Welcome to part 4 of the How To Heal series. In this episode about radical listening, you’ll learn strategies for listening more carefully and trusting your intuition and inner wisdom so that you can build a better relationship with your core self.

You’ll Learn:

• How to practice radical listening with compassion 
• The 4 parts within you that you are listening to
• Examples of patterns that might not be serving you
• 5 steps to radical listening and a deeper understanding of yourself

The closer you move to your authentic, core self, the more content you will feel. This truest version of you feels peace no matter what is happening. 

-------------------------------------

Healing is really about wanting to feel better. To feel freedom, joy, gratitude, peace, safety, and calm. To be kinder to yourself, become a good friend to yourself, notice your patterns, and make small changes to influence them. Those are our goals here.

As my mentor, Martha Beck, says, “Your true nature, the part of you that always remembers what it is meant to be and never stops trying to be what it is, no matter what happens to her. Your birthright is to feel peace and joy and gratitude and love. And in your core, you carry all of that.”

Radical Listening

The goal of radical listening is to find your inner guidance to move away from the patterns that you've created to protect you from pain and toward new patterns that help you get what you actually want. 

We all have patterns in ways that we think, feel, and act. We need to look at them and ask ourselves where they’re coming from. Are you trying to avoid pain? Are these patterns protecting you, or are they sabotaging you because you don’t think you’re worthy of feeling freedom, love, peace, and joy? 

The statements we’re working with as we learn to radically listen are:

I will listen to my needs and wants and see those as valid and important.

I will listen to my intuition and trust my inner wisdom.

Who Are You Listening To?

When you practice radical listening, you are having a conversation with yourself. But who are you talking to? In his book No Bad Parts, Richard Schwartz outlines four parts that live within each of us:

Your Inner Child

You may have wounds or patterns that you developed in childhood. These were really important to you as a kid, but they might not be necessary now. These wounds are often based on attachment or authenticity. 

Perhaps you were conditioned in childhood to believe that you don’t matter or that your needs aren’t important. Or your need for security and attachment wasn’t met, so you didn’t feel safe. You may have been told all sorts of negative things about yourself. Or you were taught that you had to look or perform a certain way in order to be loved, valued, and accepted. 

For example, I grew up in a household where it often felt like there wasn’t a grown up. As a result, I developed patterns of hypervigilance, overthinking, overplanning, overstructuring, and then getting easily dysregulated when things weren't going to my plan. Now that I am the adult, I’ve had to teach myself (and my inner child) that I am safe. The grown-ups are here.

Were you taught that your value depended on your grades, performance in sports, or how nice you were? Did you hear that you were dumb, ugly, mean, selfish, lazy, rude, or a problem? What messages did you hear in childhood that you might still be acting out today? 

Maybe it’s time to look at those messages and examine them. Where’s the evidence? 

Your Pain

Our wounds and patterns can also come from culture - religion, materialism or consumerism, racism, or other social problems that make it hard for us to feel safe, free, and loved. 

When you start to look more closely at your patterns, you might see that they are your protectors. They’re there to prevent pain. To keep you safe and stable. But these protectors are in what I call “fix it” energy. These patterns are trying to manage the narrative, manage the moment, and perform. 

On the other side of the coin, we have patterns with “fuck it” energy. This often happens when we get overwhelmed. You say, “Fuck it. I don’t care anymore,” and you sabotage all the work that you’ve done. 

Your Essential Self

This is where it gets good! You have a bunch of dreams and goals and wishes, and they need to be heard.

There are beautiful seeds inside your core self that want to be expressed and shown - things that make you super happy, ways that you feel joy, ways that you feel purpose, ways that you feel love and express love. 

You already have all of that in you. What you want to start doing is listening to your core self and figuring out how she can feel more safe to express those parts of her.

Sometimes, a seed can get buried too deep, so it doesn’t receive the light that it needs to sprout and grow. So a part of listening to those dreams and goals that we’ve buried is figuring out how to bring them into the light. How can we get them closer to the surface so that we can cultivate them? 

A Future You

There’s an exercise I often do where I imagine myself in the future - 5 years from now, 10 years from now, on my 50th birthday, etc.. Visualize a future you, and ask yourself the following questions:

• How do you want to feel? 
• What do you want to be doing? 
• What do you want your habits to look like? 
• What patterns do you want to have healed from? 

You don’t have to know how you’re going to get there. It’s a way to help you get more clear on what you actually want. If you were in a perfect unicorn-magic-wand world, what would you create? 

Tips for Radical Listening

Your relationship with yourself doesn’t need to be a toxic one. It can be very beautiful and loving. Let’s get to know ourselves and then grow into who we want to become. 

Pay attention. Think about it. You can't get to know someone if you don't pay attention to them and listen to them. Look at yourself and notice being aware. 

Notice. Notice if something doesn’t feel good or right to you. Notice what you don’t like and what you do like. Notice your pain and your delight. When do you feel joy? When do you feel present and content? When do you feel purposeful, like you have meaning? 

Look for patterns. Look for thoughts that hold you back. Look at behaviors that are blocking you from getting what you want or helping you avoid pain. Look at the feelings that you have in any given situation. When you look more closely at how you think and feel and act, you will start to notice patterns, and you can start to get curious about those patterns.

Some patterns you might notice include making promises to yourself and breaking them, feeling out of control, having extreme reactions, feeling disconnected or distracted, doing a lot of people pleasing, struggling to tune into your own needs, feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope with your feelings, using buffering behaviors, feeling jealous or insecure in relationships, or being judgmental.

We all have our own patterns for our own reasons. We don’t need to judge our patterns (and not all of them are necessarily wrong). We’re being kind to ourselves and being honest about what we’re doing. Then, you can get curious about why you developed that pattern in the first place. Is there another way you can get that need met? Is there a way you can heal that pain so that you don’t need this pattern anymore? 

Practice compassionate listening. Radical listening doesn’t mean harsh. It's listening with unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, and deep, profound curiosity.

Ask really good questions. Journaling or a spiritual practice like prayer can be really helpful here. Ask yourself questions and then answer them or imagine your divine being answering them. 

Here are some examples to try:

• What happened? What am I bothered by?
• What are my thoughts about it? (Do a thought dump and free write whatever you’re thinking) 
• What was my reason for doing that? How am I justifying it?
• What do I feel about it?
• What are the facts?
• What’s the story I’m telling?
• What am I making this mean - about myself, about someone else, or about the future?
• What feeling am I chasing? 
• What feeling am I avoiding?
• Why now? Why am I showing this behavior now? Is something happening that is triggering it?
• If I could “magic wand” this situation, what would I do? If there were no rules, no restrictions, and I could solve this problem right now, what would the solution be?
• If I could change just one thing about this, what would it be? Why would that be better?
• What if there’s nothing wrong here? What if nothing is broken? What if I’m doing everything right? How would I think and feel and act if I believed that was true?

I love this last question because it can help you find your wisdom with a very small (or no) tweak. You might not have to work so hard to get what you want. I could just be available to you with one small shift of believing you already have it. 

Through radical listening, you are becoming the best friend that you've always longed for, the intimate partner that you've always dreamed about, the perfect parent that you wish you would have had. You are building a deep relationship with love, acceptance, and safety within yourself. 

The essential self in you is completely capable of getting you all of the joy, peace, love, hope, gratitude, purpose, meaning, safety, and everything that your heart desires. 

And I promise you that she is unstoppable. 

Resources:

• Episode 161: Radical Self Love [How to Heal, part 1]
• Episode 162: Radical Self Trust [How to Heal, part 2]
• Episode 163: Radical Honesty [How To Heal, part 3]
• No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz
• Your 3 Inner Guides

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn: 

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlene

Childress. I'm a life and parenting coach. And on the

podcast, we have been working through a series that I've called how

to heal, and I've been walking you through what I'm

calling the hierarchy of healing. This is a six

part series. This is gonna be episode four. So if you haven't

listened to the other ones, you may wanna go back and

listen to radical self love, radical trust,

radical honesty. This is radical listening.

And I recommend you do that because, really, each of

the parts of the hierarchy of healing sort

of require the previous pieces

in place. So for example, if I wanna heal

from a negative pattern of yelling at my kids

or overeating or hyper productivity

or people pleasing or any of those things, I'm gonna need to

start from a premise, from a foundation of self

love. If I use shame as a whip

or self hatred or self loathing as a

tool to get me to change my behavior, I'm

not gonna experience the freedom and the wholeness

that healing brings because I'm really just masking

pain. And I'm using self loathing or self

hatred to get me to act better.

None of us really wanna act better. What we really want is to feel

better. Right? We wanna feel freedom. We wanna feel joy. We

wanna feel gratitude. We wanna feel peace. We wanna

feel calm. We wanna feel security and safety

inside of ourselves kinda no matter what's happening. We wanna feel present.

That's really what healing is, and we can't really

heal from something unless we start from that belief that

I'm good enough. I'm worthy. I'm lovable. I'm enough.

Then from there, I can start to practice feeling safe with myself.

Alright. I'm gonna tell you some things, darling. And in this

process, I need you to trust I need to trust that you're not gonna hurt

me. I need to trust that you're gonna be kind. I need to

trust that you have my back. That's why trust

is this secondary requirement in the hierarchies. We start

with self love, we go to trust, and then we go to honesty. Right?

Because I need to be honest with myself

about my pain or about my patterns that are there

to either prevent pain or to cope with pain.

I won't be honest and look at those if I don't feel loved

and safe. So that's why we have to feel loved. We have to feel safe.

Then we have to be honest. Now this episode is all about listening.

The conversation that you're having with yourself is

really this kind of core self, the the one that's enough, the

one that is loved, the one that that is beautiful, the one that is

perfect, having a conversation with the parts of you

that show up in a way that you don't love anymore. Like, you love

yourself, but you don't like the way that you're acting, And you don't like

the way you're feeling, and you don't like your thinking. You're stinking

thinking. So you want to find a way to

heal and come together and change some

of these negative patterns. So we look

like I'm honest with myself, and then I listen to myself all with

that foundation of I trust myself. I'm safe with myself. I

love myself. So these key pieces

of love, trust, honesty, and

listening all go together, and I've broken them down in

these episodes. So today is all about listening.

Now remember the series, the goal of this series is that I want

you to learn to be kinder to yourself. Wouldn't that be nice? Just

that. It's like, why do we have to be so mean? Especially as women,

we're constantly our inner critic, our inner monologue

is on fire. It's just kind of like this, you know, this

buzz of negativity that goes on inside of us. And it's just such a

waste, a waste of your beauty, a waste of your productivity, a waste of

your contribution, a waste of your own peace. I don't care how you act towards

others or, like, what you'd show up in the world. I want you to feel

better inside. So we're gonna be kinder to ourselves,

making friends with our thoughts and feelings. So getting to know

yourself, becoming a good friend to yourself, and

being curious about your thoughts and your feelings.

Noticing your patterns and your strategies that don't work for you anymore.

So if you have a behavior, like, not yelling at your kids

anymore or whatever the behavior is that you don't wanna

do anymore, like, I don't wanna, get angry or

feel insecure and then start to criticize my husband. Right? That's

a pattern that I have, and I don't wanna do that

anymore. Right? So I'm, like, gonna take a look at that pattern

and decide I don't wanna criticize him anymore. So I need to get curious. I

need to, you know, be honest with myself. I'm doing it. And then I need

to listen and figure out why am I doing that. And then I wanna

make small changes. So these are our goals. Be kinder to yourself, make

friends with your thoughts and feelings, notice your patterns and strategies

that don't work for you anymore, and make small changes that

influence those patterns. And that's what we're doing in this how to heal

series is we're healing your relationship

with yourself so that you can shift and change

and become more whole. Right? Healing is really the

process of something is wounded and it

gets healed. Today, we're talking about radical

listening. So the core sentence or the main mantra

of this topic is I will listen to

my needs and wants and see those as valid and

important. I will listen to my intuition and

trust my inner wisdom. That's what I'm hoping for

you by listening to this episode that you will learn

how to listen more carefully to yourself. Notice your

needs. Notice your wants. Notice your powder patterns.

Validate yourself. See your needs as important. Listen to

yourself. Trust your intuition. Trust your inner wisdom. The

goal of radical listening is really, like I said, to build a

better relationship with yourself. By

yourself, I mean your essential self, your core self, that

thing I talked about in radical self love, the essential

being inside of you. Martha Beck says, your true nature, the part

of you that always remembers what it is meant to be and never

stops trying to be what it is, no matter what happens to

her. Your birthright is to feel peace and

joy and gratitude and love. And in your core, you

carry all of that. We wanna tap into that

and let help you live more and more deeply

in your inner wisdom, inner inner self.

So the goal if the radical listening is to find your

inner guidance to move away from the patterns

that you've created to protect you from pain or

sabotage you from getting what you want. Because we

all have these patterns of behavior And

looking at those patterns either of how we act, how we think, or how

we feel, those are these patterns we have. So we need to,

like, look at them and see, okay, are these

are these patterns that I have? Are they coming from a way to

avoid pain? Are they protecting me from pain

or sabotage a moment because maybe we don't think we're worthy of

feeling freedom and love and peace and joy and all of those things?

I want you to move closer to that authentic self,

that core self, the one that feels peace no matter what's

happening. Because the closer you are to your essential self, the more

content you will feel. So all we're doing in this

episode is we're tapping in to

you and learning about you

from that loving place, from that safe place.

And when you're loved and safe, you can be honest.

So you're kinda having this conversation about your thoughts and

feelings, and you're, like, talking to yourself. So you're being honest, you're

revealing things, and then you're listening to

what is revealed and asking really good questions and getting really

curious because your goal is to get to know yourself,

your core self. So that's what today really is, like, looking

for patterns. Who are you

listening to if you're in this conversation? Right? Your

core self is listening to who? I

love the work of Dick Schwartz who wrote the book no

bad parts. He's the founder of Internal Family

Systems. It's a funny name because you think it's

about, like, family dynamics, like your parents and your siblings,

but, actually, it's your family system within yourself.

So he has these different ways that he describes the

parts that are living within ourselves. The first one I wanna

talk about is your inner child. You've heard this phrase before.

Essentially, I wanna think about it in terms of childhood

wounds, childhood patterns that got established

that maybe were really, really important to you back when you

were a kid, but maybe aren't as necessary now.

So he says, like, when you were young, you experienced

traumas or attachment injuries. You were like a child, so

you didn't know how to protect yourself or what to do about it. And so

you might have, you know, created patterns

to protect yourself or to

soothe yourself in childhood that you no longer

need. An example of this in my life is that because my

mom was clinically depressed and untreated,

she did not take any medication. She wasn't even not

diagnosed until I was 18 years old, but the

depression kept her really, like, on the couch, not doing

things. She also, I'm pretty sure, had ADHD,

and so she really didn't have a lot of order. So, like, the dishes

weren't done. The laundry wasn't done. You know, the school paperwork

wasn't filled out. I I I she had this, like, basket

where you could put things we were really poor. So things that were,

like, torn or buttons that were off, you'd put them in the basket.

And then, like, I think, conceptually, she would fix them and then give them back

to us. But they never got fixed, and so I would just put my

clothes in this little basket, and I would never see them again. Also, just

she was irresponsible with money, with decisions, with time.

There was a lot of times where I felt like there were no grown ups

in the room. So I over overgrown up.

I became uber responsible, uber organized,

you know, overthinking, ruminating, planning,

really trying to make sure that every I was dotted and

every t was crossed. And I took that into

my adult life and was, like, really tight with the

schedule with the kids or when plans changed, and I felt very

overwhelmed. I didn't know how to pivot. I didn't know how to feel ease. I

didn't know if something was going wrong. It

really activated my nervous system because I was like, oh my god.

There's no grown ups here, and no one's gonna help. And I would

feel very overwhelmed and very triggered very easily.

That hypervigilance, that dysregulated nervous

system, those are patterns from childhood

that I needed then because honestly, there was no one paying

attention to me. But now I'm an adult and

I get to pay attention to me. I have to

teach that inner child that

pattern of hypervigilance, overthinking,

overplanning, overstructuring, and then getting easily dysregulated

when things weren't going to my plan. I have to teach her, hey,

girl. You're safe. I'm

here. The grown ups are here. You are a grown up.

You're okay. And that has become really, really

important for me. So Dick Schwartz really talks about how

sometimes we get put into a parentified place, and then we carry

that intense burden of responsibility. So that's

true for me. So for some people, you may have been conditioned in

childhood that you're you don't matter. You your needs

aren't important. Kit children are better seen than

heard. Right? And you might not have felt listened to or

validated, or you might been told that you were a problem, that you were dumb,

that you were ugly, that you were mean, that you were selfish, that you were

entitled. Now you have a negative self-concept. Maybe you

were told you only only matters what you look like or how

you perform, and you're disconnected from your authentic

essential self because you think you have to perform or look a

certain way in order to be loved and valued and accepted. So sometimes

our need for attachment, our need for security

isn't met as a child, so we don't feel safe. That was primarily

true for me. And then sometimes our need for

authenticity, our need to be validated for who we

are at our core isn't acknowledged or given

to us as children. And so our wounds are often based on

attachment or authenticity. So you're looking for

these patterns that maybe came

from your childhood, and you're wanting to listen. Now I want

you to think about what could have been my wounds as a child.

Was I parentified? Was I taught that my needs weren't important?

Was I taught that my value is based on how I looked or what I

did or how I performed, my grades, how did I did in sports,

how nice I was to everybody in the room. Right? Was I given a

negative self-concept? Somewhere along the way, did I decide or did I hear

enough times that I was dumb, ugly,

mean, a problem, selfish, entitled, lazy,

rude. What did you hear? What were the messages that you heard in

childhood? Maybe you are acting from those messages. Maybe we need to look at

those messages and examine them. Are you dumb? What's the

evidence of that? What are you basing that thought and that

belief system on today? And we wanna examine it. So we kinda have

to look at it. We have to listen to the answers. So you're

listening for your inner child. I also think sometimes it's not wounds from

childhood. Sometimes our pain is wounds from culture. It could be

wounds wounds from religion. It could be wounds from materialism and

consumerism in our society. It could be from racism. It could be

from it could be from a variety of social

problems that exist that make it hard for us to feel

safe and feel free and feel loved. And when we

then look at our patterns, we can see that we have

protectors, parts that prevent pain. Sometimes I

call that the fix it energy. They keep us safe. They keep us

stable. They avoid chaos unless chaos feels safe, and then

they create chaos. We have these protectors that

are really kind of in a fix it energy trying to, like, manage the

narrative and manage the moment and perform. Then we also

have the fuck it's, which are the parts of us that deal with the

emergencies, and we give up all of those other strategies. And we're

like, fuck it. I'm just gonna eat. Fuck it. I'm just gonna ignore my kids.

Fuck it. I'm just gonna watch TV all day. Whatever. I'm not judging those

behaviors, but I I'm saying that we have kind of this fix it

energy sometimes, and then we have this fuck it energy sometimes. And you wanna just

look at, like, wow. Am I in a hyper controlling, hyper productive

way? Or am I in a chaotic,

overwhelmed, give up, give in space?

I don't know for you, but for me, I kind of vacillate. Usually, I stay

in fix it energy. That's kind of the way my pain shows up. But

there's times when I get so overwhelmed that I go into fuck

it. And I'm just like, forget it. I don't even care anymore. And then

I sabotage all of the work that I've done. And I think that

comes back to, like, core woundedness of feeling unsafe and

unlovable. A lot going on in this episode.

So we're listening to our inner child. We're listening to our pain. We're listening to

our essential self. So this is where it gets fun and yummy and good.

You have a bunch of dreams and goals

and wishes, and they need to be heard.

Right? If you think about a seed that is planted,

right, you already have a bunch of beautiful seeds that are

inside your core self, things that wanna be expressed, things that wanna be

shown, things that make you super happy, ways that you feel joy,

ways that you feel purpose, ways that you feel love, ways you

express love. You already have all that in you.

And what we wanna start doing is listening to her and figuring

out how she can feel more safe to

express those parts of her. I remember one

time a long time ago, actually, I was doing, like, goal

work. This was when the kids were little. And I remember thinking my

goal was to consider learning how to

knit. I didn't wanna make a goal of learning how to

knit because I wasn't sure if I would even like it. So I made

a goal to figure out if I would like it because I didn't wanna put

that fix it energy. Like, here's my goal and then and then go fuck it.

I don't care. And I didn't wanna do that. I was like, I'm just gonna

be curious. What do I like? So that's what we're trying to find is, like,

your essential self has all these seeds inside of

her, these dreams and these goals. Now sometimes seeds,

if you think about a garden, a seed can get

buried too deep and it doesn't receive

any of the light that it needs to

sprout and grow. And I know this is true because I

tried to garden. I've dabbled in that. I've decided I don't like it,

and I'm not gonna try anymore. So there's that. I do grow

strawberries and blueberries, but they kind of berries do their own thing.

Though I did, like, the whole garden box and tried all the things

and just realized, like, it's too frustrating to me most pretty

much. But in the process, I was sprouting seeds.

And if you sprout a seed and you push it too far

down, it won't actually shoot up through the

soil because it needs the light to grow. And if

it's too far down, it doesn't get the light. So sometimes our

seeds of our essential self are buried. We're trying to listen

to those and figure out how to get those

to the light, bring them up a little bit closer to the surface so that

we can cultivate them. Some of you already know your goals and dreams, and you

just haven't put enough fertilizer, enough water. You

haven't given enough sunshine. You've hidden it. And I wanna

help you discover those goals and dreams and then find out how

to actualize them. So we're listening to our

inner child. We're listening to our pain. We're listening to our essential

self. And sometimes we're listening to a future you.

So I like to do this exercise a lot where I

imagine myself in the future, five years from now,

ten years from now, or one year from now, or on my fiftieth birthday.

And I think about how do I wanna feel? What do I wanna be

doing? What do I want my habits to look like? What patterns do I wanna

have healed from? And I don't need to know how I get

there. I just kinda wanna know what I want. What is

it that I want in a perfect unicorn magic

wand world? What would I create? So we're

listening to our pain and we're listening

to our future. So we're listening to our past self that

got hurt and that has protection. And then we're listening to

our future self and what she wants and who

she's becoming, all in line with our

core essential self. So that's who you're listening to. Why should you even

do this? Right? It's because you can't get to know someone

if you don't pay attention to them, listening to them, finding out what's going

on. You're in a relationship with yourself, and it's can be a very

beautiful relationship. It doesn't need to be a toxic relationship.

I think that if you were in a relationship with someone

who treated you like you treat you, you would probably break up

with them. And some of you try to break up with yourself by

avoiding your pain, not taking a look at it, hating

yourself. Let's not do that anymore. Instead,

let's be loving and kind and get to know ourselves and then

grow into who we want to become. Okay.

So how do we do it? How do you listen? The

first is the just paying attention. It's going back to

that honesty thing. It's like taking a look at

yourself and noticing being aware.

There's a lot of things in self help and in healing and

in psychology that are all around awareness. It's like one of the

benefits of meditation is you become aware of

your thoughts and of your patterns. Right? Because you're in a

trying to be still and be present in the moment, and then you notice

your monkey mind, and it moves all around. Just pay attention, but

you can't do it, like I said, if you don't love yourself and if you

don't feel safe. What are you looking at? You're looking at stuff you don't

like, maybe stuff you don't like the way you're being treated, the way your kids

are behaving, the way that you your spouse is behaving, the

way your boss is behaving, the way your community treats you,

or the way that you're acting, the way that you're thinking, the way that you're

feeling. Just noticing if something doesn't feel good or

right to you, we don't need to figure it

all out, but we need to get curious about it. So you're paying attention

to yourself. You're like, that didn't feel good. I'm gonna think about

that. I'm gonna explore that a little bit. So we're noticing what we don't like.

We're noticing our pain, and then we're noticing what we do like.

We're noticing our delight. We're noticing what we

love paying attention. When do you feel joy? When do you

feeling of lightness inside of yourself? When do you feel just

present and content? When do you

feel happy? When do you feel purposeful? When do you

feel like you have meaning? What are your favorite things to do?

Think about taking yourself out on a third date. Like, you would

wanna get to know, hey. What makes this person tick?

That's what you're paying attention to, and you're being very curious.

So we're paying attention. We're being curious, just truly, like, wanting to

get to know yourself. And then looking for patterns,

looking for the thoughts that hold you back. Look at the

behaviors that are blocking you from getting what you want or helping you avoid

pain. Looking at the feelings that you have

in any given situation. Are you overwhelmed? Are you frustrated?

Are you rageful? Are you hurt? Do you feel lonely? Do you

feel sad? When you are looking at how

you think and feel and act, you will start to notice those

patterns and you can start to get curious about those patterns.

So some patterns that you might be noticing, making promises

to yourself and breaking them, feeling out of control,

having extreme reactions like that mad mama

syndrome, feeling disconnected or distracted, not

feeling present, noticing that

mean inner critic, that inner monologue, doing

a lot of people pleasing, difficulty tuning into your own needs

or not feeling entitled to take care of yourself, very difficult for

moms. Having trouble expressing what you want, feeling

overwhelmed and stressed and unable to cope with feelings,

buffering behaviors, behaviors that avoid that

pain. One of the ways that I'm exploring buffering right

now is I've done a shopping ban, particularly for

clothes, because I noticed that one of the ways that I protect

myself or avoid pain is

by buying things to put on my body,

almost like a shield or to say I belong, to say I'm

safe, to say I matter. And I want to explore

not doing that, not buying those clothes, and finding out if

I can find the feeling of belonging and safety and worthiness

without adding anything extra. So buffering is

when we do things to avoid pain or do things to

get a feeling. It's not necessarily bad, but

you wanna get curious. Do I need this pattern? Also notice that you

have jealousy or insecurity in relationships. I think whenever I'm

jealous of someone, instead of judging myself

or making them wrong, like, oh, well, you know, she's a bitch anyways. I don't

know. Thinking negative thoughts about that person. I get curious and

I'm like, why do I want what I perceive them to

have? What is the feeling that I think they have that I don't have?

What is the essential need that I see in them that I

wish I had? Then I look and I say, do I already have that? Or

can I get that in another way? Jealousy and envy

are interesting patterns because they help reveal something that

you want. Not the thing, not the

money or the funny husband or the

beautiful house or the pretty hair. Not

those things, but you are looking at what you

make those things mean that that person has that you don't

have. And you get curious about them. So looking at

your jealousy and your insecurity, and that's a pattern.

Asking for advice, some people crowdsource every decision. And if

you're doing that, that means that you don't feel safe. You

don't trust your wisdom. I'm not saying don't ask for advice. I just

think, you know, sometimes you can see if it's a pattern where you're

constantly asking many, many people for advice, or there's just one person you feel like

you can't make a decision until you talk to them. That might be

something to get curious about. All of these patterns

are not necessarily wrong. We're not

judging the pattern. We're being

honest about it. We're being nice to ourselves. We're

trusting ourselves if we're doing the pattern to protect

or soothe or prevent pain.

Great. Good job. I'm glad you found a pattern that works for you.

Now we have to ask, is there another way you can get that need

met? Is there a way we can heal that

pain so that you don't need this pattern anymore?

That's what we're doing. We're being really curious

and from that foundation of love and honesty and trust.

So this process that you're going through, right, is curious.

And then you're practicing compassionate listening. So first,

we're curious, just finding out what the heck is going on, being

really honest, really curious, listening, what

is going on? Then we practice compassionate

listening. I love the concept of compassionate

listening. It's listening with unconditional love,

unconditional acceptance, and deep, profound

curiosity. So when you are listening to

yourself, we have that foundation of love, that foundation of

trust. Now we're gonna get really curious. We're gonna

ask really, really good questions.

The process of listening, right, is we're being curious, we're being compassionate, we're

listening really closely, and then we're asking really good

questions. I find that it's really important for

me to journal these questions and these answers

to explore myself because I can't do that

reflective listening and ask the next question unless I'm

doing a journal entry for me. But I do

find that I can do this sometimes with a very good

listener who asks me really good questions.

So my best friend, Tiffany, does this. I have some dear

friends, my friend, Kristen Kristen Kristen, all the Kristins in my

life. Kevin will do this sometimes. He's not

great at asking good questions, but he's really good at

letting me process my own questions with

him. So I find that I have found a few people who

let me do this. Some people and I think I used to do this. I

did this in prayer. So I was like, it having a

conversation with God and letting

sort of the god within I didn't think of it that way. I thought of,

like, literally god asking me these questions. And

so if you have, like, a spiritual practice, you can do it with

that. Like, ask Alex,

imagining that the divine being that you

worship or that you follow is asking you

these questions, if that makes sense. So what

are these good questions? K? First,

I like to just start with a circumstance. Like, what happened? What are you bothered

by? Like, I buy a lot of clothes or I really hate gardening

or I really wish I could garden, or I'm so jealous that my friend

has a job and I don't have one, or I really wish that I

had more money, or, man, I really don't like that my

kid is being so you know, call saying I hate you, or

I really don't like that I took this thing out on my husband.

Whatever the thing is that's going on, kinda narrating that.

So we kinda start with, like, what the heck are you even talking about?

And then what are my thoughts about it? What do I think about

this circumstance? And doing, like, a thought dump

where you just kind of free flow whatever you're thinking.

For me, I broke my shopping ban this week,

and I was like, okay. That's how that happened.

Okay. Let's get curious about it. Why did I purchase that? What

was I thinking? What happened? What was my reason for doing

it? So I started doing the questions. What are my thoughts about it?

Do I think it's wrong? Do I think it's right? How am I justifying it?

What do I feel about it? What do I think about it?

Then what am I making this mean? That's one of the best questions you

can ask is what am I making this behavior mean?

What am I making this circumstance mean? So if it's my kid

saying I hate you, I'm thinking I'm a bad mom. I'm thinking that they're

not a nice person. I'm thinking I've made a mistake and a mistake parenting

them. I'm thinking that they are gonna become

a psychopath. I'm thinking that whatever. Right? We can start

to be honest about what we're making that mean. What do we

make it mean about ourselves? What do we make it mean about them?

What do we make it about the future? What do we make it mean about

the past? Also going and saying, like, well, what are the

facts? What is the facts about this thing? What happened?

And then what is the story I'm telling about these facts? That's another

way to figure out what am I making it mean. What's the story I'm

telling? So you're trying to separate the thing

that happened with your thoughts about it. That's that

metacognition, that cognitive behavioral therapy

is really this mindset work is recognizing

your thoughts are separate from the circumstances.

So we wanna be like, what are we thinking? What are we

feeling? How do we act when we

think that way? How do we act when we feel that

way? What's the behavior that I

do? Right? How do I treat myself? How do I treat my

child? What do I do to avoid when I'm in this situation?

How do I get out of this situation? What feeling am I

chasing? What feeling am I avoiding? So you're just asking

yourself, like, really, really good questions. One

question I love is why now?

What's happening? Why am I showing this behavior now?

And looking at a bigger narrative? Oh, it's because I've been very

lonely lately. Oh, it's because I stress that I'm

traveling soon. It's, oh, because my kid went to

kindergarten. Like, oh, it's because my husband lost his job or

whatever the circumstances. Start to notice. Oh, maybe there's another

pattern going on in my life that's making me feel insecure. That's making

me feel unsafe. That's making me feel purposeless. That's making

me feel like I don't belong. Sometimes our other circumstances

in our life can be triggering the behavior. So getting

really curious, like why now? What's happening? What's changed? What's coming

up? So those are some questions to reflect

on a situation and helping you find

some ways to kind of explore

what this could be. Why are you acting this way?

Your best guess. That's it. You're just trying to figure out why am I acting

this way. There's no right answer. Whatever your intuition,

whatever your core self answers, that's probably the

answer. And if it doesn't ring true, you could just be like, okay. What

else could it be? It's this relationship with yourself.

Another prompt I love is asking myself that magic

wand question. Like, if I could magic wand this situation,

what would I do? If I if there were no rules, there was no restrictions,

I could solve this problem immediately. What would

the solution be? And asking yourself, if I could magic wand

this and I could fix it, what would the fix look like? That's a really

interesting question because it kind of helps you tap into some of your wisdom and

some of the action steps that might need to be taken. Another one that's

kind of easier is, like, if I could change one thing about this, what would

it be, and why would that make it better? The last question

this is a newer question for me that I've been playing with

in the last year or two is what if there's

nothing wrong here? What if nothing is broken?

What if I'm not broken? What if I'm

not a bad person? What if I'm not a bad mom? What

if I'm doing everything right? Instead of looking for problems

and then finding solutions, I've been really challenging myself by

the thought, hey. Nothing's wrong here. What

if everything is going great? How would I

think and feel and act if I believed that was

true? Because then you might find your wisdom is like a very

small tweak or no tweak. You could just live

in the piece that you think you have to work so hard

for. You might not have to work so hard to get there.

It could just be available to you with one small

shift of believing you already have it.

The thing I'm jealous of, what if I already have it?

The healing I'm craving, what if I already have it?

It's an idea. It's something to try out. I've been exploring it

and it's been very freeing and really fun to not be

in so much like, I gotta heal from this and pain from this and just

kinda like, what if I'm already good? What if it's already

great? Could that be true? If it

were true, what would I use for evidence to prove it? That's a very

powerful question. So you can play with that one.

The whole point is that you are listening to figure

out how to have a better relationship with yourself.

You are becoming the best friend

that you've always longed for, the intimate partner

that you've always dreamed about, the deep

relationship with love and acceptance

and safety, the perfect parent that you wish you

would have had, all of those dreams

for relationships, that's what you're creating

within yourself. That's who you are becoming

for you. And I promise that

she is unstoppable. The essential

self in you is completely capable

of getting you all of the joy and peace and

love and hope and gratitude and purpose and

meaning and safety and everything

that your heart desires, you already have everything in

you to create that. All you have to do is discover it

through radical listening. Alright,

mama. I really appreciate you listening to this episode. I'd love to

hear your feedback. Please either reach out to get a complimentary

consultation with me. You can book right on my website,

or you can DM me on Instagram. You can reply to an email. Just

let me know your thoughts, your feelings, your reflections, what you're struggling

with, what you love. Also, if you wanna do comments on Spotify

or comments on anywhere you listen to your podcast, that's also

super cool. I'll interact with you there too. So love

you so much. I think you are incredible, and I will talk

to you next week.