies, looking at diet, but seeing the body as a whole as opposed to compartmentalizing it in one organ system or one emotional system or one mental system, and realizing wow, I can't actually give you a probiotic if you have unprocessed grief and expect that probiotic to work like it should. Or I can't give you a B complex when you've got all this anger sitting in your body. And I was trained along with the naturopathic medicine within the four years of being at school, we did learn traditional Chinese medicine as well, the acupuncture points and what organ systems will hold what emotions. And so I had a taste of it in school, but after I was out of school, I really went with, okay, what is the body actually wanting to tell you right now? What is held here? And I started doing hands-on bod for the clients that would come in person and was noticing even intuitively that I could feel anger in the back of the leg. I could feel something about the judgment of mom in the mid-back. I could feel the neck being like, I don't want to see both sides of the story. I'm just gonna hold tight to my version. And then I would, once I started trusting that more, because when that first comes in intuitively, you're like, am I making this up? But when I started to kind of trust it and then speak it out loud to the client, she's like, How do you know this? Like, okay, this is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm feeling. Can you give me more context to this? And then releasing that muscle brought up the emotions that had been held so tightly there, creating the pain patterns, creating the discomfort, that maybe, you know, an adjustment or a massage or even previous acupuncture that I was doing hadn't quite touched because we didn't talk about the emotions. So after 11 years of doing that, I was like, I just want to work with emotions and the deep energetic changes that I can see, uh, the patterning of how the inner child created these patterns in order to survive. And I needed to learn more about somatics. And I was kind of introduced to it at that point. And I ended up dropping my naturopathic license, being like, okay, this is actually what I want to do. I want more freedom and not kind of be in the restrictions of a regulated profession in order to go in the direction I want to go. So it's been three, four years now, and I dropped my license, and I've been doing this ever since.
SPEAKER_01It's totally fascinating, and I love the way that you can you know use your intuition to find out what is going on just by by feeling somebody and touching that that particular part of their body. You you you know automatically. I guess that you know, leaning into that must have been quite tricky, as you said it to start with, to to really sort of say, is this really what you can feel? And you know, am I yeah?
SPEAKER_00I thought it was hallucinating, absolutely. I thought I was like, my imagination is going nuts right now, but it has to come from somewhere. So I was like, okay, I'm picking up on something. Now I didn't know enough about intuition in order to know where it was coming from and who was talking to me and what the body actually meant when it's giving you kind of an image and it's more symbolic versus actual fact. And so that took a while to discern. It took a while to set up my own kind of energetic boundaries so I'm not getting completely depleted every time I'm seeing someone. Um, and now I can do it virtually, which is very cool as well.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Okay, amazing. And yeah, it's it's so, so super interesting. When we talk about storing trauma, and what I see from my work is there's always something that's set off health anxiety. There's something we've been through in our life or other people have. And so what it does is it creates a mistrust, and and therefore that's how you get stuck in this cycle. But for you and the link with trauma, um, how how does your body store trauma and what does that mean? How are you able to come in and help with that?
SPEAKER_00So the body doesn't really store trauma. I want to maybe rephrase this a little bit. The body, the nervous system, your innate intelligence will reconfigure itself because of the trauma. So it will scan your environment differently in order to stay safe. It will do whatever it needs to do to avoid that level of pain, discomfort, or not being in control that happened potentially when you were a child. You know, maybe there was um a circumstance when you were four and you were excited about something. And instead of being excited, your dad goes, I don't have time for that right now. You are not important to me at this moment. And that's what you internalize. So instead of creating this, I have trauma in my body, like it's a whole organ sitting there. We simply rewrote the script, the brain, the behaviors, in order to say, okay, I'm not gonna get yelled at anymore. So I'm going to modify my behavior, modify my belief pattern as to what's in whether I'm important or not, in order to not have dad yell at me anymore. And those are the patterns. I see them as patterns, and I want to make sure you know your audience kind of understands that because it's not you, it's not your truth, it's not who you are fundamentally, it's a pattern that was created in your body in order to not get hit, yelled at, abandoned, unloved from decades ago, and it was real.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I I hear that a lot. Is there a really strong correlation with the inner child?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. You cannot do, I mean, maybe there's people that do trauma work without addressing inner child, but that zero to seven age range is when we are just giant sponges and we're absorbing everything in our world as fact. So if it can be something very benign, like I think I have a six-year-old right now, so I'm very acutely aware of what he's absorbing from me and from his dad and from his environment. But if I let that, you know, penetrate too deep, I'd I'd really be careful with what I said and what I did. But so say he's doing something fun, he turns to me to look for approval, and I'm on my phone, which happens a lot, let's be honest. And instead of noticing the awesome thing he's doing, he then says in his mind, oh, mom's phone is more important than me. This is really, you know, that is not my intention, but that's what his little brain is absorbing. And so if we're not careful, that will dictate how he shows up, excuse me, in the world from then on. That mom, I'm not as important as whatever's on mom's phone. And that's, you know, so sad to think about because obviously that's not true. And what I've taught him to say is, Mom, is your phone more important than me right now? And I'll be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, right. Call me out on this stuff, right? But the same thing could have happened to you as a kid. You noticed something, mom and dad were stressed out, they didn't respond the way you would hope they would have responded. And suddenly you think, I'm too much for them. I'm not enough for them. I my emotions aren't valid, or I need to please in order to be seen, or whatever the pattern is, that love is uncon is not unconditional. Love has conditions, or it's dangerous to be seen by some parents or or authority figure. So you will write those patterns at that young age because you don't know any better and you don't have a language for it at the time. And those will stay in your system, making your decisions, guiding your life without you realizing it, and choosing your partners, choosing your job, choosing your friend circle who then bring it back up to you that you're not worthy, that you don't deserve love in the way you need it, you know? And so it's beautifully designed that way because the more those triggers happen, where someone in your present life triggers something within you, the easier it is to say, Oh, that's still there. But the problem is that we don't see triggers as good, we see them as discomfort, painful moments that we try and make sense of and blame the other person without going, oh, curiosity, compassion, what's still here? And that's what I love to do with clients because we're they're sitting across from me, virtually or in person, and I'm bringing so much compassion to the really heavy moments that they can now see it as, oh, that's been in there since I was four. Okay. So let's talk to the inner child. Let's talk, let's tell her or him what they needed to hear at that time in order to feel seen and heard and protected and loved. And then usually tears come, usually there's a pattern release, usually there's more clarity on what really happened at that time. There's forgiveness that happens kind of automatically. You don't have to force it. And suddenly there's a shift. And this doesn't, it's in a sense, it's a bit quantum like that. It doesn't take months and months to have the shift. It doesn't take months of talking therapy and stuff like that in order to see the results of it. I watch people walk in the door feeling heavy and burdened and stressed and walk out going, wow, I feel a lot lighter. That was amazing. I'm like, I know, because that's all it takes. And it's it's phenomenal.
SPEAKER_01But but for a person who perhaps doesn't realize that's what they're, you know, that's what they're holding, that's sure quite a revelation, isn't it? To come in with something that I guess it's you know, subconsciously that you are holding from a past experience that you know you have no idea, you know, at that age of six, seven, whenever it was, that this was something that had had such a huge impact. And now you've been carrying it, it's been affecting your decisions in life. And and and you know, I guess sort of um taking you down a certain path, and now it's there, it's weighing heavy on you, and you can come in and you can completely shine a light on that. We I talked about I've I've touched on the inner child before, so I find this really interesting. Um, because you know, if you've had a an upbringing where your parents are like, oh, you know, don't climb the tree in case you fall out and you sure break a leg, what happens is you're going to be fearful of you know doing that thing. And so from an anxiety perspective, that creates such a mistrust in doing taking those those little steps for yourself. So I it I find the inner child work really interesting. And that's why I was really you know fascinated to to find out how you how you go about that.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And and it, you know, it the possibilities are kind of endless with what we have made our story from a very young age and what is still impacting us. However, we will start to notice what is a pattern ready to go, ready to die when we're getting triggered by it on a regular basis. When something comes up and you're like, okay, so say your anxiety over taking risks, you know, and and parents are they're so great with doing what they think is right at the time. I have definitely said, oh, bud, be careful to my kid. Um, not hoping to instill an anxiety into him, but just uh, it's an automatic thing that you say sometimes. Um, but so with anxiety of taking risks, it's a matter of understanding what anxiety actually is for you. So when there's anxiety that's coming up, when you can name, okay, this is anxiety, or or first just feel that, and this is kind of individual too, that anxiety is coming up in the body. Maybe you feel it as like a heaviness on your chest, maybe you feel it as a tightening or a gripping of the stomach. It's very individual. Um, and anxiety is we name it anxiety, but it's fear, essentially. Uh, but I feel like it's also our fiercest protector and our most loyal thing about you. Because usually something happened decades ago, whether it was as a child or in teenage years or whatever, that sucked. Maybe you did fall into the tree and break your arm. And so there's this level of holy smokes, I don't want to do that again. I want to avoid that, I want to mitigate harm. And so anxiety comes in as your fiercest protector before your logic brain can actually kick in. And so I, you know, anxiety gets labeled as such a negative thing, but I don't think it is. I think it's this beautiful. Response to something from the past. And if we want to go into the past and see it, rewrite that, we can diminish the level of anxiety response that you have later in life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. And yeah, I see that all the time in terms of anxiety is there to protect you. It's there as a safe measure to keep you safe.
SPEAKER_00So exactly.
SPEAKER_01If you can find its roots, then if that's going back to your childhood, then releasing that is an amazing thing to do. What would that feel like if somebody came to you and you know they were they weren't sure what that was and you were able to help them shine a light on that? What is that like does it like you say, does it automatically just release?
SPEAKER_00So how does that affect I don't even think it releases? I think suddenly we just see it through a different lens. So whether that's a bit more compassionate, whether you have a bit more love for the kid that went through that, um, it doesn't take much. And in fact, when an emotion comes up, all you need is 90 seconds of feeling it before it moves through you, versus say you get that anxiety and you're like, oh, I don't want to feel this. Why am I feeling this? I should be over this right now. Like that will keep it kind of in the body, not processing. But if you allow it, I go back to those allow statements. Um, things can move, things can flow through you. Is it released? I don't know. I don't really use that word, transmuted maybe, but it's not as cut and dry as you have this emotion, you feel it, and it's gone. It's just loved. It's loved.
SPEAKER_01Maybe, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And in terms of when you're when you have anxiety or panic, how is that? What's happening in the body when you're carrying that? What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think what you like pathophysiology-wise, nobody really cares. Like they don't need to know what's happening as far as like the organ systems and the brain firing. It because it can be different for everybody, but it's more what's the story underneath it? What's that root? So if you can, if you start to feel anxiety, I mean, even last night I was awake at one o'clock in the morning and suddenly I was anxious, and my brain was telling me all these kind of negative things about myself and ways in which I'm not good. And and I know it was triggered, why it was triggered. I even I've done enough of the inner work and inner child work to know why it was there, and it still felt really heavy and potent. And then you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, okay, that wasn't such a big deal. But it will show up differently for every person on the planet. So recognizing what fear is here, allowing that fear to be there, um, knowing that it's there for a reason and it's not trying to sabotage your world, and noticing that your nervous system doesn't recognize time, it recognizes patterns. So something coming up in the middle of the night or something someone says triggering an anxiety response is recognizing a pattern. Whether it's from childhood, whether it's from teenage years, from whether it's from last month, it doesn't really care. It just knows that that pattern's in the body and it's ready to be seen now. And anxiety is just a way to protect you from getting hurt again.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And I would say that, you know, in terms of feeling safe, if you're looking at it from a health anxiety perspective, one of the things I teach my clients is is understanding that they are safe in the moment. And the more you feel that, the more, you know, that not only settles their nervous system. But it, you know, even if you don't believe that you are particularly safe, you know, if you have that symptom that you're worried about, if you can, you know, understand that you are safe in this moment now, in this very second, and that does have a big impact. Do you think you can still be anxious and and feel safe at the same time?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. No, your body can be completely safe in this moment. You can be in a safe room, not being attacked, not being triggered, and still have anxiety because the anxiety is not coming from the present moment necessarily, it's coming from the six-year-old self who learned that if they were too much, they got rejected, or that staying small kept the peace, or and and she's still running, she's still trying to like keep life going while also navigating all of that. So when your partner maybe goes quiet and that feels like a threat, well, that's going to create some anxiety because when parents went quiet or when someone showed you young as a six-year-old self that love was conditional, your partner going quiet is a huge threat. So you can be absolutely.
SPEAKER_01When your clients come to you, do they feel do they feel disconnected? Like what are their main sort of problems that they come to you with? Is there something in in particular that they want to achieve, or is it just they just feel like something is missing?
SPEAKER_00Um everybody's kind of different. I treat a lot of moms. Um, so a lot of it is kind of overwhelm, heavy responsibility. Um, they could just have symptoms of like pain, not sleeping, and they want to get to know themselves a little bit better. Um, a lot of my clients are kind of in that perimenopausal state. And so they, you know, they're carrying their family in a lot of ways. They're also carrying things from when they were a kid that have gotten really heavy. So I use um the suitcase metaphor often. And when we're little, we will pick up suitcases from mom and dad because either mom and dad are not working on their stuff, or it just makes it easier because they don't yell as much if you're carrying the load for them. But those suitcases, when you start adding in, you've got kids, you've got a house, you've got a husband, you've got friendships, you start carrying more and more, and it gets very, very heavy. And I find when women hit that perimenopausal early to mid-40s range, they're like, I don't want to carry it anymore. And they almost go into a rage about having to carry it. And that's beautiful because that's supposed to happen. And then we look at, okay, what are you carrying that's not yours? What are you carrying that was never yours to pick up in the first place? Whether it's your dad's anger, your mom's insecurities, money issues growing up, whatever it is, are you ready to set that down now? The other side of this is when we carry things for other people, and this goes even for our kids, even though this is one of the hardest lessons we can possibly learn, they can't heal from the things we're carrying. So if mom has insecurity issues, but you decide I will take that on for you, mom, because I see you're overwhelmed with life, she can't heal from that. She can't heal from that when that's not on her plate. So you have a choice in your 40s. Do I give it back to her or do I simply set it down? And if mom and dad, you know, the generation before us maybe didn't have a language for this. They didn't have an understanding of inner work, inner child work, pattern work. So if they're not able to do that self-discovery, that self-actualization, it might be too much to kind of hand back. This is all kind of energetic, by the way. You're not handing a suitcase back to your mother. But, you know, emotionally, you can be like, that's not mine to carry anymore. And the freedom and lightness you can get from that when you start to realize, oh, that pattern was mom, that wasn't me. That body issues and dysmorphia, that wasn't me. That was mom. I can set that down now. There's a level of freedom to that that it's it's beautiful to watch, honestly. Um, and it just happens kind of as an energetic practice. And you say, I allow mom to carry her own stuff now.
SPEAKER_01I love that. And and how how guilty are we all of doing this? We carry suitcases around and not necessarily it's our stuff, right? We just inherit it, we we're carrying it for others, but we don't recognize it. And and it's so true. And what I see from the work that I do is a lot of my clients are women of a certain age where you know their bodies are changing, anxiety is rife, they've got a lot of stuff going on, as you say, with aging parents and all of these things that come with this part in our life. And it's hard, like it's a really tough time. So be able to take the burden off and relieve yourself of some of these things that you've been carrying, perhaps even unknowingly, is a massive, a massive weight, I can imagine, to be able to release that up of yourself.
SPEAKER_00Very much so. And I see changes in weight, like physical weight when we are not carrying things that are not ours. I see changes in how women show up, you know. Are they slumped forward and kind of contracted, or are they, hey, this is me. I'm showing up as me and I don't have to carry your crap anymore. But the same thing goes, like I said, it's one of the hardest things we can possibly do to not constantly save other people either, including our partners, including our children, to be that fixer all the time, to carry the burden of needing to rescue, fix, and be the person that everybody comes to. You can sit back and let people make their own mistakes. And that's one of God, that's so hard. It's so hard to watch, but it's so necessary for women especially to go, okay, you will learn this more if I'm not fixing it for you.
SPEAKER_01Do you think we do that to keep the peace as a woman in a household where you're you're spinning so many plates? We I think you know, from my perspective, I would try and be a bit of a peacemaker to keep everybody happy, keep everything keep everything running in a way to carry that for somebody would be like an automatic response for a lot of people. But how do you it can be? How do you how do you get to the point where you can recognize that? Is there a method that you would implement or how would you know?
SPEAKER_00So the fixer, the peacemaker, yeah, that can be a pattern that you learned very early on. There can also be a little bit of a selfish tinge to taking on that role because it's hard to sit in your own discomfort of watching people fail. So, in order to avoid your own discomfort, you'll do it for them. Yeah. So, yes, there can be like you can be doing one role and there's multiple patterns at play. The realization that no one's coming to save you, you know, as a kid, if you were left to your own devices, you were a latchkey kid and you had to figure it out and you had to fix things, and that could be at play. The one who walked into a room and immediately smoothed things over, that could be at play. The one who can't handle any more discomfort, so does it because it's just easier, that could be at play. So the intention behind doing things is actually really important to see. We just are so automatic with a lot of our things that we don't stop long enough to go, wait a second, why am I doing this? And something like I said, perimenopause kind of puts a little spin or lens on it that goes, I've been doing this for 20 years within my family. Is this really what I want to do? Or did I just start doing that and then everybody else got used to that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's hard to know, isn't it? And I guess you know, until you open up this box and you you start looking at this type of work, it it's it's so interesting, isn't it? Because you you don't know until you start delving into this exactly what's in there and it's probably how you've been coping with it or why. Um, the fact is it just, you know, like you say, it's it develops over time to the point where it's is getting really heavy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like this is a never-ending thing. It's, I mean, it kind of is because you're never fully healed, but you don't have to get lost in the work all the time. You know, part of what I do is say, okay, let's take a break from diving into inner child. She's had her turn, she's spoken. Let's see what's here for the person sitting in front of me, for the adult version of you. She wants joy, she wants fun, she wants to feel like herself again. Okay, how do we make that happen? So I don't want you to think this is just something that you do constantly in order to heal and heal and heal and heal. No, there's a point where the inner child doesn't get the platform anymore. She doesn't get to run the show and be the loudest voice in the room. The person sitting across from me, the 42-year-old, the 50-year-old, that's the one I want to know what she wants right now. The cool part is you do have to do the inner work in order to really understand what the current version of you needs, wants, desires. Because if the pattern's running the show, she doesn't feel she deserves it or she doesn't feel like it's possible. So once that part has been taken care of, it opens up the most amazing possibilities for what she can do right now that lights her up, that is actually her. And I'm I'm going through this myself right now. Like I've had a pattern in my body that I am unworthy and not enough for most of my life. And every once in a while it'll come to the surface and I will cry it out and I will talk it through and I will sit with it, love the little girl who learned this about herself. And then I will move into a higher level of visibility, whether it's through business, whether it's online, whether it's speaking engagements, and I it will just, it's released and I up-level. And so that's kind of the pattern I see with women. There's massive expansion in their current life once the pattern has been seen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's so tricky, isn't it? Because we sometimes we just can't see it, you know. So be able to see exactly where we are. And and what I find with with a lot of my clients is they they almost don't believe that they can achieve this because they've been stuck there for so long. You know, they almost can't can't see that this is available to them because if you've been carrying health anxiety for let's say 20, 30 years, which some of my clients have, you've almost forgotten who you were before this. So to come and say, well, you know, what who do I want to be? It's almost like, can I actually even be that person anymore? Because I don't know how to even get back there. So is that something that you would you would see and be able to help with?
SPEAKER_00Of course, yeah. Um, I think the other side of it is that not only do they not believe it's true, but they don't know themselves anymore. That anxiety has been sabotaging their thoughts and behaviors for so long that they almost mistaken it for their personality now. And it's not their truth, it's not who they actually are. So we go back to the root, to the point where you were you without everybody telling you who you were before everyone gave you the role or the label or the diagnosis and say, okay, who was that? What did you love about her? What did she uh make you feel like? And then we see the anxiety, we love the anxiety, we move through the anxiety, whatever that looks like for the person. And then we start, I want to say grabbing, but that's not really the word I'm looking for. You start just gravitating towards the version of you who is real for you. Um, and I think that's where I I said this before separating you, your personality, who you are from the pattern, from the anxiety. Like when people, and I'm sure you've talked about this a million times, when people label it my anxiety. It's so, you know, it's personalizing it, right? Yeah. So that one degree of separation might be all you need to kind of go, oh, that's not me. That's just what I'm experiencing right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then you start to know or or just have the curiosity to understand, I'm different. I'm different now than I was six months ago. I'm allowed to reinvent myself. I don't know what that looks like right now. That's perfectly fine. And I think it's bringing a lot of love for yourself, compassion for yourself that, yeah, we've been through a lot in the last 20 or 30 years. Um, and I get to decide from here on who I am.
SPEAKER_01It's it's having the confidence, isn't it? And if you like I say, if you've been burdened by that for so long, it's it's having that the belief in yourself and the trust that you can do it.
SPEAKER_00Of course.
SPEAKER_01That you're able to make a change, you know, it is so hard when you when you're in it. But you know, as soon as you make that decision that this is something I need to be able to tackle because it's holding me back, then I think you're you know you're halfway there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How do you how do you go about building that that trust with your self-belief, but also with your body as well?
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, that's a really good question because what I tell people is self-trust is actually the basis, like the foundation of confidence. So we start with self-trust, and confidence kind of comes naturally for people. And I want to say it's it's not denying what's in front of you. So when an emotion comes up, whether it's a dense one or you've labeled it negative, anger, fear, sadness, grief, whatever, you're okay with it. You're trusting that that's here for a reason, number one. So you're not trying to push it away, you're not judging it. Um, you're not immediately putting yourself on trial for it and being like, oh, I shouldn't be feeling this right now. You're you're going, okay, that's cool, that's here. All right. And nothing's wrong with you for feeling those things. You're not labeling it as, I must have anxiety, I must be depressed, I must be, you know, you just, it's just an emotion. And if there is a bigger pattern coming up, like I said, you're meeting it with compassion instead of contempt, um, because that pattern kept you safe once. And we have to respect that. We have to trust that it's there for a reason. And then practically, it looks like trusting that, you know, maybe you're tired. So then you're going to trust yourself to rest without guilt that day. Or maybe you're full of energy and you're actually celebrating it. You're trusting that whatever you feel is perfect. And that can be challenging for people who have denied it or buried it or medicated it away, or have were taught early on that they can't trust how they feel. They gaslit or whatever, that that's kind of the beginning of it. Oh my gosh, I felt I'm I'm feeling some fear right now. Cool. Allow that to be there. Awesome. And so it's it's a retraining yourself not to abandon yourself in that moment. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love that. And all of this correlates so well to the work that I do. Everything you say is very similar to the way that I teach, but in a different setting, if you like. So the two come together really well and complement each other very well. I could talk to you all day about this, Leslie. I really love it. I find it fascinating, but the fact that you you found your calling now and you've Had that complete 360, and the fact that you found your intuition and you're able to use that to help others. It's it's amazing. How do people work with you and how how can people find you?
SPEAKER_00Um a few different ways. So I have a website and it's my name, Leslie Turner.ca. Um, I'm in Canada, so.ca. Uh you can follow me on Instagram. And then I have a few different containers I take people through. So I have a membership called the Intuitive Circle, and we meet um two Tuesdays, it's Tuesdays for now, but two Tuesdays a month, where I will guide people through this. So I have my own process. It's called the SEER method that combines somatic, energetic, and emotional release into a session. So I will guide people through the SEER method in the membership. And then if you want to do a more of a deep dive, we do one-on-ones virtually and in person. And then I have bigger containers if people want to really transform everything. But it's all on the website. Have a look at that and uh, or just let me know what you got out of this podcast in on Instagram. Let me know.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. I will pop all your details in the show notes so people can get in touch. But you know, I I love the fact that I can chat to you in Canada and you know, all across the world. It's so it's brilliant because you know, we met on Instagram, and you know, I think being able to reach out and speak to to people not only you know helps my community, but it it's so lovely to hear about all these things that can you know really affect and and benefit an anxiety sufferer because it's not just about the symptom, it's not just about what you perceive the matter in hand. It's it there's so much more to all of this.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for coming along.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me, Amy. This is awesome. I I love being able to speak to people that I never would have met in real life settings. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, exactly that. And um, yeah, thank you. I could like I say, I could talk to you all day. Um maybe we should do a session at some point because you know I think this work is really valuable. So keep doing it and you know you're you're making a real difference. So it so keep going. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Nice to meet you.