Inner Purpose Podcast
Discover how to authentically express your gifts through deep, purposeful work that makes a meaningful impact and the most fulfilling money you will ever earn, as an ambitious highly sensitive entrepreneur
Inner Purpose Podcast
How to face life’s storms and find peace in the messiness of life
This episode is a raw and transparent recount of my journey through a mini Dark Night of the Soul this past summer. I hope to offer solace and encouragement to anyone experiencing similar trials. Along with practical insights to help you move through the tough bits.
I’m also sharing with you the realizations I had about myself and my business, and the changes I’m making to my work as a result. You’re going to get a behind the scenes look at the shifts I’m looking at, and how I’m working through making some big decisions.
CONNECT WITH MICHELLE
- On Instagram @michelledowker_wellbalance
- On Facebook @michelledowkerwellbalance
- Email Michelle michelle@michelledowker.com
FREE RESOURCE: Join Your Next Intuitive Business Breakthrough Free 5-day Training Series for full access to all trainings and bonus resources: https://wellbalance.ca/breakthrough
WORK WITH MICHELLE:
Click here to apply to work with Michelle
1:1 Psychic Purpose Reading Session with Michelle over Zoom — click here to learn more and claim your spot
Hello, I am so glad that you're back for another episode. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate all of my listeners tuning in. I know that I've had a little bit of a sabbatical this summer. I haven't posted many episodes over the last few months and I'm going to talk today about why that is and some of the changes that are going on for me, why this is so, and none of this is scripted. I have not written out any notes for today's podcast topic.
Speaker 1:I am going to be as candid and honest and vulnerable as I can with you because we're all human and we're all going through our journey of learning and growing and evolving. And I hit another edge of my own personal growth and evolution and I wanted to share with you the experience of that so that you can understand, if you're, you know, going through these moments of maybe tough, challenging times that might come up, and understand why they come up and how to move through them and what it means to come out the other side. If you have been following me at all on my social media, you know that in during the summer July-ish, I sort of hit a little bit of a mini Dark Night of the Soul, and I say mini because I've gone through dark nights of the soul in my past that have been much bigger than this, but it was still something that shook me and something that I needed to work through, and there's a few reasons why this dark night of the soul sort of appeared. Looking back, I see that it didn't come out of nowhere. The straw that broke the camel's back, I think, was my mother's birthday on July 24th. So my mother has passed and past birthdays of hers have not gotten to me. But I think that just everything else combined the day of her birthday just brought all the feels to the table and everything came out. Now, leading up to that, I can see now I'm going through some hormonal changes. I can see now I'm going through some hormonal changes. I'm at the age I'm in perimenopause and I can see that I'm progressing through more advanced stages of perimenopause. I'm almost 46, and I can see a lot of the symptoms coming up that are indicating that I'm kind of at the last stages before I'm going to be reaching full menopause. So my hormones are going all over the place and on top of that, I've already shared with you that I highly suspect autism and ADHD All of the symptoms that I knew that I had, that aligned with ADHD and autism, all of a sudden became way more pronounced as my hormones were changing.
Speaker 1:That, in combination with, you know, just regular life stuff and as well in my family here where I live in Quebec, canada, there's a lot of projects on the go right now. My husband has been really busy this summer. My husband has been really busy this summer building a small stable for his daughter's horses so that they can live on our property. We have a 200 acre forested property. His daughter's horses were stabled elsewhere and she wanted to bring them home and there was a bit of a time limit in terms of when she had to get the horses here, which just happened last week. So this summer was busy. There was a lot going on in terms of my business, his work, getting all the stuff sorted out with building this horse stable and there's so many things involved with what was involved with making this a reality, like installing water on the property, digging for water lines and so many different things. I'm not going to go into all the details about that.
Speaker 1:So my mom's birthday was the pinnacle of this buildup of emotions, of this buildup of. There was lots of like feelings of unease happening and feelings of not feeling in control and feelings of anxiety, and my brain kind of felt like it had been put in a blender. Some of you might understand what that feels like. And then I get to this point of my mother's birthday and all the grief came up, all the emotions came up and it kind of made me go. Something needs realignment, and this is the thing. This is a really important point that I want to mention, and I've mentioned it a few times on my social media, so if you've been following me there, you've probably already gotten this message.
Speaker 1:When you come up against a challenge and all the feels are coming up, layers of old themes are coming back around and you're like I thought I already dealt with this around and you're like I thought I already dealt with this and the things are coming back around again like a spiral or a boomerang and you're questioning, like what's going on here? I thought I dealt with this, I thought I worked through this, I thought I've moved past this, and that was a lot of what was coming up for me around that time. Luckily, I've gone through this enough times now to know that when that happens. It's not that I'm back at the beginning again. I get this, a lot clients will say, but this is coming up and I thought I've already dealt with this. Does this mean like I'm back at the beginning? Am I starting over? Is this like have I gone backwards? And no, you haven't.
Speaker 1:What this actually means is that healing happens in a spiral and when you're working through these big themes in your life, it's not like a linear thing where now you're just moved past it and it'll never come back. It comes around again. But when it comes around again, you're looking at it from a different perspective. And what happens is when it's coming around again and you're like at it from a different perspective. And what happens is when it's coming around again and you're like holy crap, I thought I dealt with this already. That is a huge sign that once you move through that final layer of the spiral, you're about to step into an up level. There's something bigger that's going to be happening on the other side of that. There's something bigger that's going to be happening on the other side of that. It's like walking through the storm so that you can get out to the other side where the blue skies are.
Speaker 1:I've gone through this process enough times to know that, even though I was like stuck in the muck of it, I knew why it was happening, so I wasn't freaking out. I wasn't like, oh my god happening. So I wasn't freaking out. I wasn't like, oh my god, in the past I would have been in the past, I've done that a lot and I knew that I just needed to be with it and face it and sit with it and be okay with the fact that this difficult moment is moving through me, and I know that means that, as I let it move through, on the other side is something more, and I'm working through that something more now. And the other thing to point out about that is it's not like all of a sudden is the moment you step out of the muck, everything is going to be like I know exactly what's happening now. I wish it was that way, but it's not now. I wish it was that way, but it's not. So there's a few realizations that I've come to working through these moments, and a lot of them had to do with my business, what I'm doing and who I'm working with, and I came up with some huge realizations, as you've heard me talking on this podcast.
Speaker 1:I've talked to you about my career pivot story, where I went from being a clinical naturopathic doctor and then I was working with people with autoimmunity and endometriosis, especially the ones who've tried absolutely everything all the therapeutic diets, all the treatments, all the medications and, yeah, it helped to a degree, but they've plateaued or it's only gotten them so far and they knew that there was something more. And I would guide these people through this inner healing, inner awakening, self-connection journey so that they would come to this place where they were no longer run by limiting beliefs and social conditioning and they were connected to their true selves and they were able to live their authentic lives and who they are actually here to be, without worrying about what other people are saying or thinking about them. Essentially, they become their own best friend. And when, when you do that, you come to this place where you're so connected from within yourself, your nervous system is centered and grounded and you're operating from this place where you are operating in a place that's aligned with your soul, and when people would come out the other side of this, then A their symptoms would improve, even if they've tried everything else right.
Speaker 1:I've had clients who've been on max dose medications and their symptoms were getting worse and worse and worse. They had so many food sensitivities. They're on an extremely strict diet and once they went through this process, I've had clients who their medical doctors then put them down to the very. I've had clients who their medical doctors then put them down to the very minimum maintenance dose and their food sensitivities improved and they were able to eat more variety of foods. And their medical doctor was like how did you do this? Because they knew that you know their patients have been struggling for years and their symptoms were getting worse. And they see over and over again these medical doctors like, if you're on this path of like worsening symptoms and then medication only takes you to a degree and now you're maxing out on the medications and things are getting worse. It's not going to get better, but these clients that would come to see me they would get better. Because this inner work is the missing puzzle piece that so many people don't talk about, and especially not in the medical system. And I didn't learn about this when I went to naturopathic college. What I guide people through now takes people way further than I was ever able to guide them when I was working as a clinical naturopathic doctor and so like that's huge. That's why I'm so passionate about what I do now.
Speaker 1:As you know from my story, it took me guiding myself through this first. This is how I discovered this was because I was in a place where I was bed bound for a month and I had no answers. I had tried everything as a naturopathic doctor that I knew to try, and I was seeing all the doctors and no one had answers, including myself, and I was stuck in bed staring at the ceiling, going is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? This is I can't. I can't live like this, as I was watching my future. You know, slip through my fingers like sand, and I knew that I was watching my future. You know, slip through my fingers like sand and I knew that I was meant for more. I knew that I was here for a reason, and staring at the ceiling lying in bed was not what I was here for.
Speaker 1:I knew that, and it was this journey that I took myself through, and you know you've heard me talk a lot about it in some of my past episodes and I'll continue to talk more about some of the different aspects of this particular journey that I've guided myself through in the methodology that I've created, and it was the thing that helped me when nothing else could and I mean I've already shared. You know, before I really fully developed this methodology and went through the full journey, I had first discovered carnivore, a meat only diet, which is like the strictest therapeutic diet that you can go on, and I absolutely don't suggest that it's for everybody, but it was the thing that got me back on my feet when everything else I tried wasn't working. But the thing is is that it got me back on my feet. It gave me some energy back so that I could start diving into the research and I could start exploring these other avenues. But carnivore on its own only got me to a certain place. I plateaued after a while, like, yes, it was an important piece of the journey, but it wasn't the whole journey.
Speaker 1:And it was this deeper inner work, this journey that I figured out, that got me the rest of the way to where I am now, got me the rest of the way to where I am now. And you know, since I've gone through this journey, I've been able to reintroduce foods again, which I wasn't able to before, and this is why I became so passionate about guiding people through this journey, instead of just focusing on the naturopathic things that I had been doing before, like nutrition and dietary intake and stress management and lifestyle choices. And while all of those things are absolutely important and necessary, they will take you to a point, but they will only take you so far if you don't address this other puzzle piece that I now look at and I now do and I now guide my own clients through. And then, you know, as I was figuring this out and as I was watching the people I was guiding completely transform their lives and become completely different by the end of their journeys with me, they were so empowered and energized and their health and their symptoms improved as a byproduct of this inner work that we were doing. But there was so much more than just that their whole lives, they felt more satisfied in their relationships with the work that they were doing. But what I was finding was a lot of the people that would come out the other side of this journey I would guide them through and they would say you know, I realize now that the work that I'm doing is no longer aligned with who. I really am Right Because when they first started on their work journey, their career journey, their entrepreneur journey, their whatever.
Speaker 1:If they have a job, they have a business, they have a career, whatever it is, the choices that they made going into their job, business or career was based on the. The choices that they made going into their job, business or career was based on the old survival patterns that they were operating from before they started this work. So people pleasing and perfectionism and overextending themselves in order to make others happy, prioritizing other people's needs instead of their own, because they felt that they needed to make other people happy in order to get their own sense of worth and value, in order to make sure that people accept them and like them, to avoid feeling rejected, so that they can belong, so that they can feel like they fit in and I've been absolutely guilty of that myself in my past. These are really common tendencies, especially for those of us who have been led to believe that there's something wrong with us, that we're too sensitive, that we're too much, that we're not enough and that there's something about us that needs to be fixed. And if we've grown up in an environment with people who gave us conditional love instead of unconditional love, who had their own emotional dysregulation, and it taught us that we needed to operate from these survival states in order to get our developmental needs met, in order to feel like we are safe, that we belong, that we're loved, in order to avoid being rejected, because, especially in those young years, we need to feel like those developmental needs are met and we need to feel safe. And so, coming back from that tangent, these people, who I would guide through this self-empowerment, inner liberation method, and they feel free to be themselves and they're feeling they've released themselves from the shackles of social conditionings and limiting beliefs and now they know how to establish healthy boundaries. And now they know who they are and what they actually want, instead of following what other people told them that they should want or following other people's expectations. Now they're saying, wow, you know, the choices that I made for my job, my career, my business no longer align with who I actually am and what I actually want. Or now they're saying, wow, you know the way I'm operating my business. I was overworking and I was people pleasing and I was overextending myself and I didn't have boundaries. And all of that needs to change. I need to enforce all of these things Now. I need to make these shifts in how I'm operating my business and who I'm operating my business with, or who I'm working with, or how I'm working, especially as a highly sensitive person, a neurodivergent person, somebody with a chronic illness.
Speaker 1:We need to kind of make accommodations for ourselves in order to feel supported, in order to make sure that our nervous system doesn't feel overwhelmed, and, like I've talked about in previous podcast episodes, is when you positively support yourself, make the accommodations as well as positively support yourself from the inside with self compassion, which is such an important point that you're going to hear me talking about more then. You know, the research shows that those of us who do have sensory processing sensitivity and highly sensitive people, neurodivergent we will experience more vantage sensitivity versus when we don't support ourselves. We're going to have more overwhelm, more emotional reactivity, more inflammation, more flare-ups, more symptoms coming out, and so this isn't just a nice to have. This is a necessary thing. This is the thing is those of us who are within this subset of the population. We're here for a reason, and a big part of that reason is we're here to break cycles. We're here to lead a new way forward, because a lot of these chains and cycles, especially in corporate culture, especially in society with, you know, in the job world, is that we need to operate in a certain way right. Money trumps all and the thing is is that that doesn't work for a lot of us, especially in this subset of the population neurodivergence, chronic illness, highly sensitive we need to operate in a different way in corporate culture, in the job world, in society, as an entrepreneur, if you're operating in a way that just doesn't align with what you actually want to be doing and how you actually want to be doing it.
Speaker 1:Part of the work that I shifted into doing and making that pivot, was to work with entrepreneurs. I've also worked with people in corporate and people leaving corporate to start their own business. I found that working with entrepreneurs just seemed to make sense because I'm an entrepreneur and helping them to align their business so that they're actually doing what feels most aligned for them, that they are following their purpose, that they are feeling fulfilled and I mean, even if they don't make any changes, following their purpose, that they are feeling fulfilled, and I mean even if they don't make any changes to their business. A lot of people. You know they find success in business, but then they get to this point where they realize money isn't enough anymore. There's something deeper that I need to fulfill within myself that money can't buy myself. That money can't buy. And I know, at the beginning stages of starting up a business, your first intention and the first thing that you're going to be looking at is I need to earn a living. We need an income in order to pay for our needs. But money in itself isn't enough, and I see this over and over again with the clients that I work with, especially the ones who have been have made it and they're doing really great and they're making a substantial income and they've got. Some of my clients are making more money than they will ever need in this entire lifetime, and now they realize there's to be more.
Speaker 1:I've lost connection with myself. I don't know who I am anymore. I've been focused so much on other people's expectations and focused so much on my business that I've forgotten who I am and what I want, and so I had made a pivot to my business. Instead of working with people with autoimmunity and endometriosis, I was finding because my health had improved and I had essentially put much of my chronic illness into remission. I wasn't really relating to the chronic illness autoimmune endometriosis sphere like I had once did, and so that gap was growing, like I talked about in one of my previous podcast episodes is, you know, as you advance and heal and grow and you're still working with maybe the same subset of the population that you had been at the beginning of your growth and evolution, then you might not be able to relate to them as much and you have to kind of reach back to relate to them and that's not helpful for you and that's not as helpful for them, right?
Speaker 1:Because they can start to feel like you don't really understand. And I've been finding to feel like you don't really understand. And I've been finding and I see this over and over in what I'm studying and my own personal experience is that if you, as you grow and evolve, is to grow and evolve who you're working with, that means that there's going to be maybe a bit more of an advanced client that you're going to be working with, or someone who's farther along on their path, or maybe just a different place in their path. And the world needs all of us, right, the world needs people who are working with beginners. The world needs people that are working with intermediates, the world needs people that are working with more advanced and the world needs people who can relate to different people on different paths and different points on the path. People on different paths and different points on the path.
Speaker 1:So I knew I needed to shift away from working with autoimmunity and endometriosis specifically and only, and so I was making these shifts first towards working with highly sensitive people and then making the shift towards working with entrepreneurs. I admit that there was maybe I hesitate to call it a mistake because I learned a lot from this choice but as I was making these shifts and pivots, I was feeling pressure. I was feeling pressure from within myself. I knew I needed to make a shift and there was a part of me that needed that answer now. And I was also getting kind of pressure from the outside world, from coaches and then from observing what's going on in the coaching industry, in the marketing industry, and I was feeling this pressure to hurry up and make a decision about who I'm working with and what my niche is, so that I can claim it. And I admit that I was a little hasty in trying to force myself to figure out that nook that I needed to fit in.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I say this is because, as I've been talking to entrepreneurs over the past year year and a half and doing my marketing to entrepreneurs, I keep finding people showing up in my DMs and emailing me and going Michelle, I really, really resonate with what you're saying and I feel like you could really help me, but I'm not an entrepreneur so I don't. I don't know like, can you help me? Can I work with you? And this kept happening over and over and over again. And the other thing is, with the entrepreneurs that I, that I am working with and that I have worked with, I'm not helping them directly with the business strategy aspect of things. Like they've got that figured out and they come to me. You know, like I'm not helping them with their copy and their marketing and their business strategy.
Speaker 1:What I'm helping them with is this inner paradigm shift for themselves, so that they can connect with themselves and they can connect with their truth and they can trust themselves and they can trust their own answers and they can figure out what their true soul purpose really is and step into that and have the confidence to show themselves and show their true selves, their authentic side, that they had been hiding from others out of worry about how other people would take them, out of worry that people wouldn't understand, out of worry that people might think that that's too woo or too weird. Right, because they've been in these places in their lives where they've been judged over and over and over again for being too sensitive, being too woo, being too weird, being too much. So there's this fear if they step up and actually be who they're meant to be, then people are going to reject them, they're going to lose business, they're going to have the trolls that are scoffing at them on the internet and they're going to get hate mail. And all of these things kept them from actually connecting with what they actually want and who they really are. And there was also, I tend to find, this level of guilt and shame around the fact that they are highly sensitive.
Speaker 1:They do have a chronic illness, they are neurodivergent and because of that they don't work the same way as other people. They don't think the same way as other people, and the things that other people would say are your strengths. They struggle with, but they have strengths in other areas that other people don't, but they have strengths in other areas that other people don't. They have other types of gifts that other people don't seem to understand, because we make up the minority, and so then the rest of the population, who don't make up this minority, don't understand these differences. And so so many of my clients would say you know, all of these things that I thought my whole life were deficits. You helped me recognize that these are my strengths, these are my gifts and these are the things for me to be leveraging and leading with in my work. And when they do that, they just find that everything happens and unfolds so much more easily. They enjoy what they're doing so much more when they're operating from their strengths, even if other people don't understand, and they're not trying to force themselves to operate in ways that just don't work for them right, trying to force the square peg into a round hole type thing.
Speaker 1:And so, as I was going through this mini dark night and I was like something's not right here, something doesn't feel aligned, I just had this intuitive knowing that something needs to be shifted here. And as I was sitting with this and reflecting on this and meditating on this, it became clear, especially with all the messages that I was getting from all these people saying but I'm not an entrepreneur, but I want to work with you is the fact that I'm not here just for entrepreneurs. You know, I was very hasty in picking a lane because I was told that's what I should. So I'm guilty of falling into that trap too and, like I always tell my clients when you should on yourself, it just makes a big mess. And that's exactly what I did to understand what does and doesn't work and get that whole perspective of working in the entrepreneurial world and working with entrepreneurs which doesn't mean I'm not working with entrepreneurs, but I'm opening up to looking at things from a different perspective.
Speaker 1:And what I see as a commonality in all the people that I work with, whether they're entrepreneurs, in all the people that I work with, whether they're entrepreneurs, whether they have some other type of job or career, whether they don't have a job or career at all in terms in a conventional way and some of my clients are retired and some of my clients are what they would term themselves domestic engineers and they stay at home and they do the important work of caring for their family All of these people resonate with what I was guiding them through to be their authentic self and live from their full potential so that they could lead change, so that they could create that impact that they know that they want to be creating in this world for the greater good, through breaking cycles and breaking the chains especially of the things like that intergenerational trauma, and getting out of survival mode so that they can thrive, so that they can lead first and be the change that they want to see in the world and lead by example and showing others what's possible, giving other people permission to be themselves, because they are leading by being themselves first. They're trailblazing this new way of being, from this authentically aligned place, knowing that the truth is it's not about do whatever you need to do to make the money, even if it means that you have to hide yourself and be somebody else and mask yourself and play the game. They know that they can't operate like that, and I know I can't operate like that. And stepping into your own authenticity and being that example is being a leader, and every single one of my clients are leaders in this way, starting with being a self-leader. This is so important because this is how the world is going to change.
Speaker 1:It always starts with you, and when you are living from this authentically aligned place, where you are connected to your truth and you're following your intuition and you're doing what lights you up and you're making that contribution in the way that aligns best with your strengths, your highest zone of genius, your unique gift and your unique edge, then you're making that bigger impact. And when you are operating from this place, you're operating from a place of thriving, and when you're thriving, your nervous system is operating from this place of centeredness, of coherence. And so when you have this wider window of tolerance and you have a greater level of nervous system coherence, then this not only benefits you, right, when your nervous system is in this place, you're going to benefit because you're going to feel more centered, you're going to feel more resilient, you're going to be able to navigate challenges and come back to center. No matter what storms of life come through, no matter what challenges you face, you're going to be able to move through them and they won't derail you and you'll be able to come back to your own strength and resilience center so much more quickly. And you're going to be operating from this place where you know that you're thriving with energy and clarity and joy and satisfaction when your nervous system is in this place, and it also impacts and improves your health.
Speaker 1:And this is why this work helped so much with the autoimmune and endometriosis patients that I was working with, because studies find that these are conditions of immune dysfunction. Right, both autoimmune and endometriosis are conditions of immune dysfunction, as well as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and so and a lot of other conditions. And what studies show is that the biggest trigger for immune dysfunction is nervous system dysregulation. If your nervous system is dysregulated, if you have low coherence, if you have a small window of tolerance, then that is going to set you up for allostatic overload and that is going to trigger immune system dysregulation and that is what can trigger so many of these chronic illness conditions that you know. You get to this point where, yeah, you can support the immune system, you can support the hormones, you can try to change the diet and the lifestyle to support all of those things, but if you don't address the nervous system and what's impacting the nervous system, you're never going to get these conditions under control.
Speaker 1:And the thing, the biggest thing, that impacts the nervous system is your inner emotional environment, and I know I've said this before and it bears repeating. Right, your inner emotional environment is your relationship with yourself, how you speak to yourself, how you treat yourself, the level of respect that you have for yourself, the level of kindness and compassion that you have for yourself, how much you accept you. And especially for the people that I've worked with with autoimmunity the highly sensitive people, the neurodivergent people there is a common thread that we feel like something is wrong with us. We've been conditioned to believe, right, that our sensitivity, our neurodivergence, you know our differences mean that there's something wrong with us. We're too sensitive, we're too much.
Speaker 1:And those of us with autoimmunity, it's kind of twofold. Right, you have a chronic illness that causes you to believe that there's something wrong with you. But on the other side of the token, energetically, what I found over and over again when I was a naturopathic doctor is this energetic association of you. Think about it. Autoimmunity is your immune system is not accepting some aspect of yourself, whether that be a system in your body or an organ in your body. Your immune system is rejecting it. And, energetically, I see this over and over and over again is that what I find when we take a look at the inner emotional environment is. There is some aspect of that autoimmune patient who doesn't accept something about themselves, and so they lack self-compassion.
Speaker 1:And those of us who are neurodivergent and highly sensitive when we feel like there's something wrong with us and we need to change and we need to hide ourselves and mask ourselves, we lack self-compassion. And this is the thing I have been diving into rabbit holes lately about the research on self-compassion, and self-compassion is the antidote to so many things. It's the antidote to feelings of guilt and shame, which are highly associated with chronic conditions like autoimmunity. Self-compassion is the antidote for rejection, sensitivity, which is such a common thing that we see especially with ADHD. And self-compassion is something that they've even studied with entrepreneurs And've found that while business strategy is an important aspect to entrepreneurial success, so is self-compassion, so that you can navigate the uncertainty of the entrepreneurial world and come out the other side more successful and with less burnout.
Speaker 1:And there's many studies that look at self-compassion and healthcare practitioners, for example, and how self-compassion can minimize and prevent burnout, compassion, fatigue, if you can't tell. I am really passionate about this right now because I think that this, I believe that this is an important root of the root, of the root of the root, and you know, when I trained as a naturopathic doctor, one of the oaths that we swear by is treat the root cause always, and I've always done so. But the root cause that I thought was the root cause isn't the root of the root, and for so much of who I'm guiding, developing self-compassion is such an important puzzle piece here. So you're going to hear me speaking a lot more about self-compassion and the science of it and my own process of how I guide you to more of it, because it is a journey. It's not something that you can just go oh, I just need to be compassionate with myself and like, oh, okay, it's.
Speaker 1:It's not an intellectual process that you can intellectualize with your mind. It needs to come from the inside out. It needs to come from the inside out. It needs to come from somatic experience, a heart-led experience from your body, because your nervous system speaks from your body to your mind more than your mind to your body. For all of these reasons, this is why I'm passionate about it.
Speaker 1:All of this, to say in a roundabout way, I'm making some shifts to the language of who I'm speaking to and how, because I don't just speak to entrepreneurs, but there's another layer about this, in terms of what I'm doing and the shifts that you're going to be seeing me make, and I hesitate to tell you all the details because it hasn't fully landed. And this is the other thing. When you're going through a change, when you know something needs to shift, there's a few different stages, and I've mentioned one of these stages, which is okay. So stuff is coming back around that I thought I dealt with before and it's coming back around again. And I know now that that is an indication that I'm I dealt with before and it's coming back around again. And I know now that that is an indication that I'm about to go through an up level.
Speaker 1:But there is this liminal space, the void before you. Fully, everything fully becomes fully clear. And I'm in this place right now and I don't want to repeat the same thing that I've done in the past, which is I need to rush and hastily make a decision about my direction. So I don't want to make that decision again. I don't want to repeat that again. But do know that I have had this dream in the back of my mind for quite a number of years now, probably the last four years Since I've guided myself through this process that I tell you about here.
Speaker 1:I know how much it changes lives and I know how important this is and I know this is not something that I learned when I studied to be a naturopathic doctor, and I know that my colleagues do amazing work as naturopathic doctors and clinicians and practitioners. And I also know that many of them know that there's something more, especially when it comes to their autoimmune chronic illness patients. They know that they can support them to a degree, but they're very difficult to treat and this puzzle piece that I talk about here is one of the reasons why they might not get all the results that they would want to see that their patient receives from treatment of these chronic illnesses. And I also know that there are many of my colleagues who know this. They already know that there's these underlying things going on in the emotional world of their patient, right. They can see that they're stressors and they can see that they don't have a great relationship with themselves. They can see that there's all kinds of inner pressure that they're putting on themselves. They can see, maybe, that there's these patterns of people pleasing and perfectionism and codependence and prioritizing others before themselves, and they can see that these are the things that are keeping them from actually getting more of the results than they could possibly be getting from all the other treatments that they're doing.
Speaker 1:And the thing is is that we learn a little bit about how to navigate and how to support that, but it goes so much deeper than what we learned in naturopathic college and I've gone through my own journey of figuring this out for myself so I could get myself back on my feet after being bed bound, to come up with this methodology and it's like a combination of all different types of areas of study that I've particularly been certified in and put them all together and mustered up the courage to walk through the flames, because it's not an easy process to look at yourself. It's not an easy process to do this inner healing work because it's not always comfortable, right, and it's human nature to want to stick with the familiar. You know, doing this work, to go on this journey, is not a familiar process. All of this to say that I have this desire to teach what I have figured out to my fellow practitioners because, like I said, we don't learn this in naturopathic college. We learn it to an extent, but there's more, and I've figured out this more and I've gone through this whole journey for myself, and also all the additional certifications and learnings and studying that I've done and all the rabbit holes of research that I've dived in to get to this point where there's this calling within me to show other practitioners what I figured out so that they can pass the torch, so that they can use this puzzle piece to give their patients even better results as well. For the practitioners who resonate with this and want to learn this process, when you go through this yourself and you get to this place of greater coherence and you get to this place where you're operating from this inner knowing, from this place where you have awakened and individuated, not only does this guide your patients to even better results, but you're more satisfied, you're more successful, and this is how you can operate in your full potential in your work, without burning out, without getting to the place of compassion fatigue, because I know so many of us have been in this place of burnout and I've been there too. It's not a fun place to be, and one of the solutions is when you do get to this place where you're connected with yourself and your nervous system and you're operating from your truth and you are working in the way that's most aligned for you and you've gone through this process. You can lead your patients through this process, so I'm figuring out how I'm going to incorporate this into my work.
Speaker 1:I've been wanting to do this for four years now and there have been a couple of times where I've moved forward with starting to create something and, for one reason or another, it wasn't the appropriate time. There's been a couple of times where I've paired with a fellow naturopathic doctor and you know life and they had to abandon the project because of their own personal life, stuff that was going on. And I see, now that 2024 has been, this moment of this has been sitting in the back of my mind, and even though I know I also really love working with entrepreneurs and leaders and you know people in the general public, whether you know you're, you have a career or a job or you don't when you know that you want to go through this process of inner liberation, I love guiding you through it. But I know, if I want to make that bigger impact, if I can teach fellow practitioners what I've figured out, because I've figured out something important and I don't see this anywhere else in terms of what I figured out, and I want to pass this on to the practitioners so that they can pass it on to their patients, and that's how I can create a greater impact to the greater good and impact more people than just the one-on-one clients that are in my world Can't tell. I'm passionate about this, and so I'm sitting with all of this right now. I know I'm in a liminal space and I'm giving myself permission to stop and allow myself to integrate all of this instead of trying to hastily push forward in a direction and this is really important for you if you're going through something like this is to give yourself that permission. And this is the thing is your intuition speaks to you in those moments of stillness, and so it's really important to give yourself moments of stillness so that you can hear the messages of your inner knowing. And right now, that's what I'm doing, and I'm listening to the messages of my inner knowing, and I know there's more to come.
Speaker 1:And in the midst of all of this as well, as I was moving through this mini dark night and I was moving through all these hormonal changes and all of these symptoms of ADHD and autism were becoming more prevalent. As I'm moving through these hormonal changes, I decided okay, I want to go talk to a professional about this. So I decided to find a therapist who was able and who is able to do an assessment. It took a little while to find somebody who is able to do an assessment. I found many therapists who I could see to support me but they weren't able to do an assessment and I found that that was a piece of the puzzle that's going to be really important for me to better understand myself so I can help the people I'm working with better understand themselves. And so I've been working with a therapist now for about a month or so.
Speaker 1:A couple of really interesting points. My therapist is floored by my progress in such a short period of time. She told me that it's very obvious how much work I've already done on myself. She said she's never had a patient move so quickly and is in such an advanced place as I am in terms of the realizations and how fast I'm able to move through these concepts and move through the processing. That was a wonderful confirmation for me that this work really it is substantial and it is important. And oftentimes my clients have seen therapists for years and they tell me that this work gets them further, faster than the work that they did with their therapist. But what I also find is doing that initial foundation work with a therapist or a counselor or other type of practitioner or doing other types of personal development work really does give you that foundation so that the work that I guide you through will skyrocket you quickly.
Speaker 1:So, as I'm working with this therapist, she has officially diagnosed me with ADHD, which was something that I was pretty sure that I had, and she's quite certain that it is AUDHD. So autism and ADHD. But she wants to take more time before she can really be certain about the autism diagnosis and I'm all for that. I think it's really important to be 100% certain With these diagnoses. I already knew these things about me, but hearing it confirmed it opened up another sort of portal in my mind of like okay, so yeah, I wasn't gaslighting myself, I wasn't just making stuff up like this is a thing, and it also looking back on so many things about my childhood and how I was in school. Not going to go into all of them now, but all of these things make sense now that I see it and I go, oh, yeah, okay, and I have to say that the more I figure out how my nervous system operates and my brain operates and I actually accommodate for that instead of trying to work against it and try to force myself to do things that I think that I should, just because you know that's how neurotypicals operate the more I find my own way of operating, the more energy that I have. That just goes to show how much energy we put towards trying to operate in ways that are not aligned with our design, and this is the thing as well that I want to point out and maybe I'll do another podcast episode about.
Speaker 1:This is oftentimes so, especially with ADHD. There's a strong association with female hormones and enters menopause that all of a sudden, maybe ADHD type symptoms that were dealable all of a sudden become like whoa, what's happening? And I recognize now that that's what's been going on over the last few months and that's also why I think there's this big surge in women in perimenopause who are now getting diagnosed. There's a couple of reasons for that right those of us who are in perimenopausal age and menopausal age. When we were younger, they didn't understand everything that they understand now when it comes to neurodivergence and autism and ADHD, especially in females, because all the studies were done on males and boys and ADHD and autism in girls look completely different, and especially in women.
Speaker 1:And by the time we become adults, we've already figured out how to mask and how to like, try to like, force ourselves to operate in ways that you know, so that we kind of fit in and blend in and belong. Because these are big things that we struggled with when we were younger feeling like an alien, feeling like we don't fit in. And, you know, in order to survive, in order to find some sense of safety, we figured out how to like, do what we needed to do to fit in in some way, even if it didn't feel right. I've often said when I was growing up, I felt like everybody else had this instruction manual on how to be a human and they forgot to give it to me, and I know that other people have felt that way as well. My therapist, she's spent many, many years specializing in ADHD and autism, particularly in children, at the beginning of her career, and she's been finding in more recent years that more and more women in perimenopausal age are showing up to her practice and she's seeing this tendency of women in their 40s and 50s and 30s who are starting to see like, oh, having this diagnosis and recognizing that I am ADHD or autistic or both explains everything.
Speaker 1:And once you better understand how you're built, how your nervous system runs, how your brain operates and how to navigate your particular neurotype, it empowers you. Then you're able to work with it instead of against it. And this is the thing. So many people are at war with themselves. Like I mentioned earlier, so many of us don't accept how we are, how we're designed, who we are, and the more we don't accept, the more that we're at war with ourselves and the more our nervous system is on this high alert and the more nervous system dysregulation triggers all these other physiological issues, which causes symptoms and illness and dis-ease. And then the more symptoms you have, the more you don't accept it, the more pressure on your nervous system and then the more dysregulation to your nervous system, to your immune system, to your hormones, to all of your physiological systems system to your hormones, to all of your physiological systems. Can you see the vicious cycle? So this is where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1:I know this podcast episode probably doesn't make all. It's not based on one particular topic, and I know I just spoke in a bunch of parentheses. My husband and I he kind of pointed out out we are very similar in the way we speak and how we relate and I love the analogy that he gives is we tend to speak in parentheses, so we'll be talking about something, and then there's going to be like this little side tangent, this parentheses, and then we talk in parentheses within the parentheses. So we'll have this little side tangent, this parentheses, and then we talk in parentheses within the parentheses. So we'll have this little side tangent and then it'll take us to this other side tangent and all these parentheses, and then we end up coming back to what we were talking about originally. So you probably noticed that I tend to talk this way in my podcasts, especially when I don't have a script.
Speaker 1:So I hope that sharing some of what I've been going through lately might be helpful for you, especially if you might be kind of questioning, maybe if you've had a challenging moment or a mini dark night, or if you're finding that like there's lots of stuff coming up for you now and maybe old stuff is coming back around for you to look at and you're questioning why is this coming up right now you might be on the edge of an up level, and what's really important here is a understanding and being with it and not trying to avoid it or run away from it or suppress it, because the more that you try to hide it or suppress it or avoid it, it's going to have control over you in ways that you don't want. And if you're willing to sit with it and be with the discomfort and knowing, as with all things, this too shall change, then on the other side of it you're going to find more clarity, you're going to find more peace, you're going to find an up level. And the other piece to this is that the clarity might not come all in one go. You might find as you move through the discomfort as with all things, this too shall change you're going to find a place where it's no longer as uncomfortable, but you still might be not in full clarity yet. And to be okay with that and to understand that there will be this place where you're in this void, in this liminal space, where you're not quite in the past but you're not quite in this new place yet and you're kind of in the in-between, and the more you can surrender to that and give yourself moments of quiet so that your inner knowing and your intuition can speak to you and let you know what the next steps are, instead of trying to push through, instead, what the next steps are, instead of trying to push through, instead of trying to occupy yourself, instead of trying to push, push, push, work, work, work. Because when you avoid being in the quiet and the stillness, you're not going to hear the messages and things won't be clear. And I know this isn't an easy place to be if you relate to this and you're in this place, but the more you're willing to be with it, the more you're going to be able to get through it. And this is the thing.
Speaker 1:Coming from someone who's gone through these dark nights over and over in my life, I've had a few of them now and some really big ones and going through this inner work and what I've gone through it doesn't make these moments of challenge easier. It's not like, oh, you know that was easy, but you step into them with more clarity and more resilience and you can move through it more easily. Yeah, there's going to be these moments of discomfort and it's going to feel icky, and you know that that's part of the process and you can be with it, kind of like. There's an analogy of I think it's buffalo when there's a storm coming. The buffalo don't try to outrun the storm and run away from the storm. They actually turn to it and face it and move through it, walk through the storm towards the storm, because they know that that is the clearest path, the quickest path to getting to the good weather and the blue skies on the other side. If they try to outrun the storm, they're going to be running and running and the storm is eventually going to catch up to them and they're still going to have to deal with the storm. But if you face it you're going to get through it and sure it means that you're going to have to deal with the storm itself. But the more you find that nervous system coherence, the more that you are able to create that wider window of tolerance, the more you are centered within yourself, the more you have this self-compassion and self-acceptance and the more you trust yourself and your inner guidance system and you trust the process and you trust the flow of life, then you're able to get through this so much more easily. So I hope there's something here that helps you in some way, gives you're able to get through this so much more easily. So I hope there's something here that helps you in some way, gives you some insight in some way.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to reach out and send me a DM or an email and let me know how this episode landed for you, I would love to hear from you. And if you're listening to this in September when I am releasing this episode, know that I have a very limited time special going on. If you would like to have a session with me, I'm offering them at a very special rate and if you would like one of those, I will include the link in the show notes. If the link is in the show notes, then they are still available, or you can send me a DM and we can chat about that. And if you're listening to this later on, after the special is over, I'm happy to chat with you about what other options are available for you. Thank you for being here, thank you for listening and I appreciate you listening and being part of my community. I'm grateful for you and know that I will be publishing more podcast episodes more regularly than I had during the summer, so I look forward to speaking to you again soon.