Letting Go of Who You Thought You'd Become To Make Room for Something Better

Everyone tells you to reinvent yourself. Nobody tells you what happens when the version of you you've built your entire life around falls apart.

In this episode, I share an origin story I don't talk about often - losing my friend unexpectedly, bringing four pages of symptoms to my doctor because I knew something wasn't right, and watching every plan I had for my future disappear when I didn't receive a single PhD interview.

I share what that season taught me, how it forced me to let go of identities that no longer fit, and what grew in the space that was left behind.

If you've ever found yourself stuck between who you were and who you're becoming - this one is for you.

Apply for 1:1 coaching: https://77z9uh9ts6v.typeform.com/to/p3IrXlMi
Follow on Instagram: @jessica_tiana_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the role model you never had. I'm Jess, trauma-informed strength and identity coach, former crisis counselor, and the woman who rebuilt her body and her life from the ground up. This podcast exists because I desperately needed it. And it didn't exist, so I built it. And now you have somewhere to come every week to feel empowered and reminded of who the fuck you are. Here's what I believe with everything I have. Your body is the foundation of your healing. Not the destination, not the goal, the foundation. The place where everything else starts. The first place you stop abandoning yourself and start becoming her. That's the movement we're building here. For women who have survived everything and are done just getting through it. Women who are ready to stop surviving and start becoming the role model they never had. For themselves first, and then for every woman watching who needs to see that it's possible. Today I'm telling you a story I don't talk about very often. The story of who I thought I was going to become and what happened when that version of me fell apart. This is my PhD story, and it's really a story about loss, identity, and learning to trust something in yourself that doesn't have proof yet. Now I'm gonna start at the very beginning because this context is extremely relevant. When I first got to university, I thought I wanted to study law. So I started in psychology, and to be honest, I hated it because it was an intro-site class, which is extremely general information, and statistics. They were in separate semesters, everything else was electives, and I thought, this is fucking boring. So I switched back to the sciences because that's where my heart truly was with biology. I was really good at biology, especially the systems in the body, really good at math, and really freaking good at chemistry. The teacher even used my tests as master keys to grade other people's tests. So for a short time, this felt like the right path for me. But fast forward a little bit through that semester, and my friend died. He was hit by a car, and I woke up one day with people blowing up my phone asking if he died, and I was really fucking confused because it was super unexpected, and he was just gone. And I can tell you more about this story another time. Just DM me on Instagram at Jessica underscore TNA underscore, and I can build an episode around this and how I actually healed from this tragedy. Because you might learn something from that too. But his death became a catalyst for something I hadn't been willing to look at before. It cracked me open. And what I found underneath wasn't just grief, it was depression, it was extreme anxiety, and I had been carrying this for a long time without naming it. So I sat down one day and I wrote out a list four pages long to take to my doctor with specific moments spanning from my childhood all the way through to university. Things that had happened between my parents and me, emotional and psychological abuse, feeling caught in the middle of everything, being forced to carry registered letters back and forth, social workers in our house, being scared to talk to them, alienation from one parent. Four pages of evidence I had been building without knowing that it was evidence. And in doing that, in sitting down and actually naming what happened to me, I realized something. I wanted to understand it. My brain is very driven by math and science, very logical. And I wanted to understand how childhood shapes mental health in adults, how trauma gets internalized rather than expressed outward. Why some people go quiet with their pain and others act out. I wanted to understand myself. So I went back to psychology and I went all in. Now, if you're not familiar with what I mean by internalizing, I'll explain internalizing disorders very simply because I think it's important so you have an understanding for yourself too. And this is not to diagnose you, this is just to provide you context and understanding. When we talk about how psychological distress shows up in people, it generally falls into two categories. Internalizing behaviors are directed inward. They're low visibility, easy to miss, and easy to dismiss. Anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms. The people carrying these are often described as quiet, sensitive, shy, and their primary emotion is usually fear or sadness, or a deep sense of not being good enough. Externalizing behaviors are directed outward, high visibility, immediately disruptive, ADHD, conduct issues in children, anger, acting out. These get noticed fast, they get disciplined, and they get labeled. Here's the thing about internalizing disorders. Because they're quiet, because they don't make a scene, they often go unaddressed for years. Decades even. Sometimes an entire lifetime. The person suffers silently while everyone around them thinks they're fine. And that was me. And it was the experience of many of the women I would work with later in crisis work. I wanted to understand how childhood trauma specifically created these internal patterns. How what happened to you as a child, the things that were done to you or not done for you, quietly shaped the adult you became without anyone ever naming it. That became my focus. And it's still a huge part of my coaching now. Now, fast forward back to when I was on the path to get a PhD. So four years, my plan was to get a PhD in clinical psychology, and I did everything right. I worked across five different research labs, I did an honors thesis, I mentored other students, I reached out to professors, I wrote research proposals, I spoke to PhD students who told me I was on the right path. Everyone, profs at my university and others at other universities were impressed and told me I was on the right path and I was going to for sure get an interview in one of these programs. Other students were intimidated by me because of how much work I was putting in and the grades that I had. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, despite holding that position of success in academics, I stopped enjoying any of it. I was caught up in the rat race and I had lost the thread of why I started in the first place. But the question that terrified me was this. If I wasn't the girl on the path to the PhD in clinical psychology, if I wasn't demonstrating my knowledge and getting the most advanced education possible, who the fuck was I? I had built my entire identity around achievement that hadn't even happened yet. And if you know anything about clinical psychology programs, you know that they're more competitive than medical school. I only applied to two programs when you're encouraged to apply to five or six. I had over a 95 average in my final two years of psychology. I had high 80s overall in university, I was scoring 100% on some exams, I had incredible references, years of real research experience, profs and PhD students telling me I was going to get in. I had real-world experience working in mental health, complex mental health addictions. I didn't get a single interview. Now again, I also only applied to two schools because if you know anything about me, you know that I will not be working with someone I don't respect or don't align with just to get ahead. After all, that's why I did not apply to the school I did my undergrad in. And some might call that stubborn, but I call that a conviction in my beliefs. Anyways, I digress. I sat there and I asked myself, what the hell am I actually doing right now? I was furious because I watched people who were less qualified get into these programs because they played the politics, because they knew how to work the room, schmooze the right professor, kiss the right ass, and just be yes men. And again, one thing about me, I will never do that in a million years. So there I was, years of work, near perfect academic record, and the door I had been building toward for years had just closed in my face. And I was not about to wait around anymore. Now, at the end of all of this nonsense with the PhD, I was also working in mental health, and I had a job in the domestic violence and human trafficking sector. My crisis jobs. The kind of work that asks everything of you. And after not getting into a program I wanted and spending time in this field, I took time off to heal from my own experience with abuse. I was in multiple abusive relationships while I was navigating these experiences, while I was trying to get into grad school and work these jobs. So I took time off, and when I was ready to return, the full-time position I was encouraged to apply for wasn't given to me. So I had two doors closing at the same time. The PhD and the position working in the DB and human trafficking sector. And I had to sit with something that felt true even when it was painful. You cannot heal in the environment that made you sick. If it's not this, it's something better. I'm telling you, I sat there and I cried so much submitting my resignation letter to that position. But I had to remind myself that I wasn't meant to be there anymore. I was meant for something more. So again, if it's not this, it's something better. I live by this to this day when things don't work out for me. Which brings me to the next part of my journey. Building my business has not been a straight line. If you've followed me for a while, you've watched me pivot more times than I can count. Strict fitness coaching, nutrition coaching, relationship healing content, low-ticket products, courses, one-to-one coaching, a community, eventually landing on trauma-informed strength and identity coaching with a nervous system lens. Every time something didn't feel aligned, I felt this huge resistance in my body. A wrongness that I couldn't ignore. And every time I had to let it go and start over. And starting over feels like failure from the outside. But every pivot was actually getting me closer to what I do now, which is the first thing that has ever fully fit. I knew I was going to be okay through all of it. Not because I had proof, but because I trusted that if something wasn't aligned, something more aligned was coming. The universe will intentionally put obstacles in your way to redirect you to the path that you're supposed to be on. So every time that I had a failed launch or lost a client, didn't make a sale, for example, with my relationship healing content, yes, that is a huge pillar of my brand. That is something that I hold near and dear to my heart because of the experiences that I've had. But I was not meant to just be a relationship healing page. I was meant to help women come out of that on the other side, using a more holistic approach, because that's what worked for me. And I saw when I when I was working as a crisis counselor that talking in circles with women, and also in my own experience with my own therapist, talking in circles does not help you heal. You need a holistic approach if you want to heal from your trauma. That's probably why you felt like nothing has been working for you. Now, the hardest part for me wasn't letting go of the PhD or the job. Again, it was letting go of an identity I had been holding on to without realizing it. I knew since I was a child that I didn't want to work for somebody else. I knew I wasn't meant to be locked in an office. I knew that no matter what I did, I was going to have a top level of education that allowed me to work for myself in whatever discipline I had chosen. I knew somewhere underneath everything that I was meant for more. And my best friend John, the one I talked about in the Friends Who Keep You Alive episode, said something to me once that I've never forgotten. He said, I see you doing something more than that. You're not meant to be in an office listening to people all day or doing research. And in that moment, this was over like five years ago, I still remember the feeling of relief, but also motivation, ambition, inspiration that I felt in my body in that moment. Because I was like, finally, somebody is giving me permission to step away from the thing that I thought I needed to do. And he was right. But before I could become whatever that more was, I had to let go of the identity I had been operating from. The identity of the victim, the survivor, the one who had been through shit. That identity had been useful once. It made sense of what happened to me. But I could not build something new while still operating from it, and neither can you. Letting go of who you thought you'd become isn't just about a career or a job title. Sometimes it's about letting go of the version of you that survival required. So the version of you that's actually meant for more has room to exist. Here's what I want you to take away from this. I didn't have proof that things were going to work out. I just had this deep internal knowing, a trust in myself that I was meant for more, even when every external signal said otherwise. That trust doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the same place everything else I teach comes from. Your body, your nervous system, your gut, the foundation you build when you stop abandoning yourself and start actually listening to what's true for you. That internal knowing, the deep trust that you're meant for more, it starts in the body. It starts with feeling safe enough in yourself to hear your own voice over everyone else's expectations. That is exactly the work we do together in coaching. Rebuilding your body so you can rebuild trust in yourself. Because once you start trusting yourself that deeply, letting go of who you thought you'd become stops being terrifying. It starts being the doorway to who you actually are. And if any part of this resonated and you're ready to start trusting yourself again, the link to apply for 101 coaching is in the show notes. I built this because I needed the role model I never had. So now I'm becoming her for you. So you can become her for someone else. And remember, every no to what drains you is a powerful yes to yourself. Your body is the foundation of your healing. I'll see you next episode.