Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Calling in the One with Katherine Woodward Thomas

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

I am so honored on this episode of “The Language of Love” that I get to sit down with Katherine Woodward Thomas. Katherine is not just a New York Times bestselling author, master teacher, and a marriage and family therapist: She is also a dear, dear friend and someone I often turn to for advice and support. If you have ever heard the term ‘conscious uncoupling’ (made popular a few years ago when Gwyneth Paltrow when she divorced her partner Chris Martin), you know Katherine. “Conscious Uncoupling” is one of her most beloved books and truly a game-changer when it comes to how to approach breakups and divorce. Her latest book “Calling In the One” is a must-read for anyone who is looking for love, or anyone feeling as though they don’t have the passion and romance in their life that they so deeply desire. On this episode, Katherine and I get a chance to talk about some of my favorite things. Here are some crucial life lessons you will learn in this episode: • Resigned to Loneliness: Learning how to hold the possibility for love even when you are dating in what feels like a ‘meat market’ and are feeling bitter and hopeless after fruitless online dating • Overcoming the Four Main Obstacles to Love, including your ‘False Love Identity’ • Healing Your Past Wounds: Finding your ‘source fracture’ story which has lodged into your identity and made you feel unlovable and ‘not good enough • Feeling it, Not Thinking it: How somatic experiencing can help you ‘feel’ the love you deserve • Getting Free from the Past: How to recognize and release old stories and wounds • Becoming Future-Focused: Learning how to lean into your evolution and your possibility for powerful growth I am so excited for you to tune into this episode. Give it a listen and let me know your thoughts! One more thing! Are you interested in becoming a love coach and helping others call love into their lives? Or maybe you want to learn for yourself! My dear friend and wonderful teacher and therapist, Katherine Woodward Thomas is inviting us all to a free 90-minute webinar to learn more about calling in the ONE!  https://webinars.kwt.online/lb-coaching-sacred-calling Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love i'm so excited to share this beautiful brilliant soul with you in this week's language

of love conversation katherine woodward thomas she's a marriage and family therapist she's the author of the new york times best-selling book conscious uncoupling five steps to living happily even after it was made really famous. It should have been famous either way, but it was made famous by Gwyneth Paltrow. And she also wrote the national bestseller, Calling in the One, Seven Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life. She trains and certifies coaches and happens to be a dear, dear friend and also an amazing, trusted teacher of mine. So welcome, Catherine Woodward Thomas? Well, we're teachers to each other, Laura. Whenever you start speaking, I just get quiet because I don't want to miss a word. Oh, I feel the same way. And I think we met

when I interviewed you years and years and years ago on a radio show I was doing. It was when we kind of met for the first time in person, but I had always followed your work and I had always recommended, and this is really what I want to focus on, is calling in the one. Because I have yet to find a book or a program that really helps in the way that I know helps people get clear about what they want out of love, remove the blocks in the way, and literally call it in. I wanted to spend some time talking about that with you and about what you teach and also share with you all that Catherine, a lot of her work, and I've actually joined, just been a visiting professors, so to speak, on a couple of them. But a big part of your work is training, which I think

is so cool, is training coaches to help people call in the one. Yes. Because it's not so easy to just read a book and do this, right? You can, and the book gives you a guide. But the part specifically, I think, about removing the blocks, that can be hard to do on your own. First of all, holding possibilities is really hard to do on your own, particularly with the kind of crazy dating culture that we have that has so few rules and where online dating can be such a meat market and such a precarious place to try and look for love. So holding possibility also because in the face of our history, these patterns that were set up in early childhood, they repeat and repeat and repeat. And so most times when people come to me,

they're pretty resigned that this could really happen for them. And every single person has a different reason. And somebody, you know, it's either my thighs are too big or my bank account's too low, or I'm too old, or I have an autistic son or, you know, something. And I just find this really for everyone. So my feet are funny or whatever we have. Yeah. There's always something that makes you, it's not going to happen for you. And that's what you mean by holding the possibility. Right. The book has a lot of magic and the book really speaks to people. And when I share my story, because I come at this from the inside out, never thought that I would be a teacher of love. I thought maybe I'd be a teacher of spirituality. That's actually what I was

aspiring to. Which you kind of are. Which I am now. Yes, absolutely. It's a very, very spiritual program. It kind of integrates what I learned as a marriage and family therapist with transformational technologies and also metaphysics, which we share in your beautiful quantum love work. So I think that the value of being a coach and holding high watch for people, being present with people in their resignation, in their story, in their feelings of overwhelm, like powerlessness around not being able to create what they want, be deeply present. But it's almost like they know a little secret, like, yeah, but I got the roadmap that works. So we're going to get there.

I was just going to say, having been sometimes when, because Catherine does a lot of these trainings and there's actually one starting soon, I think, but I've come in, you've brought me in from time to time to talk about conscious sex. You're guest faculty. Yeah, I'm guest faculty. That's what I am. And what's really cool having experienced that I've trained therapists before, but I've never done online coach training or therapist training.

What I think is really cool is that the process you take these coaches through, they're learning to coach other people, but they're also getting healed and calling in your own love. They're mastering the process because what we're working with, Laura, is consciousness. You know, when we look at the obstacles to love, there's really four main obstacles that we focus on. And by the way, I want to come back to the resignation piece because I actually can really speak to how to lift resignation pretty quickly. Okay.

But the four main obstacles to love, the first three, we can come back to, they're about completing the past. The fourth one is the biggest one, and it's what I call your false love identity. And it's the thing that we're all kind of wrestling with, that imprinting of I'm not wanted, or I'm alone, or I'm not good enough, or I'm somehow not safe to be close. And it's kind of the core of the love addict patterns, the codependent patterns, the love avoidant, the anxious attachment. And why you end up attracting and being attracted to the same patterns that don't serve you.

It is the core of it. And we actually take it down to, you know, it's almost like you're going to redo a house. You just strip the house of all the walls. You go right down to the studs, down to the studs. And we really name that what I call your source fracture story. That's like the original break in your heart, that broken belonging where you were all alone and you were too young to manage that with any, and certainly too young to understand why you were alone with any sophistication or complexity.

So of course it comes down to identity formation. It gets very lodged into identity. So we really name that and we have this whole process of how to wake people up who are kind of under the trance of that story. And we actually point out how people specifically are the source of the story. That's what's been in the invisible that we make all of this very transparent. So we're working with consciousness. We're working with the kind of contraction in the body that comes up with all of these

disappointments in love and the resignation that's basically like somehow I'm on the outside looking in. I'll never have love. Love is for other people because I'm so deeply alone. And we really give people like this somatic waking up experience to the deeper truth. And in this case, it might be something like I didn't come here to be alone. I came here to love and be loved. And I have the power to learn how to have happy, healthy relationships that root down over time. So now you're in a different story that you can feel in your body deeper and wider, and you're going to show up in very, very different ways. So we have to teach our coaches not to do that from an intellectual place. They have to go into that themselves. So what happens

for the coaches is they really become masters at this technology. For themselves first, and then they can teach other people, yes. For themselves. And a lot of people will come into the coach training, not even positive they're going to end up being coaches. They really want to master this themselves. And it's kind of the technology of how to transform any area of your life. But I love working in this area in particular, because it's the core one for most of us.

You know, we're talking about, were you wanted by your mother when she found out she was pregnant with you? Yeah. It can be that early. It's really primitive. It's really primitive. I often talk about, too, in a different way that that children by nature are narcissistic. That's just developmentally how they are.

So everything that happens around them, even if it has nothing, no, they have nothing to do with it. But everything that happens around them and affects them is because of them. So when dad abandons the family or when mom is an alcoholic and can't show up for you or whatever it is, it's the child naturally thinks it's because I'm too much of something or I'm not enough of something. This is my fault. Right. And then that gets like imprinted, as you were saying, in that identity formation. Right. And it never gets excavated and it never gets questioned. And you never sort of pull that dark thing out of the basement to look at it.

And once you do, which is what one of the things that I think is so beautiful about the work you do with people is that with support and guidance around not only doing that somatically and energetically, but even intellectually looking at it, you can suddenly see like, no, that's not true that dad left because he left because he met another woman and he couldn't communicate with mom. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. And so there's almost like a closure that happens and a new identity can form? Well, one of the things that I work with a lot is the relationship between that cognitive part of ourselves and the younger self in the body. Because what happens when we get disappointed in love is we usually kind of collapse into being

overly identified with the feelings that we have. And the feelings are with that old interpretive lens. So it might occur like kind of a collapse into a low grade depression, or it might occur like a deep anxiety that is kind of compelling you to, you know, pick up the phone and say something and which it's, you know, intellectually is the worst thing to do, but you do it anyway. Right. So it's driving how we show up. And here's the other piece of it, Laura, every single self schema is what I'm going to call it. Like I'm alone or I'm not good enough. They all have their own different flavor. And we each have our own kind of primary one. And I found that there's about 22 of them that are really kind of the most that we go to. And you might

have variations on a theme, or you might have a relationship like my primary one is I'm invisible. And then I find out, well, I created invisibility because my dad was raging and it was a safety strategy. So the primary one is I'm not safe to be visible, right? But all of them have their own ways of relating that are actually keeping the story in place. So for the I'm invisible, your first attention might go to other people because you're sourcing your safety by seeing them. Yes. And not being seen. And not being seen yourself. And you become almost invisible to yourself because your attention is so out here. And then we make choices from that place, even really beautiful ones. Sometimes like, I think most of us therapist types have

some relationship to invisibility. Oh my God. We all do. We all do. Yeah. Right. That's the primary one that, you know, so you can use them to good end, but you know, but you still have to take the splinter out of your own soul. So what we do in calling in the one is we actually map out. So inside of the I'm alone, how are you the source of that experience? This is what breaks up resignation, by the way. So the pattern is I always get involved with people where I end up being their mother as opposed to their girlfriend or their partner, right?

That might be the pattern. And if you really feel into that, there's maybe an I'm alone and no one ever really shows up for me because beliefs are not just about me, but it's about my relationship. Who I am in relationship. Yes. Who I am in relationship. Well, no one's ever really there for me. So inside of that assumption, the way I create connection is that I give, give, give, which

is mother position. And I don't really have a very big cut for receiving back. As a matter of fact, I don't maybe not even feel comfortable with the vulnerability. I don't even allow myself to receive. I don't even let it go there. What I do instead is I create myself as self-sufficient. I get a little prickly when people try and get to me. So I give them the message.

I don't really need anything from you. I'm just here to give. And we literally train people to then be dependent. And there's not mutuality in the space. And then we get resentful or hurt, but we're creating this scenario. And then we'll spend 10 years on our own because it's either somebody's going to drain me or I'm just alone. And frankly, you know, no relationship is better than an unhealthy relationship.

I agree with that. So once you see it as, okay, I'm the one who's keeping this in place, because first of all, in my relationship with myself, I self-abandon all the time, just to, in the fear that someone's going to leave me, I people please. So that's a self-abandonment. I don't even know what I feel, but I know what they feel and what they want. Yeah, that was my little tip. and then inside of the relational space maybe I avoid conflict like the plague so I'm always just

kind of morphing into their world like a little chameleon but it doesn't let love root down because studies show that love roots down in conflict so the relationship never really goes very deep and it's very easy for the other person to leave or I'm so self-sufficient that I just kind of train people that I don't need anything from them. So they don't even bother. They kind of give up and they're not trying to create mutuality. And that's probably a lot of those women who say, I intimidate men. Oh, yes. What about that one, right? Those are the women that don't make room. They don't make room. That's beautifully noted. Yeah. So what actually begins to open up possibility and give us hope is for you, once you understand, oh, I'm the source of

this. And by the way, this is no small matter because how we're trying to fix it is forever going back when my mother and she left me alone and I was a latchkey kid. And then my father and he left our family and then, you know, and we're in the story. And somehow we think if we kind of stay in the swamp of the story long enough that somehow it'll just kind of untangle that gnarly knot and we won't be this way anymore. What we don't realize is that we ourselves formed our personality around what happened. Especially in love. Especially in love because it's so primal. And we have to, once we break it up and you see, oh, I see, I'm creating this because I don't take the risk to be vulnerable. I pride myself on being self-sufficient. So inside of

the new story, I didn't come here to be alone. I came here to love and be loved. And I have the power to create healthy relatedness, there's all of a sudden the pathway of development opens up. What do I need to grow and develop in my relationship with myself? Well, to always have my first attention here, to be able to start to put a label to every feeling I have, to understand what I need to validate my healthy needs and to care for that younger part of me that's anchored into some story of lack and limitation that would feed into neediness. Right. So it's learning to become much more self-aware internally and to do what our friend Margaret Paul says, inner bonding, bonding with that younger self, holding and containing our

inner experience. And then in relationship with others to allow for two people to be in the room. Finally. Yeah. And sometimes that starts, if you're single, sometimes that starts with a friend or a colleague, right? You're practicing in these other ways. You almost have to be proactive. Like, okay, well, if I never do anything where I need somebody, let me take on a project that requires three people. Yeah. That I'm going to need someone. I couldn't possibly do that alone. Yeah.

Just so I have to get out of my identity. Part of why manifesting love is so challenging for so many of us is that it's literally outside of our identity to receive and to sustain. Because we don't have an identity that lines up with deserving love and being worthy of that. Yeah. I love that you've like honed it down to 22 flavors and variations. That's really cool. I think of them like ice creams, you know, the ice cream store, you have the Rocky Road, you have the strawberry, you have the vanilla, the butterscotch, they all taste a little different. It's all ice cream, but there are very specific ways. So for example, in the, I'm not safe, there's a way that you'll come into a conversation with a projection. I'm really

interested in what we're projecting onto others, the automatic assumption about others and how others will feel about us. So there's this feeling that other people want something from me. Right. Or are going to hurt me or take advantage. Right. Other people have some kind of ill intent. They're going to take something from me. And then you're speaking through that. You're saying, you know, can I have a glass of water, please? Well, I'd like a glass of water too, please. Yeah. And then you don't understand why you're turning people off. And then nobody, look, people are already screaming from the room and they're prickly with you or they're defensive and argumentative and you think it's them. It doesn't occur for us.

We're almost blind to this selfless source piece. Yes. How do you help people? I'm assuming it's like in vivo and in the moment, but how do you help people through this process and become aware? First of all, the real get-go is what's the future you're standing for? We're so used to doing our inner development by looking back, and I use the positive possible self of the future as often as I can.

And even though it's not as mainstream, I will tell you that there's many studies from extraordinary psychologists who work in academia on the positive possible self of the future and how important it is to not just have a goal, but to actually lean in. who am I inside of that future fulfilled? What might it feel like to be pregnant, to be happy in love, to have an engagement ring on my finger and just sitting with it in a visioning, using your imagination and getting it into your body as much as you can. So from that possible future to set an intention, which is different than wanting something, wanting something is like, kind of being a beggar with God. Please, I hope it happens. Please give this to me. I'll be good

for the rest of my life if you give this to me. As opposed to, I will hold myself accountable for becoming who I would need to be in order for that future to be fulfilled. That's a big difference. When I first met you, you were single. And I mean, you had been married before. I had been married. That was the miracle manifestation of calling in the one was I called in my first husband, Mark, who I was married to for about a decade. But we met after I was separated from him or maybe we had even been divorced by then. Yeah, I think you were divorced. But I don't know that I had created conscious uncoupling yet. Do you remember? You had created conscious uncoupling and you were definitely consciously uncoupled and you were beyond that. But what I thought was so cool is this was later on, this was right before you

left LA and right after I moved here. So it was probably four years ago. You'll be able to tell me when I tell you what I remember, but you had been single for a while. I think we were walking somewhere. I was walking with you to your car and you were like, you know, yeah, I think I'm going to manifest love again. I think I'm ready. I said that too. I didn't remember that. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. And then I saw you like maybe two months, three months later and you were like, okay, I manifested love. It was just very matter of fact that I'm ready now. I'm going to manifest love. And you called in, you got to tell the story, but you called in this man who you are still with how many years later now? Almost four. Almost four years. Look at that boo-boo who like

adores you and you live with him now and you're partners in life and love. And you literally were just like, I'm going to manifest love. I'm ready now. And then like a few months later, that was it. You know, I did not remember that I had said that to you. I did it in an interesting way this time too, which people love this story. So I'll tell it here. We have vision board. We all know about the vision boards and stuff. The value of the vision board is not so much the actual visual, it's the trying on of that possibility for yourself in a way that you feel in your body. You're kind of creating, you're weaving that future, but it has to kind of run through your body. If you're doing a vision board and it's kind of like, oh, I wish I had that. Oh, I wish I had

that. Stop, stop, stop. So I knew that as a teacher of love, as the creator of Calling in the I knew that I needed to get the possibility in my body. And Laura, I'm just a woman like everybody else. And I was in my 60s already. And I thought, oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm too old. That was my version. Yeah.

Then, oh, maybe I'm too old. And I have this daughter who's in college. And that's a big expense going out every month. You know, whatever we tell ourselves, right? Of why we can't have it. So this is me. I had people supporting me. calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on

the street then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away then take the next exit let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty your donations help the united way fight poverty in thousands of ways like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. Right, so I had my friends, Isaac and Torald, Corin, and I said to them, well, I want to do a CD about love.

And I want to take people on the journey of losing love, forgiveness, getting into a consciousness of love, the having of love. So I'm going to do like a musical vision board. Because you're a singer. People don't know that. I'm a singer-songwriter. And I'd never made a CD before. I used to be a cabaret singer for many

years. That passed in my 30s. So it was a joy to go back to music. So I'm writing all these songs and we're recording them. I couldn't write the last one. They wrote beautiful music. The lyrics of that song needed to be the having of love. This is what it feels like. And I couldn't get into the center. It was like I could kind of dance around it. I call Isaac one day and I say, And this is, you know, this is inside your question, like, what's the value of having someone who's holding the high watch with you and working with you? So I call him, I said, I'm just in non-possibility. I just, it's really hard for me to imagine it.

And he sits and he talks to me and he just opened up space and I got it and I got off the phone and literally I picked up a pen and I wrote these lyrics. Sitting by the fire on a Saturday night, reading David White by the flickering light. I look up and you're smiling. oh that just gave me chills it's only been a year since the night that we wed when we danced till dawn then lay flowers in our bed as the sun started rising and it goes on i mean it's quite poetic and has all these images and it just flowed right out it really just flowed right out when i was in the center of it this is what it looks like this is what it feels like this is what it

smells like the flowers this is like this but the scene would be yes yes and trying that on and in my imagination feeling it as though it's so so I go in and I record the song we do not have a name for this song I'm just calling it the I love you song but it doesn't you know which is not a great name and a few weeks later I meet Michael in this very magical circuitous way and within three weeks without knowing this lyric, without hearing this song, he sends me a David White poem. Wow. So now the song is called Michael's Song. And it's on a CD, Lucky in Love, which is iTunes for any of you who want to listen to it.

Yeah. I love that. And I love that story. Yeah. We're weaving it in consciousness first. It's love really from the inside out. We talk about all the time with quantum love, that's it. Like that getting in what you did in that example is you moved into the frequency of that which you desired, being in the first person imaginative experience of it. And I know you have all sorts of strategies for helping people do this as they're calling in the one, right? But moving into the reality of that as if it were happening already, as if it were already here, moves your body into the frequency of that, communicates with the quantum field. And that's really the secret behind the secret. So it's just

such a beautiful example of that. Because even to be able to write those words, when you say you went into the center of it, that's what you're saying, that you went into the scenario as if it were happening right here, right now in first person. What would that look like? What would the scene be? How would I feel? Let me employ all my senses. That's how you move into the frequency of that which you want to create. Yeah. So it has to begin with that as a foundation, right? So as much as people can, not everybody can do it immediately to move into even for 30 seconds of possibility because there's so much evidence to the contrary. People feel at the effect. Most people go to psychics and get readings about love and stuff. I had one woman who came to me

for calling in the one. And before we began the course, she went to her psychic. He said, I'm so sorry to tell you, but you're not going to have a partner in this lifetime. I know it is. He was some practice. So luckily she came anyway, and she was willing to do the process. She went back to him. I don't know why she went back to him, but she went back to them for something work related. I guess they were friends or something. And she went back to him for something like four weeks later. And he guessed, you put all the cards out and he guessed, he said, what did you just do? You just changed your whole future. Let me tell you about your husband. Wow. Right. And then of course she was married the following year to a lovely man.

So, you know, these things, it's really important that we recognize that the universe is not fixed. It's not static that we influence life. We influence life, but not from our will. I want this to happen. So it's really this very deep internal process. However, here's the thing that Calling in the One really does beautifully because it's a 49-day program. There's also missing development, development that did not get taught in your home or even

inside of the freeze of the trauma that you were in, where you kind of didn't learn certain skills and capacities that are necessary to sustain a healthy relationship. So what we're doing, essentially, when we go into that positive, possible self of the future, is we're asking this question, who am I here? What will I need to give up in order to manifest this future? How will I need to now grow in order to sustain it once it arrives? And what is my next step? Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street.

Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. Yeah, and what I think is so beautiful about this is, and you were alluding to this earlier, this definitely works. I've seen it work time and time and time again for calling in love.

But what you're actually also doing at the same time is healing and resolving and releasing old stories and wounds that have been holding you back in all sorts of ways in your life that you have no idea that you may not even realize, right? Not just in love, but it may be keeping you from taking chances in your career or stepping into new possibilities in your friendships or in your hobbies or in your passion. So what I think is so beautiful about it is that it's absolutely about love, but it's fundamentally about healing and releasing those limiting stories that we unconsciously integrated and adopted and worked into our whole identity and personality so freaking early. Yeah, yeah. And we're ever evolving creatures. So once you point yourself in the right direction, so I'm really wanting to, well, I am creating a training for therapists. I do train a lot of therapists and I was at UCLA recently training therapists on this future focus. because when you start leaning in, you remember, you remember to initiate the growth of skills and capacities that might've been stunted in the home that you grew up in. Yeah. Let's talk about some of those because I know what you're talking about, right? But let's give some examples. So inside of the assumption that you are not good enough, for example, inside of that assumption

in your relationships with others, you're always at a deficit. You're coming in at a deficit and you need to prove yourself constantly. So you might develop a habit, like a habitual way of relating where you're over giving constantly and over functioning and saying yes to everything and not necessarily setting boundaries because there's this feeling like I'm not good enough and I have to really earn someone's love all the time. And it creates a tremendous amount of anxiety. So some of the missing development in that is the recognition of even feel a need in any given moment

before you knee jerk say, yes, I'll do that. Or the ability to hold your own anxiety when it comes up and soothe yourself that it's okay to disappoint somebody that if they leave the relationship because you have taken care, you took care of yourself by saying, no, that it's probably not a healthy enough relationship to be investing in. It's the ability to reclaim or even recognize your healthy needs for reciprocity to validate those needs, right? So all of these things, I'm just talking about the intrapersonal, intrapersonal different, intrapersonal, where you even validate your own needs as important.

Even know what they are. Even know what they are, be able to differentiate them from the unhealthy needs. Like I need to be the center of attention all the time because I am insatiable, which is an unhealthy need that is actually based in a false center. You know, here's the thing about if you're walking around somatically anchored in these beliefs, you're cutting off your desires constantly because they're occurring as neediness or they're occurring as painful. Because if you really believe that you cannot get what you want, you cannot get what you need, it becomes almost masochistic to let yourself just feel into your

desires for love and partnership and what might that experience bring you. You really can't go there. It's too painful. But when you're in what we call power center, that place where I came here to be seen, I came here to have an impact, or I do matter, I matter to myself, it's appropriate for me to expect that my feelings and needs would matter to anyone that I let into my inner circle. So I'm calling that power center, which is really the center of truth. And you're somatically centered there, then you can show up in ways that actually generate health and can transform your life very, very quickly. Because when you show up in a new way, other people relate to you very differently. Very differently. Yeah. I can do that for you, or thank you for telling me that, or

yes, I understand that boundary was hard to set, but I completely get it and I respect you. you know, and if you're doing that for the first time, you get off the, you know, the treadmill of trying to prove yourself and you're connected to yourself. And then you set a boundary with someone and you find out, oh, they actually still like me. Sky didn't fall on my head. The world didn't come to an end. Well, listen, we've had these conversations, you and me, because I've struggled a lot with boundaries through the years in love, not in other ways, but certainly in love because of my upbringing. And so I think what's important to say is that it's not just understanding the

nuances of it and feeling entitled to do it and doing that internal work to claim it. It's also like through the years, I think even as recently as last year when we were in the Redwoods together and I was coming back and I wanted to set some new boundaries with my husband and I was really anxious about it. And so you are actually giving me words. So it's not just like that internal understanding of deserving boundaries and cultivating and even knowing what those boundaries are.

If in order to survive your childhood, you integrated an identity naturally and in order to survive, that doesn't allow for boundaries, for instance, you don't even know how to set them, right? You don't even know what to say. So there's like this practical side as well as there is the preliminary side of like even feeling like you deserve boundaries or that

it's okay to set them or that the world won't fall apart if you do. And you have to do that on the court. You have to take risks. And as you said, before you start doing it with your neighbor, with your friend, with your coworker, with your mom, you know, you have to start where you are, bloom where planted. It's very transformative. So that's the future pulling you into who you will need to be in order to manifest and sustain that future. It's different than analysis, different than understanding, different than even grieving the traumas of our past. You know, I think there's a lot of work that's being done around grieving the past, which is very sacred work, really. I mean, there's beautiful practitioners who are doing that work

and healing and transformation are two different domains. Yeah. Yeah. And they go hand in hand. Well, when you're committed to truly transforming your life, a lot of healing happens quickly. Yes. But the focus is on really creating something outside of the story that you were born into or that you inherited or that you adopted. And some of these stories, as you well know, they're in the lineage. Yeah. Oh, my God.

They didn't even start with you. You just kind of breathe them in when you were in the world. I'm from the I'm not good enough tribe. Yeah, it's genetic and it goes deep, deep, deep. I always say when I work with people who have trauma histories, I'm the same way. I think the past informs, like understanding that, understanding the wounds, understanding what happened, having that compassion for those parts of you, all of that is so crucial. But I think so often therapy is all about staying there.

Like, let's go into every detail of it. Let's spend our time there. And that I don't think serves at all. And I know that a lot of schools of thought are there, what we're talking about. I'll tell you, there's a time when it's the right intervention. And then at some point, it could be in danger of shifting into something that's not healthy. From a metaphysical perspective, what we focus on grows. Yeah.

Where attention goes, energy flows. Right. So if you keep putting all of your attention on the abandoned three-year-old or the unloved seven-year-old, and that's where you think you need to be in order to finally be free, in some ways, at some point, you start inadvertently strengthening that sense of self. So it's important to know that identity is fluid. The only identity that's not fluid is the traumatized self who got fixed. And that's the default self that we tend to go to when we're disappointed or when we're

anticipating disappointment or projecting disappointment, possible disappointment. And then we'll kind of overly identify with that self. That's a phenomenon that most of us know, and you're kind of out on a date or something's happening in the beginning of a relationship maybe. And you feel like you're 12 inside. You're showing up as a grownup. You're trying to be cool, but you feel, you know, 11 or something. Yeah. So that's because you're overly identified with that younger you, that wounded part, right, that wounded self. So we have to learn one of the core skills that we're learning. And I love Stephen Gilligan, who's who created self relations therapy, because I learned this from him.

But it's about how to create a mentoring, kind of sponsoring relationship with that younger wounded self so that we're actually present as an adult with resources, as a spiritual self, as a person of wisdom and depth and compassion and education. And then the resources that many of us have of being a kind best friend or a kind parent who knows how to bring comfort. So it's to identify with that self and bring that self into relationship with that seven-year-old, that three-year-old. Yeah. That's a really beautiful healing when that happens. So you were saying that the resignation piece that is so common when people kind of are

saying, okay, it's not going to be for me, right? I'm resigned, that I'm not worthy of love. I can't sustain love, love leaves, whatever that story is, right? Part of what you're saying, you said you can result. We were going to come back to it. And I think we did. To resignation. Yeah. Resignation lifts fairly quickly in calling in the one and possibility opens up the moment you start to see yourself as the source of the pattern. Mm-hmm. Of sustaining the pattern for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, and on the simplest level, we turn towards the parts of you that don't actually want that. Yeah. Don't trust that you're not going to give yourself away

or that don't think that others are trustworthy in some way based on past trauma. The part of you that knows that you do not have good boundaries with men, that you throw yourself under the bus the moment you like someone, or the part of you that's still hoping that your ex-boyfriend comes back because you had, you know, some pledge of loyalty that, you know, in a moment of passion, you're the only man I'll ever love. Or you promised yourself that you would never let yourself be taken advantage of like that again. So you're walking around, you know, with walls up. So these are all the ways that were incomplete with the past. Once you are even name one of them? How am I the source of this pattern of going out with narcissistic men all the time?

How am I the source? It's very easy. We know as therapists, people, oh, my last was a narcissist. And very easy to be very angry at that person because they behave quite badly and hurtfully. So of course, our attention goes there. But where we want our attention is onto the subtle ways that we turned away from ourselves, kind of rode the coattails on somebody who knew exactly what needed to happen at all times, gave our power away to them because somehow it abdicated our own responsibility for our lives. It's important to say, I didn't really want to be responsible for my life. That was what I was going for. We have to own our 100% in the life we've created, not to say it's our fault because

these things happen subconsciously, but to recognize it. I mean, one of my favorite questions that I always end up asking when I'm working with anyone, because this is when the resistance comes up, is what's the worst thing that can happen if this problem were solved, right? If this relationship issue were resolved, if you were to find the perfect, like what's the worst thing that could happen? And that's exactly where the resistance is. What a great question, because that's going to bring that up. Well, then I'd have to be actually responsible for somebody else's life in addition to my own.

I'm not really sure I want to do that. I like having my freedom, just thinking about myself. Yeah, or I'll lose myself or I'll whatever. So this is where development comes into because sometimes people say, well, you know, I can't set boundaries because my dad, blah, blah, blah. And I always say, well, try on the word won't.

Like I won't set boundaries because I'm unwilling to risk that someone might be mad at me like my father was. So we're looking for choice points and volitionality, remembering that we're grown now. And what we have at our fingertips, teachers like Dr. Laura Berman, who can teach us all about happy, healthy love

and the skills of healthy relating are everywhere. So I want people to be as interested in naming and identifying the missing development and getting busy, you know, filling in the blanks in those places so that they feel confident in their capacity to have relationships. So for example, if one of the things I do in the section around completing your past is I look for where the resentments are. Who do you still resent? And usually it's a, you know, it's an ex-boyfriend or maybe it was a stepfather or maybe it's yourself. But what I'm looking at

yeah, there were mistakes made, there was bad behavior, and there were consequences to those. What were the choices you actually made that allowed that to happen? What were your choice at points? When I look at that 3%, 97% the other person's fault, but what were the behaviors? What were the choices? What's the pledge to myself and how I'm going to do this differently? The practice I need to take on. I will never, ever again, turn away from red flags. I will never again be in a relationship where I'm not asking for what I need right from the beginning, right? These are very hard lessons to learn. Or my boundaries aren't respected or where I, yeah, absolutely. You know, these are commitments you have to make to yourself, like from that conscious

place. And I feel like the universe listens when you do. And take action in the direction of those dreams. That's when things start to shift radically and rapidly. So there's a certain fidelity to the future self and to finding our way to that future. And one step at a time takes great courage to do it. And sometimes it takes accountability, partners, and people to be on the inside with you, cheering for you. And I've seen countless miracles manifest. And then there's grace. And then there's just grace. Yes. Let me ask you this. Someone's listening and they are wondering about this, because I think I really like this course. I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about this idea of, because I do this too,

I'll take courses that I'm interested in for my own life, even if I don't know if it's something that I want to do for practice, right? Like you were saying, a lot of people take the calling and the one coaching course who don't even plan on being coaches when they, and some of them probably still don't plan when they finish, but they've obviously done a lot of growing and learning.

Who is the right person for this kind of course? Thank you for that. I mean, we have therapists who are very seasoned. We have coaches who are working coaches in other modalities and want to move into the love coach, the relationship coach space. But we also have what we call lay people. And these are people who are coming from all sorts of different professions, and they're

usually people who have kind of a big heart for other people who really genuinely care about other people. They are people who others tend to gravitate towards you for advice because you have wisdom. They're people who are deeply committed to their own healing and transformation and want a structure and a support. I have a cap on how many people we take into the training because it's so hands-on. It's not just a virtual, watch these videos, read these books. Yeah, no, I've seen you're really interacting with them in vivo and working with them.

Yeah. I'm with them. And in the coach training, you get a mentor coach. You get a circle with, you're one of eight with a mentor coach, an apprentice mentor coach. You meet with them. We have optional weekly coaching calls with our senior calling in the one coaches for your own personal development.

So there's a lot of holding, there's a lot of relatedness, there's a lot of safety. Some people say that they've never been in such a safe, nurturing environment. So we decided early on that we were going to create something that would replicate who we want our coaches to be for others. So we give that to our coaches. And I invest a lot in my coaches because I see them as those who are on the front lines with me spreading these teachings throughout the world. And the teachings of being able to live from the future backwards, that there is no fixed future, that whatever happened to you in your past does not have to determine what's possible for you in your future. Like Paolo Coelho wrote, you don't have to believe the story of your life you've been told. I love that line. that's beautiful. Yeah. That's not fixed. I think that's really, really amazing. And so in the summary of the podcast, we have the link to this course and I'll post about it on social

media. And I know you will too, Catherine, if people want to follow you, they find you on social media, Catherine Woodward Thomas. Is that your tag? Yeah. Yeah. And you know, my website, Catherine Woodward, thomas.com. So the call that we have to find out about the upcoming coach training is coaching. My sacred calling is what Laura is putting into the chat. And we'd, and also I don't do a high sell thing for, for anyone who gets nervous about that. We have coaches who are available to talk to you about their coaching practices and about studying and taking the program so that you just hear it from another coach. Who's not a trained salesperson. Right. So they're not going to be like, and if you get, if you do this in the next

five minutes, you'll get a free whatever. Yeah. No, no. I really like giving things away for free, but not as a exchange. Yeah. So I know a lot of us shy away. I don't want anyone selling me anything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know me, I'm your biggest fan and my husband teases you. Cause anytime I say your name, I always say Catherine Woodward Thomas. I just never, that's just like always your full name, Catherine Woodward Thomas. Like it's just one name. Yeah, he's like, so what are you doing?

I'm about to talk to Catherine Woodward Thomas. Like I just always say the whole name together. I love you so much. I love, love, love the work that you do in the world. I am so grateful to you for doing it and for helping so many of us heal. And I hope you guys check it out. Check out the course, check out the books,

not only Calling in the One, but Conscious Uncoupling, which we didn't even get into. We'll have to do another conversation about that, how you can heal past love so that you can move forward. I know you cover that and call it in the one, but anytime you want me back, you just let me know. I'll come in, you know, do the alphabet with you. Sounds like fun. Thank you, Laura. Thanks for having me. I wanna make a move, but I'm too shy

I can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty.

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