Teri Hales  0:15  
Welcome to the Emancipate Your Mind podcast. I'm your host, certified religious transition and trauma recovery coach, Teri Hales. I help people step out of the shadows of religious fear and shame, and embrace their authentic selves with love and empathy. If you're ready to throw off the shackles of learned binary thinking, and explore a more nuanced approach to life, this is your playground.

Teri Hales  0:51  
Hello, everyone, welcome back to the Emancipate Your Mind podcast, I am so excited to dig into the next several podcasts with you all. We're going to be talking about how to fill the void. You've deconstructed for a couple of years with me, you feel like you have processed a lot of the past of where you came from. But how do we build in the present? How do we begin to live lives of freedom and safety and community and connection? How do we do that? And while I don't have all the answers, and I am on this path with you, and I'm learning right alongside you, there are several things that I feel like I've discovered or that other people have discovered that I am really excited to share with you. But as I was sitting thinking about, you know, where do we start? Do we talk about building healthy communities? Do we get into having a healthy sex life? And how do we talk about you know, getting into a place of freedom and safety and just expansion. And I realized that one of the things that kept coming up- a fear of mine, if you will- I'm always afraid of creating a cult myself. But I've also noticed that a lot of people who deconstruct, we have a tendency to hop from one cult culture, or one high demand culture, into another high demand culture, because we don't take enough time to really root into who we are, and to build that relationship with ourselves first. So before we hop into how do we fill that void? How do we start building these communities and these relationships? And how do we feel free? Really, we need to spend some more time, because I think the last time we talked about this was two years ago, when I first started the podcast, we need to spend some more time with really getting clear about who we are, what we want, what we value, what we believe, and really like, who is the essence of this person that we are right now in this life? And then how do we create some flexibility for us to try some things on, but also listen to our own authority, so that we can take things off that we do try on that don't really fit. Because that is what this journey is all about. And if we haven't developed those skills with ourselves, where we can really listen to what's going on, know ourselves, and be able to be flexible as that self grows and matures and changes with new information, then we're going to be susceptible to more control and to more high demand systems. And I don't want that for myself. And I have a feeling you don't want that for you either. 

Teri Hales  4:07  
So today's topic and the next several topics are going to be about rooting into you, helping you really build your relationship with yourself so that you can go and adventure out in the world and begin creating those things for yourself in a way that protects you and keeps you safe. Really rooting into our own personal authority is going to give us both the confidence and the flexibility to venture out into the world and begin creating the lives that we want for ourselves. Because I don't know about many of you, but when I was going through deconstruction, it was a very, almost a lonely process in some ways. I needed to be alone in order to hear my own voice. I almost sort of like cocooned for a little while so that I could sort through all of the information and the feelings that were coming up for me. And when it was time to start filling the void, I could feel that energy wanting to move outward. But there was some fear there of what if I get hurt again? What if I am deceived again? What if I manipulated again? How will I know? How do I trust myself? 

Teri Hales  5:32  
The very first topic I want to talk about is, what do you really want in life and why haven't you figured it out yet? So I was watching "The Notebook" which I have decided I hate that movie. I hate it. It's so full of really unhealthy relationship dynamics. And there are so many red flags in that movie, but I was watching it anyway, in November. And there's a scene in there where Noah says to Ally, like, "what do you want?" And she says, "it's not that simple". And he goes, "What do you want? What do you want?" And instead of answering the question, she gets in the car, and she drives away. And I think a lot of us do that with ourselves. We don't know what we want. And so we just don't ever tell ourselves what we want, we won't admit it to ourselves, we get in the car, and we drive away. The problem with this is, is if we don't know what we want, if we don't know what would feel good in our lives, and what kind of lives we want to live in, what kind of relationships we want to create, and what kind of communities we want to be a part of, and what we value- if we don't know what feels good for us- And remember, we're all individuals. So what feels good for me will be different than what feels good for you, and what feels good, maybe for your spouse, and what feels good for your kids and what feels good for your best friend and for your mom. We're trying to figure out what feels good for me, what do I want? And when we can't get clear about that with ourselves, we end up creating things that we don't want. And we end up staying in places that don't serve us. And we ended up not setting boundaries, when boundaries would feel really good for us. 

Teri Hales  7:33  
So one of the first questions before we begin building a life for ourselves, is really getting clear about what do I want. So if this is something that you struggle with, please know that you are not alone. I would say the vast majority of my clients struggle with figuring out what do I want now. And there are reasons for that. So stay tuned, because that's what we're talking about today. And we're gonna get into some really practical tools for figuring out what you want. 

Teri Hales  8:12  
Now, before we go further, you have asked for it and I am so excited to deliver. We are going to begin having live interactive question and answer sessions every Wednesday night starting January 18 at 6:30pm Mountain Time, so that'll be 5:30pm. Pacific Time 8:30pm. Eastern Time. And these will be online, they will be virtual, and they're for monthly donors. So no matter how much or how little you donate to the podcast, you can be involved in the live interactive question and answer sessions each Wednesday when you donate monthly to the podcast. These calls will allow you to ask questions, get clarification, apply the podcast to your personal life, and share your own points of view and research. It's kind of a one to one coaching session, as well as an ask me anything about the podcast or about how I arrived at that research. We can talk about research. It really is driven by you. I am there to answer your questions about the podcast so that you can apply it better to your life. To donate and to be a part of these calls go to emancipateyourmind.org look on the right hand side of the page and you'll find a window that says support the podcast and give a gift. The default is already set to the monthly donation box. Choose the amount you want to give. This donation allows me to spend more time researching for and producing the podcast as well as the freedom to hire others to help me make the podcast the best it can be. And it allows me to offer more interactive experiences like this. We're still working to make this process easier and more streamlined, but for now, this is how the process works. Because I am part of the Mormon Discussions, Podcast Syndicate, I get a report of new monthly donors from the Mormon Discussions Foundation on the fifth of each month. Those donors will receive emails with links for those weekly live question answer sessions. But they're also going to get exclusive tools, exercises and journal prompts, to help them get even more benefit from the podcasts and invitations to attend any workshops we hold throughout the year for free.

Teri Hales  10:38  
If you want to be included in the live discussions between when you donate, and when I get that report on the fifth, for now, please also email me at Teri@emancipatedcoaching.com so I can get you on the list for the next call within 24 to 48 hours. So if you're wanting to be a part of the Wednesday call, if you can donate by at least Monday, that gives me time to get you added to the list and make sure you have the information that you need. The email addresses in the show notes for easy access, as well as the link to donate. So both of those things are right there in the shownotes. Go down there and click on them, and it'll take you right to where you need to go. I can't wait to spend time live with you all and answer your questions. I know this is going to help us build so much community and it's going to enrich the podcast as well. These live question answers will inform the topics that we're covering on the podcast, and just make the podcast more useful for you and for everyone that listens after you. 

Teri Hales  11:47  
Now, why don't we already know what we want and need? Right? I remember Kevin sometime early in our marriage saying if you don't know what you want, who does? Who else has been there where someone is asking you like Noah was asking Alli? "What do you want?" And you didn't know, you didn't know what you wanted, and you couldn't articulate it. Or maybe you did kind of know what you wanted but you couldn't put it into words and share it with someone. This is really common for those of us coming from high demand religion for several different reasons. 

Teri Hales  12:25  
First, you may have been taught to trust authority over yourself to decide what is best for you. A lot of times in high demand religion, we are taught to defer to authority, whether it is directly to God, but usually directly to God means what a human leader has interpreted God to mean, right? And so we have been taught to listen to their authority about what is best for our life over our own wisdom and knowing. So that's part of it. 

Teri Hales  13:03  
The second part of it is many of us, from the time we were tiny kids were given a roadmap about what a good life should look like and we never learned to rely on our own inner voice to guide our journey. So we were never really given the opportunity to listen to our own wisdom. So we haven't developed those muscles yet. Because somebody just laid out a roadmap and said, first you're going to do this, then you're going to do this, then you'll do this. And this is what you're going to do throughout your entire life. And at the end that will equal a good life and you'll die knowing that you did the right thing. The end. And you'll live in eternal paradise, and everything's gonna be great. And so many of us just followed the roadmap. We did what we were told to do. There may have been a little bit of individuation there. We might have gotten to decide maybe a little bit how we dressed or a little bit what kind of music we liked, or what kind of friends we had. Or we may have even gotten to decide like what we studied in school. But for the most part, we had a roadmap of how life was supposed to look so that we could be good people and die feeling good about our lives. So we haven't learned to flex those muscles and really listen to ourselves to figure out what we want, because we've been so concerned about following the plan. 

Teri Hales  14:32  
The third reason many of us don't know what we want or need is because we were raised to be people pleasers. Many of us in high demand religion were taught to value other people's feelings over our own needs. And we have strong inner voices that silence or shame our needs and our wants when they arise. So you have wants and needs, but every time those things bubble up to the surface, there's a part of you that tells you you shouldn't want that you're being selfish, that you should just stay quiet, keep the peace, that other people's feelings are more valid or important. And so you stay silent and just keep it to yourself. And there are these inner voices that just kind of massage, silence, or shame your needs and wants as they come up. 

Teri Hales  15:25  
The next reason sometimes we have a hard time knowing what we want and need is because of codependency, and we talked a lot last year about codependency. And basically, this is when we were taught that if we were attuned to other people's wants and needs well enough that they would do the same for us. We wouldn't have to know what we want and need because someone else would do it for us. So this looks like: I become really attuned to what other people want and need -and that kind of goes hand in hand with people pleasing. But I pay a lot of attention to your facial expressions, and I can name your emotions. And I can recognize when you're getting angry or sad or afraid or anxious, and I rush into caretake your stuff, hoping that in return, you will do the same for me. And often in codependent relationships, that doesn't happen because we're codependent with someone who uses our codependency as supply. But occasionally there are two codependent people that will sort of meet those needs for one another and we become enmeshed in that way. So it's like a two codependents enmeshing with one another, where we're trying to intuit one another's needs. But the problem is that if I'm focused on your needs, I can't drive my own life, and the other person ends up driving my life. So I end up being what the other person wants me to be because I've given them those keys. We give our power to the other person and we say, "Look, I'm going to take care of all of your needs, because that feels safer for me, because I don't know how to read my own emotions. I don't know how to intuit my own needs. And so I'm just going to take care of yours, and you read me and tell me what I need, and you give me what you think I need." And it usually ends up with both of us having a lot of resentment and a lot of hurt feelings and disappointments, because no one knows us as well as we know ourselves. Or at least no one has the potential to know us as intimately and as well as we know ourselves. So codependency can definitely keep us from knowing what we want and need, we might be really good at knowing what other people maybe are feeling and what they might want, right because we can't ever get inside of someone's head. But we don't know ourselves, we become really attuned and empathic to others, but really numb and kind of ignorant of our own wants and needs. 

Teri Hales  18:06  
The next reason we might not know what we want need is because we had emotionally unavailable or unpredictable parents. So we had emotionally unavailable caretakers and we were told that having wants and needs of our own was not allowed. It was discouraged. It may have been mocked, because our parents and caregivers weren't capable of handling them and helping us manage and work through those things. So because they felt inept at dealing with our wants and needs, we just weren't allowed to have any. And so we learned that having wants and needs of our own was a burden. So we kept those things to ourselves in order to preserve our attachment with our primary caregivers, who we needed for survival as children. So if you had emotionally unavailable or unpredictable parents, you may have learned to stuff your wants and needs, because otherwise you could burden your parents, and either they ignored your want and need, they mocked it, or they just disappointed you in some way. 

Teri Hales  19:18  
Which leads me to my next one, which is repeated disappointment. When we experience repeated disappointment where we've expressed wants and needs to someone and they have ignored them or suppressed them or mocked them or done the opposite- some of us have family members for that happened-  we expressed a want and we got the exact opposite of what we expressed. What begins to happen inside of us when that recurs over and over again is we begin suppressing and ignoring our wants and needs ourselves. We almost like give up. We surrender. And so we develop behaviors to numb our disappointment or comfort ourselves for being ignored. And so we engage in these almost- they'll feel like compulsive behaviors now - to numb feelings that are trying to tell us we have wants and needs. Because if you've learned over time that your wants and needs don't matter that there'll be ignored, that they'll be mocked, that you're going to be disappointed, many of us begin pretending like we don't have them and what we do is we mask out that voice.  All the emotions that come up that say, "Hey, this is what you need. This is what you're feeling. This is what you want". We began shoving that under, you know, drinking a lot of alcohol or engaging with, you know, sexual partners, or watching pornography or overeating or overworking. We stay super, super busy, so that we don't have to hear what our thoughts and feelings are saying, or we sleep a lot. We do things that drown out the voice inside of us, that's still there and never quits speaking, we just find ways to drown it out so we can't hear it. Because if we can't hear it, then we can't get disappointed. Or we at least numb the disappointment. 

Teri Hales  21:29  
These are the reasons we don't know what we want or need sometimes, even as adults. We've been living in these bodies for decades, but we don't know what we want and need because somewhere along the way we were told to quit listening to ourselves, that we couldn't trust ourselves, or that if we express the things that we heard inside of ourselves, they weren't going to be met and we were going to be disappointed. So take a moment, if you need to, and really hold these pieces of yourself. They were trying to help you survive. They were doing their very best to help you get your needs met. And our primary need when we're children is to be connected to a caregiver who can help provide shelter, food, love and belonging, and safety for us as kids. And we did whatever we needed to do to preserve that relationship, even at the expense of ourselves. So it makes sense. You're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. In fact, you are working exactly the way your brain was designed to work to keep you safe in childhood. But you're an adult now and you're able to meet these needs for yourself. You're able to create safety and security. You're able to reparent yourself. You're able to be that caregiver that you wish you had; the one who can recognize that you have needs, get curious with you about what those things are saying, brainstorm how you can meet those needs in a way that is healthy for both adult you and the child you. You're able to show empathy to yourself and to comfort yourself in ways that serve both adult you and child you. So it makes sense that you are where you are. You're operating exactly the way we would expect you to operate given what you've been through. And you aren't stuck here. You can begin to make changes to help all the parts of you feel safe and secure and able to move forward into the future to create what you want. 

Teri Hales  23:57  
So how do you get reacquainted with your wants and needs? Even with all the things getting in the way of knowing what we want need, our inner wisdom has never stopped communicating those things to us. Your wants and needs didn't just leave you. You don't have to go on some long journey to find them. They're right there with you, just like always. But like we were talking about, we may have to intentionally tune in to hear its voice and probably clear away some of the distracting internal chatter that distracts us from what it's saying. So in this episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about how we tune in. And in the next episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about how do we work with those distractions, those voices that we were talking about that shame or suppress our wants and needs when they come up? How do we work with those pieces so that they can step out of the way and we can work with our wants and our needs to start moving forward and building the life that would feel good for us. 

Teri Hales  25:04  
Now I know the first one is going to upset some of you. I've heard it before in the past, but it doesn't make it less valuable. The first one is get quiet. Many of us have learned to cope with difficult feelings that having our needs and wants unmet created in our lives by keeping mentally busy. If our mind is always going, if we're always distracted, then we can't hear what our bodies are telling us. If you've been coping with your unmet needs by staying mentally busy, sitting quietly is going to feel really uncomfortable at first, and your brain will try to get the wheels spinning again. I have been there. I think I've told you when I very first started trying to incorporate more quiet into my busy, perfectionist, people pleasing, over achieving brain, it felt a little bit like torture. I would sit down and literally seconds later, my mind was spinning with "did I put the laundry in the dryer? I need to make this for dinner. That's right, I have this appointment this afternoon. Oh my gosh, I need to do this". My mind would start going and I had to learn how to work with that part of myself, with that neurological mechanism that was in place to protect me. So you're gonna want to get up and do something or check your phone or start a conversation or listen to music or watch a show. And that's okay. Your brain is trying to protect you. And when you notice it, even if you're in the middle of your distraction behavior, just stop. Thank your brain for trying to protect you. Turn off the burner if you need to. Put your phone in a different room if you need to. And go back to your quiet place. And you may have to do this multiple times. But remember, it's practice. You're not trying to be perfect. We're just looking for progress. When I very first started trying to sit in the quiet, I don't think I made it three seconds. And so I would have like a three second segment. And then notice myself wanting to get up having that energy in my body, my mind started racing, and I'd have to notice it and be like, "thank you. I'm safe. It's okay for me to sit quietly, I can handle whatever comes up. And if I can't handle it alone, I have a therapist on dial, I live with the therapist, I have friends I can call, okay". And I'd sit down again for my three to five seconds until it happened again. But slowly over time, what happened is I was able to sit for longer and longer periods, I still can't go for longer than I don't know, five minutes before I start feeling antsy. But five minutes is a huge improvement from five seconds. Or let's be honest, for like two or three seconds. I've made a lot of progress. 

Teri Hales  28:09  
Does that mean that I sit in silence and my mind is blank? No, you're not looking for your mind to be blank, you're looking for your mind to be focused. And honestly, doing this with myself has allowed me to focus in all other parts of my life. So I have found a couple of tips for busy brained people. So if you're like me where your mind really starts spinning, here's a couple of things that can be helpful for you if you're wanting to incorporate more quiet so that you can hear what your wants and needs are. I found that actively scanning my body, keeping my brain busy with that, and keeping it on task like okay, we're not thinking about laundry right now. And we're not thinking about how I need to return these phone calls. And we're not thinking about my appointment right now. I'm just focusing on scanning my body. 

Teri Hales  29:05  
I start at my head, but you can start at your feet or anywhere else that feels intuitive to you. And I would go from my head and I would ask myself curiosity questions. So like what do I feel in my head right now? And I would just try to notice any sensations. Do I feel any tingling? Is there any aching? So many of us have been living in our bodies- like we live in our head and our body is just this like animal that we ride, right? Like all of us is up in our head and we just don't pay attention to our body. We don't know when our feet are cold. We don't know when we're hungry. We forget to eat. We forget to pee. We do all of these things because we're not paying attention to our body. We live entirely up in our head. And so actively scanning my body brings me from that feeling of being outside. Many of us who have trauma have this feeling of being outside of our body. That's called depersonalization We almost feel like we're floating either above ourselves or to the side of ourselves, and we're watching things happen to us. We're unaware of what's happening to our flesh and bones and our nervous system, we're just, we're unaware of it. And so if you've had that feeling where you feel like you're outside of your body, and unaware of the feelings your body is experiencing, body scanning can really, really bring us in, and kind of bring the essence of us back into our flesh where there's a lot of wisdom, a lot of information that will help us live that life of freedom and connection, and security and safety that we really want. 

Teri Hales  31:04  
So, when you're sitting in the quiet from my busy brain, people scanning slowly. Like I said, I start with my head, and I just, I almost like, pull my head into segments. So I look at the top of my head. For those of you who are into like Reiki. I almost scan my body according to chakras. I didn't realize that's what I was doing whenever I first started this, but I'll start with that, like crown space in my head. What do I feel on the crown, like where my hair is? Like, right now I feel a warmth and there's like a tingling and it feels really open and expansive. And it feels really good up there right now, actually. The crown of my head feels, I don't know, kind of wants to bring happy tears to my eyes as I'm focusing on that part of my body. But then I come down to the lower half of my head. And I noticed that my tongue feels a little bit, I don't know, like swollen probably because I've been like singing and talking and stuff a lot. So my tongue muscle is a little sore from probably overuse. And my throat feels a little bit scratchy as well. But yeah, that's what I'm feeling in this bottom part of my head. And then I moved down into my throat. And I noticed, like what is happening there. When I very first started this, I often felt a lump in my throat. And many people who don't feel safe speaking about what they want and need, who don't feel safe setting boundaries, who don't feel safe speaking their truth- you might feel that like, knot in your throat. It can feel really tight there, maybe even sore there. And then move and do that through the rest of your body. I usually move into my heart space next and I spend a lot of time there. A lot of wisdom about what you want and need is in your heart space. If your heart feels heavy, pay attention to that. Or if it feels open and light and expanded like mine does right now. Mine just feels like it's radiating. And it feels like there's this like yellow light coming out of it. Again, those happy tears when it come to my eyes, then pay attention to that. All of that. They're good cues. And don't forget to move down your arms and hands as I'm bringing my focus there, my fingers and my toes are really cold even though I'm wearing you know, warm clothes. I'm cold right now and I actually didn't even notice that until I started doing body scanning. So pay attention to those things. Your body has so much wisdom to share with you and bring curiosity not judgment. Make a safe space for your body to share with you what it's experiencing. This is going to keep your mind busy if you're like I'm scanning something. Having a task to do can be very helpful for those of us with busy brains. 

Teri Hales  34:10  
Now, if you have a very very, very busy brain like I also did, and still do sometimes, moving your body while your mind scans and communicates with it can be really helpful. So a lot of people find hiking in the quiet woods to be really helpful. Running. Gardening has been really useful for me. So getting my hands in the dirt where it's quiet and I'm out there alone while my body is moving and engaging in something that's pretty mindless, washing dishes. Yeah, those kinds of tasks- folding clothes- where your body is engaged but your mind is free, can be really helpful for allowing yourself to get quiet while your body is busy. I also find that driving or showering can be really useful for people. So any of those moments where your body is engaged in something can be useful for finding quiet. So quiet does not have to be what I thought it was, which is sitting like a monk in a totally silent room, sitting silent for minutes or hours at a time. I can't do that still. But I get a lot of quiet while my body is engaged and I'm able to get curious. I have to intentionally do that. I have to say, "Okay, I'm washing dishes, so I'm not going to turn on a movie, I'm not going to listen to a podcast, I'm not going to listen to a book on tape, I'm not going to, you know, no one's here. So I'm not having conversations. And I'm not going to multitask. I'm going to wash these dishes, and body scan. I'm gonna garden, and I'm gonna body scan. I'm going to be in the shower, and I'm going to listen to myself." 

Teri Hales  35:55  
But you do have to be intentional with that. Because many of us with busy brains have a tendency to engage ourselves when we're not having the racing thoughts. If that's not quite doing it, we have a tendency to turn on other noise, to take our attention away from our bodies. And again, start small, even if it's one minute, start small. And allow yourself to get in touch with your body, however feels best for you. And you may come up with solutions and share them in our live question and answers that I haven't even thought of. I love it when that happens. So please, anything that works for you feel free to share. Because when we share with each other, we help all of us grow. You all have helped me grow more than you know. Like I said, I'm on this path with you. I don't have all the answers. I am learning just as much as you are. We're all in this together. 

Teri Hales  36:51  
Okay, so once you have gotten in touch with your body, you're not, you know, mentally living outside of your body anymore. Or you're not just numbing everything that's going on in your body and kind of riding your body like a horse into battle. Once you've allowed your consciousness to get down into your body and start to integrate, you're going to notice lots of emotions in there. And that is a great thing. And those emotions are actually going to be your guideposts that help you figure out what you want. This is why it's so important to get into our body because your emotions are always communicating to you about your experience in this world. They're always telling you what you think about things, and how you feel about things, and what's okay with you and what's not okay with you, and what you really enjoy and what you really dislike. All of that information is meant to be like "yeah, go more this way and less that way here. This person feels really amazing in your life and this person not so much. You really enjoy this belief and doing these things, and you really don't like doing these things". So it's so important to get into our bodies. 

Teri Hales  38:10  
Now when we're figuring out what we want- this feels a little counter intuitive for some of my clients, but I find that it is one of the most useful and helpful ways to get to what we want. Saying I want to figure out what I want feels warm and fuzzy, right? Like it feels like it should feel like sunshine. But I find that most of us are more in tune with our less sunshiny emotions: our anger, our sadness, or resentment, our disgust, our overwhelm and stress. And sometimes it's easier to start there because we're more aware of those emotions. These are the don't want emotions. They tell you what is not working in your life.

Teri Hales  38:52  
And just to help you get really clear when you're body scanning, let's talk about what they feel like in your body. So anger often makes you clench your muscles like your jaw, your fists, or even tightening your whole body. My anger lived in my shoulders and my neck. It was like a ball of anger, resentment, stress and overwhelm that lived in my neck and my shoulders. I found myself always like, in pain up there. Even as like a late 20-something I was tense all the time. So when I started noticing that over and over again, and I got curious with it, I was like why are you so tense? It was surprising to me that thoughts of resentment and anger and stress and overwhelm and anxiety all started kind of coming out of that space. So when I got to that space, I would just sit there and talk to it like "oh, you're really tense. What do you want to tell me?" and it would talk about like all of my responsibilities that I had taken on like a superhuman person. Like, between my business that I ran as a wedding photographer, homeschooling my children, being a regular wife and mom, my church responsibilities, like I was trying to live the life of like three different people. Of course, I was stressed and overwhelmed. Because I thought my worth and loveability was attached to how much I could do for people and how much I accomplished. Of course, I was always anxious and stressed out and overwhelmed. And do I still get into that pattern sometimes? Yes, I do. Totally did it last year. And so as I was scanning my body last year, noticed that tightness in my shoulders and neck again, and I was like, "Oh, you're there again, what is going on?" 

Teri Hales  40:51  
So when you notice that your body is clenched, or if your skin flushes, your heart starts pounding, or you feel hot, and you start to sweat, or you may even get like tunnel vision, where you can only focus on that one irritating, enraging thing. You know, what I'm talking about. These are like the thoughts on loop. Those are the ones you need to pay attention to. When you're doing dishes, and you're scanning and all you can think about is that frustrating phone call you had with your mother, or your sister, or your husband. That is the thing to focus on. That's the thing that you're like, I don't want that thing. Let me get curious with it. And so many of us were taught that anger is super dangerous. And anger, when it's suppressed, can explode and be super dangerous when we're suppressing it and not paying attention to it, sometimes it hops through the barriers, and is like "I'm here, listen to me". But when we're getting curious with it, and allowing it to speak in a space where we're not immediately threatened, where we're not immediately with the person that is driving us crazy, we can work through what we actually want to change. And it gives us a lot of power. To be like, this thing is driving me crazy. It happens all the time. It's been happening for years, and I am sick and tired of it. That's actually my husband's tell. When he says "I am sick and tired", I'm like, Okay, this has been a recurring anger issue for him. And we're gonna have a conversation later, when he's had a chance to calm down. We have a chance to sit down and I can say, "I heard you say you are sick and tired of this. What is it about this thing that's driving you crazy? What is the story behind it? What is the expectation? What boundary needs to be clarified? And if you could wave a magic wand, what would this look like? How would it get better?"

Teri Hales  42:53  
 So anger, all the clenched muscles, the heart rate, the swirling, obsessive tunnel vision and thoughts. We talked about overwhelm already, it's that feeling like you're in fight or flight. It's hard to rest and relax. Your heart rate is fast. Your blood pressure is elevated. Your thoughts might be spinning. You can feel emotionally dysregulated, where you're like laughing one minute and then crying the next and then back to laughing and then crying and you feel like you've lost your mind. If that's happening to you a lot, you may be in emotional overwhelm. Because your emotions are just swirling in everywhere, and you just don't have the capacity to like, attend to them all. They're just all at the party speaking all at once. And you may even feel tired all of the time, if you're in overwhelm. So if you feel like emotionally, or mentally or even physically, just tired all the time, overwhelm may be what is going on. You may be feeling stressed all the time. You've been in fight or flight for a long time. And so it's something to get curious about. 

Teri Hales  44:05  
And I find that those of us who are in overwhelm, one of two things happens when we try to get quiet with ourselves. Either: The moment we get quiet, we have so many intrusive thoughts coming in and it can feel like we're- we can't control them. Or we may want to fall asleep while we're in the quiet. So those were two things I struggled with. Whenever I first started practicing quiet, which was also one of the reasons I moved my body. That seemed to kind of offload some of that energy. If I was hiking, it was easier for me to pay attention and not feel so anxious sitting with my thoughts. So body movement is incredibly important for those of us in overwhelm who either, you know, get into our spinning thoughts or just want to fall asleep to escape it all. 

Teri Hales  44:55  
The next don't-want emotion that I want to talk about is disgust. So disgust often comes with a sense of nausea. Your face may pinch up. Your nostrils may close your upper lip and your lower lip may make that like "eww" face, you know the "ugh" face. You're gonna feel revulsion and you're gonna want to stay far, far away from the thing that is disgusting you. It's interesting because I thought disgust was just for like yucky foods or dead animals, or poop. Like those are three things that typically just disgust me. But when I started getting quiet and curious with myself, as I was deconstructing Mormonism, I felt some serious disgust. As I got curious with that, I, you know, I felt this like revulsion. The idea of walking into the church literally felt revolting to me. The idea of participating in like temple worship, made me feel sick to my stomach, there was a physical, in my stomach, like my stomach would kind of turn. This feeling of "No, uh-uh". And it's that feeling you get when you've maybe eaten a food in the past, and then ended up vomiting it up. And then when you see that food in the future, you're just like, "eww. no.". That's what disgust is like, it's that feeling of "we remember that was really harmful for us and we do not want any more of that ever again". If you're feeling disgust, that is a wonderful key to what you do not want more of. 

Teri Hales  46:44  
Now, I could have been really surfacey with it and just been like, I'm disgusted at the church. I don't want any more of the church. But as I sat down with it, it was more like I am disgusted with lies and deceit. I am so tired of people who lie and deceive, in order to manipulate my decisions. That disgusts me. I was also disgusted by predatory grooming practices happening inside the church, the financial manipulation, taking advantage of people who are barely getting by or who are in poverty, in order to enrich a multibillion dollar organization disgusts me. Like I am revolted at that idea. So, yeah, pay attention to those things. They tell you what you don't want. And these emotions are the red-alert items about what needs to change to make space for what you do want. Anger and disgust are alarm bells to help you stay away from things that aren't just uncomfortable, they're hurting you in some way. So by looking at what's not working, which we're often much more aware of in our bodies, it gives us clues to what needs to change to make room for what we do want. 

Teri Hales  48:03  
As you notice this tension, or this kind of nauseous feeling, give it some room to speak. Get curious with it. Ask it questions and listen for its answers. And there are no wrong answers. When we can allow whatever comes to the surface to be what it is, to just accept it - Like this is how I feel. I'm disgusted with lies and deceit. Okay? Why? Ask yourself questions and really peel that onion until you find out what exactly about this is making me feel resentful or angry or enraged? What about this is making me feel overwhelmed and stressed? And get curious look at it from several different aspects and allow it to speak to you. Gather information for the next step of the process. 

Teri Hales  48:57  
Another emotion that I love cueing people into is envy. And that's the strong desire for something that someone else has. The Bible refers to this as coveting, and many of us were taught to stay far, far, far away from this emotion. But remember, there are no bad emotions. They're all just messengers. It's all just information to tell us about ourselves and our experience in the world. Envy is no different. Envy is a particularly helpful messenger to help you figure out what you really, really, really want, right? So unacknowledged envy, which is what I think a lot of us are afraid of, It often feels like longing in the body, and it's sometimes accompanied by anger or shame. It may feel like an ache or a hurt around your heart space. You may notice yourself thinking things like "what would that be like?" or "must be nice to be so lucky". It can also feel like resentment and anger that others get to enjoy these things while you're stuck without. "It's not fair" is usually the thinking pattern that goes with the resentment side of envy. And sometimes envy is accompanied by a sense of lack or shame. Often as we go through the envy cycle, our brain tries to make sense of things. "Why do they have this thing and we don't?" And we usually decide one of two things. We either decide, we don't have those things because life isn't fair, and life likes the other person better than it likes us. Or because there's something wrong with us. So without curiosity with our envy, we usually end up either feeling resentful, "life isn't fair", or ashamed, "I'm not enough". So envy often comes in this cocktail of "I really want what you have", and because our brains are trying to make sense of why they have it, and we don't, we either go towards resentment, "life isn't fair and they just have that, and life doesn't like me as much". Or we go towards the sense of shame of "I'm not enough, there must be something wrong with me that I don't have what they have". 

Teri Hales  51:14  
It's in this space of shame and resentment, that a lot of the ugly things that come up with envy happen, right? This is where we can be really mean and nasty to people have become prejudiced against people. This is where we can try to sabotage people, or begin to try to shame and knock other people down, right? However, if we can get curious with our envy, just like all of our other emotions, if we can create the safe, curious, non judgmental space with envy, it can tell us exactly what we want in our lives. If we can notice when that little green monster shows up, and there's that hint of "that's not fair", or "wouldn't that be nice".  If we can get curious with it, It will tell you exactly what you're longing for. Now, a lot of times this happens for me, while I'm watching movies, when I'm on social media, and occasionally in real life with like real friends, okay, or family members. So when I noticed that, that must be nice, or what would life be like if I had that? 

Teri Hales  52:26  
Like, if I'm watching a movie, or I'm scrolling social media, I'll pause right then in there and be like, "Okay, what is it about this in particular that I want? Because so often we don't want the whole thing. If I'm looking at- this happened a couple of years ago- If I'm looking at this lady in this beautiful bikini on a yacht with Greece in the background. She's in the Mediterranean, her sunglasses on, she's eating grapes. What is it about this photo that I want so badly? What is causing the envy? And as I sat there, I was like, Is it her body that I want? No, I'm good. Is it what she's wearing? No. Is it being on a boat? I don't really care for boats, like, I'll go on a boat but it's not like I'm like, "oh, I want to be on the water all the time". So it wasn't even that. I'm like, is it the wealth? And that was closer. I'm like, I'm getting closer to it. But it's not even the money, per se. I was like, is it that she's in Greece, and that was way closer. I love to travel and experience new lands and new food. I love having experiences out in the world, in different cultures with different languages. And the freedom to travel, to go different places to really experience all the cultures. That got me and I was like, I envy people that travel frequently. I envy people that go to different lands. I want to travel. That is super important to me. Does it have to be on a boat with a model's body in a bikini? Not at all. I don't care. As I went through those things. I was like, none of those really mattered to me. But I want the experience. That's what envy can do for you too. Get super, super, super clear. As you're looking at that picture or that moment in that movie, or you're listening to a good friend tell you about their promotion. What is it that's bringing up the envy, because it's not the whole thing. You don't want their life. You know, you don't want their life but there's something about their life that you want to incorporate into yours. Get super clear with what it is you're envying and then ask yourself why you envy those things. And just keep peeling that onion until you get the heart of what you really want in their situation. And then this is where we get to begin to figure out those next steps of what we could try that might bring us more of that. 

Teri Hales  55:17  
 Last, joy, excitement, peace and calm. These feelings are going to feel like what I was telling you about when I was scanning my own body, there are these expansive, light, just joyous feelings. For me, the color that comes to mind is like a radiating yellow or orange. But some people experience pink or blue when they're having these sorts of sensations. I love to ask myself like, what color is this emotion? For me? Anger is like bright red. Disgust is black. And maybe you work that way too. And maybe you don't. And that's okay. But asking myself like, what shape is this? Is it soft and squishy? Is it really prickly? What color is it? Describing the emotion if I can't label it helps me so much. So joy and excitement and peace and calm. These all feel like radiating, expansive, sometimes bubbling emotions that just feel warm and cozy and yummy. And these are the emotions that let you know you're already doing something that you want and need. Sometimes when we're in that state of dissociation or depersonalization, where we feel like we're living outside of our body or our body feels numb, we may not recognize these feelings either. And recognizing when you're feeling happy or excited or really at peace, can actually help you pinpoint what's creating those feelings too and focus time and effort to make more of that in your life. And my next invitation to you after you've listened to these emotions, and gotten curious with them, and asked them questions and written down your insights if that's what you're into, or voice recorded your insights for later- keep a record for yourself. My invitation to you is to try things on.

Teri Hales  57:12  
I know I've used the shoe analogy in the past, but it really helped me when I was first beginning to learn this principle, which is "I can try things on and see if they fit just like I try on shoes at a shoe store". I can find a pair of shoes that fit and I can wear those for a while. But they may not be the pair of shoes for my entire life. I'm not still wearing shoes I wore in my 20s. They wore out, they started pinching, they went out of fashion, whatever. When that happened, I donated them to someone who might use them if they were still in good working order, or I got rid of them if they were not still in good working order. And then I went and got a new pair of shoes. And I tried them on until I found a pair that fit. And here's the crazy thing is sometimes we try on something that we think looks cute, or we think it'll be comfortable and it's not. And so we take it off. I try on a different pair of shoes. That's what we're doing here. 

Teri Hales  58:11  
Listen to your emotions, figure out what you don't want and what you do want. And then brainstorm with yourself like how would I go about either diminishing these things that I don't want? What boundaries do I need to set? You know, what habit changes do I need to make in order to get less of these things I don't want? And what's the next best step forward that I can think of? One of the places we get stuck is we want the answers to present themselves to us on a silver platter. Like this is exactly what you should do to get exactly what you want. But that's not how life works. Life works by me making a decision and learning from it. And if I don't make any decisions, if I get analysis paralysis, which is where I sit here and I analyze all the options forever, and never take a step forward. I never get closer to what I want because I need to look at these options and say, "You know what, this one seems the most appealing to me and the most feasible. So I'm gonna take that step forward". And you're gonna learn really fast when you try that on, either. Yes, this gets me closer to what I want, or no, this is not at all what I need and want. And you learn from that either, "Okay, this did not work at all, back to the drawing board". Or maybe you try something on and you're like, "Oh, I loved 80% of that. But this 20% is still bugging me. How can I keep this 80% and find a way to work with this 20%? What is something I could do or try on to get me even closer to what I want?" and allow yourself to continue trying things on listening to your body until you get to that place that feels good. And understand that even when you get to the place that feels good, you're going to continue to grow, mature and change. Your life circumstances are going to continue to change according to what's going on in the world, according to what's going on in your family, and in your relationships, and you may need to try on a new pair of shoes at some point in the future. 

Teri Hales  1:00:24  
But continuing to meet with yourself- spend time with you. Get curious with you. We often spend so much time building our relationships with everyone else, and we forget to build our relationship with us. This is the most important relationship, the one you have with yourself, because it influences every single other relationship. When you can start here and have a really good idea of who you are, what you want, what you value. It's going to allow you to associate with other people in ways that feel healthy, and interdependent, instead of codependent or just completely isolated. Which is what a lot of us do, right? We either get enmeshed with someone or we go and we isolate. And I think that there is a place for isolation after codependency. There's nothing wrong with that. But after a while many of us begin to crave human interaction again, but we don't want to go back to the enmeshed place. You might not know it all when you start to build relationships, but give yourself permission to continue to listen. As you're in relationship with others what feels good, what brings out envy, what feels like a red flag, what's bringing up disgust or anger. And get curious with you first, get really clear with you about what you're feeling and why. And that's going to influence your communications with others and how you move forward. I'm really excited for you all because I know that this process over time- it's not going to happen overnight- but over time, you're going to get so much more of what you want, simply by spending time with yourself, getting clear about what's bringing up these feelings, and giving yourself permission to try things on, to see what fits, and continue to like change things out as you grow and mature and change. 

Teri Hales  1:02:31  
Now, if you need more assistance with this or any other kind of healing from religious trauma or childhood trauma, please come join me at the Beyond The Wound virtual summit. It's happening January 15 through February 5. Beyond The Wound helps survivors of religious trauma find the resources, freedom, and connection they seek. Our upcoming virtual summit features more than 20 trusted thought leaders and licensed experts in the field of trauma and religious trauma. Come learn how trauma affects your nervous system, gain practical tools for mind-heart-body healing and learn how to trust yourself. I'm so honored to be one of the speakers at this event and I had the absolute joy of getting to interview several others that you may recognize: David Hayward, you know him as the Naked Pastor. Brian Peck from the Religious Trauma Institute. Yolanda Renteria who speaks about childhood trauma- if you're not following her on Instagram, oh my gosh, go do it. TEDx speaker and therapist Crystal Lampitt, who I had an absolute blast interviewing, and several, several others. I'll also be hosting a live panel on Toxic Theology with Jo Luehmann, Dr. Mark Karris, and Dr. Laura Anderson on Sunday, January 22. And all three of those in the live panel are releasing books and are going to be telling you a little bit about their book and giving you a sneak peek. If this interests you, and I hope it does, because it's going to be amazing. Go to beyondthewound.com to register and type in podcast20 for a 20% off discount on your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there because no one should have to walk the path of healing alone. Thank you for joining me, and I will see you next Sunday.