The Wound That Becomes Who You Are

When the Wound Becomes Who You Are

Episode Description:

This week Jennifer calls herself out  publicly, directly, in the way only an Enneagram 8 can. For years she built her brand around high-achieving women. And the whole time, men kept showing up in her practice and transforming.  

She missed it. Because she was living inside an identity that was editing it out.

What You're Orbiting series goes deep on wound identity aka the story we build around who we are that once kept us safe and now quietly filters out the life trying to find us. Jennifer shares her own blind spot, an anonymized client story about what horses can teach us about who we actually are, and three questions that cut straight to the core of what your identity might be costing you.

What you'll hear:

• Why Jennifer has been marketing to women while men keep transforming in her practice
• What wound identity is  and why it's usually your most successful trait
• The horse handler story: what happens when you stop living inside the story of who you're not
• What identity actually costs  especially when it's still producing results
• Three questions to find where your identity and your calling are in conflict

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You've done the therapy. You've read all the books. You've listened to all the podcasts. And now you have the career. You've got the house. You've got the kids. You've done all of the work. You've checked all the boxes. You've done everything you were supposed to do to be happy. And you woke up one day and realized that you're not. And you started asking the question, isn't there more? Yes, there is. And I don't mean more information. We have all the information. What we need is transformation. And that is only done when we excavate that whole system and repave that superhighway. We're not skimming the surface here. We're gonna dig in deep and drink the water from a deeper well. We're telling the truth in a whole new language. You felt the nudge, then you hear the whisper. You ignore it, life gets louder, and it will manifest as burnout, exhaustion, illness, injury, anxiety, disconnection, addiction des jour, and drama at every turn. There is a better way, I know, because I found it on my own journey. This story is a part of my story. And I built this toolbox for myself, and I have proven that it works with hundreds of clients over the past 28 years of being in private practice. We're gonna blend neuroscience, psychology, and timeless Eastern wisdom and show you where science meets soul work. This is where we will rewire the patterns that have kept you stuck. I'm Jennifer Moore, licensed psychotherapist and creator of the Therapeutic Coach Approach. Isn't there more? Yes, there is. Each week I'm gonna share practical tools to implement so that you can actually transform your life. Follow now wherever you listen. And if somebody popped in your mind, that's not a coincidence, that's a synchronicity. Send it to them because they're ready to hear it too, just like you are. And welcome home. I'm going to share something that is almost embarrassing for me because as a psychotherapist and pattern recognition specialist, which is literally what I do for a living, I could not see my own patterns because I was living inside of it. For years, I've built my brand, my content, all of my messaging around women, high achieving women, women in leadership, women entrepreneurs, women who are outwardly successful, but inwardly, internally exhausted. That's who I speak to. And I've created all of my content for women. And the whole time, quietly, consistently, without even noticing, men kept showing up in my practice. Not one, not two, but over the course of the past year, two years, almost 20 different men who have made real changes in their life. Transformational, more money, deeper relationships, more intimate relationships, getting real about who they are, completely different identities than who they believed they really were. So every session we would find the through line. And I love these men. I love them. And somehow I kept looking past it. And I kept showing up in every one of my podcasts or my newsletters and all of my webinars, all of my programs over the past six or seven years. I've built four women. And yet all of these men keep showing up. And last week something happened. Four men called me, four men in two days. And I finally said, This is not a coincidence. This is a calling, specifically about the identity that I have built around who I thought I was. So today I want to talk about the identity that you have built that has maybe been editing out the life that's trying to find you, the life that is calling you. So I'm calling myself out as a teaching moment to help you figure out what you may have been editing out of your own life. Welcome back. I'm Jennifer Moore, licensed psychotherapist and founder of the therapeutic coach approach. And somehow I was blindsided to my own blind spots. So last week I talked about shadow work and we're we went in pretty deep last week with Carl Jung and shadow work and patterns and how the patterns get really trapped in the nervous system and how it has to be a top-down bottom-up if we're gonna change that pattern. We have to recognize it, but information is not enough. We need transformation. So today I want to show you what that actually looks like. And I'm calling myself out in my own lives, and I've got a couple other lives that I'm gonna give examples, stories that in my practice that I've noticed. But the people that I work with really do have an identity shift. But I'm gonna talk about the wound identity, the story that you've built around who you are that was completely necessary, but now maybe running the show and you don't even know it. So last week we did talk about Carl Young and the concept of shadow, what it is, the parts of ourselves that we exiled. Maybe we hid them in a closet under a bed. We didn't want to talk about it because they're embarrassing. They make you cringe. And then you see it in another person, it's mirrored back to you, and you're like, ugh, that person, why did they show up in my life? And why do they bother me so bad? They haven't actually done anything, but they talk too much or they do this or they do that. Those are our own shadow parts being mirrored back to us. But today I want to go in a little deeper. I want to talk about not the actual parts that we've exiled because we built our life on those, that burial site when we decided that it was no longer safe to be vulnerable or to be needy or to be soft or to be angry or ambitious, whatever we buried, we don't lose that part. We build an identity to make sure that nobody sees it. And that identity, that persona, as what Carl Jung called it, is often very successful, extraordinary. But the child who learned that need was dangerous because the adult who never asked for help is fiercely, impressively self-sufficient. The child who learned that anger wasn't safe, becomes the adult who is perfectly composed under pressure, leads an entire organization from composure. The child who learned that being too much, you know that person, becomes the adult who is impeccable at reading the room, always knows exactly how much of themselves to give and how much to keep back. These adaptations are real. And this is the intelligent response to the environment that kept you safe. It kept you successful. It helped you to understand what was going on in the room. They are really the part that of you that is why you're actually sitting in the room, right? It got you to where you are, but it's not gonna get you where you want to go. At some point, it stops adapting and you keep living inside of it anyway. The self-sufficiency that served you at nine is still refusing help at 45. I actually had a friend this week who needs something from someone, and she is so afraid to ask for it. And I reflected it back to her. I said, you know, they had to ask for that help at some point themselves. This is how the flow works. Ask and it is given, and you have to receive it in order for the flow to continue. The composure that made you a reliable leader is still suppressing the signal that something needs to change because composure doesn't always receive that signal. The instinct from reading the room is making you smaller than you are in spaces where your full presence is exactly what's needed. But again, if you were told you're too much, it may be scary to show up as the full you. James Hollis, who was a Jungian analyst, has a phrase. He calls it the unlived life. The life that keeps pressing on you beneath the identity that you've built. Let me say that again. Because I love it. The life that keeps pressing on you from beneath the identity that you've built. So you say, Oh, I can't do that. I don't have that advanced degree, or I'm just a that's it feels like an imposter. Hmm, hmm. Honey, stop. Stop with the playing small. This is an identity that you've built. It may show up as restlessness, as a sense that something is missing, even though everything looks right. Remember what I said last week? That's why I named this podcast. Isn't there more? Yes. And that calling is not going away as the career that no longer fits you, even though you've worked so hard to build it, the calling that you keep hearing, and then you talk yourself out of it. That's your unlived life. Asking, when are you doing this? So your blind spots. And I'm calling my own blind spot out. We can't see our own blind spots, but here's my truth. I'm an Ennegram eight. I am direct, I'm decisive, I take up a lot of space, and I don't apologize for it. I protect people with all of my might. I take on responsibility with a ferociousness and a fierceness. And if you're on the receiving end of my anger, it can feel like the wrath. Not to sound crazy, but I can be scary if I'm really angry about something. If there is an injust, if somebody has been mistreated, if somebody has been wronged, I really can, I can take it on. And I've also been told many times that I have a strong masculine energy. I actually take it as a compliment. I'm direct, I'm clear, I'm bold, I don't soften things unnecessarily. But at the same time, which I've grown to claim also and to really lean into, and I know this, I mean, I'm deeply soulful, but I can be nourishing. And that nourishing presence creates a safety where men can open up and feel safe to be vulnerable. They can be direct with me without me crumbling. They can be vulnerable and I won't weaponize it against them. They can show me the parts that they've been hiding behind the performance, and I won't treat it like it's a problem or a wound. I meet each client where they are. So for years, men have been finding their way to me, either through referral, through just happenstance or whatever. However, they found me along the way, even though all of my collateral said women, women, women. And these men have come to me and they've been transforming. They have been showing up and having massive transformation in their life and changes. And they're making more money. They have better leadership skills. Their relationships are actually working better, more intimacy, which means better sex, my friends, because they can have a real conversation with their partner that is open and vulnerable and intimate and connecting. We all want to connect, right? But there is a sense of themselves that they didn't even know that they had, but yet I kept marketing to women because that was my brand. That was my identity. I'd built something clear and specific. I lived on my story, and I have become an expert in menopause and perimenopause hormones, the trifecta of the gut-brain connection because of my own story, my own struggles with it. I've learned all these things and I want to help these women who were in their 30s, mid-30s, early 40s, going through these major changes because I wanted somebody to guide me. But the whole time all these men kept showing up in my practice. They didn't get the memo that all my content was for women, but I kept marketing to the women, and these men kept showing up. And I know I talk about look for the through line, look for the through line, look for the pattern. We have to see the pattern. Well, Jennifer Moore couldn't see her own pattern until last week when four people in two days called me and I had a wake-up call. And I said to my husband, this is not a coincidence. He laughed at me, of course, and said, I think it's a coincidence. I said, I don't think so. There is no such thing as a coincidence. There are only synchronicities. I think that this is a calling, and I've been editing it out because I built my identity on something else. Which means my website has to be changed, all my marketing, all of it. So I can take away the persona of just being for women. I love my women. I love my groups, I love all my masterminds, I love all of the things that I've done with the women. And I'm ready to invite men in the conversation, men into the circle. Because here's what I know. And all of the messages that I teach, that I believe, that I know is I follow the truth. I follow the truth. And that is the one through line. And that's where the message needs to go. Our job is to stop editing down what doesn't fit the story that we've told. Our job needs to be open. What is my true purpose? What have I been editing out? What am I not looking at? What is right in front of my face? So I have another client. She is a female, she is amazing. I love her so much. She does amazing work with horses. She's a horse trainer. She trains people on how to how to ride their horses, how to work with their horses. She trains the horses, takes on all kinds of horses. And she tells me these stories about what she's doing. And I'm like, I don't think you're selling your services. Like, I don't think that you see what I see. She trains these horses. She does all this amazing work based on her instincts and listening to the horses, but she knows that the horse is always a mirror. And whatever is happening in you, that anxiety that you're suppressing, the authority that you're trying to perform, the fear you're pretending isn't there. The horse knows. The horse doesn't respond to who you're pretending to be. The horse responds to who you actually are. So as she's telling me these stories every week, we were talking about her schedule for the summer, and I gave her a challenge because she gets up and goes out early in the mornings to avoid the midday summer heat. I said, What about in the afternoons you write a book? She laughed at me. She said, Are you kidding me? I don't know enough to write a book. I'm disorganized with my thoughts. I can't do I she laughed at me. I don't know enough. I said, Oh, but you do, but you do. So I gave her the challenge. Why don't you just you don't have to sit down and write it. Why don't you just start doing some memos? Use AI, use whatever, get those memos organized. Wow. So she did it. She came back this week. I said, Did you do your homework? She said, Yeah. She couldn't talk. She had no words because it was exactly what I said. She had been hiding behind a small identity of who she thought she was, who she had built her business around, but the story was nothing less than extraordinary. She started telling me story after story, horse after horse, each one with a precise mirror of the human nervous system patterns, learning how to recognize, regulate, work with the imposter, the fear, the nervous system, all of the things all required her own nervous system regulation. It required her to face her own fears. It required her to show up in a way that she didn't even realize that she was showing up. When she's telling me this, she said I had no idea what I had actually built. I said, Girl, this book is going to change people's lives. But what she had done was she had built her identity on a wound identity. And it's costing her her business, people that she could work with, and it was keeping her small. But her story is so extraordinary. The work she does is so much bigger than what she even realizes and recognizes. And when I mirrored it back to her, I'm like, this book is going to change people's lives because people don't realize it. And you don't even have to be a horse person to hear the story and realize, wow, this is a mirror of us. So both of those stories, how are we hiding behind the identity that we built? One that we have edited out where there may be a calling, a real calling that is pressing us forward, but an identity that was built around something different, an earlier version that kept you safe, but you keep editing out. I have another client who I've been working with for about two years, maybe three now, and he has an extraordinary story. And but he has a hiccup. He's got a big hiccup. He thinks he can't go to the next level because he doesn't have this credential or that credential. Well, you know me. I'm gonna be direct and I'm gonna call BS. I called BS on that, and lo and behold, we got his business to over a million dollars. That's because we stopped playing small with the identity. He was editing out who he thought he could become based on a credential, a degree, and that's just BS, because he's got the skills, he's got the smarts, he's got the wisdom, and he's got the years of experience. But this is what Jung calls the wound identity, the wound itself. Whatever happened, whatever got buried, whatever part of you that you decided early on in your life, that wound is real. The identity that formed around it was intelligent, it was protective, and it was necessary. In IFS internal family systems, we call them protectors, we call them firefighters. But at some point, that identity stops being protection and it starts becoming a cage. It tells you, you're the one who works with women, not men. You're the one who's not organized to write a book. You're the one who doesn't have the degree, so you can't make a million dollars. Well, I call BS because we are going to heal that wound. Maybe you're the one who is so strong who doesn't need help. It tells you this is just the way you are, and you believed it because it's been true for a long time. And it's been useful for so long that you stopped questioning whether it was true. But here's what it costs you it cost you clients who are meant for you, but they couldn't find you because your own messaging was off, aka myself. It may have cost her her book because she wouldn't have even thought of writing a book. She was like, This is the craziest idea you have ever had, Jennifer. I said, It's the best idea that has come through me. It actually was not my idea. It came through me. And it is going to change her business and it is going to change lives whenever people read this book. The version you of you, of your leadership that operates from wholeness instead of from the adaptive self that you built to survive on. You often, you more than often, 99% of the time, you can't even see the cost because the identity is still producing results. Your brand works, the training works, you may have a successful business, but results can coexist with a ceiling that you don't even know that you're bumping against. But there may be a bigger calling than your current identity is ready to let in. What are you editing out? I just want to say that again. Who are you editing out? So there's a version of this conversation that gets clean, too clean, too fast, and it's not a decision, it's not a mindset. This is not about just simple insight because remember, top down, bottom up, your identity, we have to think about who this is, who have I been hiding from, but we have to repattern the nervous system. So it requires a below thought approach to shift it. But the starting place is okay, am I really willing to even question the story? Who have I built my identity around? Maybe it's illness, maybe it's something that happened to you. This is just who I am. I don't have any energy. I don't this happened to me. This terrible thing happened to me. And this is just who I am, and this is just how things are. Is that true? Is it true? What is this identity protecting you from? What has been trying to get through this story that you keep editing out? Like for me. Oh, I just work with women, that's my brand, that's who I am. Well, it was protecting me from a wider reach. What if they don't like me? I don't know. What if they do? What if there's real transformation? I work with human beings. Whoever shows up and is ready to do the work. Whatever transformation is supposed to happen is going to happen. Or for my client who says, I'm not a writer, I'm an imposter, I can't do that. And I'm like, girl, you know more than the average person who is out there riding their horse. You know more in one day. You teach more in one day than most of these trainers are teaching in a year. And it's not just about technique and meth methodology. This is about intuition. This is about connecting with the horse. What does the horse need? What is the horse here to teach us? The mirror. There's mirror mirrors everywhere, right? It's like the fun house ple mirror room. They're everywhere. They're mirroring back to us what we need to learn. What is it protecting you from? The vulnerability of being seen, of putting something real out in the world that might actually make the world a little bit better. That identity that protects us from vulnerability is. Of the unlived life. The identity protects us from the vulnerability of the unlived life. And at some point, if you're willing to start, you start to wonder whether the protection is costing you or is it just keeping you stuck? So last week I asked three questions under the blue moon. I hope you sat with those questions under that beautiful full blue moon. This week I want to ask something different. I want you to think about the story that you tell about who you are. Not what you do for a living, not what your resume is, not what your achievements are, but the story underneath those things. The story that tells you who you've allowed yourself to be, what you're capable of, who shows up for you and why. Where did that story come from? And more importantly, is it true? Is it true? Here's what I know after almost 28 years of doing this work. The people who transform, not just put a band-aid on something, but really transform are the ones who are going to ask those questions. Question the story. Not all at once. I'm not saying blow your whole world up, quit your job tomorrow, leave your husband, leave your wife. I'm not saying that. I'm saying question your story about your own identity, who you have allowed yourself to become. Get curious. Just get curious. And if you're anything like me, getting curious can be fun, but it can also be a little scary about looking at places where I may be in conflict with my identity. Are my values actually in alignment? Where does life keep pressing through that you keep editing back? Where does life keep pressing through that you keep editing back? Where the evidence is right in front of you and somehow you still don't see it. Where the thing that you most need to hear is the thing your current story has no room for, like the men I've been working with in my practice, whom I love. I love these guys because they're showing up and they do the work. The calling is never quiet. I just had my own volume turned down. So I'm turning my volume up and I'm listening and looking at the ways that I've had my identity that has been editing out the bigger calling. And I'm asking you, are you willing to turn the volume up? Are you going to keep it on mute? What or who is trying to find you that your current identity is not making room for? What would you do or claim if the story you've been living inside wasn't the only story available? What if there was another story to be told? What if your wound could be healed and you could write a new script? All right, so if something in you moved, you felt a little friction, there's a calling in there. I have three spaces open on my current schedule right now. So if you are willing to go a little bit deeper, I offer a free consult. You can find the link in my show notes. I've got a couple of retreats coming up soon that are gonna be game changers. I'm visiting venues right now. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you. And I again I want to ask you, what are you editing out? What or who are you editing out? Next week, we're gonna go and talk about the dragon, what you've been running from, what's gathered around your deepest wounds, and what it actually takes to turn and face it. So thanks for being here. You know that your success does not have to cut cost you your piece, and I look forward to seeing you next week. Until then, Namaste. Before you go, if something landed for you today, don't let that just be information. Let's use it as transformation, integration into your body. Ask yourself, what's one thing I heard today that my body already knows is true? Feel it. Allow your body to experience it. This is where the magic happens. If this episode added value to your life, the best way to support the show is simple. Share it. Forward it to somebody who needs permission to go a little bit deeper. Just start showing up. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you're feeling really generous, write me a raving review. It means everything. All the links and resources are in the show notes below. And I'll see you next week. Until then, you remember just how incredibly powerful you are. Namaste.