Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Breaking Free from Shame

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

In this Language of Love session, I have a chat with Trina, who has been through some really tough times in her past relationships, facing big losses and struggles. She opens up about the toxic relationships and challenges she's been dealing with as she tries to rebuild her life. I emphasized how important it is for Trina to take the time to be single, rebuild and move deeper into love and accept herself before thinking about jumping into a new relationship. It's like building a strong foundation for a house - if you rush past this phase of post-relationship healing, you just make the same mistakes again and again. I suggest that she goes on a journey of self-discovery and self-love, one that's all about what she wants, not what others expect. After all, loving ourselves and understanding our own worth is the first step toward attracting the love we truly deserve. In this episode, we’re diving into: The concept of vibrational frequency and how embracing our divine feminine power can attract the right kind of partner into our lives The impact of deep-rooted traumas and subconscious fears in our interpersonal relationships The importance of having a support system and holding oneself accountable Why setting boundaries is a vital component in healthy relationships Be sure to explore Calling in the One by my good friend Katherine Woodward Thomas! It's a fantastic resource for anyone looking to prepare themselves for love.  Visit my website to explore my range of books and courses on love, sex, and relationships, and be sure to tune in regularly to the Language of Love podcast for thought-provoking discussions and invaluable advice aimed at helping you love and be loved better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Trina, welcome to the language of love. Tell me what's on your mind.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. So I have been a devotee of your podcast for a little over a year now. It's helped me tremendously in a very, very difficult time in my life. I don't want to start crying within the first five minutes, but I have my tissue ready. So over the past four years, I've lost two significant relationships and both times I lost my home and my job as well. So back in 2019, I ended a marriage And then almost immediately I started dating somebody and that ended back in July of last year. And that relationship was with a toxic narcissist who at the end of the relationship, I felt

like I was, I was in fear. I was in fear of domestic abuse and just, I didn't, his anger was so intense and that I did, I just didn't know I couldn't stay any longer. So both relationships I ended, the marriage, you know, was something that most women wouldn't have left. It was with a very successful physician. I had the money and the cars and the diamonds and the trips and the house. And, but he came home one day and said, you're fat. I'm not attracted to you. We have nothing in common, but I'm not divorcing you because. Yeah. So because I was there to raise the kids from because he was his he had kids from a former marriage who he could not take care of and she couldn't take care of because she was incompetent and a drug addict and a whole host of things. So here I am now rebuilding again. And this last relationship that I left last year, I left the area that I was living and I moved to the beach and I found the book Mother Hunger and I healed. and I did nine months of intensive EMDR therapy and I just really thought I got to the root of it and I've rebuilt. I've got myself a beautiful condo and a great new job and I have my dog

and my friends and things are going great, but I'm still struggling. I'm still like life is still hard. And I feel like my whole life has been that way. I feel like I've been just going like, like shoulder deep through a swamp my whole life. So what is hard now? When you say it's still hard, tell me about that. I have always wanted to, to be different than who I am. I've always wanted to exercise and wanting, I've wanted to want to exercise and I've wanted to eat well and do all the things, all the self-care, all the things that everyone says that you should do. I've always wanted to do that. And I've have it in my mind. I have it in my calendar. I have all the things that I need to do what I want to do, but I don't do it. I don't do it. And I'm 54 and my body is

changing and I'm, I can feel things now, uncomfortable parts of my body that 20 years from now, I think about my 74 year old self and I don't, I want her to be happy with me. I want, cause my 34 year old self wasn't thinking about my 54 year old self. Right. So you, so you're saying, and is it particularly around physical health where you feel stuck? It's around physical health. It's around spiritual health. I want to, you know, I want to meditate. I just want to have either. So the thing is I am either going to stop the struggle and just be who I am and not exercise and not lift weights and not meditate and not do any of those things. But the moment that I say that to myself and it comes out of my mouth, I immediately think

I can't do that. I need to do this. Yeah. Well, I think so. There's this theme, right? And we all kind of attach, all of us have our emotional, physical, whatever Achilles heel, right? For some of us, it's money.

For some of us, it's body weight. For some of us, it's love. for some of us, it's different for all of us, that area where we just have a really hard time getting a handle on it. And it's different for all of us. And often it has to do with how things were handled in our childhood and where those traumas were, right. And what they were around the simple, straightforward example, someone who experienced homeless litmus as a child is going to have money fears, right. And struggle with consistent earning. And, you know, So we all have those. But what stands out to me, even in the way that you describe the issue, is a very heavy level of shame and kind of self-loathing almost.

Yeah. I mean, everything that you mentioned, the money, the relationship, the weight, all of it has, I've struggled with my whole life. I mean, and there is, you know, especially with societal, of course, but especially in my family, you know, I'm 54, I'm not married. I don't have children. What's wrong with me? Why hasn't this happened for me?

And all the work that I've done in the past year around the EMDR and everything that I've just been trying to search for the answer and like the magic bullet that's going to like snap me out of it and get me on the path. Yeah, there is no, there is no magic bullet, but it does feel, and I have no, I mean, I have no evidence for this. I just go with what I'm feeling and knowing as I speak to people. So I'm just going to volunteer this to you because I'm feeling it is that there's like a commitment to being stuck that stems from a story you've adopted or adapted. And I don't know, maybe you can tell me briefly what the nature of the traumas, the mother wound, and I'm sure other wounds that you referred to, but

there's this commitment to being stuck. I'm not saying it's conscious. I don't, I know you don't want to be stuck, but there's this part of you that's committed to being stuck because there's two things. One, there's, I'm just trying to articulate the pictures I'm seeing. So there's an identification with being she who is stuck, she who is the fuck up, she who is not together, or she who is not measuring up. And that's an extremely old story. And maybe even your role in the family and connected to that is, and this is by the way, I guess, true for almost all of us when we're wanting to create change in our life, big change is this fear of like, who will I be if I am not this screwed up being that I've always been. And there's this fear of the unknown,

almost like rather be with the devil you know than the devil you don't know but the devil is just your lack of self-care and health right but there's almost like a commitment and a fear of moving forward changing and becoming something different because you're a 50 and this is who you've always been but there's also an identification with that one so were you kind of the family fuck up I mean is that kind of your role in the family so I'm definitely the black sheep I come from a big Irish Catholic family and I'm the only one that isn't married and doesn't have kids I've had two failed marriages and now it's a third almost about to be engaged you know very serious relationship that ended but on paper I'm successful I'm the one with two degrees and

I'm the one who's traveled all over and, you know, on paper, it's emotionally, logistically and financially, but emotionally, even the relationships you chose, right. And listen, I've been, my ex-husband was a sociopath. I mean, I've been there. So this is not a criticism of your character or anything else, but you don't have a good sniffer. I mean, your, your, your ex-husband your ex-husband was an ass at best in my belief I believe he's gay and I was there to raise those kids that was it it was I was right and I don't know you have been with people who have used you who have manipulated you who have misled you who have said they were one thing and not another and you have been a match for that right or else you wouldn't have fallen in love

with him. Just like I was a match for a philandering sociopath in my ex-husband. I mean, listen, he's not diagnosed there and I hope he's not listening. And I don't, you know, I'm not saying he's officially a sociopath, but he definitely did some messed up things. So the point is that you said you've done a lot of EMDR, which, and I love EMDR, but it's limited because what it does is it it's, you know, a lot of people like it, especially in the current climate of loving the hacks on the back, like getting right to the root and removing it kind of thing. And so I get the attraction to that. And I actually am really a fan of it as a mechanism of kind of integrating things and releasing some things. But I think you, and I don't know,

you can tell me whether you did this in the treatment you had or not, because I find that a lot of EMDR programs and therapists do not get as deeply into this. They kind of treat it more as a band-aid to deal with the acute emotional or psychological pain you may be in, but they aren't necessarily really going into those old stories of low worth, hopelessness, helplessness, never going to make it, never going to be loved. And to me, the core of all of this for you, and there's some version of this in all of us, is that I'm not lovable exactly as I am. So, yes, she did get into all that. We did a timeline from my first memory to present day and it took us nine months to get through it. And I learned a lot about myself. But then subsequently, my father passed away in January and I've learned a lot about my parents' relationship that I didn't understand. And I have a lot of empathy now for their individual participation in my childhood and

my upbringing and where they were in their own lives when they were married and when they had kids. And my father didn't want to get married. He wanted to, I just found out he wanted to leave the morning of the wedding. And so she married him, had three kids with him and stayed with him for 60 years. You know what I mean? So that doesn't make any sense to me. That was the model, right?

So, so, you know, it just felt, I have a lot of feelings of abandonment issues, of course, anxious attachment, you know, of course I, and I, and my father was very aloof. He was never interested in us kids. He was just not present. And I mean, I, you know, I'm not trying to say anything badly about him. I mean, I, I, you know, he was my father and, and, you know, but still the best he could, but that doesn't mean you're not going to. And same with my mother.

She did the best she could with the situation. And for me being attracted to people like my father, who are not, who are aloof, who are not available, who are hot and cold. But I think I'm so grateful for my last relationship because it really did bring me to the bottom. It brought me to this work. And now I started putting a toe in the dating field again. And I, I, I'm pretty disgusted. Yeah.

I don't want you to date yet. You're not ready. I'm just going to tell you right now, you're not ready because until you really get to a place of full self-love. So even the desire, I know you want a partner. We all, when we're, you know, we all want love, of course, but I know, I don't, I'm just telling you, I know that part, a big part of why you're feeling this urgency is not because you're lonely or want to get laid or longing for companion. It's that big old, like for you, I want to erase the word should from your vocabulary. Like I want an alarm to go off on your, on your smartphone. Every time the word should,

I wish there was an app for that. Every time the word should comes into your mind or out of your mouth, because even the date, the weight loss thing, the exercise thing, all of that, anytime we're saying should, it's a trap. I always say, put your shitter away. And the dating thing for you is a should. I should be settled down. I should have a partner. I'm a loser because I've been married this many times and it hasn't worked out. And so I need to get back out there and find someone to prove to myself and everyone else that I'm lovable. And that is the most, the worst recipe for disaster. First of all, second of all, you've had two, if not three, it sounds like unsuccessful relationships with people who weren't who you thought they were, right? And who were

really emotionally abusive or physically threatening and or abusive to you okay and maybe you didn't I do feel like you had emotional abuse in your childhood this is not to malign your parents maybe even some physical abuse you definitely had emotional abandonment okay so here you are what a year out of this toxic abusive narcissist relationship where you have been working on yourself but you're also saying I'm still not enough because I'm overweight because I don't take care of myself because I'm still not enough. And if you go out in the day with your history, especially, but even without your history, if you go out in the dating world with a big old turd of not enoughness inside you,

you are going to be a frequency match to an asshole. He may be found one. Yeah. And then, and yeah, and the same thing, it was the same pattern over and that's going to keep happening because until you, until you love yourself the way that you want someone else to love you, you are not going to get there. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey and it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found. And I am so thrilled

to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler, we've got Paul Selig, we've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me, we've got body work, we've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. So I unequivocally, and I don't usually feel this unequivocal when I haven't taken someone's history and had like five or six sessions with them, but I feel really definitive about this

for you, that it's not a good idea for you to date right now. And that, that this, while maybe the last nine months have been about excavation and I'm covering a lot of, and getting a lot of clarity and starting to clear some things, I really feel like the next nine months should be about integrating and learning to cherish yourself and learning to really fully and completely accept yourself. And this is the irony. And it's actually, I'll just use myself as an example, as I said to do, because I gained 45 pounds, which is a lot of weight over the past two and a half years. And especially I would say 20 of those pounds came on in the past year or six months ago. In the past six months, I've been losing that weight. But what finally led to me to

lose the weight. I did all the things and couldn't do them or didn't follow through or didn't break down or whatever. And it was finally when I looked at myself in the mirror and said, you're freaking gorgeous. Like you're fat compared to a lot of people you're overweight, but like, look at you, you know, you're in this human body, you get to be here. And even if you are five sizes larger than you want to be, you're still totally and completely lovable and acceptable. And I believe that. Yeah. But at the same time, you aren't giving yourself grace with changing that. So I get for you, maybe it's not the way you look, but it's thinking about inflammatory diseases or other medical issues down the line. Right. Which is all arguable

because, yeah, of course, the statistics show if you're a certain weight, you're more at risk or whatever. But also the mind is the largest medical organ determinant of our health and inflammation, right? So if you're committed to the fact that you are setting yourself up for the degenerative disease in your older years, you can be guaranteed you're going to have degenerative disease in your older years. So I really want you to take some more time. You've done the first level of healing, but there are more levels to do to get yourself to a place where you're a, you're ready for love, but also that you, because I think if you can give yourself more grace, there's a couple of things I'm going to suggest to you around

your body and health. Okay. One is to really give yourself grace and not the grace. Okay. I'm just going to take the pressure off, but then I'm going to die in 10 years and I'm going to be miserable and incapacitated. That's not giving yourself grace. It's like, I'm going to trust love.

I'm going to trust God. I'm going to trust myself that I just am pushing against resistance right now and pushing against resistance doesn't work. It keeps me stuck. So I'm going to surrender to this. And all I'm going to do is every single day, I'm going to go, even if it's just a walk around my apartment or my office, I'm just going to move my body even just for five minutes. And in the morning when I wake up and before I go to sleep, I'm just going to close my

eyes for five minutes and breathe and think about what I appreciate. And that's it. And if I don't do it, that's okay. I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just going to give myself a couple of weeks, at least, if not a month of grace of just chilling. That doesn't mean that I go and eat five dozens of Dunkin' Donuts, right? Like I'm going to try.

I'm not going to be psycho. I'm not going to be restrictive and like crazy with myself or do anything that puts pressure on myself, but I'm going to see what happens if I take the pressure off. And I just kind of see if I can make some small, healthy choices. Right. And in the meantime, I think it would be really, really helpful for you to find a buddy, someone who can go on walks with you, someone who, and I mean, a girlfriend doesn't, I'm not talking about a date, right. Someone who is willing to be your accountability partner. And this really made a big difference for me too, because I would not motivate by the time it came to do, you know, I said, okay, in the morning, I'm going to get on

the bike or go for a walk or whatever. And then that time would come and there'd be a million other things that I thought were more important or I decided were more important. But when I had a friend who was waiting for me, I didn't blow it off. And then it only takes three weeks to start a new habit, right? So then you get less and less dependent on the friend and you start to kind of experience it yourself. But trying to do this on your own is going to be really hard for anyone, but especially when you're not in practice. I find that I have toxic productivity so that I keep myself busy to not, I'm too busy. I'm too busy to go to the dog for a walk. I'm too busy. Or now I'm too tired. Yeah. Right. That's why I think in a cat, we aren't going to call it an

accountability partner, but like a buddy, because you're not going to blow off your buddy. You're not going to call her up and say, sorry, I can't meet you at the park because I need to find something else, some other work to do, or I'm too tired. You'll go. And then once you go, you're going to feel better. And then it will start building on itself. I think there's also this larger level of emotional healing that's still there to be done now that you've done the first level. And that is around self love, like really, really falling in love with yourself and cherishing yourself and making a commitment. If you commit to nothing else, making a commitment to treat yourself like your most cherished friend. So when you are talking

to yourself in your head, I always call this a thought cleanse. If you go for the next 24 hours and pay attention to what you're saying to yourself in your head, that will be really instructive. Are you saying kind things to yourself? Or are you saying, are you a loser? Are you lazy ass or whatever? Or you should be, and why aren't you? And why can't you? Whatever, right? Or are you saying, good job? And like, that's okay. Or my favorite, whoopsie. I really, I really try to be positive with myself. I do, you know, have the same themes around exercise and eating right. And you know, that I, I do, those are the two kinds of subjects that I, that I don't treat myself internally well around, but I really do know what I bring

to the table. I know what a friend I kind of a friend I am and what kind of a person I am. And so I understand the value and how much of a catch I am for anybody, a friendship or an employee, a romantic partnership. So I think that, and I think about not having that or not having, getting to the weight loss or the exercise goals or, you know, the physical feeling that I want to have. If I don't get to either any of that stuff, I'd be so sad that if it didn't happen for me, that I really want, I really want it. And I really want it because I know what I'm bringing to the table. yeah well that's beautiful that's beautiful but something is still going on yeah and i don't think it's i think the weight is i mean i was just saying this to my son my oldest son really struggles with weight and when he starts to gain weight or if he starts binging and then as soon as he has like a binge then he won't exercise because he hates him you know he's like fuck it i'm not gonna and then he doesn't exercise and he hates himself and then he gains weight and it's like this cycle that goes on and on and on. And that's his Achilles heel. That's the way and the vehicle

through which he expresses his own self-loathing that's still to be worked through, right? And that it's not, I can only do what I can do to encourage him to work through. But I think that's true for all of us. We all have, I mean, some of us who are non-functioning have that in all areas of our life, but most of us who are relatively high functioning and to the rest of the world seem like we have all our shit together. We still have this Achilles heel and the Achilles heel holds. So it doesn't mean only like the way you're framing it is that I feel great about myself and all these other areas of my life. It's just this one area, right? And that is true on the surface and even a little bit below the surface. But even deeper, I would challenge that and say that yes,

and it's not a either or. Yes. And that Achilles heel, your unique brand of it is also a container for a much wider sense of not enoughness, but it all gets funneled into there so that you can be high functioning and all the other areas, which is a beautiful thing. God bless you for being a great adapter and for doing that and figuring out a way in your childhood and later to channel that. Right. But I just want to say that because I do feel like I really feel strongly that there's more in there around, around rejection, around rejection, because you know what a good catch you are, but then there's also, I don't know why I'm saying this because you don't present this way and you don't speak this way, but there's also one in you who doesn't buy it. Doesn't buy

what? That you're a great catch. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I've had some partners who have definitely done their, their due diligence to make themselves feel better by ripping me apart. Right. And maybe that's all it is. Maybe it's just that what I'm feeling in you is all of that internalized manipulative feedback that those jerks said and did to justify their mistreatment of you. But I would say that even on a larger scale, attracting in that many assholes is a sign that there's one in you who feels like she deserves it. And you know, it's happened outside of relationships too. It's happened with employers, with bosses and with family. Yeah. Yeah. And so it sounds like you're getting a lot better at setting boundaries, right? Because as soon as

that guy that you were dating backed it up, you were like, bye-bye, right? Are you getting better with boundaries? I am getting better with boundaries. I have set a few boundaries with family members and now I'm the problem. Yeah, of course. Well, that will happen, but I'm not backing down because this one particular family member just has never had my best interest at heart and she's lost the privilege of being in my life. Yeah. I've had to do that with some people too. And that's a really, that kind of clarity will tell yours and holding that boundary, even though they're all gaslighting you and telling you that you're the problem and we're families that you got to accept the abuse because that's what families

do, right? As you hold that for yourself, that in and of itself is a beautiful act of self-love and a message to your system. We are not tolerating mistreatment anymore. We deserve better and we're not going to take it. And so that's a beautiful thing. I think if you, let me just think or feel what would be most of service in terms of, I don't want to say it's not really an uncovering because I feel like you already know what the wounds are. It's more like a deeper level of healing of those wounds, a journey of kind of real self-discovery and love, not like removing all of the shoulds and exploring how do I want to design my life? And not so much of like, okay, I want to be a size eight. So I better

fricking exercise. You know, why aren't I doing that? If this is what I want, why aren't I doing it? Like not in that energy, but, and not even in the, in the more surface aspects of how you really want to live your life. But what is it beyond the surface of all the shoulds of what you should have and what you should be doing? What is it that you truly, truly want? I really want to be very comfortable in my skin. I want to have a deep, true love that I believe that I've never had. I want to have that like just deep soul connection and to live, you know, as much of the rest of my life with somebody as I can. And I think that's part of the, I need to get on this. I need to fix this and get on this. Yeah, no, no, you've got plenty of time. First of all,

second of all, huh? I don't know why I'm saying this, but what town do you live in or city do you live in? I live in the middle of Massachusetts outside of Boston in a town called Clinton. Okay. I lived in Boston for a while. I remember Clinton. Okay. So there may be, you know what? I don't know. You say you listened to my podcast. So you may have heard this episode with Sheila Kelly. It was about the erotic being like unleashing the erotic. I forget what the title the podcast was, but she does. It was very scary. That's what I'm thinking. Right. So she does these beautiful classes that are ultimately around tuning and tapping into the divine feminine in yourself and becoming fully what we call embodied, like fully inhabiting your body and all of its

curves and beauty and really inhabiting it and connecting with it and with your sensuality and your creativity and your flow. And I think you have been in such a kind of linear process in your work and in your life. And you see all these timelines, you know, and I have to do this by this time or that will happen you know so you probably work a lot in the left brain yeah and the more logistical linear thinking brain and what you're being called to do now is really connect more deeply through the right brain through that intuition through the sensuality through the and I don't mean sex it's not about sex although that's fine it's about really inhabiting your body and claiming it. And I feel like you're disconnected from it. And that's part of

what's creating this resistance in you. So if I could prescribe it to you, which I will, I would say to take that course with Sheila Kelly, which you can do online. If you lived in a city, I would say, because the first thought I had was I wanted you to take a pole dancing class. But I think Sheila Kelly's class may be even better for you. And you can do that remotely. I have studied with Deborah Silverman last year when I was at the beach and I am in my Scorpio progressed moon. So this doesn't sound totally out of left field for me. And for those of you don't know, she's an astrologer, right? So I think that's part of it. Right. And this is by the way, and something that I'm really kind of stepping a lot more into teaching women as I'm now moving

toward my mid-50s, is that this can be the most passionate, erotic, creative, embodied, powerful, divine, feminine, sensual time of your life. There's so much to step into and to unleash and to uncover. And I feel like with you, there's this dense kind of armor of containment and direction and control that probably kept you really, really, makes you really effective in work, makes you the girl that we all want on the committees on everything because you're going to get all that shit done. Your executive functioning is probably through the roof, right? And all of those are tremendous strengths. And you probably cultivated that really, really early in order to stay safe, in order to have value in your family, in order to get the little bit of approval that

was available to you. So those are all great. It's not about getting rid of those, but the other part is a little atrophied. So what comes up when you're suggesting this is I would love to do all this in the safety and confines of our relationship, a loving, deep relationship, because I intimidate men so much as it is where I am. This won't intimidate men. I promise this will not intimidate men. This is not going to make you into some, I mean, Sheila is a little bit this way, but she's a very different erotic creature than you are. So Sheila can be intense. That's her personality. And I love that about her, but she's by nature intense. And so when she gets into her, it's a lot and you got to be a lot to be with her, right? As a man, probably. I mean, she's happily married

to a man for whom she's not a lot, but unleashing and uncovering and connecting to your divine feminine erotic power is like a magnet on steroids. It is not at all intimidating. It may be intimidating for losers. Perfect. It may repel men who can't really inhabit their divine masculine, and who aren't moving with integrity, and who are pretending to be something they're not, those men may not be attracted to you. But a man who is comfortable in his own skin, who understands his power and doesn't have to wield it, who appreciates an embodied, empowered woman who's comfortable in her own skin, and can keep up with her, that's who you'll attract. And where exactly is this man? Oh, he's there. You just aren't a frequency match for him.

You're not going to meet him now. Yeah. Remember what I'm always teaching since you listen to my podcast, you know this, right? And if you read Quantum Love, you know this, that the only thing we can perceive around us or in our world with our five senses, which is all we can perceive things with really in the tangible world, the only thing we can perceive are things, experiences, and people who are vibrating in harmony with our vibration. And what I mean by vibration is we are all pure atomic energy. That's all we are at our core. If we were to look at everything and everyone around us, we're all vibrating atoms and our bodies hold an energetic frequency. And the only thing we can perceive, and this has been shown and demonstrated and proven with quantum physics,

the only thing we can perceive around us, including potential mates, and the only thing they can perceive around them, including potential mates, are people who are in a similar harmonic vibration. So if you are living from a place of even unconsciously, I'm not quite enough yet, certainly for love and sex and all that, and I'm not fully in my power, and I'm more in defensive mode than creative mode, and I'm in fixing and managing, controlling everything around me, you are not going to be a frequency match for the kind of man that you want to notice, be attracted to and attract in. And so I see it, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years. I see it time and time and time again, and it's happened in my own life. That's how I met my

husband of 20 years. He just kind of showed up as I moved into this space. And I see it time and time again, that who you are with will be a direct reflection of how you truly, truly, not just on the surface, truly feel about yourself. Wow. Okay. That's not to say all the assholes in your life are your fault. They aren't, but like I said, I'm grateful for the, what I've, I mean, I'm ready for the struggle and all the stuff to stop. I'm ready for it to get easier, but I'm grateful for where it all led me because it led me to this place of healing and discovery. And I wish, you know, I would have learned what I learned with this EMDR 20 years ago, you know, and then I was able to increase my frequency and have this love. Cause I mean,

that's, I would love to just, I would love to be married and for, you know, 40 years, I feel like I have 40 years left. You do, you do, and you will, and it's all in divine timing, but first you have to fall in love with yourself yes and if you will do this even for six months what I'm saying and you really do commit to something it's got to be something with erotic embodiment I'm getting that very clearly and Sheila's the queen of that which is why I'm referring you to her but if you can do that and like really continue to be you know the other things I was talking about with your body and with giving yourself grace and really being gentle with yourself. I think you are going to be in a totally different place six months from now

and then get on the dating apps because you're going to have a totally different experience. You may not even need to get on the dating app. You'll go and get coffee and they'll be asking for your number as you walk down the street. Do they still do that? this one well okay good good yeah I would like to avoid the apps if at all possible and what I would say is I'm just going to give you a timeline it's interesting I've been giving people a lot of timelines lately that I get which is something new I was just doing this yesterday I was like god this is a very specific timeline but okay so what I am being shown for whatever that's worth is you do three months of this, right? And then after the three months and you

can get it in advance and have it ready, then I want you to, while you're still doing that, so you don't stop, but three months in, I want you to also explore calling in the one with Catherine Woodward Thomas. You can listen to my podcast with her as well, but I, but I want you to like use that as your dating app for the last three months because of this six month program of sorts we're talking about. And it's still not going out there and seeking and dating apping or anything else. But what she teaches in that book and in her courses is this cultivation of really getting ready for love. So those last three months of the six month little prescription I'm giving you is not only continuing to do that embodiment work and that other and caring for

yourself and the buddy system and everything else and the self-compassion but then you will start to prepare fertile ground including getting super duper clear in what you want in life and getting ready and setting the stage for calling that in okay yeah that sounds great all right will you call me in six months and tell me what happens? Absolutely. All right. We'll look forward to hearing from you. Best of luck. You got this. Thank you so much. I really, it's been a pleasure.