Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - The Journey of a Wounded Healer

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Therapists are people too! And just like anyone else, therapists have their own unique struggles, fears, and insecurities.  In this Language of Love Session, I speak with therapist and PhD candidate, Mary, who opens up about her money fears and shame. In this session, we explore: Mary's recent experience of fear and shame around money and finances Dispelling the notion that therapists should be perfect and have it all figured out The concept that therapists as wounded healers (the desire to heal our own wounds drives us to become healers ourselves)   Strategies for healing and integrating different parts of ourselves, including self-talk and mindfulness practices The concept of physiological and energetic responses to triggers Grounding and calming the nervous system during acute moments of agitation Trust and faith in relation to overcoming scarcity The importance of daily spiritual practice and connecting with a higher self and guidance Cultivating coherence and peace within oneself to attract positive experiences and manifestations The value of staying grounded, calming our nerves, building trust and faith, and having a daily spiritual routine. Remember to take a look at my book Quantum Love for some fascinating insights. In the book, I show you how our emotional states can actually impact our energy levels, and this has been scientifically proven. It affects what we attract into our lives and how people around us respond. It's pretty mind-blowing stuff! 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. All right, Mary, tell me what's going on. How can I help?

Okay, so I'm happy to be here, first of all. I'm in this amazing place in my life. So I've launched a relationship workbook. My clinic is thriving. I'm a soon-to-be doctor in the making. Marriage is good. Family life is good. I'm navigating through menopause with ease. It's not easy though. And last night, as I was working on some business things, I was doing some accounting and looking at finances, you know, rent has gone up. And so I started to get gripped with some of this fear around money and finances. And I haven't been there for a very long time. Even though I know things are going well, I felt like I went back into that negative place of like, oh my God, I'm not good enough. Something's wrong with me. And I just was flooded with shame. I teach people

this. I should know this. Why am I going back there? What's going on for me? Am I getting ready to grow again? Like what's happening? Help me. Okay. So that's your question. That's my question. Okay. Well, let me start with this. So you're a clinician, you help people. I obviously am too, but by no means do I think I have it all figured out. I sort of see myself, and I encourage you to see yourself the same way as a healer, a guide, a teacher who is further along the way in many ways than the client you may be working with. And so obviously you'll work with many clients who are further along the way than you in many areas of their life, except maybe the area where you can help them because you're further along,

right? So I think it's a fallacy and you maybe were trained this way too, since you're around my age and a clinician, but I was certainly, and I had to untrain myself, but I was trained in the same way that physicians were trained and still are with this kind of insidious element of a God complex. You're supposed to have it all together. You're supposed to be the guru or the God or the know-all, end-all, be-all. You have no right to help other people unless all your T's are crossed and all your I's are dotted and everything is perfect. And that's just a crock because that doesn't exist. There isn't a therapist in the world who's got all their crap figured out they wouldn't be human if they did and quite frankly those who you know and many

of us were drawn to the this kind of healing because of our wounds and our shadows and our that's part it's the wounded healer i think most of us are wounded healers so it's very natural that those things are going to come up and what i have learned over the 30 years i've been doing this and it happens again and again and again and again is that whatever i'm going through that is pulling me down, that is triggering me, that is bringing up my old shadows, that is bringing up levels of trauma that I thought I was done with, new layers of the onion peeling away. But as I move through those, not only do I heal that and evolve further and I'm a more integrated and happier person, but I can use that because now I have a whole new level of understanding

of that issue when clients come to me. It's a much deeper understanding. I have much more guidance to give because I've done it to myself and I've figured it out, not only clinically and intellectually, but energetically and personally. Do you understand what I'm saying? Totally. And this is what I'm doing. My thesis on is the wounded healer. Oh, okay. Perfect. Yeah. And who takes care of the therapist. And I feel like I do that, right? When I'm in session, like I'm in the chair, but I'm also, I'm also you, right? So I'm no different than the person really that sits across from me. And I think that it's that receiving, right? Being abundant. And

I have all this abundance in my life. And then when this comes in, I'm like, man, why? Well, let's talk about that piece. Okay. Yes. So I started off just kind of dispelling this idea that somehow you should feel shame or less than, or that some clinical inadequacy because you're struggling like that. That is just one more way to beat up on yourself, but it's not true. Okay. Now, let's talk about the thing you're struggling with, which is a scarcity trigger. And just to give you an example, here I am helping you, okay? I think I'm further along maybe than you are, but that is not to say that I don't struggle with it too.

Just this week, I struggled with it because I got a huge unexpected tax assessment that freaked me out. I was like, ah, I wasn't counting on having to lay out all this cash. I had everything all figured out. And I was like, what's going on? How am I going to have enough? So the thing to recognize, I referred to the layer of the onion sort of metaphor already, but this is what happens. If we have stopped healing, if our shit has stopped coming up, we are dead. And this is why I try to explain to people, healing is not a destination. You don't ever get there. You get to a pure and more beautiful and more in flow and more manifesting

magic-filled human being with each evolution, with each layer of healing you do. But darn if there isn't another one that is always going to come up. So I can share with you what I have learned and practiced and continue to practice to keep, because I have the same, that's my my abandonment and finances are two big triggers for me. And it comes from my childhood and I know why it is and I know what it is. And I've, that's a big part of it. I'm sure you do too, right? You know, where those beliefs come from. So that's step one, right? Then in that moment that scarcity is coming up, here's what's so important to understand. And you already know this intellectually, I'm just bringing it home for you and everyone else listening who struggles with this.

The one that is flipping out and scared and hyperventilating or feeling anxious or has a rock in their chest or is starting to move into that fixed managing control mode, that is not you, okay? That's not Mary, the clinician, the wife, the grownup, the blah, blah, blah. That is a version of you that is much younger, a little girl version of you, an inner child, right? Of yours who is feeling scared and unprotected, right? So now if that's true, and I believe it is, because that's if we're otherwise not living in a place of scarcity and all of a sudden something comes up, in your case, it was looking at the finances,

right? That triggered her to step forward and be like, oh shit. And by the way, our inner children are these innocent, adorable, beautiful little beings who needed to find a way to get by in their family with the threats that were around them or the abuses or the issues around them so we make up these weird strategies and agreements that a child's mind would make up and we think oh if i'm just a really good girl then daddy won't leave oh if i help everyone with everything then maybe we won't we'll be able to pay the light bill like we make up these weird things that make us responsible because it gives us this false sense of control and we do the best we can to stay safe. And so when that little girl steps forward, which is what happened to you when

you got triggered, she's like, oh my God, we're not safe. You better watch out. Like their purpose is to protect us, right? Now, if a little girl, if your little daughter or niece or whoever came up to you and was like, oh, I'm really scared about money. I don't know if we have enough. I'm not sure. I know you said we have enough, but I don't think we have enough. And what if we run out would you be like shut up you're a horrible human being you have no right to help anyone would you say that to her absolutely not right but you say that to yourself so for sure which means you're saying it to her because she's the one you're talking to it's not you the Mary I'm talking to right now yeah right I mean she's the little one is in there I'm sure you know she's

always in there, but she's, you got to think of it almost like we're all walking around with multiple personality disorder, not in the clinical sense of the word, but we have all these different parts that step forward and kind of take over and drive the bus when we're in our triggers. And the more evolved and the more healed we have are part of that healing is integrating these little or parts of us one by one, sometimes throughout our whole lives. And then we're less and less reactive, less and less triggered, less and less likely to get triggered, but there's always going to be something else. Okay. So that step one is like, lay off yourself, talk to yourself. So there's so many great strategies and I'm sure you know, a lot of them, like I,

one that works really well for me is like going into the bathroom, staring into my eyes until I can see her, which you will. I don't know if you've ever stared into your eyes in the mirror, but it's deep once after about five seconds, until I see her in my eyes. And you'll see her. You'll know when you see her. And then you say what you would say. You're like, don't worry. I know you're really scared right now. You're just feeling triggered because we looked at the bills and it feels scary, but this is a benevolent universe. We know this. We know that abundance always, you know, you're basically like reassuring a child. Okay. But that really helps. So that's the cognitive approach, let's just say. Then there is the energetic physical response that

makes a big difference. And there's one, there's a version that you can use when you're in the trigger, which I'll share with you in a second. We can even do it together. We won't do it for the full three minutes, which is what you have to do. And the other version of it, you do daily as a regular practice now do you have a daily kind of mindfulness meditation grounding practice that you stick to yes every morning 6 a.m okay good and what do you do and so it's just a practice of gratitude and writing down things that i'm grateful for doing my journaling and then i set some goals for the day and things that i'm going to get accomplished you know and then i meet with the community of people and do some mindset work and stuff like that. 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 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 home page i really hope you can join us okay so i love all of that i don't want you to get rid of any of that but everything you mentioned is cognitive yes right it's fine and we'll speak a little bit to your little girl in the way that i was describing like in the mirror of it's the same kind of thing that you're

doing right with the mindset work and the gratitude and that's all really really powerful but what we also have to do and have to understand is that when we are in our trigger there is a significant physiologic change neurologically physically and on a quantum level energetically so i'm assuming you've read or you know about my book quantum love if you don't read it because it'll really make a difference if you're a clinician i mean it's so powerful for clinicians but also just for anyone. It's designed not for clinicians, but for everyone because it demonstrates to you the ways, and this is scientifically proven, the ways the different emotional states we're holding in our systems change our energetic frequency, which then

changes what we're manifesting and what we're magnetizing and how people around us are responding and everything else. And so if you want to not only move out of scarcity, but not be a magnet for scarcity, then it's really important to create and cultivate a daily practice of moving your system energetically into what we call coherence, which is the state of abundance. So coherence, just for those of you, Mary's nodding if you can't see her because you're listening, but She obviously knows what it is. But for those of you who don't know, it's when the electromagnetic fields, the electromagnetic pulses of your brain and your heart are coherent, are in synchrony. Right. And so when we are in those states, those are states of flow. Those are states of peace. Those are states of abundance. OK, so let's first talk about the acute version. when you're like, holy shit, right? And you're feeling yourself really agitated.

So the first step is to take like three grounding breaths, which I'm always talking to you guys about. You breathe in deeply through the nose. And as you're breathing in, you imagine a light flowing in through the top of your head, any color that comes to you. But I do think that when it's a fear-based thing, you're breaking up red,

because that's a root chakra issue. Red, bright red light is really powerful, but it could be any light. Breathe in the light through the top of your head as you continue to breathe in and hold it for a hitch. Let it fill every cell in your body, imagining it filling your whole body with light. And then as you breathe out, you imagine that light shooting out your tailbone, going deep, deep, deep into the earth, making roots there. Now, why do you do this? Because when we get triggered, we leave our bodies in many ways. We're ungrounded, okay? And so in general, when I was first doing this work and I was an ungrounded, anxious

cuckoo bird, this was maybe 15 years ago, I would put, and this is true for anyone who's struggling with a lot of ungroundedness and getting triggered a lot, I would put post-it notes in my medicine cabinet, on my car, everywhere, even alarms on my phone once I got a smartphone, ground. And then I would just take three breaths and I would come back into my body because it's amazing how much we leave it. Step one. ground, three breaths like that. Now, this is how you move into coherence. First of all,

we're going to calm the vagus nerve, which is the nerve that gets activated when we're really anxious. And it's really simple. You breathe in through the nose and out through the nose, in for the count of four and out for the count of six. Okay. So you do that while I'm talking, because then I'm going to add on to it. So you breathe in 2, 3, 4, out 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, in 2. And you'll start modulating your breath now to the count of 4 in and the count of 6 out. And while you're doing that, you're imagining something that you feel deeply grateful or appreciative of or deeply love. And you're imagining that with as many of your senses as you can. But even if you just hold a picture of that image, that scene, that person, place, or pet, or thing,

I always end up thinking about Bailey because it's just so simple, my dog. And it brings me so much love and appreciation. But if you think about that and hold that image and then breathe in for the count of four, out for the count of six. And you literally do this for three minutes. Your nervous system is now calm. Okay. So can you feel that at all? I know I'm talking all the way through. Okay. So that's the acute moment. Like I'm feeling agitated. I can't get out of this funk. I can't stop thinking about it. Let me ground. Let me calm my nervous system down. And then you can think. Then instead of your amygdala being activated when you're in a state of fear, your prefrontal cortex of your brain is activated, which is the part that can

see the future, that can see opportunities, that can think through solutions, right? Okay. So that's the acute version when you're in the moment. Now, as a daily practice, and you're already set up for this because you've now just done your gratitude journal, okay, like you do every morning. So now you got a few tidbits to put in your imagination as you do these three minutes, okay? But you continue it even just for five minutes.

What I find as I started doing this is that I would say, okay, I'm gonna do it for three minutes and five minutes. I wouldn't necessarily, I don't like setting an alarm when I meditate because it's too jarring when it pulls me out, But I usually am like, OK, when is this going to be over? And I look.

But what I have found is when I do this, very often, I don't want to leave because it feels so amazing. So here's what you do. You do the three minutes of the breathing. And then in that place, you stay there in that really peaceful place. Keep your eyes closed. And then call in, ask a question, because now you're tuned into your higher self. now you're tuned into the divine. Now you've accessed and opened the capacity for deep,

deep wisdom. Okay. So you can say, so like the other day I was doing this and I was like, okay, how, why am I feeling so much scarcity energy? Show me what I need to know to move out of this scarcity. Okay. And I just held that and I kept breathing four and six. And it was the craziest thing because it was the last thing that I expected. But Sammy, my son showed up, the one that crossed over, the one that died three years ago. And he, it was like a lucid dream, which I don't always often have, but he sometimes comes to me in dreams where it's like, he's there. It just is so real. And so I'm like sitting there and I continue to breathe and I don't want it to stop, but I have tears running down my face. I'm like, oh my God, like there you are. And he's just

looking at me and all of a sudden we're on this beach. I mean, I literally had this like crazy metaphysical experience. We're on this beach. And I'm so meanwhile, I'm like all caught up in the fact that he's there. And then I remember, I'm like, okay, but why are you, I love that you're here. Don't leave. But I asked this question, are you related to this question? And he kind of looked at me and said with his mind, I heard this is what you need to know. And he moved into me from my right, which is ironic because that's where I always are kind of interesting because that's where I always feel him. But he kind of moved his energy into me and I could feel it. And then he moved it out and then he moved it in and then he moved it out. And he's like his

communication. It wasn't like he was talking to me, but I was getting the message. She's like, your energy and all you have to do is bring bring me in. But what he was showing me because it was very clear that it wasn't his energy. It was his energy. It felt like him, but it was him as kind of a jumper cable to the divine, to God, to spirit. It was like to the oneness, to the support that's always available to us because I still have a hard time with God having that two-way relationship because it's still kind of hard for me. I believe in it, but I sometimes doubt it. I wasn't raised with it. Sometimes, nah, are you really there?

Is this really? But Sammy, I know is real. I can feel him. I connect with him. And he's just like, we are all part of the oneness. He's just a little closer to it, right? So he was showing, and it was the last answer that I expected. I thought I'd get some words of wisdom or strategy or something, which often you do.

I'm not saying that every time you ask a question, you're going to have a profound metaphysical moment but you will you will get answers you will get guidance and it's not it's definitely divinely inspired it's not coming from your brain or your thinking i just felt that when you were talking about sammy and that experience i'm like the word trust is like yes right there right yeah so and what scarcity comes down to and listen sister i'm there with you is a crisis of faith right it's like if we really have faith that the universe is a friendly place and wants to support us and is always co-creating with us and we are always supported and everything is for us and that which is right is always unfolding and we really really really know that then there's no

reason to be afraid it's only in those moments that we're disconnected from that knowing which is human and for many of us a habit and something because we weren't raised with the opposite we weren't raised with any kind of healthy faith or any faith so it's something it is literally something we have to cultivate and anytime you are fearing scarcity financial scarcity love scarcity any kind of scarcity is a faith issue yeah oh my god i this is like my head's exploding i just needed to hear this needed the reminder yeah thank you You are so welcome. So you get it now, right? You're going to do that. It doesn't, you don't have to, you can just, you can commit eight minutes to it every morning and you may want

to go longer because it's really fun in there and it feels really good, like really peaceful. Sometimes I end up in outer space. Sometimes I'm just like, just with my eyes closed, but I'm feeling surrounded. Sometimes I call in my angels and guides. Sometimes I just ask for information or what the next inspired step may be. And it's not necessarily coming from angels and guides. It may be coming from my higher self or even my subconscious, who knows? But it's always amazing suggestions

and things that I wouldn't have thought of on my own. Yeah, I think I've moved away from my spiritual practice and being in business and being an entrepreneur and just creating, which is part of your spiritual practice when you're imagination and the creation, But doing these pieces and this was a great like, you know, I love the looking in my eyes in the mirror. And then I also love, you know, sort of going into that deep meditative place and just being forgetful of how powerful that really is. Yeah, it's so powerful. And we all do that. We all move to the 3D practicalities of life. We have to manage that. And it's easy if that's our default. And especially if you're getting a PhD, you, like me, love playing with your intellect. It's something that's really easy for you. It's a go-to place. And those are all amazing gifts.

I agree. I mean, I got them, too. But it can be a curse when it comes to tuning into your body and moving the thinking brain out of the way. You know, I always say move your brain out of the way so your mind can work and your mind is turned on with these processes I'm talking about. So you're giving you're getting out of your thinking brain who's trying to fix, manage and control things and you're moving to your mind, which already knows everything. Yeah. And it's always tapped in and tuned in and is always flowing to you, whether you're hearing it and listening to it or not. Right. Yeah. Just imagine if I listened to it, I wouldn't have had my freak out last night. Yeah. Well, maybe you would because you're going to, I guarantee you, but you're going to have a lot less of them and you'll know what to do. It won't, it'll shift much more quickly. You won't be stuck there.

And if you do this daily, it's like a lubricant where you're less likely you've now turned on faith for the day kind of. And you've set that energetic template of coherence, which is a frequency match to abundance coherence. it's a state of at its bare minimum acceptance. And then it goes from there, acceptance, joy, excitement, passion, playfulness, you know, all the way up to bliss, right? But these all have an energetic frequency that creates a frequency in our body. When we talk about manifesting our reality, we do, but really the idea of manifesting feels like force, feels like making something happen what's really happening is we're magnetizing things to us so we are a magnet for whatever energetic frequency our body is holding in any kind of consistent matter so when you move into coherence that is a state of flow and peace if not joy and excitement beyond

that, but at a bare minimum, peace. Now you are a magnet for peace. Right. And now you can move forward with your day and get even more excited. Sounds amazing. All right. So you're going to try all this and keep us posted on how it goes? Oh, my God, I'm totally going to dive into this. And yeah, I love this part of myself. And I haven't practiced for quite some time. Actually, my background is in spiritual psychotherapy. And, you know, and sort of moving and shifting away from that as things got busier, and life got bigger and more complex. And yeah, so this was a nice, I was meant to have this conversation for you to like, kick me back into gear for sure. Good. Well, I'm excited for you. Keep us posted and read Quantum Love if you haven't already,

because it's going to, it will even change. I now can do couples therapy with one person if I have do, which is a really big deal. For a couples therapist, that's a real, because normally we're spending the whole time just doing the best we can with one of you or trying to get the other one to come in or whatever. And then eventually if they're not unwilling to come in, then it eventually peters out and there's nothing we can do. I mean, very often they are willing and then you can engage them in the process, but not always. And with this, I always prefer to work with both of them. But what's really cool about quantum love is you can change everything if one of you changes some things energetically, then the other one just like matches you there.

It's a kooky Jedi mind trick for your relationship, but it works. Yeah. Yeah. I totally believe that. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us and for asking a question that I know we all struggle with how to move through scarcity back into flow. And that's the gist of it, right? Yes. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. I'm glad I got this opportunity with you. Me too. Thank you. Thank you.