Episodios

  • 5 emotional wounds we all suffer from

    5 emotional wounds we all suffer from
    Sep 22 2022

    Healing your emotional wounds is essential if you're to reach your happy place, and stay there. Your emotional wounds can often be the source of your day-to-day triggers, so by healing your emotional wounds you're able to reduce the stress and anxiety you experience each day.

    The problem is that we're not always aware of what those wounds are. Many of the experiences that are at the root of these wounds probably happened before our conscious memory kicked in and so it can often feel like we're looking for a lost pin in the dark. Also, some of these wounds are built up over time with the repeating of similar experiences.

    So while one event might not stand out, it could be that we had many many experiences that followed a particular theme and over time, a wound was created. Just like if you get one scratch from your cat, it'll pass, but if your cat keeps scratching you in the same place, eventually it will get infected and be super painful. Then when it eventually stops, you'll probably get a scar #ouch

    If we are to think about our emotional wounds in terms of themes, it can get a bit easier for us to start to address them. Because even though we might not have strong memories of the individual events that created our emotional wounds, once we start thinking about how we've been affected by a particular theme in our life, memories start to come to the surface for us.

    What also helps us to heal our emotional wounds is starting with common emotional wounds that are common or universal. By starting here, we can begin to reduce the emotional load we're carrying and so make any onward journey easier.

    What is a universal emotional wound?

    There is a shortlist of emotional wounds that can be considered universal, in that they affect all of us to some degree. This is because they are experienced by us at a very young age before our we are able to fully understand what is going on. This means that simple experiences end up carrying a lot more emotional weight and impact than they should.

    For example, let's say a mother has to hand her new baby over to health care professionals just after the birth because she needs medical attention. In that moment, the baby is going to feel abandoned or rejected, and may also experience separation anxiety. And so the first of many wounds is in place.

    Of course, many of us have had situations whereby our parents or caregivers had moments when they were struggling and took it out on us as children. Being a parent I can testify to the triggering nature of kids, and it's all too easy to react in ways you'd rather not. All of our childhoods have had many of these kinds of experiences.

    Over time, these slowly build up to create painful emotional wounds that show up in our adult lives through our fears, emotional triggers, limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviours. With this as a backdrop, it's not surprising that as adults we are the emotional walking wounded.

    If we don't address these wounds, then just like physical wounds, they can start to fester. So for our emotional health and well-being, we're better off trying to understand what they are. Once we know what they are we can start taking steps to heal them.

    Below I'm going to share with you, some of the common or universal wounds that we all have to some degree. In sharing these with you, I'm also going to share

    • how they show up - so that you can more easily spot if you have it
    • recommended Head Trash Clearances that you can do to start healing the wound

    To read what these 5 emotional wounds are head over to the blog post that accompanies this podcast at https://clearyourheadtrash.com/blog/5-emotional-wounds/ 

    To sign up for the live trauma clearances head over to 
    https://clearyourheadtrash.com/live-clearances/ 
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    1 h y 6 m
  • Micro-dosing for mental health, Simone's story

    Micro-dosing for mental health, Simone's story
    Sep 15 2022
    Micro-dosing for mental health is something that has been explored for some time. The pioneer of this is the Czech-born psychologist Stanislav Grof. Micro-dosing is the practice of taking or administering very small amounts of a drug in order to test or benefit from its physiological action while minimising undesirable side effects. So when it comes to micro-dosing psychedelics, this means consuming very low, sub-hallucinogenic doses of a psychedelic substance, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or psilocybin-containing mushrooms. The idea being that you get the benefit of the substance, without the trippy side-effects. This is a trend that's been building for a while now and articles in the media are now pretty common. Like this one in the New York Times: More People Are Microdosing for Mental Health. But Does It Work? There's even a show on Netflix about it: How to change your mind. In this show, author Michael Pollan leads the way in this docuseries exploring the history and uses of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline. Using micro-dosing therapeutically In his latest book, How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan writes of his own consciousness-expanding experiments with psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin, and he makes the case for why shaking up the brain's old habits could be therapeutic for people facing addiction, depression, or death. As someone who's taken psychedelics - albeit recreationally and not therapeutically - I have no doubt that they have the potential to provide therapeutic support when taken in small doses, but I was curious to hear someone's experience of this. So when a friend of mine shared a link to an article on Facebook where she was interviewed on how she had used micro-dosing to improve her mental health, I knew I wanted to talk to her about it. Here's the article: Can microdosing psychedelics improve your mental health? Here's what the science says I came to know Simone when I interviewed her for my Fear Free Childbirth podcast about the time she gave birth in a stream. Her YouTube video of the birth at the time had hit over 55 million views and my podcast interview with her has been one of my top episodes on that podcast. Giving birth in nature takes a special kind of fearlessness and confidence in oneself, which Simone had in bucketloads. Simone's experience of micro-dosing for mental health As an experienced therapist Simone also has extensive knowledge and experience in managing emotional and mental wellbeing, so I was particularly interested in hearing how she came to turn to micro-dosing to help with her mental health. My conversation with Simone During my conversation with Simone we discuss; what lead to her deciding to try micro-dosingwhat substance she took micro-doses ofhow she felt once she started micro-dosinghow long she used micro-dosing forhow she came to know that her time for micro-dosing was coming to an end Micro-dosing Resources During our conversation Simone shared some books and resources. These are listed below; Books: A Really Good Day by Ayelet WaldmanHow to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan Website: www.thethirdwave.co. Recommend this for a solid, practical introduction to microdosing. Articles: Simone recommends this article because a lot has come out recently about the fact that Drs/Psychiatrists/Scientists don’t really know how anti-depressants work. Likewise, despite decades of research into psychedelics, we still don’t know exactly how psychedelics work either. She thinks it’s wise to be cautious and proceed carefully, but not to have fear about using psychedelics. https://psychedelicspotlight.com/the-truth-about-depression-serotonin-ssris-and-psychedelics/ Shows: Fantastic Fungi on Netflix How to Change Your Mind on Netflix Here's some research I came across: Psychedelic microdosing benefits and challenges: an empirical codebook https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-019-0308-4 About Simone Simone Surgeoner is a therapist and mentor who has helped thousands of people find their own authentic path in life. She enjoys nothing more than exploring the depths of what it means to be human. Using herself as her own guinea pig, Simone demonstrates beingness as arising from integrity with one’s essence. Helping people find their inner truth, through their own direct experience, is the core of Simone’s work. As a mother of four daughters, currently unschooling her younger two, Simone is passionate about the liberation of all humans. Psychedelic integration and support is one of the areas where Simone supports clients, as she continues to help people at all stages of healing and evolution: sexuality, relationships, trauma, pregnancy & birth, children, hormones, health, business & career to grief and dying. Website: www.saksana.com.au
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    56 m
  • Balancing your inner feminine and masculine

    Balancing your inner feminine and masculine
    Sep 7 2022
    Your inner masculine and feminine

    Do you think your inner masculine and feminine energies are in balance? Does this question even make sense to you?

    I ask that because I’ve had some conversations with people when they’ve looked a bit puzzled when asked. They simply didn’t understand the question. The idea of having inner masculine and feminine energies was a total mystery to them.

    While I’ve been aware of these differing energies for a while, it’s only really in the last three years or so that I’ve been taking a closer look at them personally.

    A few weeks ago I shared some learnings I had around balancing my inner masculine and feminine which you can read here: Are you denying your feminine energy?

    I had realised how much I had been denying my inner feminine during my life, and how I’d dialled up my inner masculine to compensate. This came with costs that are really now only clear to me now that I’ve brought about more balance.

    Balancing your inner masculine and feminine

    I don’t feel for a minute that both my masculine and feminine energies are totally within balance. But now I’m a lot more savvy as to why it’s important for them to be in balance, and how to go about bringing our feminine and masculine energies into balance. But, I don’t feel savvy enough about this to be able to speak with authority on it.

    All that I know is that it’s important to restore balance, as with all aspects of life. What I really needed was someone else who IS totally savvy to break all this down for me, and you!

    This is where my conversation with Zoe-Anna comes in.

    When I was seeking out more information on balancing our inner masculine and inner feminine, I came across one of Zoe-Anna’s articles and I thought “THIS is the person I need to speak to!”. I was thrilled when she replied right back with a YES!

    Zoe-Anna does not disappoint. During our chat we explore;

    • What are our masculine and feminine energies
    • What does being in balance look like
    • How do we know when we’re out of balance; tell tale signs
    • What do each of these energies do for us
    • What is toxic masculinity or toxic femininity is and how it shows up
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    56 m
  • Healing from Trauma 

    Healing from Trauma 
    Jul 20 2022
    Healing from Trauma 

    Trauma is something we all have to wrestle with. But not all of us choose to do so. Sometimes we're forced into facing our traumas - as I was recently.

    This is why I wanted to have a chat with someone who works with trauma, so that they can share their perspective. 

    Brooke is a trauma-informed coach who has experienced trauma throughout her life, and through conquering her trauma, she now focusses her time on helping others to do the same.

      About Brooke

    Brooke Bownes an international trauma informed coach and therapist, author and speaker who specialises in working with midlife women to heal from mother wound by a bespoke system

    Brooke has personally experienced trauma, right from birth, being born with the cord wrapped around her neck which caused medical issues, trauma from narcissist abuse and complex PTSD, loss of her home, being homeless.

    She has now rebuilt her life and has changed her pain into her passion and helps women from all over the world to heal from the trauma of the mother wound and narcissist abuse, she is on a mission to raise the awareness of and heal the trauma of The Mother Wound and narcissist abuse with her programme

    Find Your Power by releasing the trauma and mother wound so they can discover who they are and live the life they truly want.

    Brooke has a loyal community in excess of 7000 over FB, Instagram, & emails and has written a book called You Can Have It! How to break through the self-sabotage cycle.

    Connect with Brooke here;

    Facebook group

    Connect on LinkedIn

    Add Brooke on Facebook
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    1 h y 5 m
  • Does your anxiety come from your time in utero?

    Does your anxiety come from your time in utero?
    Jul 12 2022
    I recently stumbled on a past trauma that proved to be the key to a lot of the things I've wrestled with as an adult. As someone who hunts down head trash - especially my own - this is a HUGE win for me. When something isn't shifting, I dig and dig until I can figure it out and get rid of it. I had some personal stuff that just wasn't shifting and I needed to figure out why. Trauma feeds fear and anxiety I figured there must be a traumatic experience feeding it. Trauma does that, it's feeder of fear and anxiety. In my experience, if fear or anxiety isn't shifting easily then there's a trauma keeping it in place or making it worse. Sometimes, we don't even have a conscious recollection of the experience. This was the case for me. I had no conscious memory of the trauma I was about to clear. Clearing traumas of things we can't even remember To get around this, before clearing the trauma, I placed my intention on clearing whatever it was that was feeding the anxiety I wanted to address. What followed was a brutal hour of clearance work. Tears, snot and more tears. It just kept coming. By the end of it I was spent. Spent, but alive and vibrant! And light... god how I felt light! It proved to be one of the most significant clearances I have ever done. The traumatic event I worked on proved to be The Key to a huge number of the patterns that were running me. Emotional patterns that were sabotaging me and holding me back. It was also the the root event of my eczema, which had recently come back with a vengeance like I have never known. Once I was done, I wanted to know what the event was. I was curious. So, what WAS this event?? What the hell was it that had embedded so much crap for me? So I asked how old I was to try and figure it out. Childhood trauma is usually the culprit, so I started there. Was I under 5? Yes. Was I under 4? Yes. I got a hunch. Was I in utero? Yes. I was in utero! And then I knew EXACTLY what it was. When my mother was pregnant with me she was worried about losing her job if they found out. So she tried to keep me a secret from her employers in case they found out and fired her. Talk about stressful! Apparently her bump was really small and you could hardly tell she was pregnant. I arrived early. I can only imagine the thoughts she would have been having; I've got to hide this. I must keep this a secret. I want my bump to be small. My baby can't be visible. If I get found out, I'll lose my job. She was the breadwinner, so this would have been a big deal. Being found out meant loss of security. Oh hello Lex's head trash! The root of my problem patterns! This is all the shit I've been wrestling with FOR AGES that wasn't budging. Some of it is only obvious to me now that I understand and can see where it came from. I had lightbulbs going off all over the place! I'm totally fine being visible, thinking big and doing things that make me stand out. That bit is ME: Lex. And yet, I've not been able to sustain it or go ALL IN with it. I was getting pulled back into hiding and playing small. That bit was HER. I was running my mother's pregnancy fears and making them my own. No wonder I was struggling with this stuff. Your time in the womb matters As part of my work in birth and pregnancy, I know that the in-utero experience is a precious one, and one to be protected and nurtured. When I interviewed the father of prenatal psychology, Thomas Verny, on my podcast he talked about all this. It's a fascinating chat and worth listening to if this stuff interests you. There's a lot of evidence that supports this so I'm not being all woo here. The in-utero experience and the birth create emotional imprints in the baby that they will carry though into adulthood. Anna Verwal also talks a lot about this. This is why I'm so vocal about wanting expectant mothers to clear their fear, stress and anxiety while they're pregnant. It matters. Not only does it help them to have a better birth experience - which is a bloody good reason on its own - but it's also good for the baby and its future adult self. I expand on all this in my book, Fearless Birthing. If they're not positive emotional patterns, then these imprints can be the root cause of anxiety and phobias as adults. I see this time and time again in my work helping women overcome tokophobia (extreme fear of birth). Some people have accused me of fear-mongering or making women feel guilty for their thoughts and feelings during pregnancy. Pregnancy is already such a challenging time for some, physically, mentally and emotionally. The last thing they want is the guilt that comes from thinking that their negative thoughts are damaging in some way. I'm afraid I can't do anything about that. That we know already. It's already happening. Surely, it's best for women to know this so that they can do something about it. I'm simply the messenger. Being well-informed is crucial People can choose whether they do anything about it or not. But being informed is crucial in ...
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    17 m
  • Not all public speaking fears are equal

    Not all public speaking fears are equal
    Jul 4 2022
    Not all public speaking or presenting is equal, at least when it comes to how we feel about it. Presenting and public speaking sit nicely at the top of any list about fears and anxiety. Thank you primal brain for that! But not all presenting or public speaking is equal in terms of its potential to make us nervous, fearful or anxious. And, this is different for everyone. Speaking in front of a large audience of people you don’t know probably sits at the top of the scary pile for most people. This goes back to our primal brain and how we used to live, and survive. Back in the caveman days, if we could look out and see lots of eyes on us, then it was probably because we were being eyed up for dinner. Bad situation. Life or death situation! In this situation, our fear and anxiety was pretty useful and helped us to survive. Today, when we have eyes on us it’s usually because the eyes belong to people who are interested in what we have to say or what we’re doing (at least we hope they are!). In situations like this, the fear and anxiety that is wired in is less helpful, so it can be useful to get rid of it. How to lose the fear and anxiety around public speaking To lose the fear or anxiety you might have around public speaking and presenting, it’s useful to dig deeper. This is because it can give us clues as to what is at the root of your fear or anxiety. This is especially so, if you want to use Head Trash Clearance to get rid of your fears and anxiety. To use Head Trash Clearance effectively, we need a list. A nice list of things to clear. And we’re only going to be able to get that if we dig and unravel what’s going on. So let’s get to it! The different aspects of public speaking fear The first thing we need to explore is the idea that not all public speaking and presenting scenarios are the same. Once we recognise this we can start to get to the bottom of it. Consider these different situations; Speaking to a small group of your peers at work. (e.g. your team)Presenting to people more senior than you (e.g. the management team, the board or the company investors)Speaking in front of a small group of people you don’t know at work (e.g. clients, suppliers or other departments)Presenting to a large group of people who know you  (e.g. the whole company or your division)Doing a presentation in front of a large group of people who DON’T know you (e.g. a visiting subsidiary or at a conference) Do you feel the same approaching all of these scenarios? Probably not. It’s quite possible that some of these won’t present a problem for you, whereas others will. Maybe you’re fine speaking in front of people you don’t know, it’s speaking in front of people you DO know that’s the problem. Perhaps you worry about what those people will think of you. Or maybe you struggle with authority and are easily intimidated when having to communicate to those who you perceive to hold more power or authority than you. This could make you nervous and anxious and stop you thinking straight or doing a good job. Or perhaps you are fine speaking to small groups, it’s the large groups that make you nervous. Different presenting situations trigger different fears You see, behind all of these different scenarios, there are different fears and anxieties. it’s less about the speaking per se, and more about what these situations bring up for the person doing the speaking. These different situations could bring up any of the following; fear of looking or sounding silly or foolishsaying the wrong thingmessing uppeople thinking less of themnot being taken seriouslyappearing stupid or like an idiotfear of being fired or demoted for doing a bad job (messing up, saying the wrong thing)fear of missing out on a promotion for not doing a good enough jobfear of appearing a fraudnot being expert or knowledgable enough But this is not all that you need to consider if you want to get rid of your fears around public speaking and presenting. We need to take this one step further to get a fuller picture. The nature of the presenting job It’s important to consider the difference in the nature of the presenting job itself. There are two main options you face when it comes to presenting or public speaking; 1. You’ve prepared something specific to share In this situation you have something that you’ve prepared in advance that you’re going to talk through. Perhaps something like: specific internal presentation – monthly team updatekeynote presentation at a conferencepitch to potential investorssales presentation to potential customers In these situations, you have time to prepare and run through what you want to say. The main challenge you have is ensuring that you remember to cover all the points you want to cover and that you stick to the timings. Of course there’s a bit more to it than that, but you get my point. It’s quite a different situation to the next one; 2. You’re speaking, but it’s unscripted or ‘on ...
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    18 m
  • Abandonment Trauma

    Abandonment Trauma
    Jun 22 2022
    If you've been following my adventures in trauma clearance, you'll know that I'm feeling very called to clear my traumas at the moment. If you missed it, I dive into that in my blog: Traumas & Yetis: 2 things they have in common. One theme of emotional pain that has come up a lot for me in my life is around abandonment and rejection so this has been on y Healing-To-Do-List for a while. That's not to say I haven't tried to heal this pain in me because i have. But I know that I'm not fully healed of it. There's clearly more to do. So now that I've diving into traumas, this is an obvious one for me to address. As I've been prepping myself mentally to clear the traumas I'm carrying around abandonment, I've been giving it a lot of thought. I think it's important to be super clear what abandonment really means. What do we mean by abandonment, and feeling abandoned? When we carry hurt around abandonment, we often feel like we've rejected, dumped or left behind, and that this has been done to us deliberately or consciously. Perhaps there are some situations where that is the case. But, I bet many of those times that's not the case. More often than not, the abandonment is an emotional feeling rather than an actual state of being. Of course, it can be both, but I'm interested in the feeling aspect here. If you got lost in the supermarket or park as a child, you might have felt abandoned in that moment. But, I bet your parents didn't actually abandon you. They were probably desperately looking for you. But in that moment, the child in you FELT abandoned. Very different from the time your mates thought it would be funny to leave you in nothing but your underwear in the middle of town after a drinking session. My parents divorced when I was four, so I don't have to look much further to figure out where some of my abandonment issues come from. I remember thinking as a child that I thought it was my fault my dad left us, even though my mum assured me that wasn't the case. But that's how I felt and as far as my emotional self was concerned, that's all that mattered. As with most divorces, the parents don't separate because of one of the kids. It's their relationship that's broken down. And, when they eventually part ways, it's unlikely that the parent who leaves the family home is abandoning the children in a deliberate fashion. They might be desperate to stay. But things just aren't workable and it breaks their heart to leave. No matter how the leaving parent feels, the kids will most likely FEEL abandoned by them. Their sheer absence will do that. I think it's important to get clear on this stuff because we sometimes start throwing some blame into the mix which just adds emotional weight to our abandonment. This doesn't help things at all and can make it all much more painful, and therefore more difficult to face and resolve. Abandonment is not always inflicted deliberately Let's take my mum for example. Years ago, when I did the Hoffman Process, I prepared myself for the slew of Daddy Issues that would come up from the divorce situation. What I was not prepared for were the Mummy Issues I had, and a lot of those came from her abandoning me by dying suddenly to cancer when I was 30. Now, I'm pretty sure she didn't die deliberately to abandon me. But the fact is I had abandonment pain that I felt as a result of her dying so early in my life. Being 30 without a mum is a tough gig. Being a mum without a mother is even more so... as I would later discover. The family pattern of abandonment The more I thought about abandonment, the more I realised how strong this theme has been experienced by my family and predecessors. My grandmother was abandoned by her community when she fell pregnant out of wedlock.My mum was abandoned by her mum when she was put into an orphanage during WW2 for her safety, to be retrieved once the war was over.My mum was later abandoned by my dad which led to their divorce.My dad's parents divorced when he was young, so he was abandoned by a parent too.Then me. I was abandoned by my dad as part of my parents' divorce, and later by my mum when she died when I was 30. This was a pattern I was carrying inside me. It's in my DNA. The memories of abandonment are in my cells. Time to expand the scope of the trauma clearance As I fully took all this on board, I realised that my approach to clearing my trauma this time around needed to be different to how I'd done it before. I needed to cast the net wider than my own life and my life in utero. I also needed to deal with these cellular memories of trauma. So that meant including ancestral trauma that I've acquired from previous generations. And while I was at it, I might as well throw past life trauma in there too! Phew! How many traumatic experiences was I carrying? Now as I'm a numbers person, I was curious as how many of these traumas I was carrying around. You want to know? I bet you do! Current life: 121In utero: 5Past life traumas: 11,800 ish!Ancestral...
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    26 m
  • Dr Thomas Verny, The Embodied Mind - Interview

    Dr Thomas Verny, The Embodied Mind - Interview
    Jun 15 2022

    In this episode I get to chat to one of my heroes for the second time - lucky me!

    Dr Thomas Verny is the godfather of prenatal psychology and the author of the classic book The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. It was this book that was a huge inspiration to me when I wrote my first book Fearless Birthing.

    In his words..

    "As a psychiatrist, I have had a lifelong interest in memory and the mind. At the beginning of my career, this took me into establishing the science of Pre and Perinatal Psychology. About seven years ago I developed an interest in cellular memory and cellular intelligence. I started to read scientific journals and books on this subject. All in all, I must have read more than 5,000 papers which eventually led me to write the book that you see before you, The Embodied Mind."

    I first interviewed Dr Thomas Verny for my Fear Free Childbirth podcast and you can listen to that here.

    During that conversation, Dr Verny said that he was working on his next book and I asked him to let me know when it came out so that we can have another chat. Well he did and here we are.

    His latest book is The Embodied Mind and it came out late last year. We spoke just before my personal life unravelled somewhat and so I never got round to editing and publishing the podcast. But now I'm back, here it is!

    In this podcast, Dr Verny explains the thinking behind his book and during our chat we talk about;

    • how we must abandon the top-down system... this thinking that the brain and head is at the heart of everything and 'in charge'. Instead, it's more like a horizontal system.
    • the trauma we carry in our bodies and in our cells
    • the collective trauma that's built up - that nations have, that peoples have
    • how little attention is being paid to the collective trauma
    • hidden trauma
    • the importance of the health of parents pre-conception

    and much more.
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    50 m