Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #46: Dr. Nima Rahmany & The Overview Method: How To Dissolve The Root Cause Of Stress

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

What if you could be more successful and more powerful in your business and all other areas of your life? Dr. Nima Rahmany walks us through how to master a relationship with yourself by way of mastering your nervous system. He teaches us how we can look at the triggers in our lives and how we can respond to them by developing a relationship with the root: our nervous system.  About the Guest: Dr. Nima Rahmany, DC, CCWP is both a Chiropractor and an educator, specializing in helping individuals and professionals get to the ROOT CAUSE of their physical and emotional challenges, from stressed, depressed, and anxious to living Powerfully Aligned and on Purpose. After building a successful Chiropractic practice in Maple Ridge, BC, Dr. Nima sold his clinic in June 2016 to pursue his passion of teaching and coaching professionals who are stressed, depressed, and anxious to transform and have their best year ever— in both a private and corporate setting. Dr. Nima has integrated all the mind-body tools in his quest for healing stress-related disorders into one, simple to follow method called “The Overview Method”, which is “ the adjustment above atlas” that he teaches one-on-one and in groups all over the world. More From Dr. Nima Rahmany:  Website: www.drnima.com Finding Dr. Nima: Twitter & Instagram: @drnima Fiverr: To receive 10% off go to www.fiverr.com  Use CODE: CONFIDENCE Rejuvenate: To receive your discount to try Rejuvenate go to www.rejuvenatemuscle.com  Use CODE: CONFIDENCE for 15% off. Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!  My book Confidence Creator is available now! get it right HERE If you are looking for more tips you can download my free E-book at my website and thank you! https://heathermonahan.com *If you'd like to ask a question and be featured during the wrap up segment of Creating Confidence, contact Heather Monahan directly through her website and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list so you don’t skip a beat to all things Confidence Creating! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, you're going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here with me this week. This has been such a crazy week for everyone. And my thoughts are with you. My heart is with you because if you have been freaking out like I have been,

it has definitely been a roller coaster ride the last week in realizing how serious this whole situation is for our country and our world. And it's just, it's so much to process. So when I was thinking about everything that's going on, it reminded me in a very strange way around the 2008, 2009 recession and what I learned from that, which I wanted to share with you. So if you didn't go through that or if you don't remember it in great detail. I really stuck with me. I had just gotten divorce. I was going through divorce. It was a disaster. I had to lay off a third of our workforce at the company that I was with at the time. And it was such a stressful and negative feeling similar to now with the sense of I had never been through a recession before. I didn't really know

what to expect. I didn't know, and this is a key, I didn't know to pick up my head. And really look around outside of what was right in front of me to anticipate and forecast down the road what would come as a result of this. If everyone was getting laid off, if all these people were losing their jobs, how does that pan out? How does that affect business, the economy and opportunity moving forward in the next three, six, nine, twelve months and beyond? And so because I didn't do that, I never thought, oh, wait, maybe this is a great time to invest in property and real estate. And I never thought about those potential positive outcomes because I was so immersed in the

negativity of the moment, which I'm sure you can relate to when you're going through an unknown scary situation. So yes, this is completely different because this virus is its own entity and unlike anything we've seen. However, in some weird ways, it just takes me back to that scary time of not knowing what's to come, fearing the worst, and being. so immersed in the negativity that I'm not able to see anything positive. So the good news for me, and I want to share this with you, is because I've gone through something scary and unknown,

that recession, and because I have experience with it, and I realize, while it took a lot of time to come out of it, it didn't happen overnight at all. And things were not great for our country for a couple of years. However, things did bounce back, and it was temporary, and it wasn't forever and this two shall pass is real you know it's not going to stay like this forever and there is comfort in knowing that and and in having faith and in putting positive out there and in seeing positive is really important so i've really leaned into my gratitude practice specifically with my son every day finding a few things at least three that we can be grateful for and i have to say I'm immersing myself in the media, trying to learn as much as I can because I want to keep us

safe and healthy. And I know that there are times where watching too much of this in the media can harm you because you start getting down this rabbit hole of negativity. And when I sense that I'm getting there, I'm separating myself from it. I'm working out, which is so important to me. I'm sleeping. I'm eating. You know, I'm doing those basics, drinking water, trying to really just lean back on the basics

and stay focused on what I'm grateful for, pick my head up, look around for the opportunity that I might not have seen yet. And it's funny because two weeks ago, now, or it was last week, I gave a speech for BBVA financial institution and everyone was high-fiving and shaking hands. Literally, this was just not this week, the week before. And this week, I spoke at Florida International University and no one would go within three feet of one another. No one wanted any type of contact, social distancing was in effect in a major way. It was in one week's time, the complete mood and behavior of everyone was so completely different. And it really just opened my eyes to, in such a short window of time, things can change so incredibly drastically

for the worse and or for the better. So I was talking on social media the other day about how I had received a bunch of cancellations for speaking engagements and conferences. And I was trying to think about, okay, where can I pivot and move my business to to figure out in the short term, whether it be two months or six months or whatever, that window of time is, if we're not going to have live events, how can we translate my business, my expertise into adding value to people and developing and earning revenue during this time, but doing it virtually? And there's so many different ways. Of course, as we know, we have the podcast ability. We have the ability to create video content and monetize that to create community and sell access to community and do one-on-one

coaching and virtual coaching and training. Right. So there's so many different opportunities that I'm grateful for thanks to technology. And I've been evaluating all of these and knowing that I don't have the exact plan right now or blueprint on exactly what it's going to be. But I also know that if I remain fluid, stay positive, and keep taking action every day, I will figure it out eventually, just like with anything, like when I got fired, or like when I was going through the recession and I was completely freaking out, what I learned was I worked hard, I took action, I took steps to move myself and my business forward, and eventually we were out of it, right? Things got a lot better. And again, it took some time, but it did pass. So, you know,

when I hear people today panicking about whether it be the stock market crash or about the actual virus and what could that potentially mean for each one of us, you know, that fear of the unknown can be paralyzing. However, I'm really disciplining myself. And that's what I believe it really is. It's just discipline that, you know, if I move my body, if I take care of myself, if I am with my loved ones and I, you know, speak to people that care for me, that love me and that I care for and love, you know, all of those things will help lead us in a more positive direction. So that's what I'm focusing on today. And I hope that you are. too while we move through this rather uncertain time. But the funny thing was is I was just lamenting

about all these events getting canceled. And I went to bed and this is so bizarre and crazy. I woke up to find out a friend of mine had connected me with a powerhouse woman that I can't even believe I got the opportunity to meet and potentially work with now. She's holding a massive event in October and wanted to speak to me about being a speaker at the event, which I'm so beyond. And this is not solidified yet, so I can't announce it yet. But I mean, this is mind-blowing stuff. Unbelievable opportunity. I'm so grateful for it. Mind you, this happened a day after I was feeling like everything was canceled and ruined. And then on the platform on all of, you know, my website and all of my social handles, I have an opportunity to book me through a platform

called Engage. Woke up this morning and there was an offer to book me for an event in May. And I had just received cancellations for, you know, March, April, and May. So, it just went to show you never know what's going to happen tomorrow and we still don't right we have absolutely no idea what is going to happen today or tomorrow but it makes so much more sense not to go down that downward spiral and waste the energy and you know waste this one shot we've got at life to sit in a corner and cry for ourselves when tomorrow things could take such a drastic turn and i'm telling you today has been such a great day so please keep that in mind we don't don't know what's happening next. Another interesting thing that happened for me today was I had the

opportunity to go to a student-led meeting with my child. And what is kind of cool about this, and I want you to think about this in regards to business, in regards to your life and your accountability, when my child was in elementary school, it used to be called parent-teacher conferences. And the student wouldn't even be invited, right? So it was this conference where you would meet with the teacher and you would discuss what your child was doing. In middle school now, we had instead a meeting that was student-led. My son was in charge of the meeting. We were there together. It was the teacher, myself, and him. And he had to go in and sit down and lay out a plan. The first thing he did was discuss his strengths in school and how things have been going

a semester, his weaknesses and how he could improve those moving forward. And then he took me subject by subject and actually had documentation to back up and illustrate his talking points. So he would pull out homework examples. He would pull out quiz examples, test examples. And together, you know, we heard him out. He did a great job presenting all of this in about a 25-minute meeting and covering all of the overview for each subject and what he saw, what his thoughts were. And then he turned the meeting over to us for our feedback and input. And together, I will tell you, you know, we had some really good observations about, you know, when he puts effort in, what a dynamic difference we see in the outcome. And he really recognized it.

And we also talked about someone he had met with this week earlier, who's a teacher for him next year when he's in seventh grade and how he connected with her and really enjoyed listening to her and getting advice from her. So we made a decision as a group today that he would be able to get access to this person on a weekly basis, starting now since it was impacting him positively. So it was so great, you know, one, to allow for an opportunity to review what has been happening, what's been happening positive, what's been happening negative, how can we improve these things and highlight the good things? And how did we get here so that we can learn, you know, what we need to do to end up at the best place possible moving forward. And it was like this

great meeting. But in the end, it took me back to it's all about accountability. And that idea of a parent teacher conference versus a student-led conference is massive because that ownership goes on him. And I just think to myself, how can we apply that to our own lives, our own businesses, our own employees, our own relationships is how can we be accountable? And that's what I've been thinking a lot about today since I left that meeting, is how can I be accountable during this difficult time? How can I show up as a leader? How can I show up as my best self? And yes, being calm and thinking clearly is definitely an aspect of that and taking care of ourselves in order to think as clearly as possible as critical. But there are so many different things we can do. We can

communicate. We can publicly hold ourselves accountable. You know, we can support others. You know, we can give back if we're in a position to do that. So it's really, it's about more than just staying calm, but really showing up as a leader and thinking of other times in our lives where we've done that successfully or maybe where we've seen it not done successfully. So we can learn from that and show up better this time around. So those couple of my thoughts for today, given this really difficult and unknown environment that we are currently in, but hoping that might help you a little bit. I know that I'm definitely making it part of my daily plan. I'm making it part of, you know, like anything, we need a blueprint, a game plan, and a strategy. And a goal,

and my goal is that, you know, this time is going to pass and there's going to be a future where this is no longer going to be an issue for us. I know that that is out there. And now it's, okay, how do we get from point A to point B and do it as effectively, efficiently and positively as we possibly can. And so it's about knowing that that model and strategy is going to evolve and change. And I'm okay with that because change is the one thing that we know is always coming. And change is good. It isn't always a negative. So hoping that you can stay positive during this time, hoping that you can focus on gratitude, take steps, take action, and continue to pivot and grow during this period. I'm cheering you on. I have got your back on this one. And I promise you there have

been other bad times that we've all faced and we've gotten through and focusing on knowing that this is another one. And I just hope everyone stay safe. So I'm excited for you to meet my guest today because I think it's really timely. Not only do we talk about the virus today on the show, but my guest actually is a doctor, Dr. Nima Romani. And, you know, he's going to teach you, he teaches business people, executive entrepreneurs, and even teenagers about how to dissolve the root cause of stress. And I know we've got a lot of stress going right now. He's a creator of a breakthrough new tool called the Overview Method TM,

where participants are taken through an exercise to clear emotional baggage and resentment that holds them back from moving to new levels in business, health, and family relationships. He's helped thousands of people in his over 20 years of chiropractice as well. He's a very smart guy. He's got a different way of looking at the triggers in life and how we respond to them. And listen, if we're all going to be working remotely and people are going to be at home a lot more, you're going to have some time to really dive into you and doing some work on you. So you're going to dive in with me right now to learning about what the root cause of stress is and how we can change it.

Hang tight. Welcome back. I'm really excited for you to meet Dr. Nima today, who you are not even going to believe he is not in the U.S. No, this man is traveling right now amid all the hysteria out there. Did you say you're in Thailand? I'm in Thailand, baby, right now, yeah. Perfect time to travel. I went through Hong Kong without a mask, and I was just taking pictures of everybody.

I just, I don't really, I don't buy into it. Well, you know, it's interesting because of. of your work around the nervous system, your knowledge and your expertise, it actually isn't that surprising now that you're explaining that you're not getting freaked out by this versus people who are not experts in the nervous system myself and have been really freaking out, you know, really immersing myself and watching more news, consuming more news, and trying to play out how this is going to impact my business, you know, where to, where That's messing up your nervous system, Heather.

Heather, I'm a nervous system specialist. So pretty much everything, what I've discovered in my 18 years as being a chiropractor is that you live your life through your nervous system. It senses and processes your external environment and then creates an internal reaction that's based on, you know, you have a processing unit which makes meaning out of everything. And then your internal, everything inside of your body then gets altered to match what you feel is on the outside, and it works back and forth. So the number one thing that I did when I learned this was I stopped watching the news. I stopped listening to content and reading content

that had my nervous system in a panic into a dysregulated state, because when you're in a disregulated state, Heather, what happens to your immune system? It doesn't work as well. When your nervous system is dysregulated, that's why when you're under a lot of stress, you get holds a lot more frequently, right? It's because your immune system doesn't work as well. So this becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy all started in our minds for consumerism. You know what I mean? It was the same thing. Look back in the 1976 60 Minutes episode on the Swine Flu pandemic. It was all to sell a bunch of vaccines. It turned out to be way overhyped. And I just don't believe it. It is safe to breathe. Of course, I wash my hands. I'm not completely careless, but nothing outside of the normal things that I do to keep my body and my nervous system in a complete state of regulation.

That's the greatest thing that I can do for any virus. And if you catch the, it's the flu. It's the freaking flu. I've had the flu before. It sucks. This is a little bit more of an extreme version of it. But even if you have it, the chances of you dying from it are extremely rare. So we are now. Now getting ourselves worked up over nothing and it's happening all across. This is classic of American media, by the way. So it's big. It's not the first time it'll happen and it'll happen again and again and again. Don't buy into it, Heather. Okay, so I'm not going to buy into it. But tell me, I'm interested to hear how your background and expertise around chiropractic work

led you to really focus on the nervous system because I've seen chiropractor many times and definitely has benefited immensely from that. But how have you grown from that to really speaking to past trauma, nervous system, and your overall? So I've been a chiropractor for 18 years. I still am. I still have my license. I love having my hands on people doing an adjustment and seeing this amazing transformation. What I noticed, every chiropractor who's been working for more than 10 years cannot ignore,

or any body worker cannot ignore, that. the root cause of why people are coming into doctors' offices in the first place, stress has an underlying trigger, right? You can't ignore that. So I always was extremely proud of the fact that I get to deal with the root cause. Instead of dealing with medications to treat problems, let's go after the root cause, which is interferences in your nervous system. But then what I discovered that the reason why you're coming in was because of real stress and pressure in your business, or you're going through a relationship breakdown, or you've had a really bad argument, or it's been going so long, it's become toxic, and you're thinking of

separating, and you're going through a divorce, and you're coming in to see me, and I'm just like, wait a second, stress is the underlying trigger, but if we keep going upstream, it's usually an interrelationship breakdown, whether it's at work, whether it's with family or your partner, or with your kids, there's some sort of a relational breakdown at the helm of this stress-related problem. And if I can look at this relationship breakdown and continue to go upstream, it all is started with my relationship with myself and the context of who I am in this universe. And if I don't have a deep, intimate relationship with myself through my nervous system, by the way, That's how you relate to yourself.

My relationship with myself is sensed and perceived through feelings and senses of my body through my nervous system. If I don't learn how to master that, then I don't have this relationship with myself. I dissociate with myself. I judge, abandon, blame, and shame myself when I get triggered. Then I can't show up in a relationship powerfully. I become codependent or I become narcissistic, whichever one on that scale, it's two sides of a coin. and I show up in my work not able to empathize with my team, not able to empathize with my clients, in my business.

People don't feel the real sense of me because I'm not connected to myself and my purpose. So as an entrepreneur, you must have, if you cannot succeed, if you don't have your heart connected to the purpose of why you're in the business in the first place. Yet that's the thing that entrepreneurs dissociate from the most because of the stress and the overwhelm of being an entrepreneur. So you must learn how to navigate this nervous system and learn how to self-regulate it so that you can be connected with your heart

and yourself and your body, your purpose, your relationships, your team, and your clients. It all gets traced back to the root cause of the root cause. The most important thing, the foundation, is your relationship with your nervous system. So I love teaching people how to master that relationship. You don't. Then your health gets screwed.

relationships are done and your sense of self-worth to receive, you know, in your business, your connection with other people, your empathy that you have as a leader is all done through the nervous system. So that's the angle, the access point that I use to help people heal and transform and empower all areas of their lives. If your anxiety, depression, or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't need just another meditation app. Tachiatry makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days. Takayatry is 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression,

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Fiverr, it starts here. So where do you begin? Because so much that you just shared is out of what I believe most of us even think about. I definitely don't think about my nervous system. You know, this is bringing awareness to something. I've never thought about. Where does someone like me who's really blind to this begin? The thing is you think about it all the time.

It's just, are you consciously aware of it or not? So the first place that you want to look is anxiety. Anxiety is, you know, this feeling like the first place that you begin is how do you breathe? Do you feel safe in your body? When you're walking or are you stressed and overwhelmed? What's your digestive system like? See, if you look at the body, where do you be?

begin, your body is an exact mirror, holds the mirror to what's going on in your unconscious mind. Your body is run through your nervous system. Your brain communicates with every cell of your body through your nervous system. So if you have... Can I challenge you on that for a second? Because when I was younger, I was in unbelievable shape, looked amazing. Like to the world, it looked like this cat's got it going on. But inside, I was full riddled of shame, not even acknowledging my past. I mean, so disconnected from who I was and really, you know, the pain that I was carrying around with me, yet to everybody else that really looked like I was super healthy.

Totally, totally, 100%. What I'm saying is it doesn't necessarily mean that you look healthy. I'm not talking about the outer appearance, okay? What I'm talking about is how you feel in your body. So if I were to interview you back then and you were to be very real, with me at the time, Heather, I would say, Heather, what's it like for you? And you would say, I feel anxious all the time. I don't know who I am. I'm constantly trying to please other people. I'm constantly looking for approval outside of me. When I look in a mirror, here's where you begin. When you look in a mirror, can you say, I love you and genuinely mean it and feel it? Let me say that again. When you look in a mirror, can you genuinely, not bullshitting, can you genuinely look in a mirror, and say, I love you and actually feel it here. Okay, so that's where you start.

If you can't, it's not your fault. It's because of certain things that have happened through your story, through your experience. In life, when we're born to parents who have also been, you know, traumatized as well and haven't dealt with their past and their traumas, when a child isn't validated for their feelings, we say, don't cry, stuff it down, suck it up, or when we are experiencing tears or big emotions and our parents don't know how to deal with them because they have their own guilts and their own shames and their own traumas and they try to deny your reality, that's a trauma to a child that causes us to abandon ourselves and dissociate from ourselves for the purpose of

attachment. So we have this choice. Either I attach to my personal. I attach to my primary caregivers and please them or become authentic to my own feelings and risk being rejected by them. So we have to choose at a very young age attachment versus authenticity. But that sounds impossible. It sounds impossible. Welcome to why everybody so dissociated and depressed as a young child moving further, further along from teenagerhood on. So you're right, It is impossible because how do you choose? Well, of course, you choose to abandon yourself for the sake of approval. And then it carries forward in your teenage years where you try to please, as you were saying,

this outer appearance looking good, but dissociating from yourself so that you can get that external validation that you didn't have when you were a child because of parents that were completely dissociated from themselves as well. This isn't a blame game. This is called intergenerational trauma. And then this anxiety we try to fill with achievement, with looking good, with being pretty, with trying to be perfect, with making a lot of money, with success, with affairs, with alcohol, all of these external sedatives to take away that pain of disconnection from ourselves. And finally, you hit your 20s and 30s and say, who the hell am I? I don't know who I am. I don't know what I want.

this person who I'm married to, I don't really know why, and it doesn't make sense. And that's when we have our midlife crisis. And, you know, we hit our middle age, you know, crisis, which James Hollis, who's a young and psychologist, one of my favorite writers, says the first half of life is a giant mistake. You basically think that you're the one in control, but you're actually run by all these unconscious behaviors trying to compensate for all of those old traumas that had us feel like we're unworthy of love. And so finally, after, I mean, if you used to be that way, Heather, and now you're different, it means that you've gone through at least one period of a dark night

of your soul where you had to discover who is Heather. What is Heather? What are Heather's superpowers? What makes her tick? Yes, I do have that physical appearance. That's great. I can use that to my advantage, but I want to be deeper than just what's on the outside. Who's the soul of Heather? And it takes a journey through your darkness into your past and he uncovering all of those old stories and healing those old traumas until finally you realize who it is that you are. And hopefully if you've done the work right, what emerges through that pain is purpose. And now you take that purpose and then you shine a light to others who are kind of a few steps behind you.

And that's really what the whole journey is all about. You just explained so much of my life. It's crazy. And the two moments that jumped into. my mind when you were explaining those dark, you know, moments. My divorce was the first time that I really had that breakdown of, okay, how did I get here? I have a child now depending on me. How did I create this situation? How did it get so broken? And then the second time was when I got fired unexpectedly two years ago and I questioned everything. How did I end up in this toxic environment?

And those two occurrences are 12, 11 years apart. Right. So it definitely there was a... Wake-up calls. Huge. Huge. Yeah. Yeah. And it's in those wake-up calls that, you know, this is what drew people into my office.

Sometimes those wake-up calls come in health issues. They didn't come in a health issue for you. You appear to be very healthy and health clearly and vitality is a very important value to you. Just by looking at you, you can see that. But usually health is what would draw people in the office. And so they would say, hey, my health is shit, and they would have all of these symptoms that they're working on it. And I got tired of telling them that these symptoms are the end stage.

We got to go upstream and really look at how you got here. And the biggest obstacle to this, Heather, is people don't like to take responsibility. They think that by taking responsibility, it's victim blaming. It's like, wait a second, this toxic environment, they're toxic. This partner is toxic and they're pointing fingers. Why can't the system fix what's going on inside and they're pointing fingers and they're expecting some sort of a transformation that someone else is responsible for? And when you suggest to them, look, take a look at yourself.

They're like, what are you victim blaming? Like this is not my fault. And yes, I agree. None of this is your fault because it was unconsciousness that led you here to a wake-up call. I'm unconscious. I am asleep. And I get awoken up with a divorce, an affair, a health crisis. The rug gets pulled out from you at work to get you to go, wait a second, who is Heather?

And why have I been abandoning my sin? Here's what you discover. I've been abandoning the real Heather all along. I've been stifling and suppressing Heather's full self-expression. and this tragedy, this wake-up call has been a gift to awaken me to go inside and say, what do I wish to have the fullest expression of myself be? What do I want to leave as a legacy? How do I want to impact my child?

What version of me do I want them to see? And these are the healthy questions that lead you on this search to healing. I just show people how to do that, use it. the nervous system as the access point. Because if you can use the nervous system, then nobody's a victim because we're all, like your toxic narcissistic husband was also traumatized with a dysregulated nervous system that caused him to behave the way that he did. So you're not a victim anymore than he's a victim to his traumas from the past that are

causing him to have this adaptive behavior towards all of that. And so when you look at it from a nervous system perspective, you realize we're all the same. Human behavior is the same. Instead of playing victim to your boss or your ex or business, whatever you're playing victim to, you can transcend that by first regulating your nervous system first and then going and then becoming the creator of your badass life, but not without regulating your nervous system first. So there's many people that are in that dark space right now going through that hard. time, you know, and starting to realize, okay, something's not right here. What are the steps that

they can take to start to connect with who they really are? The first thing that you want to do is to realize when you're going through a dark space, a lot of times what prolongs the dark space that you're going through are the avoidance of the feelings that you're going into. The first thing that I suggest is that they find a guide and a mentor, okay, a guide. It really helps to have a guide. As you're going through the dark, make sure you have a guide with a flashlight who's actually not just necessarily read a book and has a certificate on the wall, but they've actually hiked that mountain. So they're like, here's the path. Let me have the flash it. Let me show you what's going to happen at each stage. It's very helpful to have that. In your hero's journey, which you're in a

hero's journey, we're all on a hero's journey. We must go through this belly of the whale. And it's important to have a guide, an Obi-1, some sort of guide to guide you. But when I'm guiding people through this, what I get them to do is to first uncover the number one is to notice the feelings that you're trying to avoid. So when you're going through your darkness, you'll notice feelings of betrayal. If we can use you, are you open to, okay, great. So when you were going through your divorce, that first dark night of the soul that you were going through, I'm sure you went through feelings, obviously you had anger, but if you look deeper, you probably felt a sense of betrayal at some point, or perhaps a great deal of guilt in another, or shame. So there's like all of

these feelings that are so uncomfortable in our bodies that are horrible. So what we do is we check out of our bodies, we dissociate, and we get into our minds and create stories and try to sedate ourselves from what's going on down here. So to heal that, Heather, you must do the opposite. You must be like a firefighter going into the burning building, which is opposite to what most people do to try to numb themselves from the next comfort and pain. My suggestion is to go into it and to sit in it. I had to go in and when I was healing from my last really difficult time, I realized that this paralyzing fear of abandonment that I had from the feminine had me get into relationship after relationship where as soon as one was done, I had another one going ready to go because of the

deathly paralyzing fear of being alone. Oh my God, like, shoot me. I would rather be stuck in a horrible relationship for years than the pain of being alone. So what did I do? I actually had to do the most scary thing. I actually sat and willingly experienced the pain of loneliness. I thought I was going to die for like the first 30 days, but after a little bit of time, I started to feel and to process those emotions. So the first thing that I would do is to write down all of the feelings that you're experiencing in this dark night of your soul and to actually sit down and feel them. It's like exposure therapy. It's like when they did in the olden days, when a kid had chicken pox, they would have chicken pox parties. Hey, let's everyone get them so that they can immunize themselves,

through natural immunization of the chickenpox. This is what you're actually doing. You're immunizing yourself to feelings because most of the time you're trying to avoid them. So the first thing you're going to want to do, Heather, is to feel all the feelings. That's the first step. The second step that we take people through is to realize these feelings that you went through through your divorce, Heather, they're not new at all. They're actually replications, repetitions of old feelings.

when you were younger. So let's say you felt a sense of betrayal. You felt a sense of abandonment from your husband, which is normally what I experience. I work with a lot of people in their middle ages, entrepreneurs going through relationship breakdown, that kind of thing. What the common thing we'll see is, all right, you felt that betrayal and abandonment.

Where did you feel this before? And then they'll start crying and going, yeah, when I was six years old, my father had an affair, and it was a huge trauma in the family dynamic. I'm like, boom, there you go. The six-year-old egocentric version of yourself, because children are all egocentric, everything is about them, right?

The affair that your father had, you made that mean you're betrayed and you're unworthy of love. And basically, boom, how do you heal from your current dark night of the soul is to go back and realize that it comes from an old, wound, this current challenge you're going through isn't about this challenge. It's about that old wound. There's a six-year-old version of you, a five-year-old version of you, whatever version, what was it for you? That was the replication of your, how old were you that kind of replicated your divorce? I guess probably my parents got divorced when I was four years old and we never had a

relationship. I didn't have a father until my mother remarried 10 years later. Boom. So did you not see that the feelings of abandonment, right? Did you not feel abandonment from in your marriage? Yeah, for sure. Okay, great. Guess what? Great. Guess what? Your relationship is designed to bring up those old wounds of abandonment as an opportunity for you to go back and heal the four-year-old version of yourself that felt dissociated when the family split apart. So that dark night of the soul, if you don't go back and heal the four-year-old version of you, you'll start to notice it again and again and again.

You'll start to see abandonment with work again. And the same thing happens at work. And this feeling of abandonment that is sticking with Heather ever since she was four, it becomes a sensitive spot. And you start to filter the world from this lens. And you have these abandonment lenses. everything is abandonment to you until you wake up and you go, oh my God, these are lenses that my four-year-old self had. And it's time to reconnect with that version of me and to heal those

old wounds. And it's a lifelong process because as you get triggered again and again, you now can then become aware and go, ah, that's my four-year-old self. I can now become trigger-proof. The trigger becomes an access point to me healing that younger version of myself. And the conflict that created the trigger then becomes an access point to deeper intimacy if I learn how to play it right. So this has become the most important skill that every entrepreneur can learn if they want to really scale up in their lives and expand is to learn how to become triggerproof. Because every level you expand to, every level up will bring that old devil up. And it never goes away in its entirety? It's a part of you.

That four-year-old version of you that your parents split up will always be with you. In fact, it's a part of your superpower, a part of what makes you amazing, badass at what you do. It's what makes you a really great mom, too, that four-year-old, that wounded child. But unregulated, it will consistently wreak havoc and sabotage because you constantly, when you get triggered, you regress back to that. Now, with the proper amount of work and I created the methodology, you can totally turn that story around. And she will always be a part of you, but if you're conscious, you can use her to your advantage. If you're unconscious, it will keep coming up again and again and repeating these patterns. It depends.

So the answer to your question is, it depends. those things that used to set you off like crazy, all of a sudden aren't as triggering anymore. In other words, you're not as reactive. Over time, you're able to regulate that. That's basically what happened. So over time, you're able to regulate those things that used to set you through the roof. It's a practice. Very strong practice, and you have to be very disciplined to really change those patterns and that behavior.

I always tell people this. I say that. But Nima, Dr. Nima, this sounds like a lot of work. And I say, yeah, it's really difficult. But the alternative is unbearable. The alternative to doing that work, to not do that work is unbearable. The work can be challenging. But it's very rewarding when after a certain period of time, you wake up and you're like, oh, my God, I love what I do. I'm completely connected to a cause and a purpose greater than myself, which I am, my purpose and cause is to break the cycles of intergenerational trauma. Because if you don't get this right, you're going to pass it on to the kids. It happens. It's just, this is what happens because they're dysregulated. And it did happen. You know, you're four years old. You have a divorce.

That wound unhealed gets unconsciously drawn to somebody that's designed to bring that up. And if you have a kid and you break up and guess what happens? You create the exact same experience unknowingly, even though, know you said, I promise I will never be that way, the way my parents were, you just wake up one day like, holy shit, I just turned into my father. That's what I was noticing. That's what drew me into this work. And yes, the work is challenging, but the alternative to doing this work is unbearable, to live unconsciously at the mercy, at the effect of other people, being messable with or effable with, you know, and having other people in control of my reactivity is a really crappy place to be.

I'd rather be the one who is triggerproof. That's really the whole purpose of this work is to say, look, you know what, I'm the one in control of my mind rather than having my mind in control of me and other people in control of me. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with Lux Essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day. Quince has all the staples covered, from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the markup to 100% silk tops and skirts for easy dressing up to perfectly cut denim for everyday wear. Their wardrobe essentials are crafted

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tapping, rapid eye movement. the, you know, journaling, when I went in, I went all in, and it was rather consuming. I mean, it can really take a lot of time. And I see why a lot of people don't want to go there. And you and I both know, a lot of people won't, some won't ever go there. And, you know, instead will rather exist. Play the victim. Be a victim and exist, you know, keep the anxiety and or go on medication or whatever it may be

for different people. but even though I did all that work for a decade, it's like what you said. I still get triggered. I still, you know, I was thinking about how you said sometimes this can manifest in physical issues. I threw my back out right before I got fired. I couldn't run anymore. I suddenly was not as strong physically as I've been my entire life. So you start seeing these little red flags showing up and it really, like you said,

it's a trigger to say, okay, hang on, this is surfacing for me again. I need to deal with it again. Clearly, you wouldn't be where you are today if it wasn't for the work that you've done. Okay? All of that. It's clear. I can tell when I'm talking to somebody that they've done their work, just their embodiment, just their self-confidence.

You're very empowered. You're a woman with a lot of self-confidence, self-esteem. Clearly, you've been through some shit. You've gone through on the other side and found your power. Like you're not one to be pushed around, let's say. I can feel that, right? And as you expand to new levels, you'll be called on to revisit those old wounds, and it's wants for you to have a process, a methodology for you to connect to the feelings that come up,

to feel them fully rather than avoid them, to go back to their origins, to resource that younger self that was the one dissociated from, and that you abandon. at that time and together get the messaging, get the message from that younger self that you need right now and bring it back with you to your current reality in the dark so that you know what your next move is. And this is an actual process that gets you connected with your heart and your inner voice to move forward. As we navigate entrepreneurship into the unknown, we travel into the unknown. We're literally going, we're like explorers. You're an entrepreneur. You're an explorer. You're testing this marketing tool or that funnel or whatever. You're testing. You're going out and doing a

talk. You're putting yourself out there. You're doing a post. As you're going into the unknown, what's going to really make or break what happens is how you're showing up in that moment. How are you serving this present moment? How am I serving this present moment right now in this conversation? impacted by the quality and the regulation and the tone of my nervous system. And so the most important thing for entrepreneurs is to create and come up with a customized process that gets you connected to your vision. And when you go through stressful shit on a day-to-day basis that disconnects you from that vision and triggers you, how to bring yourself back into your heart, healing that

past, bringing that past, wounding with you. that younger self with you, the message that that younger self-south wants to hear to self-south and now show up in the present moment as that visionary. This game of managing and regulating your emotions becomes the most important thing to grow your business, to have a really healthy relationship, to not have your kids have those same traumas that you're raised in. And so the most successful people in the world, the thing that they're constrained by the most is their inability to regulate their emotions. It messes up their team meetings. People don't

feel safe around them. People will hide the truth around people that are afraid of reactivity. It blocks intimacy. It blocks your connection to purpose. So this is the most important thing for an entrepreneur to really get. I love teaching it. And one of the things that you had said to me earlier was that you can't have business problems without having personal problems because it's all stemming from something so much deeper. Exactly. You can't have a business problem. without a personal problem that's attached. So you can't separate business from the self. Your business is an extension of your energetic field.

And how you show up with yourself is how things are going to show up in your business. Right. And so I always love to look at how my business is going as a reflection of what's happening inside. And so the trick is to use everything on the outside as feedback to what's happening inside. And that's the key is using this whole concept of mirror mirror. It's like, why are my clients just not showing up and doing their work? Ah, mirror mirror, where am I not showing up and doing the work? Ah, okay.

So in other words, my universe outside of me, my relationships, how people are treating me is a mirror for how I'm being towards myself. Wow, that's really eye-opening. Of course, I'm sitting here thinking in my life. I'm like, wait a minute. Totally. Processing. I never think about that.

Totally, totally. And it's like, and your relationships are perfect for this too. Why is this person abandoning me? Why is this person rejecting me? Well, the question you're going to ask is, where am I abandoning myself? Where am I rejecting myself? Oh my God, I totally was a yes person here.

I totally completely eclipsed all of my values and my needs so that I could give to this person and hope for their approval. And lo and behold, they abandoned me. Well, I abandoned me first. They're just mirroring to me what I've been doing to myself. And so then it changes the entire conversation from victimhood to taking full responsibility for restoring that relationship with myself so that I can show up in my business. I can show up for my clients, purposeful, show up for my kids, you know. And so that's how you transform everything is by taking that on. You know, one of the things you just made me aware of is converse to what you just explained about someone abandoning you.

You could also have relationships in business and personally where people are so desperate to hang on to you, hanging on for dear life and asking yourself that same question. Where am I hanging on to something for dear life that I don't need to do that any longer? Amazing question. Perfect. I love that you saw that. A hundred percent true. Is that this is called self- what you're doing when you're asking yourself that question. You're sitting and you're writing in that journal after what happened. You're able to take that day and you're able to reflect on it and you're able to use whatever happened as an access point to connecting deeper with yourself. Ultimately, this brief journey that we can't stay on. We're on a floating spaceship. And we're only visitors here for a very short period of time. And when I calculated it, I have, you know, if I'm going to live to about 95 years old, let's say I live to 95, that's about 18,000 days left.

18,000 and some odd days for me to observe what happened and to look at that as an opportunity to really appreciate and deeper connect with myself so that I can then show up and leave a legacy over the last. last 18,000 days that I have left so that I can hopefully be remembered for my contribution to the planet. And so when you sit down and you learn how to self-regulate through these questions, you're able to make a big impact. You're able to leave the planet a much better place and having made a contribution because you're not seeking that external approval. You're so full of gratitude within yourself.

you're so full of self-resource, you're so connected that you're like, wow, I want to help those who are struggling. That's how you make an impact. That's how your business expands. It's not by, you know, staying in this wounded self looking for external validation and likes and approval and all of that stuff. And that's the roadmap to complete utter devastation because nothing that everybody gives me, all this approval that everybody would give me, it could never be enough. The more that I get, the more fame that I get, the more approval that I get, my ego gets bigger and bigger. Therefore, I need more to fill that void. And that's how many of the people who are up there at the top who've completely disconnected from themselves from that,

they really hit rock bottom really hard after that. I think it's an important thing to remember. It's all about learning how to self-regulate through asking these really great questions. Where am I doing that? you know, how is this a reflection of me? How can I learn to love the part of me that's doing that, you know? Is there ever a person or are there people out there that don't have to do this work, but just by some magical way they were born in the most beautiful family and there was no trauma, or is everybody on a level playing field here?

We're talking about attachment wounds. Okay. We're talking about attachment. Now, depending on your level of attachment, if you had parents that were attuned, that validated your reality, that consistently gave you validation for your feelings, that were able to hold space for you while you had them, then you have a huge advantage in many aspects. You have huge advantage in many aspects because you feel safe, confident, secure. you have a secure attachment, you have better ability to create secure healthy attachments with other people. If you didn't, you do have a disadvantage in that, in that core wounding causes you to dissociate from yourself and then you'll get into codependent type of patterns. And then you'll have breakdowns.

The good news is if you do the work from that space, you have the possibility of making massive transformation in the world. You look at all of the people in the world who've made a mark, who've had massive impact, they've all come from some sort of a brokenness, some sort of a wound, right? And there is that little dark passenger that's there that needs to be regulated, that will rear its ugly head when you step up and scale yourself and expand yourself. So to answer your question, does everyone need to do that? I believe that we all have some sort of wounding as children.

All of us have gone through experiences of trauma that has led us to believe and conclude and make meaning out of that we're unworthy of love somehow. Okay. So it will show up in different ways. Now, the levels will be different, but it does show up for most of us in certain ways, yes. And as a parent, you know, thinking about the things that you're saying, how do we make space for our kids and validate their feelings? The greatest gift that you can give to your child is a self-loving parent.

Because when you don't fully, haven't fully healed from those wounds and reparented the wounded child within you, you will act in unconscious ways to look good and to appear good and to download some of those traumas and fears and anxieties onto the kids. But when you stop and you pause in trying to parent them and go in and parent the wounded part of you that's been coming up and triggered, what happens is you then really fully are able to see yourself, to be seen, really, to get this point is that to be seen and heard is one of the rarest experiences for a human, as a child, when you have parents that aren't attuned, it's kind of a narcissistic style parenting. You don't really have the ability to be seen as a child. You just want to be seen. What does a child want?

Look, mom, look mom. Look at this. Mom, look here. Look here. Look what I'm doing. It's like, see me. This is what the child is wanting. Your child inside of you wants that. And so if you can pause and really see the child inside of you, by natural default, what my clients will tell me is that by doing this work, I've become a way better parent. I've fallen head over heels deeper in love with my child. I'm able to see her and just be present with her because I was able to see and hear myself. That wasn't seen in here. I was able to awaken the inner parent within myself to parent my own child inside that my own parents weren't able to give me because of their own stresses and traumas. And by doing that, all of a sudden, I look at my child and see her or him completely differently.

So to answer your question, the greatest gift that you can do is to go in and heal your own childhood wounding. That would make you the rock star parent. And that will break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. That's what I stand for. I just realize is that one of the things I'm asked when I speak at events is people will come up to me after and say, how can I make my kids more confident though. I'm confident, but how do I make my kids more confident? And I always say, take a look in the mirror and see where your confidence level is and how you're showing up as your most confident self, because that will inevitably be the example for your child. And it's really so similar to your answer, you know, if you really want to be the greatest parent and teach them

love and to care for themselves, you have to do it for you first. And you have to also make sure that is the confidence that you have truly an authentic confidence or is it a show-off type of confidence? Because if I'm truly confident, then I don't need to kind of let other people know. And so the greatest thing that you can do is to really fully see yourself and to acknowledge yourself. And to make a child more confident, what you would do is basically really be able to see them. have them feel seen. Having a child feel seen is very validating. That's so powerful. Children are used to being invalidated. So if you can validate the child, even wherever they're at, and teach them about how everything they're going through makes sense,

first you've got to do your work yourself. You've got to do the work yourself. Validating a child's reality is probably the most confidence-inducing thing that I can think of. Dr. Nima, obviously everybody's want to learn more. They want to hear more about you and learn from your teachings. Where can they find you? My website, Dr.Nima.com, dR-N-I-M-A.com. It's got my YouTube page, YouTube channel. I have a show called Triggerproof.

About 30 episodes of my show called Triggerproof on YouTube, which is all on my website as well. I have tons of content on there. I have an e-book and a virtual workshop. It's a 90 minutes of the five pillars of work. what it takes to become triggerproof, which is regulating your nervous system through breath work, chiropractic care and exercise, rituals, attunement, and living according to your highest values, clearing your past grievances and resentments, learning how to dance with that voice, the ego, the dark passenger, empathic communication with your younger self and others,

and community and commitment, because this is not going to happen alone. does not happen in isolation on a one-on-one. They're now seeing the one-on-one model of therapy doesn't actually fully work. It's not complete. We require a community of people to share what we're ashamed of, share what we're confronted by, so that somebody shares and I can go, wow, me too. I've gone through the same thing, you know, and not in a victimy way, in a way of you're not alone. You know what?

We're in this together. And so I have a workshop that teaches that. It's all on my website there and an e-book. on healing toxic relationships. And so I just love teaching people how to empower their lives through their nervous system and become triggerproof so that they can an F their nervous system, essentially, better relationships and more powerful businesses and entrepreneurship and leadership. Well, thank you for being here, Dr. Nima.

You definitely open my eyes and I know you're opening my people. So hang tight. We will be right back and all Dr. Nima's information will be in the show notes. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed getting to meet Dr. Nima. He definitely has such a different take on how to manage stress and how to get to these root causes and these triggers. And I'll tell you that really resonated with me because I've definitely got my triggers. And it's so true, but uncertainty is one of them for me.

So it was helpful to kind of reflect on, okay, I know I'm feeling stressed out. I know this has been a trigger in the past. I've seen when I've handled it well and not so well. but remembering where all this stems from and taking that time to observe and watch myself is really pretty empowering because it puts me in a position where I can make better decisions instead of react. And anytime I'm reacting, I'm allowing outside forces or other people to make decisions for me, which means things will not go well. And I'm actually going to answer a couple of questions about that today that really blew me away. But first, I had to mention,

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Why not? Put technology and medicine to work for you. I did, and it works. Rejuvenate Muscle.com. Check it out and use the code confidence at checkout and get 15% off your entire order. Okay. So to some of the questions, this question actually came to my website. I had this little drift bot that I love. No, this is not an ad. I just love the drift bot. It's a little picture of my head. And when you go to my website, Heathermonahan.com, you can type in any question you want. And if I am anywhere, where I can respond, I get a ping on my phone and I respond right away. It's so cool. If I'm not around, it'll say, Heather's not available. She'll be right back with you. And then I respond as soon as I'm back on my phone. Okay, so this is interesting. Hey, Heather, how do I get past the

negative ruminations when my ex still lives in my house? And whenever she's feeling angry about me divorcing and she's attacking me, this is one of the reasons why I filed for divorce because she belittles me. I'm really suffering. I don't know how to handle this. Okay, so this is the first thing that I say is go stay at a friend's, go stay in a hotel, but end the cycle. Get out of there. End the game.

This person is allowed to have a leash on you because she's in the proximity of you. If you filed for divorce and we're leaving this person because they belittle you and put you down and put you in a tailspin, that's the trigger. You don't need to be with that person any longer. Cut the excuses. Find a solution. So this person happened to be listening to one of my other podcasts and said me a couple other notes and said one last question. I believe in always growing, always trying to wake up better than how I went to sleep the night before.

How do I differentiate between useful criticism from people like my ex or just mean-spirited attacks? I find this question very interesting. I said clearly she is mean-spirited. Clearly. When you are around the right people that support you and love you, it is. not hard to differentiate. Choose better people. And that power and decision is in our hands. That is not forced upon us. So when you are around people that really cheer you on and support you and love you, you don't have to wonder if they're attacking you. And in fact, even if you were around someone

and you were questioning how they said something to you, if you've got that loving relationship, it's not hard to voice your opinion and say, hey, I feel a little off right now. Were you just attacking me. It felt a little weird or am I confused and not hearing you correctly. You can say that to someone that you love that loves you and they're going to say, oh my gosh, no, I did not mean that way. Because we all know you could be dealing with your own stress, your own anxiety, something that other people don't realize is going on. We never know 100% what is going on in somebody else's life. And it's so important to recognize that, especially given this current climate we're in. I was going into spin class the other day. And when I walked in, I saw some man was on my bike.

And I came back out. I went to the front desk and I said, hey, someone's on my bike. Can you just put me on another empty bike? And she was so nice and said, no, Heather, I'll go tell the guy, you know, that that's your bike. And I said, you know what? Typically I would say, hey, it's my bike. But given the current climate we're in, given the stress that people are under right now and the anxiety out there, I feel fine just going ahead and taking another bike. It's no skin off my back.

So, you know, as we move forward today and every day right now, we don't know what other people are up against. We don't know what's happening with their family members, with their job, with their health, with their concerns, with their fears. We don't know who's suffering. So it's really important to have empathy right now, to communicate clearly, and to try to give people the benefit of the doubt. And one of the ways we can do that is parroting back to someone, was this what you said? I want to make sure I understand you correctly and really putting extra effort and concern into being kind and communicating clearly because the whole world needs that right now. So I so appreciate you being here with me. And as always, when you DM me or email me or send me

anywhere on any social media platform, a screenshot of your review of this show, I buy you my $299 confidence creator video course. It's so good. You will love it. And that's my big thank you to you for supporting me, for leaving me a review because reviews help so much. I would appreciate it immensely. Until next week, keep creating confidence.