The Sabrina Zohar Show - 58: What it *actually* means to love yourself and to release shame and blame with Masha Kay!

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

On this weeks episode of The Sabrina Zohar Show, Sabrina is joined by Masha Kay to chat about what it *actually* means to love yourself and to release shame and blame especially around Valentines Day! Stay at the Foundry in Joshua Tree, Check them out on AIRBNB! Want to work with Sabrina? HERE! Stuck After the Podcast? Master Implementation in 8 Weeks with Sabrina's Foundation Course Join the Make It Make Sense: Getting Through a Breakup course HERE! Get Ad-free episodes and 2 Bonus episodes a month HERE! Dont forget to follow Sabrina and The Sabrina Zohar Show on instagram and Sabrina on Tik tok! Video now available on YOUTUBE!  Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formally known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A.Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Do the Work podcast. My name is Sabrina Zohar and I am your host. Oh, babes, happy almost Valentine's Day. I'm so excited. Next week, you guys have a bonus episode with Benjamin the Flirt Coach. I wanted to have something pre-valentines for a little fun. But I really, really wanted everybody to have this episode with, you know, our favorite, our one and only nervous system specialist, Miss Masha, is here.

It's my first time recording in our home studio, which I'm so fucking amped about. That video's coming. We're working on it, babes. But today we talk about what does it actually mean to love yourself? Like what does self-love really mean? You know, how is shame and blame not helping you in your dating life? How do you relate to yourself? You know, loving all of those parts. What about acceptance? Kindness with your imperfections. Empowering you. That's, we're here for that. So I'm really excited because this is one of many things that Mosh and I're going to talk to you guys about because it's not just about finding the right person.

It's like, how do you love yourself so that you can receive the right person? Ah, you know, babes. You know I'm here for you. So I'm really excited. This is going to be a very meaty episode. It's a damn good one. And guys, just a reminder, please, please, please, don't forget to rate the show. So Spotify, the way I need you to rate the show is at the top of the main page, like on my Do the Work podcast page, there's three little dots.

You click that says rate show. That's it. On every episode, it says, like, write in a Q&A. I actually don't have access to those. So you don't have to worry about it. I'm not reading any of those because I can't see them. I don't know who sees them. But please, please, please rate the show.

That's the only way I can grow on the charts. listen to the episode in its entirety, share it with your friends. That way I can get better guests. We can get bigger sponsors. We can keep the show going. Now, big announcement. Coming in the next couple of weeks is bonus content. So for $5 a month, you can get ad free.

And for $8 a month, you could add free in two bonus episodes, two to four even, depending on the month. But minimum of two with me and tech guys. So we're going to be doing live profile audits. We're going to have Collins. We're going to answer your questions. We're going to have specific episodes and topics. Like this is a place for you guys to have full control of the content that you see.

And so we're giving this specifically to, you. So take up, get ready for that. And guys, my new website's at Sabrinazohar.com. Yay! And that's where you can work with me. I'm so amped. And so if you guys need anything, you want to join the program, there's two spots left. I don't know. I'm going to be reading off clients because I'm writing a book. So I've got, Mama's got a lot. There's a new course coming out within the next couple of weeks. So there is just so much upcoming. And so if you guys need anything at all, just check out the web, Sabrinazohar.com. Everything's there. And the link in show notes. And yeah, I'm just so excited. Thank you guys for sponsoring for supporting the sponsors.

software, especially in my clothing line. You guys know you get 20% off with the code do the work on Wearsoftware.com. It's the coziest, most sustainable, most just amazing, luxurious coes. And they keep you, they feel like the hug that you don't have right now. So guys, thank you for everything. Thank you for the support. And thank you for showing up as you. It's been, you know, we've had some ups and downs in life. And it just feels amazing that we can come back to the safe community of each other. So I love you guys. And without further ado, let's get right the fuck on into it. Oh my God, guys, happy Valentine's Day soon to be. I'm so excited today. We are joined by Miss Masha. Hey, thank you so much for having me, especially on Valentine's Day. This is a big honor.

It's a big honor. But here's the thing. It's the same with the New Year's episode. I think it's such an important episode that it's more than just me talking at people. We need to have, I think, we need to talk about some stuff today. That's really important. Nervous system. I think all of the things. And that's why I'm so excited to have. But before we even jump in, what do you and Paul have planned for Valentine's Day? You know, we're not huge Valentine's Day people. I mean, I love, I love pink. I love hearts. But we tend to not go out as much on Valentine.

There's something about like sitting with a bunch of couples. It kind of feels a little force. So we tend to stay in or like go somewhere. So we'll see. We tend to plan it a few days in advance. Maybe do something cute at home. Yeah. Decrate.

Heart balloons. I was going to say I'm not a fan of on the actual day doing something. It's too much pressure. It's too expensive. Like, you know, it was like $300. And all preset. And everyone's doing the exact same thing, having the same conversation. There's something awkward about it.

Yeah, I'd much rather on the actual day. Like, I told tech guys, I don't know if I remember last year, he did literally nothing. Like, remember he didn't even like, wish me. The conversation. Uh-huh. Yeah. How far we've come? Oh, my.

Crazy. Yeah. When peck and I- You're blowing my mind right now. When we first had our first Valentine's that he didn't do a goddamn thing. And I almost broke up with him because I was like, just be. Just because it doesn't mean anything to you doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything to me. So this year we actually kind of made the same determination.

But we chose on actual Valentine's Day, he's just going to make dinner and we're going to spend it at home. But I'm so excited. We actually spent our Valentine's Day earlier at the foundry. Oh, my God. So it is, yeah, I love Joshua Tree. Anybody that's in California or if you're coming to California, the foundry is a home. It's a two-bedroom home in the middle of the desert with like hot plunge. Oh, like hot sauna and the cold plunge in the hot tub.

It's beautiful. The owners are fucking amazing. It was super affordable. It wasn't even that bad. The trip was incredible. Like, we needed to get the fuck out. We, like, just spend time together. We created content.

Like, just being in the desert and getting that energy and just removing ourselves. Exactly the opposite of what I'm, you know, being in front of a bunch of couples. That was my, honestly, my favorite thing. And seriously, if anybody's in L.A., like, go to the foundry. It was, I want us to go. Oh, my gosh. I would love to. I love Joshua Tree.

It is so, it's magic. It really is. That's the perfect way to spend Valentine's Day, in my opinion. Totally. I love that. I'm so excited. But anyways, now, and also, too, like, let me just really preface quick. I know that this year, there's going to be a lot of people that don't have Valentine's

that might be alone. Maybe it's, like, the first one without a Valentine. Or, you know, maybe it's like the fifth one without a Valentine. Or maybe it's your first Valentine, like, whatever, wherever you are, I want to make sure that, like, that's why we're doing this episode is because this isn't about how to shame or blame or how to make you feel like shit that you don't have anybody on the contrary. We really want to empower and have that to where like maybe this year, because this is coming out before Valentine's Day, then maybe this is the year where you choose you for Valentine's

Day, you know, like where you put yourself first and maybe like I used to do that on my single Valentine's Day, I like when Clemy and I would be together, like I would do a day of me and I was everything I loved, I would do for myself. I love that. You know, I'd order all my favorite food. I would watch my favorite shows. I spent it with Clem, my favorite thing, not human because he wasn't human, but it might as well been to me. And I really took care of myself. And I think, you know, that's what I wanted us to kind of come today to talk about is like, what is self-love? You know, like, we hear, it's the same thing as when we talked about manifestation. We hear all these buzzwords and all of this bullshit that goes around. But like, I want to see what? I'm just curious, high brow, low brow, whatever, what do you think self-love is?

Yeah. And can I just say, that was so beautiful. And I think that's such an important point that, like, wherever you're at to really, I think it's a good opportunity to pause and think about, like, what is this day really about? And if it's about it's about. And if it's about, love that's not just about being in a couple and like posting things on Instagram like I think we sometimes miss the point and I think the point really is love and I think the love we experience in relationship is often a mirror of our love for ourselves right there is some mirroring happening there and I think that's a great question like what self-love is because I think it's highly misunderstood and I'd be lying if I said at some points in my life I didn't misunderstand it right because it's

such like a fun buzzword but I think the truth is that self-love is is acceptance and self-compassion and curiosity and kindness to yourself. It's none of the things I think we think about in the mainstream. You know, I always think about this with clients of like when people come to me and they say, you know, I really need to work on self-love. Fair. Great. I love that goal.

And then when you start talking to them, you realize like there's kind of like two camps. There's these two extremes with self-love that I find working with people. Like on one side, we have all those people. who think that the definition of self-love is this like over-indulgence, a complete lack of accountability, no bad vibes, no bad thoughts, right? That's one extreme. Bubble baths and face masks for everybody. Exactly.

That'll make the world go around. Exactly. Like if you just do that, that's self-love. And like, don't get me wrong. Love a good bubble bath. Love buying myself flowers. I think those are acts of kindness showing up for yourself. But that alone is not really self-love.

especially when there's no accountability. There's no self-reflection. None of that. And then there's the other side. And these tend to be probably the people who are listening more, to be honest, the people who are doing the healing work who are really committed to themselves. And their idea of self-love is this like perfection. Yeah.

And overly disciplined. Like accountability to the point where it's just shame. It's not actually accountability. So, like, there's just so many misconceptions because I think self-love is actually something in the middle. It's compassion and understanding and accountability. And it's not perfect. No. Anything that has perfection, that's not love.

That's not healing. That's the wrong path. That's the wrong direction. Listening to a video, you know, someone came up of, like, the difference between falling in love and being in love. Of, like, being in love is that, like, you love all the good look, like, oh, you know, Masha, I love about you is like, You're so kind. You know, like, oh, okay, so this is what I love about you. Oh, yes, okay, I can love a lot of things.

But being in love with somebody or, you know, there's a loop it back is like, I know the good, the bad, the ugly. I know every part of you. And I still choose and I still have this love for you with everything that I've seen. And I think that's where I'm like, how can we bring that into ourselves? How can we not just love ourselves when everything's going great? Oh, wow, I just got a great date or I just got this or I just got that. Yay, I'm so amazing.

it's like, but how can I also love myself when things don't go well? And like, I've shared this with you, but like an example I had for anybody who watches, if TikTok shows my videos, I don't even know anymore, but if it does, for anybody who saw the other day, like we all know I've been working on myself for fucking ever, really trying to accept myself and like things I know about myself. Like, yeah, I've been told all of my life I'm too much. Like, and where did I learn that from? It might not have been someone directly saying, Sabrina, you're too much, even though they did.

It was a lot of the times my dad, the way he acted towards us. Like when I would be emotional, he'd walk out. Or he'd hit us or he'd be like, stop. So what did I think? I'm too much just something wrong with me. That's where that perception came. And so that's a core belief I've been trying to work through and undo and like accept about myself that like, yeah, there's going to be times where I'm a big personality or I get passionate

or I get aggressive or whatever. You know, aggressive is such a relative term. And then, of course, like, you know, flying high, I'm doing well. It's the day the photo shoot. Everything's going great. Tech guy. Everything's good. John's here, the photographer, like we're crushing it. And John says, hey, can you go on TikTok while

I'm filming you? I want to get you interacting. And I looked at the comments. Now, I don't read your comments to anybody out there, whether you say good things or bad things from my mental health. I can't, I can't be engaged in that community. Love you all, but it's for me. And for me to keep showing up like this. And I made that rookie move and I read the comments. And in that moment, I completely withered because what happened? I was face to face with every belief I had about myself, somebody telling me, somebody reflecting it back to me. Now, of course, there's all those positive, all these people saying, I love you, thank you for this, thank you for this. But then there are the fucking pieces of shit trolls that just attack and put you put you down for

who you are, not even just like we've talked about like, hey, I don't love this content. Great. You have every right. But no, you, you like, I get, you know, wow, you look good for almost 50. And you're like, fuck you asshole. Like way to try to shame. How can you get a woman, shame her about her body, her weight or her age or her promiscuity? That's how you can get directly. So trying to shame me. Oh, look, and you're too aggressive. I can't fucking stand your voice. Every time I see your video, I want to throw up.

And it's like, what happened? In that moment, that was it for me. I completely went down this rapid hole of like, they're right. Oh my God, they're right. I knew it. And like, I had to stop. And like, I had a moment because I'm a fucking human where I went back into that thought process. Like, I always do.

Then I literally pulled myself out. I went into the room. I even said, I was like, guys, I'm not here right now. I was like, give me five. And I went into the room. I cried. And I came in. And I expressed myself and I stopped and I said, but you know what, it's okay that I feel this.

I was like, this is normal. It's normal because I know that part of the process of loving myself means I have to accept all of the parts of myself, including the ones I don't even want to look at, including the ones that other people see of me. And I think the reason I share the story is like, yeah, that was a business thing. That wasn't necessarily in romantic. But it's the same, same but different. This shit's going to show up. And I think if you can actually look at yourself, look at the past parts of yourself, look at the other versions of yourself, look at the 22-year-old. Sabrina that was acting so out of character for her and so out of anxiety. And I can look and say,

but I love you and I know you did the best you could with the information that you knew. What are we introducing? Compassion. Yes, you saw that so beautifully. And I think that's a perfect example. And you're absolutely right. The fact that has to do with work versus dating means nothing. We all have our challenges. For some of us, our challenges are in dating. For some of us, there are in other areas, relationship with family or work. But it's all the same. We are facing our insecurities. and our fears and these parts of ourselves we don't want to look at. And I think maybe just a better definition of self-love is self-love can't be you loving the best parts of yourself. That's not that hard. I mean, at first, you're like maybe, you know, you're starting in a place where you don't

feel like you have a lot of great parts to yourself. So you work on those. But there's like a danger where often we start our healing journey. We work on developing all these like really beautiful, disciplined parts of ourselves. But if you believe that self-love, is those parts. If you love only the best parts of yourself, you're in for a rude awakening because there will come a day where maybe those things are not accessible to you for one reason or another, life happens. Right? And you can't be the best version of yourself or something like this happens where people are mirroring things to you that are completely under your control and they're like kind of like mirroring your worst insecurities about yourself. Right. And in those moments,

you need to be able to love the darkest, ugliest parts of yourself. And I think people, have a really hard time with this because they think when I say love the ugliest darkest parts of themselves either like that's impossible I can't it's too ugly but on the other hand a lot of them especially my clients were really disciplined really ambitious go getters they think that's me saying like take those parts as they are don't work on them like allow yourself to be that way like this like giving up and it's like well I don't take that that's not up to my standard and it's like but this is where there's a misunderstanding about what self-love and self-acceptance really is. It's not saying that maybe like not in your example, but in other examples, maybe you didn't

show up well in a relationship or in a friendship or in a work situation or as a professional. Like you did not show up as your best. You messed up. Right? In those moments, loving yourself is not not holding yourself accountable. It's not like, yeah, I did that, but like, who cares? Whatever. It's not my fault.

Someone else's fault. Or like, it is what it is. It's who I am. That's not self-love, right? Self-love is having compassion and accepting that is what I did. That was the reality. And I could still respond to myself with kindness, right? It's really how you respond to yourself in the tough moments. Totally. It's how you respond. It's not how you feel. Like that's another misconception. People think self-love is like always feeling great, always looking in the mirror being like, I'm the most beautiful person in the world and just having these like super positive thoughts. And like,

I'd be lying to you if I said I feel that way all the time. That's complete bullshit. I think self-love is how do you treat yourself in the darkest moments, the tough moments, when you make mistakes where people are saying horrible things to you? When your fears and insecurities are coming up, do you treat yourself with a little bit of compassion, with a little bit of understanding, with curiosity, right? And then that actually allows you to hold yourself accountable. And that's the piece that people are like, no, it's one or the other. It's like, no. Oh, actually, real genuine self-love allows for accountability. And accountability allows for growth, allows you to be the creator of your life. But accountability is not shame. And that's another like point of confusion. Does that make sense? Not 100%. Like you said that really well because I think that's also the thing.

Like when it comes, if I hear when we're fucking like good vibes only, it's like, no, man, you know what's real? It's the same as like everything. Stop chalking life up to an Instagram post. Like that's the first thing is that if you go on and everybody is like like, like people even look at me and they're like, but you have all this and you have all that. And it's like, yeah, no, one, I ate shit to get a lot of it. So like, let's not look at where I'm at now. Let's look at like where people are starting in two. If you're going to compare yourself and insecurities and all that and then we start to get jealous. And it's like, then all of a sudden we're muddying the waters. And then now all of a sudden you've, now like think about it. If you're a six year old child, like that's how I talk to myself like I'm a child. So if I'm a child, if I'm six, when has shame. and blame ever helped somebody grow. Now, it could motivate them to do better. But that's still, like we've talked about this. How many clients, you work with so many high achievers. And I have a lot of people that are really perfectionist. Same thing. It's that anxiety. How many times it's like, yeah, when things go well, there's getting the accolades. And then when it doesn't, all of a sudden,

they're so hard of themselves. And then yet, you notice that even when things are going well, still hard on themselves. And it's like, well, because what were your reasonings for doing all of these things that you're doing. A hundred percent. And it's like, I always say that the problem with perfectionism, which is driven by shame and overachieving, driven by shame, is that you are not running towards your goals. You are running away from your fears and insecurities. I love that so much. Shame is the thing driving you. You are not running towards a goal, towards an outcome, towards a desire. Honestly, that's not a new night. You're just running away from feeling shame, from feeling not good enough from your insecurities. And that is why so many high achievers, they get to success. And they're like,

why don't I feel better? Why does this feel shitty? It must be because I didn't do enough. Right. When in reality, it's like you were running towards nothing. So there's a lack of fulfillment. And at that point, because you're not running towards anything, there isn't any real motivation. The only thing motivating you is shame. Yeah. So you need to keep shaming yourself. And it becomes like an addiction to shame, an addiction in the sense that you need shame. You need shame to drive you, right? It's almost like your answer to a lack of motivation. Right. It's like, I don't have other motivation. It's like, right, because that's probably how you were motivated as a child. You weren't given that positive, like work towards something, believe in yourself, feel good. It was,

if you don't do that, I'm going to say you're a bad person or I'm going to shame you. I'm going to put you down or I'm not going to show you love. So you're just running away from that your whole life. Oh, and like especially we have to think about even those little things, especially when we're talking insecurity. Like I had somebody write in today and she's like, I'm just, confused. Like my child was great. Everything was amazing. But like I have such severe anxiety and abandonment issues and my self-esteem is through the, through the floor. It must be because my first boyfriend was a narcissist. And it's like, now listen, that of course can fuck you up. But if you had a really great foundation, you had a real, your parent, did you have parents that were there to say, hey,

no matter if you fail or succeed, I still think you're incredible and I'm proud of you that no matter what you're going to be okay, because you have you. No. Most of our parents were, like I would go to my dad and be like, got this and be like, okay. And then you're just like, okay, so I need to do better. Okay, when I need more. But I need to get there. And it's the same. Then we start to look at that in dating.

It's like, this isn't just, you know, like obviously we work with higher achievers and work. But then if we look at this in dating, if you're always, Mama's famous saying, you need to love yourself more than the need to be loved by other people. Now, how does that what does that actually fucking mean in like real life? That if you're always, if I, let's think about this way, if I was always after your approval, Masha, always constantly after your approval,

always constantly after your approval. Everything I did was for you to tell me I do great. Well, then what? That's why I'm always chasing something. I'm always looking for something. Versus, I love myself so much that I get to choose if you're in my life to better my life. Versus I need you to validate me. And so that's why so many people rush into relationships or they just go ahead in first.

Now listen, if you're coming from a secure space that no matter what you'll be okay and like, you know, you can hook up with people and walk away and you can date, then like this doesn't apply to you. This doesn't apply to you if you are okay and you can handle this. And you go do your fucking journey and live your life. But if you're finding yourself that like doing certain things or whatever and then you all of a sudden start to like, I had a client years ago rushed right into a relationship after like literally two dates. They were saying, I love you.

And it was like, oh, yeah, yoy. And then sure enough, like a few months in or like three or four months in, she started to then question if she even liked the person. And it's like, yeah, because you were so driven by them validating you. I mean, just they loved her. but like this was this was not just moving quick this was like it's love bombing but then when she stopped to realize like wait what is it that i want i was like so here's the thing you got what you said you wanted you got the love you got the guy you got the thing you got all of this and now here we are you're not

happy well because what like you said were you running towards a goal or you were you running away from like a feeling or something a hundred percent and even how you compare that like if i'm looking for your approval constantly if you're constantly looking for my approval to some degree you see yourself as less than. You're putting me on this pedestal that you need something for me, right? So you're ready not feeling good enough. There's already that like inkling that there's, there's a little bit of a lack of self-love and respect and like seeing yourself in the same place. And okay, so that's one thing to have the shame and need for approval is driving you. And then on the other hand, you're saying like, well, what did you really want? And the problem with

those of us that are motivated by fear and shame is that we aren't. not connected to ourselves. Part of self-love is that self-reflection coming home to ourselves, accepting ourselves, getting to know ourselves. And so if you're never doing that, how would you know what you really want? Your desires are dictated by what the people around you want, what society wants, what friends want, what gets accolades, where get praise, what gets validation, which is why then you get it. And you're like, again, this is so many of my clients, like, yeah, why does this feel so empty, right? It's like you didn't know yourself. You didn't have that goal to run towards because you don't know yourself well enough

to to identify that. And so this kind of like also comes back to this idea of being, it's kind of corny and like kind of plays into the manifestation stuff. But I also like I like the saying like being the creator of your reality. Yeah. I think that's a really important concept. I want you in any area, whether that's dating or career, to be the creator of your reality. And if you are running away from your fears and insecurities, constantly seeking approval. from other people, constantly not feeling good enough. All of this is driven by that lack of self-love. You are not the creator of your reality. You might think you are because you're taking action. Again, my clients are highly ambitious, highly disciplined people, but they're not the creators of their

reality. You know who creates their reality? Their fears and insecurities. The people who validate them, society, their family, their friends, what impresses other people, their reality is just like a combination of those things. Oh, I am the biggest proponent of if the reality you have right now is not matching what you say that you want so bad, there's a disconnect here. Like even like the client I was just talking about, yep, she ended up breaking up with the guy moving on and then ended up finding somebody else that like she actually connected with. Great. Awesome. Like that was that was a great moment for her to stop, reflect and like she ended up doing her thing. I think if I'm not mistaken, she might be married now. Great. Awesome. We love love.

But like even for me, like I remember how many boyfriends I had where I'd be like, okay, they're here. Well, they're here, right? And so like I was just happy that I had someone there. And then six months later, I'm like, I feel like shit. I don't even like this person because I never stopped to be like, well, what does Sabrina want? What do I like? What do I need? What do I want? How does this person make me feel? Like after a date? Did I ever stop to be like, no, instead I was just, well, he keeps calling me. He keeps texting. He's giving me that. He's giving me that. He's giving me that. He's giving me that. And like, so talk about mindset, how we speak to ourselves. I was listening to a post. It's from a neuroscientist and she's going to be on the pod in June. I'm really excited to have her. I've been nerding out on neuroscience. I'm loving. Oh, it's

It's fascinating. It's fascinating how the fucking brain works. If I had to go back to get a master's degree. Do that same. Yeah. If I were to go back, like I will, I've actually told tech I was like, I want to look for a course in this because I'm so, because I think it's like we can, you can't fuck up with when you're talking about science and the brain.

It's like, listen, you can, you want to tell me if you wanted to be what it's like, let me give you some psychology and some fucking brainwork and then come back and tell me the same bullshit that you have. But she made such a great point of if you love yourself authentically, I'm talking where you accept those parts. parts of yourself. That to me is really loving myself, is knowing every aspect of myself, knowing what triggers me, knowing what gets me, and saying, that's okay, I accept those parts of me and I'm working on them. She made a great example of like, if you feel, if you're insecure

and you feel really shitty about yourself, like you're overweight and you're ugly and you're constantly telling that about yourself. And it's like, yep, here we go. And then what's happening? Your reality is matching that. No, no, no guys want me. And it always keeps happening. It's this self-fulfilling prophecy. See, I knew it. And it's like, no, no, no, that's not her gut reaction, that's your anxiety that's creating this narrative. And she made a great example. She was like, if you're feeling really shitty about yourself and you go out into a bar, what we forget is like when you're feeling like that, you're starting to figure. So you're probably not feeling secure. So you're going to be standing differently. You're going to be hunched over. You're going to be

dressed differently. Your makeup might not be how you feel because you're not feeling yourself, right? You're feeling that insecurity. And then let's say you order a drink and the bartender's dismissive. Then of course, you're going to be like, well, it's because you make this, you create this entire reality. and then it's, see, nobody ever wants me. It's because I'm ugly. When it's like, no, that has actually nothing to do with it. What it has to do with is that you walked in there feeling less than about yourself, expecting that this other person was going to all of a sudden validate.

Then when they didn't, it was, see, I told you so. Totally. You were leaving it in their hands. I love that example. That's such a grave explanation. And I feel like that explains why this topic is so important, right? We hear the word self-love a lot, but I don't think we're making a compelling enough case for why it's so important. And I think that is a great example to illustrate that self-love

in a real way. And we'll talk about like what that is and we'll kind of reiterate that, right? But in a real way, self-love not only changes your perception. Yeah. That's what you just described. They're really cheap. It distorts how you see the world. Totally. Right. And we know that about the nervous system. So when you're not in a place of self-love, you are probably dysregulating. Your reality is very distorted. And that distortion then creates your reality. Totally. Because you're filtering the world differently. You're looking at the world differently. You're acting differently, unconsciously. And then, yeah, your reality and the outcomes are very, very different versus that same example. If you could practice self-love, and again,

real self-love. We're not, I repeat, we are not talking bubble bats and face masks and all of that. Real sense of self-love. And you come into that bar, your body language is different, how you perceive the world, how you perceive interactions with other people is different. You're a little more open. You take chances a little more. You don't close opportunities off before they even get started. And if you do that consistently enough, you're going to have a very different reality eventually, right? Like you're going to have very different outcomes. And again, to me, that becomes, wow, you're the creator of your life. You are taking action the direction of what you want. And eventually, eventually it's unavoidable. It's inevitable. Reality will start to match what

want. Yeah, you have a different internal and external perspective because the external is like, yeah, your life is going to change. When I changed the way that I saw myself, when I, here's the biggest thing, when I gave permission to myself to feel, when I validated my feelings, instead of gaslighting myself and saying, you fucking Sabrina, here you go again, you're fucking insane. See, another guy that doesn't like you because you're too much. When I stopped and said, well, okay, yeah, maybe I was really forthcoming. Maybe I was really direct with this person. But maybe they also just couldn't handle that and maybe this just isn't a person for me. When I stopped attacking myself and I said, okay, so this feels like shit, all right, well, that's okay, right? I'm allowed to feel shitty.

Growing up, I wasn't. Growing up with my dad, it was, my mom was big on feelings. My mom was always cry and feel Sabrina let it out. But yet she wasn't really there for you when you needed to. So she would say it and then she'd walk away and you're like, okay, but I'm still alone. But how? Yeah. Right. No one taught me that. Then my dad, it was literally, he would hit you if you'd start to cry. He would be like, stop. Like, he just didn't have, he didn't know because he, his own, he didn't understand. And so it's like, when I had to stop and go, where did I learn this? Oh, right. When I was a kid, no one gave me permission to feel this. No one just gave me the opportunity to say, it's okay, cry. Let it out and I'm here no matter what. And then when you're done, we'll talk about

this. So then that means now as an adult, that's my job. My job is to say, hey, you're allowed to be upset that somebody said they were going to call you and they didn't. You're not being too much. You're not overreacting. That's okay. Because then what that did was, great. So the then what am I not willing to accept anymore? Okay, cool. So then I started to change the confidence I had of, well, fuck you. I don't, I'm not worried about you. You don't call me. Okay, you didn't call me. I get to decide if this works for me, not, oh my God, and it's because I'm this and it's because I asked him to call me and he didn't. It's like, or then our internal, then you stop gaslighting yourself. Our entire ecosystem changes.

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because I think if I hear one more, I should have. I should. And it's like there's so much shame and blame. And we do this to ourselves because we're so used to that. How do you work through that when you're so used to your shoulds? Yeah. And I think this is where, you know, I think at first you did a beautiful job of explaining why self-love matters. Now we're kind of moving into like, what does that look like?

Yeah. And I think it kind of starts with shame and blame for most of us. Like our journey with self-love. of like that's what I'm trying to say again. It doesn't start with the bubble baths. It actually starts with looking at the places where we're shaming and blaming and shudding ourselves. Yeah.

And to me, that is always step one of self-love. It is always step one in like the way I work in my framework. I always say befriending. You guys have probably heard me use that word a billion times. In that befriending phase, what we are trying to develop is this like friendship with yourself, which is really a sense of self-love. Right? And I almost like avoid using that word sometimes.

because people have the wrong idea of what that really means. And that feels too far-fetched. Like, I can't love myself. Are you crazy? So we start with, can you be a good friend to yourself? Can you be curious? Can you be compassionate? But what the work really entails when you're dealing with shame and blame is starting

with curiosity, which is where I like to use the nervous system. I find that the nervous system framework gives an easy entry point into curiosity about who you are and your behaviors and gives you an entry point into. to developing compassion for those parts of yourself. Because the parts you're shooting and blaming are the parts of yourself that are a little messy, are a little imperfect. There are those younger parts of you. And they're really the parts that need that self-love. Yet usually they're the parts we are not loving at all. We're loving the perfect pretty parts, the fun parts, the positive emotions, right? That's not what actually needs your love. So look, all those parts you're blaming and

shaming, can you get curious about them? Can you maybe look at them like these things that I do, whether it's a behavior, whatever, a way of thinking, how did it serve and protect me? This didn't come out of nowhere. Where did this develop? Because it did. It served and protected me at one point. And I think, again, that's what the nervous system really gives us, that compassionate lens into parts of ourselves we don't love. And so we start to develop a little bit of compassion.

And again, compassion is not saying, this is fine. It doesn't matter that it may be I got defensive or raised my voice at someone. No. it's just understanding, getting curious, be like, where is that coming from? And how did that serve me? What was I actually trying to get across? And so from that compassion comes a little bit of acceptance. Acceptance for past versions of yourself that you might think are so ugly and you're

trying to run away from, right? That's the problem running away, not running towards. And then compassion for yourself in the present. Where again, you're probably not always going to be perfect. You're going to have difficult emotions and that compassion. starts to lead to acceptance. And that acceptance, and this is so counterintuitive, that acceptance actually opens us up to holding ourselves accountable. And this is where my clients get stuck, right? Because they're like, no, I'm all about discipline and holding myself accountable and change.

I can't love myself and accept myself. And I'm like, that's the funny part. To do what you actually want to do, you actually need to love yourself and have acceptance. And then you will be able to hold yourself accountable. If I'm not the poster child of that, I don't know what is. We wouldn't be sitting next to each other if I hadn't done that. Yes. If I didn't have compassion for myself, then how would I ever be able to be okay with my journey and then be able to share my journey and be able to start a career? Because I didn't blame and shame and hate. And it reminds me of, I can always tell when people don't have compassion for themselves based on how they date, because, or how they react. Because like, when I see so many people be like, ew, you're making excuses.

And it's like, no, no, no, explanation or excuse. I'm not making. excuses for this person, but I'm holding compassion and space for where they are because I know you doing this bullshit, like I had a girl comment. So I made a video about somebody going 50-50. And a girl that I know, she made this video and she's like, if somebody goes 50-50 with you, they just don't love you. That's it. They don't care about you. And so I made a video and I was like, you're fucking kidding me. Like this provider mentality. I'm like, you know, someone can provide for you in so many other ways but financially. And I was like, you know, here's the beauty of it. I'm like, I built this incredible business. And now my partner and I work for my business. Like, how incredible

is that. And a girl finds me on Instagram. So she sees this video on TikTok. I shut the comments off because I'm getting the trolls and all that. And it became a cesspool. And I'm like, that's not the point of this video. We don't need to encourage this bullshit kind of back and forth. Like, I don't need to start people getting, people getting bullied and attacked. It's like, that's not the point of this. She then finds me on Instagram. So she watched my video. She has to find me on Instagram. Then she has to look up me and tech guy. She has to look up my, all of this stuff, just to leave this comment saying, you call yourself a relationship coach. First of all, you. You. You You live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, which I'm going to assume is rented clearly.

And you think it's okay to do 50-50 because you settled for somebody. But ha-ha, yet you call yourself a relationship expert. Pathetic. And I wrote her back and I said, asterisk, three-bedroom home. And the fact that we work for my company because it's almost a seven-figure business, that's why this is all happening. And I said, I sure hope you can find some compassion for yourself because you're so quick to judge other people.

I can only imagine how you speak to you. Good luck with that. Because that's how I know. when you have no motherfucking compassion for anyone, how the fuck do you have compassion for yourself? If you're going to look at a guy that says, listen, after a couple of dates, I'm not ready, I thought I was, and I'm so sorry.

And all of a sudden, you villainize him. Fuck you fucking used me. Imagine how you talk to yourself. But if you can stop and say, you know what, that sucks. I'm so sorry you're going through that. Thank you so much for letting me know. I can only imagine.

Good luck with that. Then imagine how you speak to yourself. A hundred percent. What a game changer. You are so spot on with this. And you're absolutely right. It's like the people who have compassion for themselves can hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time. Right?

That they could say, hey, I understand this, not an excuse, this in explanation. This makes sense to me. Right. And I could acknowledge that maybe this doesn't work and I need to take some kind of action because this no longer is serving me. So I don't need to hate you. I don't need to villainize you. I also don't need to make my. like put myself down or blame or shame myself, I could hold two contradictory ideas. And to me,

that is the epitome of accountability. And that is the key to growth. And that is the key to all of the things that you and I talk about with our clients that they desire most. But you have to be able to hold these seemingly contradictory ideas. That is self-love to me. I think maybe in many ways, I would say that is self-love of can you be compassionate and accepting. And, And at the exact same time, say, I think I need to take action. I think I need to take accountability. I need to ask what was my role in this? And I need to make changes moving forward because despite the fact that I don't believe

I'm broken, I want something different for my future. To me, that is, if I could define it, that would be self-love. And like something else you're pointing out and something you and I talk about quite a bit is, I think self-love is, again, allows for the discerful. that is necessary for growth, right? So like when something difficult happens, especially in relationship, but hey, I could say business too, and I'm sure you'll relate to me on this. When something difficult happens, it's easy, like if we really have low self-esteem, it's easy to be like, oh my gosh, I'm such a fuck up. Yeah. I'm never going to make it, right, like to shame and blame ourselves,

right? So when something difficult happens, if we have self-love, we could hold space for ourselves, we could feel our emotions, we could validate, we could be the loving parent. that maybe we never had to ourselves in that moment. That isn't like a permissive do whatever you want. That's just loving, holding space, allowing for emotions, having compassion, acceptance, right? So we could acknowledge like, wow, this is really hurting me. This is bringing of fears and insecurities.

This is not actually reflection of who I am. But it's okay for me to feel these emotions, right? And once we've allowed ourselves to feel those emotions, process reminded ourselves that this doesn't take away from my worth, we could then look at the situation, be like, and what did I contribute to the situation? 100%. Can I look at what I did in that relationship, in that work situation? Even if I don't necessarily think, like, I messed everything up, maybe there's something I can learn from this.

Maybe there's something I could adjust. Like, I could still check myself, again, in a loving way, not from a place of shame. I think that really what it comes down to. And that situation allows compassion for both parties. You could have compassion understanding for yourself. and you could have a level of understanding and compassion for the other person, even if the other person is someone who clearly hates themselves, someone who clearly has a lot of issues. But again, if I have compassion for myself, I could have compassion for you and say,

hey, I get it. I understand. It's not an excuse for your behavior, like in your situation and your story. But I have a pretty decent explanation for why that woman acted the way she did. I'm not excusing her. But I have an explanation. And I actually could have compassion for her. As angry as I am for you.

I could have compassion. I actually think both could co-exist. 100%. That's why when I saw it, I chuckled. And it's like, that's why I even laughed. And I was like, maybe you can learn some compassion for yourself. Because it's like for somebody. I hope you do.

I really, truly from the bottom of my heart, I hope she does. 100% because it's sad existence. If you're just going to judge everybody and everybody's like holding two conflicting thoughts was one of the hardest things for me. Being able to say, I can miss somebody and also know that they're not good for me. Like being able to say, wait a minute. So what works for me? Can I see you in a space? Okay, got it.

Or like, anything. You go with friends, family, relationships, work, anything like that. Shit's going to happen. But if it's always the shit happens that all of a sudden you attack yourself. Every single time it doesn't work. See, I knew I was a piece of shit and I fucking knew I was too much. It's like, okay, let's look at it from the brain, right? If we're actually going to look at where this came from, if you want to fucking fight me on this,

maybe start doing some research on the brain. It's not just because, oh, you're fucked up. No. It's because the amygdala. The amygdala was formed when you're a child. So when you have all of the same core belief, same core belief, same core, think of it as like a wrinkle. It's getting grained, great. grain, grain, grain. Now neuroplasticity, we need to start creating new pathways. That's going to

take repetition. That's going to take perspective shifts and being able to say, huh. Like, that's why I love when I get the email. I get this email probably multiple times a day, like a DM about it or something of someone saying when I first heard you, I fucking hated you. And I'm like, go on. They're like, oh, God, you just rub me the wrong way. And then like, and then when I stopped and I finally listened to you, I started to understand why I hated you because you were triggering the fuck out of me. And when I leaned into it, now it's like, and then you'll get this paragraph of like how their life has changed, how they've opened up their brain, how they feel better. And it's like, I'm not saying this because I'm patting myself on the back of like, I'm God's gift. It's like,

no, motherfucker, I did this. I'm teaching you how to do what works and how to actually get to a place where you can wake up in the morning and not fucking hate yourself all day, where you can wake up and say, I have one life. This is all we're going to get. You want to believe in reincarnation shit. Like that's all you. But on paper right now, where you and I are, we're not getting this time back. So the more that I'm going to obsess over somebody else and I'm going to ruminate and I'm going to allow them to dictate who I am, the further away from me I'm getting. And if I want to come home to myself, that means I need to take that flashlight onto myself

and stop looking for everybody else's problems or stop telling everyone else, you need to go to therapy. This guy I'm dating, he needs therapy. He's a fucking avoidant. It's like, what does that say about you? Yeah. And I think that we're like really touching on where, like a lot of misconstitutional. or, you know, struggles people have with self-love, right?

They're either shaming and blaming themselves. Like, I can never love myself. I'm such a mess. Right. And so those people, I always say, hey, loving yourself isn't never making mistake. It's never feeling negative emotions. It's how do you relate to it? The moment where you're just putting yourself down, can you relate to yourself one percent

differently? Yeah. Right. Like, as you catch yourself saying those horrible thoughts and can you just notice that? I'm like, wow, I'm really being hard on myself. Right. Just that awareness. and curiosity could lead to a tiny bit of compassion of like,

damn, I'm being really hard on myself the way maybe my dad was on me. I'm not saying I even have to change that in the moment, but just that awareness could be like, damn, I remember that hurt and I'm kind of doing that to myself. So maybe I'll just take a breath. Like that to me is a really beautiful starting point for self-love. And I would say that is self-love. Like in those moments you're being really hard on yourself. If my client tells me they did that, I'm like, you're practicing self-love.

Self-love and love in general. We could say this in general. is not just something that is. It's an action. It's a verb. It's something you consistently have to do. It's like, oh, we're just in love. That's not going to last long.

If you're in a long relationship, like that's not going to last long. You have to continue choosing to love yourself and your partner. And I think the same goes here. It's not like you're just like always going to like yourself. I think that's not achievable maybe. That's a little bit out of for most people. It's a little bit far-fetched.

But you could show up for you. yourself through action and choose like those moments of curiosity and compassion and kindness. So that's kind of like one side, right, instead of shaming of blaming yourself. But then the other like pitfall that people fall into what self-love is blaming everybody else. Or and it's sometimes not blaming. Sometimes it's like very kind of hidden in the sense that it's like, oh, well, you should go to therapy. Well, what about that person?

This person's avoid it. This person's this. Like labeling everyone, telling everyone else how to live. like that's you doing the same thing. Shine the light on yourself. Hold your self-account. You don't need to worry about them. That's not your job.

And that's actually a way of distracting yourself. And that too is not self-love, right? Like I'm so great. Everyone else is the problem. That's not self-love either. No, it's ego. That's like at that point. And not to mention too, it's like, I think the hardest thing for me when I was really

learning to love myself was accepting that I have flaws. Because it's like, you know, growing up, you think like, no, I have to do well. I have to do well. and I think so many of us underestimate how the impact of our childhood has in our adulthood. The amount of people that will message me like, this person said this, I don't know what to do. And it's like, what do you mean you don't know what to do? It's like, listen, when you're five years old and your parent walks out of the room or leaves the house, like my dad used to leave when we were kids, I would come home from school to an empty house at seven or eight.

And I remember going on AOL and getting bullied by suit. I had no one to go to. I didn't have my mom to be like, mom, they're being mean. Can you help? I was alone doing this. So it's like, I learned, you know, what do I do? I'm lone, I'm stuck, come save me. Can somebody come help me? You're an adult now. You're not a five-year-old child left in the room with the lights off that you're like, I have no control. Yeah,

as a kid, you have no control. You're right. At seven, I can't live my, I can't take care of myself. I don't have the cognitive ability, but when you're fucking 37 or you're an adult and somebody says something, it's like, then maybe for once what we do is the awareness of, I don't know what to do. Wait a minute. I'm feeling helpless. By even just labeling, I'm feeling this. Prefrontal cortex gets turned on. So we go from anxious brain right back to logic, right back to the now, right back to whoa, okay. So do I feel helpless? What do I feel helpless about? This person said something. Well, what would I like to say? Okay, so am I helpless? You start to discredit yourself and not in a bad way, not like, you see, I knew you're crazy. And facts are your friends. So start finding

facts and what it is how we're relating to ourselves and how we're seeing other people so that we can do I facts to back this up? Totally. And like I kind of teach them. and a little bit more of a simplified way in the sense of like being an observer, like that curiosity. The reason I use that word, it's very intentional, right? It's like very innocent of like, okay, curiosity. I can do that. But it's simple, very intentionally in the sense that curiosity makes you the observer.

You're observing the behavior. You're observing that part of yourself versus being in that part. So it's not you are the helpless person. It's, hmm, there's a part of it. me that feels really helpless and is saying it doesn't know what to do. And just by being observer, you're creating some distance. And that distance is allowing you to get a little bit more present and to separate from it and to have a little bit more control, a little bit space to get curious, to like reason a little bit. And I don't mean intellectualize. I just mean just that act of observing and

being curious puts you in the observer seat creates more distance and gives you the opportunity to practice self-love in a very actionable way of like, hmm, I can see that, right? In a similar way that if, you know, we always kind of have the analogy of like your inner child and you're the parent and you're reparenting that child, right? As a loving parent, if your child is coming to you screaming, like, I don't know what to do. I'm helpless. Your first kind of step would be to just observe that and hold space. Like, I could tell your feeling this way. You don't need to fix it right away. No, but validate. You don't need to just even. I see. see that you're feeling sometimes even myself.

Make them feel seen and heard. Exactly. We just, we invalidate ourselves so fucking often of like, no, because I'm then it's like, maybe for a second if we can just say, yeah, I feel this. And it's okay for me to feel that. Off the bat, you've just given valid. You just validated yourself.

I don't need you to validate me. I just did it myself. And the interesting part in that is like, exactly. It's like sometimes when, you know, we have that thought of like, oh my God, I don't know what to do when we're feeling like the victim, the more intellectual part of you's like, well, you're an adult. Stop doing that. Right.

And it's like, and that doesn't help. That creates more of an internal battle. Right. But if you could step into that observer seat by practicing curiosity and like be that parent, you're like, hmm, I see that a part of me is feeling really, really helpless. I see that. That makes sense. Right. Like you're kind of getting on that kid's level. It's like, I see you.

Yeah. I see how you're feeling. What you will notice is that part gets a little quieter in the same way that child that is freaking out. If you just acknowledge their emotion, like, I see that. I could understand. how you're feeling that way. That child's like, oh, okay. So you get it? Right. Meanwhile, if you're like, no, you do know what to do or like, let me fix it for you. That child might get louder. It's like, no, I'm trying to communicate to you that this is how I feel.

You're disarming. So that battle. And that battle is intensifying versus by just observing and acknowledging and validating, you might notice that party that feels so helpless. It's like, uh-huh. Okay. Yeah, I feel a little helpless, right? Like it starts to like get a little less intense and then give way to for you to kind of use the prefrontal cortex and like actually reason a little bit more. But that act of getting into your body, getting more present and being curious and mindful is kind of like the entry point into that. Yeah. And the reason like we could talk for fucking ever here. But like to kind of wrap this up, which I think next time I really want to start talking in because like this was to me the first precursor of how do we learn to love ourselves so that one,

I could be okay with myself. Like my mama always says, like, the relationship with yourself is the most important one because I'm with me, my whole life. No one else, nothing else in my life might stay in the same. No one, my parents are going to live forever. Everyone in our surroundings, not every person is going to be in your life. Not everyone has someone from the moment they're born until the moment they die besides themselves.

So it's like, if I know that that's the most important relationship, that's what I want to cultivate right now is this trust within myself, this love within myself. And then I think the next episode that we need to talk about is like, cool, once you've done that, then how do you work to receive that for? other people because it's so easy to go pray fall to the pitfalls of like see i knew it and this didn't work out and it's like yeah yeah you're quote unquote self-fulfilling prophecies it's like it just this rigmarole keeps going in the song and dance because it's like you if you don't also just a spoiler alert for anyone out there that has anxious attachment one you don't need to tell your partners

about this i get this every day look when do i tell them you don't need to because you know why they know it's not hide it's not hidden i i'm sure you know you've seen my anxiety tech i he was even ryan that's his name his name's fucking ryan that's it. Cats out of the bag. You guys are going to know his name. Even Ryan always says he's like, the minute I met you, I could see your anxiety. He's like, it's not a bad thing. It's just, it's a part of you at this moment. Yeah. But it's more of like, I don't want to, you don't need to pretend to be anything you're not. But what I really want us to get you guys to is a point of one accepting that about yourself. I'm like, okay, I'm anxious not. I'm trying to play it cool.

I'm trying for him to not see it. It's like, he sees it. Don't worry. The paragraph you wrote me after about how you acted, I see it. Okay. He could see it. But in that's not, not in a bad way. It's just like, let's try trying to pretend that you're somebody that you're not, because like the people are going to figure this out. But I think then the next step is then us getting you primed and prepped for like, cool, now that you accept yourself, you say you do, are you ready to accept other people accepting you how you say you do? Because that's always the hardest. You can say you love yourself. And then all of a sudden, someone tries to give you love and you're like, fuck, you don't have any worth. I don't know. And it's like, that's like that's, yeah. And I think that's kind of like the next level.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? If you think of life is like a video game, that's like the next level. It's like you practice self-love within yourself in your own little bubble. That's where that work starts always. And then you take it out into the real world, specifically in relationship. And that's really tested. Like, how much do you love yourself? How much do you accept yourself? And not in a bad way, not like in a past or fail way. But like I promise, that's going to really give you opportunities to work on that, on that self-love piece. And like if I could like leave people with kind of like two points that have been like playing through through my mind as we've been talking the first and honestly just the most important is self-love is not like love and light and like I just feel great all the time like if I'm being really honest I think self-love is the exact opposite I think

like really doing the work of self-love is so fucking dark yeah it's some dark shit okay it's like the darkest ugliest parts of yourself facing them being with them they're coming up really loud you have to have like one percent more compassion to be with them. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Because when they're coming up, you're not going to feel loving towards them. Like that's not what self love. It's you're going to feel all the worst emotions. And it's like, can I have compassion towards that? Just one percent more than I had yesterday. Like, so I just really want to make that clear. I think people think, oh, I'm not doing it right because, you know, this is dark. This doesn't feel great. It's like, no, that's probably you're doing it. Right. If it's just like feeling amazing all the time,

that's a denial. Yeah. Like if that's how it started, like if you're getting, getting to that place after working on it, yes, because it's going to feel really good. But I've yet to hear of someone who the process of getting there was like love and light. It's a lot of darkness and not in a bad way. Like we need the full spectrum. Like our existence is about the full spectrum of emotion. It's not just the love and light and positive. We need the dark and the negative.

It's actually so much in many ways more valuable for our growth. Right. Like that's where a lot of like the gems. Yeah. Really are. And then like the second point, and I think you said it briefly, but I want to bring it up. I think a lot of the work of self-love is also owning those parts of yourself that you don't love and allowing people to see them. Like not pretending they don't exist.

That doesn't mean, you know, you could do whatever and not hold yourself accountable because sometimes those behaviors might make people feel uncomfortable or, you know what I mean? You could still hold yourself accountable, but also. That is a part of you. And the people really close to you are going to see those parts of you. And allowing them to see that and have difficult conversations about that. I think that's very much a part of the work. And just allowing yourself to express those parts that felt unlovable or imperfect in little ways is very much a part of the work of self-love. Again, those dark parts that you might think are ugly or unlovable, allowing the safe people in your life to see them.

And yes, hold yourself a count. if something ever comes up where that makes someone uncomfortable or causes you to act in a way that's out of alignment. That was beautifully said. I couldn't agree more. I think I just hope that if anybody's anybody, whoever is listening is that whatever the takeaway from this is, at least from my end, is like you, it's okay to say, you know, like if something bothers you with somebody to be like, hey, I don't know if this is working for me. To be able to validate like that if somebody if you're dating somebody or whatever, all of these variables to instead of it like, like, I have to do this and I have to change and I have to do that. It's okay to just validate yourself and for a second,

that's a start by saying, even if you can even just start by saying, I don't like this. You are now giving yourself that. You are saying, you're saying, you're saying, I see you. I see you, little me. You're telling me that you don't like this.

I got you. Even just that. If it feels overwhelming, everything else we talked about feels out of reach, that's okay. Even if you can just start by saying, this doesn't feel good. Yeah.

I don't love this. Anything. Just turning the awareness on to what is happening internally is literally the beginning. Like you always say awareness. It's a first step. Then now we build on. 100%. Thank you so much for joining us. Happy fucking Valentine's Day for everybody. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. Anything upcoming? Anything fun? What do we have? The group is still going. So we're going to have another launch very soon. I'm not exactly sure. I haven't revealed when. But there's going to be another round of the group coming up.

Yay. Can't wait. Everything will be in the show notes. You can find Masha anywhere. And if you guys need anything, everything's in the show notes. But as always, guys, happy fucking Valentine's day. We love you. And thank you so much for sitting with us and for doing the fucking work. Thank you, guys. This was always so wonderful. Until next time.