Life-Changing Tools to Heal the Abandonment Wound (Part 3 of series)

Healing the abandonment wound is possible — and you don’t have to do it alone. No matter how long you’ve carried the ache of feeling left, unseen, or not enough, there is a way forward. Healing isn’t about erasing the past, it’s about reclaiming your power, your worth, and your ability to feel safe in love and in life again.

When this wound begins to heal, relationships feel more secure, self-trust deepens, and your heart opens to connection without fear of being abandoned. 

This part of the journey is about courage, compassion, and choosing to believe that your story doesn’t end with pain — it expands into freedom, love, and peace.

If you’re ready to step into what’s possible on the other side of abandonment, grab a pad of paper and pen to take notes. This talk is for you!

✍🏼 DOWNLOAD "Healing the Abandonment Wound Workbook": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hwzbYOucOWW5wXa9N-RAiJtB22HT1q1Z/view?usp=sharing

🎧 Listen to "Reparenting: Giving Yourself What They Couldn't": https://youtu.be/8cRcZxpOl9Q

For FREE RESOURCES, Book Link, Quizzes, Noom Vibe Link, Self-Love Merch Shop and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

Transcript

Kristen 0:00

Welcome to Empower Hour with KB. My name is Kristen Brown, and I'm a personal development and self-healing author, intuitive healer, and mentor. I am the author of the international number one bestseller, The Recovering People Pleaser, and the host of Empower Hour with KB here live, recorded live on Noom Vibe, but also posted on YouTube and all major podcasting platforms with edits, of course. My work blends lived wisdom, neuroscience, and universal truths into practical tools that are both relatable and actionable. In my hopes of helping people reclaim their true worth and personal power, my guiding motto is all change happens on the inside first, and when you change your inner world, you will change your life. I have an exciting conversation for you today, and I say exciting because although the abandonment wound can feel heavy and daunting, so many of us want to slip into that place of, oh, there's something wrong with me. No, no, no, no, no, no. We need to keep this stuff light, truly. We need to keep it as light as possible because we're all doing the same things. We all have picked up experiences and had traumas and dramas, these types of things that have happened in our life, which has programmed into our brain a certain way of thinking, believing, and therefore acting. So the first two parts of this series were where did the abandonment wound come from and signs of having the abandonment wound, which has led us now into part three, which is healing the abandonment. So today we're going to dive into this very deeply. And I think you're going to find, surprisingly, that it's not as daunting as you might think. Because we feel this way and because it feels so icky inside of our body, because we have judged our behaviors, we often will naturally think, well, the healing of this must be hard and long. It must be extremely difficult. And I'm here to tell you, in my experience and the experiences of those who have done this work, it's not as hard as you think it is. The quote unquote hard part is being consistent. Because remember, we have brain programming. Our brains are programmed. We are a set of conditioned ways of thinking and believing and acting, which all come together that form our quote-unquote personality. So we think, oh, to override this system is going to be extremely difficult because this is just the way I am. No, my beloved, you don't have to stay that way. So this is why I don't love labels. I like them to maybe identify certain behaviors like people pleasing, certain groups of behaviors, but these labels do not mean, oh, you are this forever. What I have learned is that when we are consistent with our practices and we put our heart into it, we can't just kind of fiddle around in there for a little bit and then go back to the way we were being. When we truly put our heart into it, we heal pretty darn fast. I'm just gonna tell you, it's all about consistent effort. Okay, so let's jump into how to heal the abandonment wound. Now, it will take time. It's not gonna be a one and done situation. It is going to require the steady practice, like I mentioned, and it's going to require your compassion. Compassion. What is compassion, everybody? It's self-love. So the tools I'm about to share with you are not about perfection. They're not about hitting it out of the park and getting an A. It's just about being willing to apply these things to yourself, wanting a better experience, wanting a different experience of life. Because often, those of us who are discovering wounds, the reason why we're discovering them is because we don't like the way things are going in certain areas in our life. We don't like that our relationships are unhealthy, or that we always leave people, or they always leave us, or you can't get along well with your coworkers, or you have struggles with authority. These are just a few things. You start to notice these patterns. In that noticing of the pattern is where the healing begins. That's where the healing starts because now you are aware, because we can't work on what we're not aware of. But like I said, I think you're going to go into this in the tools that I'm about to share with you and say, these really aren't as daunting as I thought they were. And by the way, for those of you who are just joining this talk and maybe not have heard part one and part two, they are amazing. I have gotten so much great feedback from part one and part two, and I feel to have the full picture of this, the abandonment wound, like I said, where it came from, the signs that we exhibit into the world, and how to heal it. The three-part series is going to be extremely serving to you. I also offered in part two, I didn't offer this in part one because I hadn't created it yet. In part two, I offer a free workbook to help you heal, just as a tool, just as a resource to help you heal this wound. And I call it Healing the Abandonment Wound Workbook. That's what it is called. And here's the best part it's free, and all you need to do is send me a DM here on Noom Five by clicking on my profile picture and clicking where it says say hi. And then just write, please send me the workbook. And I literally am going to send you a link here that will lead you to the Google Drive that it is hosted on, and then you can download the workbook and work on it yourself. It's very beautiful, it's very simple, it's succinct, it's clear, and it's just a way of uh moving you more towards your healing. So it's not a, I mean, depending where you're at on your journey, it depends how how much work you've done on your journey. If you've done a lot of work, it could be the last piece of the puzzle. If you haven't done any, it could be the first piece of the puzzle. It doesn't matter. None of that matters. It just matters that you put some time into this workbook and you can print it out. I do always recommend printing things out in black and white so you don't use much ink. But I also invite you to just keep it on your computer and have a notepad next to you. And just dedicate a notepad to this work so you don't have to print any of your ink or use any of your printer ink. I love to have healing notebooks. I had many, many healing notebook notebooks. I had a ton of five-star sectioned, five sections notebooks, and they were all full. And I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing, and I still do to this day. I have notebooks all over the place. With that, let's jump into the tools to heal the abandonment wound. And yes, I did receive your message, and I will be sending you that afterwards. Okay, uh, someone else just sent it to me too. I'm not saying your names, okay, just because in case you want to be private about it. So, yes, I just got three more requests, and you will be getting it after this talk because I don't want to send it to you in the middle of this talk because it disrupts my flow. So let's dive into the tools that help to heal the abandonment wound. The first tool, okay, yep, I saw you too. Yeah, I will send it to you as well. Yeah, keep going, you guys. Just anytime throughout this talk, just send me the request and I will send you the free resource. The first tool is to recognize the wound and its pattern. This is why the first two talks are very important, because the second talk, the first one's about where it came from, the second talk is about the signs of this. So the awareness is incredibly important. Awareness is key. You can ask yourself questions like: Do I panic when people pull away? Do I pull people in and then push them out? Am I a runner? Do I test others to see if they will leave? Do I sabotage closeness or cling too tightly? Do I fear being too much or not enough? And again, there are so many more of these that I expressed in episode two, part two of this talk. That you can go into my profile and find that. This is again information. We're just gathering information at this point. We're just trying to understand ourselves. We just want to know more about what we're doing, how we're ticking, and listening to the feedback that has come to us from people that we have been in relationships with, whether it was friendships or romantic relationships, what has been said to us? Because if there is any pattern there, there's something to that. If you've had several people say to you that you're too clingy, you're too needy, you're all over me, you don't give me any space, there's a clue. If you've had someone that has said to you, um, I can never make you happy, it seems like I can't prove my love to you ever, no matter what, you don't believe me, there's a clue. If you have someone that says, you know, you're you're hot one day and you're cold the next day, I'm getting this whipsaw back and forth that I am having difficulty trusting who you are because you're you're you're in, you're so in, you're a thousand percent in, and then you're out. Or you're hot and you're cold. Why did a what's her name, Perry? What's her name? Um Perry. Oh gosh, you guys help me with her name. Anyway, you're hot, then you're cold. You're yes, Katie Perry, thank you, Dev. Hello, menopause brain. Um, yeah, you're hot, then you're cold, you're in, then you're out, you're up and you're down. That that song just popped into my head while I was saying that. And yes, you know, if you've had somebody say these things to you, then these are just clues. That's it. They're just clues. They're not places that you need to look at yourself as if you're flawed. All they are is adaptations of your younger self or that your younger self created to survive, to make it through. That's all they are. Let yourself off the hook, my beloved sisters and brothers. There's nothing fatally flawed about you. They're not flaws. This is all about the brain and it doing what it needed to do to get us to survive. But it became programming and we're still functioning from that place. So that's not working anymore, is it? So, what often serves us and helps us to survive in our childhood is often the very thing that works against us in adulthood. Mind blowing. I know there's so many paradoxes on this healing journey. There's so many things that are like, what? It served me so well, but now in adulthood it doesn't. I don't know. It's just the grand design of coming to earth, being a spirit in an earth suit and doing the things and being here to grow and to learn how to love unconditionally ourselves and other people. That's really what it's all about. So there's got to be some challenges put into place, or else we wouldn't be learning anything. For me, I hope this gives you the same respite that it does for me. When I learned that really this whole thing is just about learning, this weight fell off of me. It's like, oh, I don't need to be perfect. I don't need to look like this person, act like this person, get this type of reward or award or behave, you know, whatever. I don't need any of that. Accolades. It's really just about my own spiritual journey here, it is the same as it is yours. So letting yourself off the hook that you're supposed to be someone that you're not is one of the best things we can do for ourselves. And it is deeply, deeply rooted in self-love. It's deeply rooted in acceptance of you as a human being. Simply as a human being. So please keep that in mind. So the first tool is to recognize the wound and its patterns. Fairly simple, right? Recognize the wound and its patterns. Not super complicated. And my workbook is based off of what I'm sharing with you today. It's not going to be exact because it's very simple, all right? But it's based off of this. So I do recommend that you uh request the link to the workbook. Again, it's free. It's not even an opt-in, you guys. I'm not taking your email and throwing it on my list. Okay. This is literally free for you. It's just something that my heart called me to do. And it was late in the afternoon. It was like, I don't know, or somewhere between 2 and 3:30. And I was like, I want to make an opt-in. Not an opt-in. I want to make a a resource for these, for these beloved soul siblings of mine. And that's what I did. And I whipped it out pretty quickly. I was surprised because normally they take me a long time. And this one, I was just flew out of me. So, yes. All right. So, what's the first one? Recognizing and healing or recognizing the wound and its patterns. The end. You're just becoming aware. Okay. So it's about journaling about this. There is so much data supporting the fact that when we write with our hand, not type, write with our hand with a writing implement onto a pad of paper, that we slow everything down and we become super aware. But also, believe it or not, you guys, the healing starts there because we're because the slowness allows us to start becoming aware and reprogramming ourselves to a certain degree. Does that make sense? Because remember, we're unaware before, but now we're writing it down and we're bringing it up to the prefrontal cortex, that front part of our brain. And we're becoming highly enlightened to something that we weren't enlightened of before. All right, the second thing is to connect with the inner child. We hear a lot about inner child work, don't we? Well, there's a reason for it. There is that part of us that still remains in our youth. And that is the part of us, we call it inner child, but really it's the part of us that was conditioned. It's the part of us that have these experiences that was conditioned. That part remains within us. So we feel like we're still that. A lot of us are just children walking around in adult bodies. Think about that. We're children walking around in adult bodies until we do the healing work. So connecting with your inner child. The abandonment wound, however form that came for you, is a felt experience that your inner child is still carrying. It's a felt experience. And that part of you may believe something like I'm not lovable. They'll leave me. Or I must earn love to keep it. I had a little bit of that one. I had to be amazing, or else the people would leave me. That's what I would think. And subconsciously, by the way, I didn't know that at the time. I do now though. So healing requires reparenting. And that is becoming the safe adult that you once needed. And I have a talk here that goes in depth into reparenting. I grabbed the link before I got on this talk and I put it in my notes. So it'd be easy access. So if you want the reparenting talk, just write in the DMs by clicking my profile pickup picture, clicking where it says say hi, and just write reparenting. You can find it yourself by going to my profile, clicking the talks button, and scrolling down. It's maybe about 20 talks ago. You got to think I give five talks a week. So it's not too far down, but you will find it. Or I can just send you the link if you want easy access. Okay, because I thought, hmm, I did give that, yeah, I did give that talk. And I think people might want to have easy access to that. All right, so this is about reparenting. This is about becoming the safe adult that you once needed. Again, think about it, you guys. Is this moving mountains? Is this building Rome? No. All this is is slowly, methodically, and consistently asking yourself what it is that you needed and then giving it to yourself. Okay? And you can do things such as inner child meditations. I highly, highly recommend meditations. Highly recommend meditating in for so many reasons. When we do inner child meditations, we are actually going to that part of ourself because there really is no new story. A lot of if you feel the desire to have an inner child meditation, it's you've probably feeling many of the things that other people have felt. So we're going to that place inside of us from a calm, nervous system state. All right. And hopefully you can get into the state of theta because if you enter theta, you are actually reprogramming your brain. Hear me well. That is per Dr. Joe Dispenza and many other doctors, scientists, and neuroscientists. In the state of theta, we start to reprogram. So think about this. I do an inner child meditation, doesn't matter how long it is. Okay, it's not like you have to do hours and hours of this. And you allow yourself for that period of time to be out of fight-flight, calm your nervous system, be in the present moment, and maybe repeat what inside your head what it is that they're saying in these inner child meditations. You will reprogram your brain. You're going to secure your inner child. It doesn't seem like enough, does it? Come on, Kristen, really? Yeah, really. Like I said, these things aren't exclusively difficult. They're not in like really hard to do. It's just we must be willing to do them and do them from our full heart. Because we can lay there and meditate and go over our shopping list and then say, why aren't these inner child meditations working? Or sorry, that didn't work for me. Why? Because you weren't in it. This is about intentionality. It's not, it doesn't have to take all day long every day, but it's about intentionality. It's about being fully present with these tools that I'm sharing with you. You're going to be surprised at how quickly you will heal. Now, quickly, I'm not saying in three days, all right? I'm just saying it's going to be faster than the years and years that people think it's going to take. The next one is to write letters to your inner child and reply from your adult self. Okay? So you're right, uh, you could also be the inner child writing letters to you. I'm scared, no one loves me, everybody leaves me, I'm unsafe in the world, whatever it might be. And then your adult self can write back and say, oh no, not anymore. I got you. I know that was your experience. That was hard, it was terrible, it sucked, it was so scary. And the ways that you have adopted came from that, and you're okay, whatever it might be. It's gotta be from your heart. I can't tell you what to write. Just consider that. I have also done this thing that's called an apology letter to self, but that was different because that was me apologizing to my younger self for not respecting and protecting me. This is different. This is writing letters to your to your inner child saying, I got you. I'm not going anywhere. We're strong. Here's how we're gonna do this. Okay? And the next one is to find a childhood photo and speak to it with compassion. A lot of people do this. You find a photo and you put it somewhere. Put it where you know you will see it. Maybe on the faucet where you brush your teeth every morning, maybe on the mirror right in front of you, maybe on the mirror that you put your makeup on or that you shave your face, whatever it might be, put it right there, maybe in your car. And every time you glance at that, you talk to that sweet, beautiful baby with love and compassion. I look back at childhood photos at me and I see the sweetest little girl. I see the most gentle heart in the world. I see her just walking around in this world full of adults and all these brothers and not knowing what to do, you know, all of these things. And I just have so much compassion and love for her. And I dedicated myself to my inner child 15 years ago. I told her, I got you. No more. Are people going to disrespect you, raise their voice to you, whatever it might be? I have got you. I will protect you and I will take care of you. And anytime something has come up in my life where I needed to set a boundary, that of course that ego part of me was like, yeah, I just let this one go. It's not worth the fuss. It's not worth the fight. But you know what comes up for me, everyone? My dedication to little Kristen. My dedication to her was so fierce and so profound that I'm like, nope, sorry. I have to speak up. It's the same way that I would speak up for my children. My daughter said that to me in part when I talked a lot about how my kids want me to write, not a lot about, but I touched on that my kids want me to write a parenting book. And my bot, my daughter, my eldest said that as one of her things. She said, You were always there for us, mom. You always had our back. And it doesn't mean I was the parent that believed my kids over the teachers. Okay. She and I she said, but you didn't do it to a false. She goes, You asked a lot of questions. You asked us a lot of questions. You wanted to know what was truly going on. And if it was something that was uncool from an adult in our life, you addressed it. Like you had our back. And that's what I'm trying to say here, you guys. You've got to have your back. Like your life depends on it, because it kind of does. And I don't mean your physical life, but your joyful life. Okay. Have your back. Dedicate yourself to yourself. Again, is this hard? Right? Is it hard? Nope. It's not difficult to write, to write a letter to yourself. It might be a little challenging to put that ego down that's fighting with you and says you don't deserve this. Again, that's one of the hardest parts of the whole journey is quieting the ego because it's loud and it's obnoxious. And it's the first voice always. My husband and I just had a conversation about this last night. We're talking about uh some story, I don't remember what, and we're talking about the ego, and it just kind of flowed into this conversation. And we were discussing that the ego is the first and loudest voice that we hear. It's the first one. And if we just pause for a second, the second voice is going to come in, which is our higher self. But we tend to knee-jerk respond to that ego voice first. So, what's gonna want to stop you is your brain, a part of your brain that's trying to quote unquote protect you. So this is about, and hear me now, hear this very clear. This is about internally turning towards your ego and saying, I know you're trying to protect me. I know you want me to survive, and I'm okay, nothing's happening here. I'm just learning to love myself. The ego is loud, but it is not strong. And his, how did he word it? Because he's been doing a lot of this work lately, and he said, Yeah, it yields easily. It just kind of backs down. I said, Are you feeling that experience now? He said, Yeah. It's exactly what it is. It when you start to turn to it and talk to it, it's not running us as much as we think it is. It's just loud, but it's weak. Contrarily, the higher self, again, these crazy contraries, ironies, and paradoxes of the healing world, the higher self is quiet, but it is very, very strong. The higher self is quiet, but it's very strong. So the ego is loud, but it's weak. The higher self is quiet, but it's strong. It's powerful. Wild, isn't it? I know. This stuff lights me up. I'm such a nerd about all this. Probably because I had such a great experience with my own healing journey that it's just, I just wanted to know more and more and more. All right, here's what we want to do. We want to commit to that inner child that we're never leaving them, that we've got them no matter what. Absolutely no matter what. You dig your feet in, you ground in, and you let that little baby inside of you that did not get their needs met, that all of these things happen to, and you say, I got you now. You're in my charge, you're under my care now. And I know y'all, y'all are strong. Y'all have been through a lot. You've been through a lot. So think about that strength that you had to get through what you went through and now take all that energy and apply it to your healing, apply it to your inner child. All right, the next one is to challenge core beliefs with compassion. All right. This is important. This is going to take some effort, and it may take a little bit of repeat. One of my favorite all-time things that I learned organically probably 17 years ago through Byron Katie, and that is to question our beliefs. Now, this isn't just, this is this is not why I'm why I'm giving it to you. This is universal. Many, many, many, many, many teachers and speakers in the world are going to share this with you as well. But I learned this organically through Byron Katie to question our beliefs and ask ourselves, is this 100% true? 100%, unequivocally, absolutely without question. When you find those core beliefs, you start asking yourself, is this 100% true? Like without question. You're going to find that there's going to be a crack in it. Nope, it's not 100%. Now remember, if you have this belief for a long time, your ego's going to want to try to talk you into it that it's true. Because remember what Uncle Fester said, remember what Aunt Matilda said. See what I'm saying? Or remember what your teacher said, or that boyfriend or girlfriend is going to try to talk you into it. But then when you start looking for evidence, let's say the belief is love always disappears. People always disappear. People always leave me. Sure, you might have a backstory of course you're dealing with an abandonment wound. But what about now? What about now? Is it 100% true? No. There's people that don't leave. There's people that have never left, by the way, if you look back in your life. So we challenge those beliefs. And for me, if it's not a hundred percent, it's a lie. It's a lie that the ego constructed to keep me small and stuck. So I'm done, I don't, I'm done believing lies. I am the truth monster, that's all I want, and I will not believe a lie. So if I discover that something is a lie, I'm done with it. You have to be done with the lies. We can't keep repeating these lies to ourselves and living this small, scared life based on a lie. All right. So you could have beliefs like, I'm unworthy, love always disappears. If I let people in, I will be destroyed. It is unsafe to love. The list goes on. This is again for you to discover. And once again, what I'm talking about today is ref a lot of these are reflected in the how to heal or I'm sorry, healing your abandonment wound workbook that I have a link for for you guys. So if anybody wants it, all you have to do is tap on the profile picture here of my son and beans, click where it says say hi, and then say, please send me the workbook. All right. I also have the reparenting talk that I'm happy to send you as well. And all you need to type in there is reparenting. And I after these this conversation, I will send all those. So we want to write down. Okay, great. Uh, we want to write down our abandonment related beliefs and then challenge those beliefs. Challenge it truthfully. Is this real? Is this 100% true? Now remember, we're not saying, has this been true in the past? Did this happen to me in the past? We're talking about current time right now. Is this true that everybody leaves? Think about that. Everybody, everybody in your life has left? Nah, they haven't. So you want to challenge it, and then you want to write a response that is as true or more true next to it, whatever that belief may be. Do you know I healed a solid year of chronic anxiety in January of 2011 by going to each, each belief as it arose, and I challenged it and reframed it to something that was more true. My chronic anxiety, this is no joke, you guys, a year of chronic anxiety went away. Within 48 hours, my body symptoms like the pounding heart and those type of things were gone. And within two and a half weeks, those beliefs stop coming. Again, we need to be relentless. We need to be tenacious. We need to be consistent. So when that belief comes up or you hear it coming out of your mouth, no one will ever want me. Right there. That's your that's your cue. Challenge. Is that true? No one will. No, that's not true. That's dumb. There's 8.1 or 4 billion people in the world these days? Oh my gosh. And you're saying that out of all those people, no one in the world is gonna want you? No. Or everybody's gonna leave. You think there's no safe people out in the world? No. See what I'm saying? Challenge those beliefs. Retrain your brain. That's what we're doing here with these. Repeat these, especially when triggered. The most important part because what's a trigger? That is somebody touched the wound. Someone touched the wound, brushed up against the wound, blinked their eyelash in the direction of your wound. It doesn't take much for us to be triggered when our wounds from trauma are touched and triggered. So when you're in that triggered space, you find what am I feeling right now? I'm feeling like this person is gonna leave me. I'm feeling panicky. Okay, calm down. Take a deep breath. Relax. Is that true? See what I'm saying? Take your time with these things. Write them down. Work in progress. Just allow them to unfold. The next one is to regulate your nervous system. This is huge. We have to move the body out of fight flight. Why? Why is that? It's because we don't quote unquote learn when we're in fight-flight. Again, meditation, massive, massive, massive part of my healing journey. I didn't know it. I had no idea. I was meditating because I was a nervous wreck that couldn't eat and went down to 106 pounds. That's why I started meditating. I was like, I've got to calm myself down. This is awful. And I remembered the days, which I still do, of kundalini yoga and the breathing exercises we did in kundalini. And I started to do those. And I would not get up from that floor until, because I laid on the floor in my bedroom. That's where I did it. Did not get up from that floor without until my heartbeat was calm. And guess what? What I was going through at that time was so horrific that within an hour, it was oftentimes back up there. And then slowly it was two hours, three hours, four hours, and it just started to extend until eventually I was calm all the time. Okay. So this is important to do because we learn, we retrain the brain through calmness, like I mentioned at the beginning of this talk in theta. So if we can get ourselves into that theta and we can, well, first of all, we're calming the nervous system, period. Let me, I'm jumbling things together. We're gonna calm the nervous system down so that we can take in new information and we can implant it and wire that into the brain. Okay, such as I am worthy, not everybody leaves me. These type of things, okay? That's the first thing. The second thing is that, like in the inner child meditations that I was talking about, when you get your brain into theta and you're listening to something that's powerful like that, that will implant. That will start to implant in your mind. Meditation is huge and crucial. Again, is this hard to push an 800 bolt, 800-pound boulder uphill? No. It's not that it's hard, it's that we need to be consistent. And I know many people say, I can't meditate. Yes, you can. I don't care if it's 30 seconds of you picturing just blackness, just darkness, just nothingness, just clearing your brain. That's meditation. You can meditate. Don't beat yourself up if you're popping in and out. That's how it is in the beginning. You're you're working a muscle. So when you go to build your biceps, first you might be lifting a five-pound weight, right? Eventually you're up to 25. You're gonna build the muscle. Again, don't judge yourself, beloveds. Be gentle with you for crying out loud. Be gentle. Take your time. Just practice. Anything that we practice over an extended period of time, such as eating less calories, eventually the weight starts coming off, right? But we kind of have to practice that for a while to get to our goal. Then eventually, what was six ounces turns into 15 pounds. See what I'm saying? Same thing with meditation. Don't beat yourself up. Don't expect you're supposed to sit there and um with a zero mind for an hour straight. I still can't do that. I've been meditating for 16 years. Okay? Be gentle with yourself. But we need to calm that nervous system for very, for many, many uh reasons. The other thing that we can do as far as calming the nervous system is grounding. Oh man, I watch, I listened to a podcast recently and I was said, okay, I need to share this with my vibers because I do grounding, but I love the way that this woman expressed it. She said, stand or sit with feet on the ground. That's it. Feel your feet on the ground. Feel your feet on the earth. And I've heard that barefoot is even better, outside is even better, but it doesn't have to be because sometimes we don't have that luxury in the middle of the day in a 50-story office building in the middle of New York City, right? We just don't have that. And then feel up your legs, feel that grounding moving up to your legs. Say, how do my calves feel? How do my knees feel? How do my thighs feel? How does my pelvis feel? And then keep continuing moving up through your body. Do I need to adjust anything? Grounding. Again, you're telling yourself you're safe. Also, there is very many practices of vagus nerve reset. It's also been called vagus nerve stimulation, which I thought was interesting because I would think the vagus nerve would be stimulated, and that's why we have to calm it, but it they call it vagus nerve stimulation. So here's how we stimulate it. You ready? Humming. What do you think ohm is? Oh. And you feel that vibration up through the roof of your mouth. Okay, it stimulates the nervous, it stimulates the vagus nerve. Isn't that crazy? I learned that recently. I was like, they're like, yeah, that's why people ohm. And it doesn't have to be ohm. It can be any other thing that you want. Humming is fantastic for this. Also, cold water. Have you ever seen in movies? I often wondered why people did this. And I just laugh every time. It's like almost every action movie I'm in, someone runs to the bathroom and starts splashing water on their face. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? You guys are going to be able to unsee that now. Almost every of those types of movies, the heroine or the hero or the hero runs, the um protagonist, I guess I should say, runs to the bathroom, then they're just leaning over and they're splashing water on their face, and then they just stare at themselves in the mirror. You know what they're doing? They're stimulating their vagus nerve. They're splashing cold water in their face to snap them out of it. I've also heard of people holding ice cubes. Isn't that crazy? Also, deep belly breathing. That's part of stimulating the vagus nerve. If I'm correct, don't quote me. I learned these things and then I promptly forget them at some point along my journey. But the vagus nerve runs down through the head, down behind the right ear, and then crosses over and runs down the center of our body. If I'm correct, please Google this or research this. One time when I was in the most incredibly stressed out space, I started to learn about, oh no, I was having heart palpitations. I was having heart palpitations that I later learned were part of perimenopause. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know what was happening. I thought it was nerves, to be honest with you. I thought it was nerves. And do you know they started right smack in the middle of a talk on wisdom? That's the first time that I got them. This was when it was the predecessor app. And I was just sitting there giving a talk, all of a sudden my heart's like it was and I was like, what is happening? And that, but it continued. It started to be um consistent for a while. So I thought it was nerves at first. So I started to do um, oh, right on. Peter said he's grounding now. Nice. So I started to learn about the vagus nerve, and one of them said is rub behind your right ear. And so I started to do that. Oh my God, it felt like I had a sore muscle. I could not believe that bone behind your right ear. Uh, is it called the ethmoid bone? I don't remember. But I would rub that bone right behind the ear. I couldn't believe it was like literally rubbing out a knot. You know how it feels when you have a knot in your body? I was like, oh my God. I couldn't believe it. Right now I'm doing it, it doesn't feel like that. So I thought there's something to this. Okay, so vagus nerve stimulation again. Deep belly breathing. Mm mm mm. And then there's somatic practices. There's a lot to be said about somatic healing. Okay, somatic practices are things like yoga, dance, and stretching. It's moving your body to get the energy to move. You can also accompany that with saying something. I am moving fear out of my body right now as you're dancing. I am releasing fear as you're doing yoga. I am letting go. I'm grounding. I'm pushing everything that I don't want, all the impurities in my system into Mother Earth, which by the way, what does that residue or refuge do? It nourishes, right? What does manure do? It nourishes. People put manure on their fields and whatnot. So think about removing all your residue. It's a positive thing. I do a practice every night where I say, God guides guardians, angels, and ancestors. I know that's a lot, you guys, but I wanted to cover all my bases. God guides guardians, angels, and ancestors. Gather around me now. Link your arms, link your energy, and I imagine them all around me in a circle, and they're all linked together, and they're shining this golden, sparkly, beautiful, pure white, loving energy through my body. And I used to do this very slowly, and now I do it fast. I'm like, there is no time in that realm. Why do I got to do this slowly? And I hadn't just whoosh. They wish all impurities, anomalies, anything that is not serving to my body down into Mother Earth. And then I imagine all around me, because all of those things will nurture and nourish, all these flowers pop up around me. That's the positive. Then I imagine Mother Earth sending grounding energy up through my body, starting. I'm just going to be frank here, okay? Right through my crotch where the root chakra is straight up through all of my chakras, out through the top of my head, into infinity. And then I have source energy come down through the top of my head, all through my chakras into Mother Earth. And then where they meet in my heart, they spin out in this like golden, think of like a record, how it spins, but it's gold and it's got like sinews in it, and it's spinning really fast, and it shoots out left and right to infinity. That's how I fall. It's one of the things I do before I fall asleep every night. Okay, you don't have to use that. Makeup, I made that up. No one taught me that. I was like, I just want to do this, and this is what I did. So these types of things help you. Don't be afraid to experiment. What feels good to you? How do you ground? How do you get calm? Somatic healing. Also, there is somatic experiencing therapy. This is great. So let's say I'm coaching somebody and they're feeling something. I don't know, make something up. They're feeling some type of not great thing. I'll say, Where do you feel that right now? And they'll say, Well, I feel it in my heart. And say, okay, can you send compassion to that place inside of you? Yes. Can you love it? Can you soothe it? Can you think about it? Yes. Now what are you feeling? Like it's lighter and it's gone. That's somatic experiencing. There's all kinds of somatic therapists that can do this. And I bet there's even YouTube tutorials that will walk you through this, like little workshops or practices. Because YouTube is like, it's the second largest search engine in the world. Google's the first, YouTube's the second, YouTube is owned by Google. Gosh, utilize these resources, everyone. All right. Yeah, so this is not this is about not just talking about the wound, because sometimes talk therapy isn't enough. This is about moving the wound through your body and out of your body. The next step or the next tool, these aren't steps, is to create emotional safety with yourself. This means showing up for yourself instead of abandoning yourself. You're going to show up for yourself instead of abandoning yourself. You're going to do say daily self-check-ins, maybe even hourly. What am I feeling right now and what do I need? You all have heard me talk about this as a five self-love tenant called self-care. That's why I say the five self-love tenants, they really embody so much healing because these are this is just different words. What am I feeling and what do I need? And then remember, you're tending to your inner child here. You're taking care of you the way you never have before. You also speak to yourself kindly when you're in distress. This is self-compassion. Understanding where you're at, understanding what you're feeling, saying, I understand, that sucks, that was scary, that was this, and then you speak kindly to yourself. I understand. I know this is scary. I got you. We got this. We've done harder things before. This is not any harder than that last thing. We're gonna breathe through this and we're gonna take it one step at a time. Saying it to yourself. Oftentimes we wait for others to say this to ourselves, to say it to us. But remember, the whole purpose of stop abandoning the self also means that we have been in the practices of people pleasing, of giving away our power, of not setting any boundaries and these types of things. So to stop self-abandoning is about returning to you and taking care of you. I also have a talk very recently about stop self-abandoning. So I don't have the link to that one on hand or right now. But if you click on my picture and you go to where it says talks, you scroll down, it's not gonna be that far down. There's a whole thing on how to stop self-abandoning. Huge. All of these things work cohesively together. Open your hands, like spread your fingers apart, and then put them, put your fingers between each finger and then connect them, squeeze them together. That's cohesive. That's what happens when you apply all these things together. This is where healing happens. It doesn't come from one thing, it comes from several things. And it's the willingness to continue to do these things no matter what, as if your life depends on it. Not your physical life, not like you're gonna die. And that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying as if, you know what, I'm gonna make this my job because I want to have a better experience. I'm tired of feeling this way. I'm tired of living in fear, I'm tired of being scared of relationships, what people are afraid people are gonna leave me, thinking that I have to be everything to everyone, whatever it might be for you. Doing all these things, they work cohesively together. Each thing, it's like, oh, garlic is so tasty, right? But what happens when you mix garlic with olive oil? What happens then when you throw in some basil? What happens then when you throw in a little balsamic vinegar? Right? See how they all work cohesively together? One thing is great, but when you combine them, whoo! It's it's a beautiful recipe for healing. Okay, so this is also about creating emotional safety for yourself. It's also about soothing yourself in healthy ways, whatever they may look like for you. You can create a playlist, a music playlist. You can say, you know what? I need to go make myself a cup of tea and go sit on the back patio. I need to go walk, I need to go spend time with my animals. How can you soothe yourself in a healthy way? That's not drugs, alcohol, food, porn, shopping, any of those things that can lead to problems. How can I soothe myself? So, this is about creating awesome self-soothing practices. So when you're overwhelmed or upset, how can you comfort yourself? So, just a recap of this one: creating emotional safety is to stop abandoning yourself, checking in with yourself, asking yourself what you're feeling and what you need. It's about speaking kindly to yourself, it's about soothing yourself in healthy ways. You can even have rituals like a daily bath or tea time or bird watching time, petting your cat time, playing with your cat or your dog time, whatever you can do. All right, the next one, this is a really important one, is to learn secure relating. So, this wound that we're dealing with, the abandonment wound, was created in relationships. And it heals most deeply in safe relationships because we're actually having the experience of what's safe. So we want to seek for connections that our needs are welcomed, that repair is possible after conflict, that emotions are safe to express, that a person supports your well-being, and a person who consistently shows up. These are the people that we want to attract into our life. We want to be willing to let go of the lopsided and painful relationships. The relationships where we're doing all the work and giving all the care and showing up above and beyond. There's a level of abandonment that is coming from the lopsided relationships, just so you know. When I'm overgiving and I'm doing all the things, and the person is doing nothing, and there's crickets and there's no one there, it feels a little bit like abandonment, doesn't it? It's like they don't care. They're not there for you. They're not for your emotional needs, your physical needs, but doggone it, when they need something, they're sure ringing you up, aren't they? This might not be a healthy relationship for you. This might be a relationship that you have to be willing to let go of. I see people relating to that. Yeah. Yeah, mani, pasta, share, absolutely. It's you know, we've we've been in those, right? So this is about looking around our life and saying, who feels secure? Who can I connect to to help deepen my healing? So what this means is when you are around people like this, if you allow yourself to do so, operative, operative, operative words here. If you allow yourself to do so, look at your people and marinate in and absorb in that they are safe. The reason why I'm saying if you allow yourself to do so is because I talked about this in part one or part two, I think it was part two, is that a person can be the safest space in the world for you and you still don't see it. And you can sabotage that relationship. So when you see that there is time that has passed and this person has remained the same and they have consistently shown up for you and they're doing all the things, it's time to believe them and to sink into that and to know safe relationships are possible. Secure relationships are possible. You're not only doing yourself a great favor, but you're doing your person. Because if we don't see them as safe, when they are safe, we can push them away. We can unconsciously sabotage and push them away. Because they may be like, ah, this is too much. Like I'm I'm doing all these things, but no matter what, you don't feel safe with me. And I, which means they're not getting their nets needs met, by the way. It means the entire relationship is based on you trying to feel safe, which means you're not showing up for their safety either. That's a biggie, isn't it? It's a hard truth. Breathe into that. Just breathe into that truth. Don't judge yourself if you're someone who's done that. Don't judge yourself. It's just the way of it. It's just the way of it. It's the equation, it's how it manifests, it's how it plays itself out. So, yes, learn secure relating. The next one is to grieve. This is a biggie. Grieve what you never got. The truth is you didn't get it. You may have been, may have been. All the things that I talked about in part one, you might have been emotionally or physically neglected, you might have been ignored, you might have, I don't know, I can't list all the things right now. I got the list here, but I don't want to dig through it. Okay. Yes, those things happened. They certainly did. You're not wrong. You're not crazy. They did. Grieve not having it. You know, I didn't, I didn't have a father. I had a father who didn't blink. I had a mother who didn't blink, or I was adopted, or I was raised in foster care, or whatever. There was no one there. Grieve it. Yes, it sucked. It was sad, it was painful, it hurt. And the next step after that is to work on forgiveness. When we grieve it, we're clearing some space. We're allowing for something different to emerge. Remember that forgiveness is for us, not the perpetrator. Forgiveness is for us. When I learned that, because I there was at one point in my life that I actually researched forgiveness because I was hearing about it and I was like, I thought I had forgiven people and whatever. And so I started researching it heavily. And I started to really understand what it truly meant. It does not mean we condone it. It does not mean we're accepting it. It does not mean that it's allowed for you or anybody else ever. It just means that we understand that the person did the best that they possibly could. It was heinous, it was horrible, it was shitty, it sucked. But they did the best that they could. That's what it is. It's just a deep understanding. That's all it is. I understand why they did what they did. I understand how that was the best that it got. We can even replace the word forgiveness with understanding. By the way, because forgiveness could be a loaded word for some people. Just understanding, yeah. You know, somebody in one of the, I think it was the number one talk, part one, somebody was talking about how their parent was a certain way with them and that their grandparent was a certain way with them. You think that lineage doesn't continue on? There's just these chains tied around our waist to the next person's, tied around their waist to the next person in their past, tied around their waist to the next person. I gave a workshop one time and I went through a visual where we cut all of those chains. We cut ourselves, not everybody else's chains. We remove the chains from us. That's what forgiveness is. It's just letting go of all that. It's not yours. You free up so much space for yourself. So working on forgiveness, Biggie. Forgiveness is uh is really a powerful, I don't want to say elixir. It's it's almost like a one-stop shopping. It cleans up a lot. Forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others cleans up a lot. Again, it's hard to explain, but it does. The next one is, and the final one is practice. It's just practice. Healing isn't linear, you'll still likely get triggered, but over time you're gonna notice it faster. You're gonna respond differently in a healthier way, and you will abandon yourself less and less. Progress is not about never feeling the fear again or having a wound or anything else. It's not about that. It's about noticing it faster, responding differently, and abandoning yourself less and less. It's one of the crazy things that I learned on my journey. It's I was applying all types of things to me. As you guys know, my College of Christian was a very dedicated two-year period of healing. And I was just doing all these things, and that's exactly what happened to me. There was no fanfare, there was no marching band, there was no commencement speech, there was nothing. It was just all of a sudden I did something different. It blew my mind. It blew my mind because I had been with Kristen, the same old patterned Kristen, for 42 years. And one day I walked in the front door of my mom's house. This is when the children and I were living at my mom's. I got a text on my phone. It was a StarTac phone, a flip phone, opened that, saw that, and shut the phone and put it back on my little, I had a carrier on my waist. Like a clip thing. And I went to keep walking and I froze. I stopped. Because I did not respond to somebody that I was missing, wanting, vying for attention, trying to be all that too. I just shut my phone and there was no thought to it, like, well, I got home, I'll do this later. Or I just looked at it and shut it and started walking. Like, I don't, I don't need to respond to that. But there was no thought to it. There's no, I didn't even think that. I just opened it, shut it, put it on my back in the carrier, and I stopped. I said, what the heck was that? Because I would have been like, oh, dropped everything right there, you know, come up with a witty response, trying to either flirt or get the person to want to see me or something. Because back then I was afraid to not even, you know, taking my time to respond to a text, which by the way, is the opposite of what we ever want to do. I don't think I even responded to it, to be honest with you. Or if I did, it was hours later or the next day. It just wasn't important anymore. That was my defining moment. This is working. Whatever I'm doing is working. And I didn't even know, you guys, I didn't have a mentor. I didn't know what I was doing or what I was even aiming for. But my soul was carrying me. My connection to source was guiding me. And I remember at that moment saying to myself, what's changed? What's changed? What's changed? And the answer came like that: your self-worth. You know your worth now. So when I started to know my worth, I stopped abandoning myself. See how this all works together? It's so exciting. So don't think there's gonna be some big major party or fiesta or lightning bolts. You're just gonna start noticing that you're doing things differently. And you're not gonna have those knee-jerk responses to things in your life. And you're gonna abandon yourself less and less. You're gonna set boundaries, you're gonna say no, you're gonna take your time responding. Yes, this stuff takes time, but you will notice quickly the changes. Because I will tell you something. This wasn't like two years into my journey, I noticed that. This was like months. I can't give you an exact amount of time. I know that I was still hung up on that guy. I call him Jacob in my book. A story about him and the recovering people pleaser. I don't even know what time of year this was, you guys. All I know is I walked in the house, I was like, I did something different. It starts to change you because your brain is changing. You are healing your inner world. And when you heal your inner world, your outer world changes with it. Upgrades in a good way, in a positive way. Final thought is you don't need to quote unquote fix yourself to be loved, just so you know. The parts of you that were unseen, unheard, unmet, untaken care of, unprotected, unrespected, all of those, please know that when you Meet those parts now. You will heal them. They are healable. They're not there forever. You're not stuck. Self-love tenant number one, grace and forgiveness of self. Be willing to give yourself grace on this journey. Be gentle with you. This is not all gonna happen overnight. Again, not again, I don't think I've said this yet. Be willing to just dedicate some time to yourself. Like if you're between relationships, how about just not date? How about just say, you know what? I want to get I want to better position myself before I date. That's what I did. I said, I gotta stop, I gotta stop this running from relationship to relationship gig because it ain't working for me. I need to be alone because men are a distraction to me. My partner's romantic partnership was a distraction to me because I was putting so much into them. I knew that if I got into a relationship, I was gonna, yeah, I knew me. I'm like, I'm a Libra. We're really romantic. We're really, we're in love with being in love. Amani just said she has a date night with herself every week. I love that, Amani. That's so good. But take that time to be with you. And if you're in a relationship currently, still take that time to be with you. Dedicate and set aside some time. If you're with a quote unquote average human being, they're gonna love that you do that, by the way. If you're with a narcissistic type person, they're not. They're gonna cut it down and make fun of you and what have you. So please know that if you get that pushback from somebody, they're not a healthy person in your life. Because anytime someone says, I need to do this for me, I'm like, go do it, go do it. Go do it. Yes, yes, yes, go do it. Like it was really gorgeous out this morning. I was actually ready for the gym as I walked outside, and my husband goes, God, it's so breezy. It was 78 degrees, partly sun, partly cloudy and breezy, which is beautiful in Arizona. I said, I'm not going to the gym. I'm walking. I'm like, you want to walk with me? He goes, No, I'm gonna go to the gym and play basketball. Do you know I asked him like four times, sure you don't want to walk with me? It's really nice out here. And even when he was driving to the gym, I'm like, or I had left already on my walk. I'm like, bro, it's it's gorgeous out here. He goes, Well, maybe I'll play basketball at the park. This is a prime example of him taking care of him. He's like, Yeah, no, this is what I need to do for me. That's attractive. I was like, Yeah, good for you, bro. Good for you. And I'm kind of giggling at myself. I was like, you sure? But he does like when it's beautiful outside too. So meet yourself with compassion, grace, acceptance. I truly hope that you guys got a lot from this three-part series. It was fun. It's a big topic, and I was a little first a little hesitant, thinking, oh, maybe this is too deep and too big for the Bible ishes. And then I just decided, you know what? These are my people. These are my people. These are the ones, like I said, I say in my opening, you're the courageously curious, the soul led and the heart centered, the seekers, the givers, and the sacred rebels. I thought, no, this is okay. They're gonna like this conversation. So I appreciate you all being here. And you know what? No one came up to the stage today, and I think that was very purposeful. I think you guys wanted to listen, and that's okay. I did have a lot to unpack. So kind of it kind of worked both ways. But please know that I always enjoy you. And if you did come up, I would for sure pause this episode to bring you up and to hear your voice because what you have to say matters. One last time I'm gonna share that I created a free resource called Healing the Abandonment Wound. I just felt like it would be really great for you guys to have like a little accompanying workbook. I knew that I was giving this talk, and this talk kind of goes hand in hand with it, but there was so much more information in this talk than just that, that worksheet. But please know that if you would like the Healing the Abandonment workbook, it's like nine pages, there's prompts, there's a lot of writing involved. Grab yourself a workbook or some type of notebook to write in. If you would like that, click on my profile picture here, click where it says say hi, and please send send me the workbook. And if you would like to have the reparent talk that I gave, then you can write reparenting. And I'll give you that link just so you don't have to scroll down through and find it, so you can listen to that. I'm not gonna send a little message or anything, I'm just gonna send it to you because I have a lot of people that are wanting this, so I'm just going to send you the link and it and it opens and you'll see the picture and everything. I have a question from Jeannie. You had another resource today. Yes, yes, the reparenting one, yes. I will send that to you as well. Yeah. Yes, I know it's reparenting. She has a typo repainting. I have the re the repainting. Okay. She said, darn it. I know, that's funny. Um, okay, and this person said, I would like all the books available. Okay. Yes, there's a workbook, and there is a workbook for the healing the abandonment wound, but there's also, I was gonna share a link to reparenting yourself. That was the other one. So if you would like that, Wendy, yes. Everybody's saying send me everything. Okay, good. All right, you guys. Thank you so much. I will get on that as soon as I hang them up from up from this talk today, but I really appreciate you all being here. I love doing life with you. I love this group. We are so powerful. You guys are absolute rock stars. I say that with every fiber of my being. I am not blowing smoke in your ear. I know who you are, I see what you've been through. Even the ones who haven't come up on the stage and spoken yet, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be listening to this if you hadn't. I know that for a fact. So every person that sticks and stays in these conversations and listens and absorbs and does the work, you're amazing, and you're the you're the kind of people that I like to be around because I know that your heart's in the right place and you're really willing to do what it takes to heal yourself. Yes, I have another person who wants the repainting. The repainting link. I am dying. For some reason, you guys, I don't think auto spelling likes reparenting. It may not even be a word. Because I think when I was typing that in, yeah. Everybody wants the repainting link. You guys got it. You got it. All right, much love to you guys. I will be sending these shortly, and I will see you tomorrow. Take good care. Bye.