Therapy Demonstration - Meeting Place (from EMDR Therapy) | Ep. 111

Hello, welcome back to the Holistic Inner Balance Podcast. I am Hadlee of Happy Healthy with Hadlee.

And I'm Dr. Nicole.

And we have got a, a different style episode today. We're going to be talking together about EMDR, trauma, but also we've kind of got a little treat for you that's different from what you maybe have experienced before in— I mean, in any podcast, but it's for sure in this podcast. We've done exercises where we've kind of walked you through exercises before, but in this one we actually had Dr. Cain walk me through a practice that you are going to be able to utilize for your own, your own benefit. And so hopefully you enjoy that. It's— I got like real vulnerable and speak just because I want to show how we can do this for ourselves. And I want to show that, that we can, we can do this work. And so at the beginning of the episode, we are going to dive into a little bit more about, you know, what EMDR is specifically, as well as what trauma is, what trauma is, and also some of the misconceptions that we hear around trauma as well. And Dr. Cain is a wealth of knowledge in this podcast, so you are not going to want to miss it.

Here is the skinny on trauma. You have been programmed your entire life of how you should feel about things, respond to things, how you make meaning from what has happened to you, what has not happened to you. And the question that we're going to dive in today is, what if these programs aren't working for you? What if the way that you see the world is holding you back from feeling in control, feeling calm, and feeling like you can connect deeply in relationships and live a life that gives you fulfillment and meaning? What if these programs are hijacking your happiness? And so if you at all resonate with this, then I think you're going to really love this conversation with me and Hadlee. We're going to be digging into EMDR, which is an approach to exploring the mind, the body, the nervous system. And the other bodily systems in understanding why we now feel the way that we feel. And it provides us tools to go back into those programs and to understand them and then recalibrate them. So I'm ready for this conversation, and I hope that you are too. And Hadlee, thank you so much for being here and holding the space with us.

Oh my gosh, I'm super excited and also a little nervous for this. But mostly excited.

Yeah. Hadley's a little nervous because I asked if she would allow me the great honor of being a little bit vulnerable and turning this conversation into something that's a bit more experiential. And I really honor that. And that's one thing that I really love about the work that you and I do together, Hadley, is that we both really do endeavor to be Real and sincere. And so I'm— I want to express to you how grateful I am that you're open to this process.

Oh my gosh, I just love you. Yeah, I, I want to be an example for people to see, you know, like, not everything in life is perfect. And we have so many things that, that we can peel away, that we can like uncover inside of ourselves. And so doing this work is incredibly fruitful. And when we are able to do it and really get deep with it, um, things really open up. So I'm really excited to be the guinea pig today.

And this is going to be the first of a series where today we're going to learn what is EMDR, and we're going to learn an exercise that by the end of this conversation you'll be able to do this exercise on your own. It's called Meeting Place, and that is going to create a good foundation for one of our upcoming episodes where we start getting into parts work and looking at the different parts of ourselves that may be holding on to that old programming that could be causing us to feel like we have imposter syndrome, or to have stomach upset, or to get headaches whenever we're overwhelmed, or to feel worried and panicky and anxious. And so today we're going to start at the beginning, and then we're going to be getting deep over time. And so, Hadlee, I'm— thank you. This is going to be wonderful.

Yes, let's, let's dive in.

I'm curious as we get going and just to kind of look at this modality and try to understand this modality a little bit. I'm curious what it is that you've heard about EMDR, if you could tell me what it means to you.

Hmm. Well, I still have not actually experienced EMDR, but I have learned a ton from you. And we also had an amazing podcast a while— it was— it's been a while though now. So, you know, you can go back and listen to that as well where we talk about— we really dive deep on EMDR and we had some wonderful guests talking about it. But to me, it's really about sort of rewiring how we're thinking about things or rewiring the, you know, the structures of our brains, essentially, and how we think about past experiences, traumas, adaptations that we've had to experiences in our lives. And yeah, and just really being able to release sort of the really, really strong hold on those— the reactions to those memories, if that makes sense.

That totally makes sense. Yeah. And it— the first part of it is exactly what you said, is it's like identifying the different parts of ourselves that are involved. And for some of us, it's very biologically based or sensation-based. And so Maybe you hold your stress in your gut, or someone else holds their stress in their heart or their chest, and they feel like their heart palpitates. Or some people, they hold it in their nervous system where they're trying to fall asleep and they jerk, right? Mm-hmm. And so sometimes that stress, those events get held in our, our body, and other times they get held in our thoughts, our logical brain. But one of the findings in neuroscience is that adversity doesn't always get stored in logical parts, or even parts of the vocabulary and language, parts of the brain and nervous system. And so that body-based— it's called a bottom-up approach— is really powerful. And then of course we have lots of therapies. Cognitive behavioral therapy's zone of genius is starting with the logical parts of the brain. So if you feel, based on your experiences and what you've heard growing up and judgments and interpretations A lot of that can be targeted with talk therapy. But if you feel like you've tried that before and it's just not gotten you the results that you need, or you may think one way and yet your emotions and your body feels another way, EMDR is going to be a good fit for you. Just as you were saying, Hadlee, that was really good.

Yeah. And that's been my experience, is there's so much that we can do with our cognitive mind. But there's so much that lives in the subconscious and the subconscious basically lives— I mean, it lives in the mind, but also the body. And so when we can do these kinds of therapies, especially EMDR, because it's been like it's the most effective trauma therapy out there, which is insane that not that many people know about it or know really what it is. So that's why we want to bring this to you.

What you said just reminded me of a quote, a quote by Carl Jung, and he says something along the lines of What remains in the unconscious and is not brought to the consciousness will continue to affect us, and we will call it fate.

Yes, that's such a good one. I love that.

Yes, and that's kind of what you're touching on, is that if, if we don't do that inner work and find out what's underneath the surface of conscious awareness Then those things will still be impacting how we feel and behave and think and metabolize and all of that today. Yeah. And EMDR is a tool for that. And I also appreciate what you said about it not being well known. And the interesting thing is that it's still not well known, and yet it's been around since the 1980s. It is the number one form of therapy in terms of treating adversity, trauma, stress. It's the number one form of therapy at the time of this recording. It's the number one form of therapy used for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, combat veterans. And it can be helpful from the spectrum of I feel overwhelmed all the way to I have experienced severe debilitating trauma, and it can be effective with everything in between. And so we're going to dive into that today.

Yes. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm glad you said that too, because I think a lot of times we— when we think of trauma, I mean, and this is changing a little bit, but when we think of trauma, it's like you had to have experienced this massive, massive thing. But we're all walking around with adverse things that have happened to us and that we've experienced as You know, you could call it trauma. We've called it adaptation before on the podcast, where it's like we are responding to our external world in ways that we're kind of creating meaning out of it. And we're, you know, we're holding that in our bodies. And so we can really do this for both the big, big traumas and also for the things that we maybe don't think of as those big T traumas, but we can think of more of those those little t things that are, that are adversely affecting us.

I love the language that you're using of big T traumas and little t traumas, because the number one object— objection that I hear when talking about EMDR is, well, I don't have trauma. And I think part of it is that we have an opportunity to reclaim the language of trauma. And trauma isn't about what happened, but rather How you responded to it, how your nervous system was equipped to respond to it. Because 2 people can endure a similar event, and for one person, and they're like a duck, it rolls off their shoulders, they don't think about it again. And then another person, they're very affected by it, and it holds them back from living their life. So for that second person, it was a trauma, and the first person it wasn't. And it's not because the event was different, but rather how it may have overwhelmed their current set of adaptive mechanisms.

Right. And

so,

and not to say that that is that person's fault, that they like didn't have enough, you know, like they weren't good enough to be able to overcome it or anything. But it's how I like how you said how they— what they had available to them. It was like basically the resilience that they, they had in that current moment.

I love that you use the word resilience because that's the goal of this kind of work, is to improve our resilience, to increase the size of our window of tolerance. And doing proactive EMDR is like doing fitness. You go for a run, not because you need to stop your legs from atrophying, but it's because you want to pursue greater fitness. And I think that could be the same for EMDR. And I want to emphasize what you said too about little t's and big T traumas, because that's sort of like in-the-know language. And to sort of interpret that for those who may not have heard it before is a little t trauma is considered something that is smaller and yet impactful that tends to occur again and again and again. So maybe it's being undermined at work or being embarrassed in a classroom every time you ask a question. It can be lots of different things.

Mm-hmm.

And a big T trauma is typically what we think of in terms of trauma, which is more of a major life-threatening event where you either witness something really severe and life-threatening or you endure Something or hear about something that's a big T major life-threatening event.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying. That's great.

Yeah. And so I want to, before we go into the exercise that we're going to be learning in today's podcast, which is called Meeting Place, I want to talk about adaptive mechanisms and programming and what I mean by that language, because I think that's going to set the foundation for the next couple of episodes that we do. Is that okay?

Yeah, let's do it.

So our bodies are designed to adapt. And so think about it. We'll start with a metaphor and then we'll talk some science. So let's say that you grew up in Alaska where it's really cold. And the metaphor is that you need to stay warm because the environment around you is generally cold. And so you wear a big puffy coat. That big puffy coat. It protects you. You need it. It helps you to survive. It helps you to thrive. And that puffy coat is great. You love it. You use it. Life is awesome. But then your circumstances change, and you have now moved down to Cancun where it isn't cold. It's warm, and you're still wearing this adaptive puffy coat. However, This adaptive puffy coat is no longer adaptive if it stays on you. If you continue to wear that puffy coat even though you're in a warm climate, you're going to get too hot, you're going to suffer. And so when we see adaptive adaptability or plasticity or changeability or flexibility in our nervous system, our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors, then those adaptations are beneficial. But when they become that puffy coat that staying on you even though you're now in Cancun, then it becomes maladaptive. And so that is the foundation of how adaptations can get stuck and that they can cause issues for you later. So that's the metaphor. Now let's apply that to an actual scientific sort of biological response to a situation. Are you ready?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so let's say that you grew up in a bad part of town. where there were lots of noises, and usually if there were noises, it meant that danger was afoot, something bad was happening. And so your body has learned noises outside equals bad and danger, and therefore I have to become more attuned to those noises outside and more able to respond to danger. And so that becomes protective. So there's a part of the brain, it's called the salience network. And you think about that as the filter of the brain. And so the job of the salience network is to take the over 11 billion data points per second of sounds and sensations and temperatures and all of the things that are coming at you and in you to the brain. And your brain's job is to take all of that, send it through the salience network, and decide what's relevant and what is irrelevant. And because you live in an environment where every little sound could indicate danger, that the salience network will become more leaky, and it will let more of those danger cues in, which will then activate the emotional part of your brain called your amygdala. And then your amygdala will send forth a series of signals that bring on board your fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn, fracture nervous system response. And we'll get into all of those in another conversation. But that will make you hypervigilant. And so that's you being in Alaska with a fluffy coat, you have to be hypervigilant to noise Outside, right? Okay. Absolutely. So now you grew up and you moved out of that town and you created your own life and you live in a house that's safe. You live in a neighborhood that's safe. You locked the doors, you have a cell phone and you have the keys. Nobody else has the keys. You are safe. But now you find that when you're laying in bed, that little noises will either wake you up or keep you up. That's wearing the puffy coat in Cancun. That adaptive mechanism which helped you survive when you were younger is now causing you issues. It's stuck. And so what EMDR does, and other bottom-up trauma-informed therapies do, is they go in and they unwind those programs from earlier in life. And then you can learn the steps to reprogram it, to tell the mind, the body, and the nervous system, your behaviors, your habits, all of the All of the parts of you, hey, it's current year. We're not back in the past. This is the reality that we're facing now. This is what I need you to know. And then you can start the process of unwinding it. So that's kind of the foundation of the programming in EMDR. Is that— tell me, like, how that landed.

Yes, I think it's so important to recognize that these— I always talk about it with my clients as, like, patterns. These are Patterns that are now outdated for you. Because a lot of times when, you know, well, with, with this example, we might have, so, you know, someone who is like, why am I feeling so jumpy all the time? Like they might be kind of beating themselves up for it. There are, there are other examples that a lot of times when I'm coaching my clients in in helping them to be able to change their behaviors, change their habits, change their lifestyle, because that's what I do is I help them to have a healthier lifestyle. And when I'm helping them do that, a lot of times they fall back into old patterns and then they beat themselves up for it. So for example, it's like, oh, I am going to binge eat an entire pint of ice cream or, you know, Bigger than that. I don't know. I don't know what the other sizes are, but I'm going to— I'm going to binge eat, you know, whatever it is, or I'm going to watch like 8 episodes of my show on Netflix and like stay up till 4 in the morning or whatever. And then they're like, why did I do that? Like, what the heck is wrong with me? And really, these are adapt— these are things that you picked up at some point because they were trying to protect you. They might not have done a great job even from the get-go, but they they were trying to protect you in, in that point in time. So maybe it was like you had a really stressful childhood and when you could just like numb out with TV or with food, that could take your mind off of it at the time. And so that was a protective mechanism. And so we want to just be aware that these parts of ourselves are not bad or wrong or like we don't want to should on ourselves here. We want to, we want to really just acknowledge that These are just parts of ourselves that are trying to protect us and trying to have our best interests at heart.

And I love what you said where you pointed out habits that can develop that are adaptations to what happened or didn't happen. And so when we look at habits, it's like, okay, well, where did that pattern or habit come from? Is it something that I learned as an adaptation, or is it something that's a family pattern or a cultural pattern. And so looking at the roots of that, we've also touched on biological changes that can occur. And so somebody may present into my office, maybe even to see you, Hadlee, where their main thing is polycystic ovarian syndrome. And we know by looking at the adaptive information model that our sex hormones can be very strongly affected by childhood adverse experiences. what happened to us, what didn't happen to us in terms of neglect. We saw that with the ACEs study. And so sometimes it's not just that your hormones are going haywire for the fun of it. Sometimes they're a stuck pattern that just simply needs, um, the repatterning. In fact, there's this amazing course that I am really excited to take where it talks about PANS and PANDAS and autoimmunity and how EMDR has been studied to be effective at clearing that. Wow. And so really, with integrity and authenticity, looking at how is all of this an adaptive mechanism? And I really feel like that's claiming and reclaiming our personal sense of power and agency. And when we feel like we're at war with our symptoms, when our bodies are against us, but rather looking at them from a like, hey, I know you've got me, and I'm going to help unwind where this is coming from because we're no longer back there and you've been working overtime part or parts. And I want to come alongside you and take off some of that burden. And so the first step of that is to do that. So if you're listening to this and you're like, okay, less talking, more doing, the first step of this is Meeting Place, which we're going to go to next after we take a quick little break here. So hang tight, and we have an exciting announcement. And then after the announcement, we'll be back and we'll jump into Meeting Place. So see you in a sec, right? Hadlee, I am so excited. Did you hear about the amazing thing that we're doing?

Oh my gosh, I've been— we have been like working on this, or the intention has been out there in the world for like years now.

Years.

Yeah, so excited.

Yeah, so you asked for it, kids, and we were listening. And so we are so excited because there's been such a high demand For connection and community and super sparkly high vibe girl time. And so, Hadley, what are we doing?

We are bringing to you live in-person podcast events.

We're doing a, we're doing a dance, we're doing a little jig. So if you wanna know if we're gonna be in your area, check out our social media and our websites and we'll have a calendar of events. And you could also make requests for events in your area. If you wanna host a live podcast, then we are totally open to hearing about it. So you can find that information at our websites and our social medias, which you can both get in the link in the bio here on this post.

Yes. So excited.

Yeah. All right. I hear we're having a really good conversation back on the other side, so let's go listen to what they're up to.

Let's do it.

Hi, welcome back, Hadley. How was your break?

My break was fantastic. How was yours?

Mine was good. I listened to 2 goons talk about how they're going on a live podcast tour. I love it. I'm so

excited. I'm

so excited.

I'm really excited to attend those.

Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm so glad I'm invited.

Me too.

I hear that tickets are limited, so Um,

very limited.

Yeah, very limited. All right, my friends, we're gonna do— we're gonna do an exercise called Meeting Place today. And so this is my adaptation for Meeting Place. And, you know, I always recommend that when you're doing trauma work, when you're doing healing work, is to have a supportive team on board and to have a good practice in place where you can support yourself. Now, this exercise is generally speaking well tolerated by most people. But if you find that anytime that you do a little bit of inner work that it can be kind of activating for you, is that maybe it would be good to go and to have a therapist or a clinician that you trust just hold your space for this, or maybe do something ahead of time. And so if you're like, that could be me, then no worries, my love. Just hit the pause button on this recording. Find a helper, do some of that window tolerance work with your helper, and then unpause, and then we'll get together and you can do this exercise with us. But that's my little disclaimer. And so, Hadlee, do you feel— I know you've done a lot of personal work, you have the resources. Do you feel ready?

I feel ready.

Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to close our eyes, and if you feel comfortable, I would love for you to use self-touch. I think that's really grounding for you. I know you and I've talked about it a lot. It's for sure grounding for me. And there's a couple of options for self-touch. I see you and I are both doing the butterfly hug. And so the butterfly hug is where you cross your arms in front of you, and then your right hand is on your left shoulder, and your left shoulder's— your right— left hand's on your right shoulder. And you're just gonna tap left and right, and you're gonna pick a comfortable, slow pace. And so it may be at this rhythm. Left. Right, left, right, left, right, left, right. And so as you're listening, if you're gonna go along with this exercise, just allow yourself to get comfortable where you're not gonna be interrupted and where the temperature's right and you could just focus on you. We'll spend maybe 15 minutes, 20 minutes together today. And if the butterfly hug isn't your jam, maybe you can tap your toes left and right, big toe on the right, and then tap the left toe alternating, or you could put your palms on your legs and tap, whatever feels right. Sometimes we get easily distracted and we need a little bit more of a reminding tap, in which case maybe you want to tap gently on your temples or the sides of your head. And as we're going through this exercise together, you may notice thoughts coming and thoughts going, and you may find yourself worrying or getting distracted, and that's okay. Just simply notice the thoughts as they come and just say, thank you, but not now. Thank you, but not now. And so what I would like to have you do is I would like to have you imagine walking down a path. Visualize that in your mind's eye, and as you move down the path, Pay attention to what the ground feels like beneath your feet. Notice the sound of your footsteps. Notice the speed of your cadence. And take a breath in and notice the feeling of the air as enters your body. Recognizing that it's just the right temperature and you feel comfortable. You're not too warm, not too cold. It's just right. And as you walk, allow your ears to notice the sounds that are around you in this place, this trail, this path that you're walking along. And notice 3 things that you can hear. And then as you keep walking, notice 2 things that you can see. And then as you take another breath in, notice one thing that you can smell. And then you notice ahead of you is a place, and this is your meeting place, and it can be anything that you want it to be. But there are a few criteria, and one is that it has a door. That you have control over. And the second is that it's totally your jam. You can decorate it how you want. You can put the furniture in there that you want. It can be indoor, outdoor, as long as it has a safe surrounding boundary and a door. And so imagine going into that place now. And so, Hadlee, while you notice this place and your eyes are closed and you're still doing your tapping, I was wondering if you would be comfortable sharing with us what you see and what you notice in your place.

I'm noticing that there's a— it's a little Scandinavian-style cabin, very minimal, light wood, lots of windows with a loft and a little wood-burning stove. It's very winter, winter-themed.

Mm-hmm.

And cozy white blanket, white fluffy blankets. And just lots of, um, lots of cozy vibes.

Yeah, yeah.

Soft.

So soft. Clean. Beautiful. What are the sounds that you hear in this place? What are you noticing?

Birds, and really nothing else. Just silence.

What is the lighting like?

It's like the light of early morning after the sunrise. And after like a, an overnight rain, there's like a, there's like a glowy light.

Yeah. And let's imagine that you find a place that feels really comfortable for you. And tell me where you would like to recline, whether you're sitting or standing or lying. Describe to me that.

Hmm, there's a big furry rug, white furry rug on the ground, and, and also a blanket on top of that. So I'll just lie down on there and put the blanket over top. Yeah.

So you lie down on that like cozy furry rug, get the blanket on top. I love it. And so this, this is your meeting place.

Mm-hmm.

And what we're going to use this place for is it's going to be a place in your control, a place of your creation where you can invite your parts to come. And The door is there because there may be parts that you're not ready to have come in, or maybe there are parts that want to leave and you want to keep them there. Mm-hmm. Although we generally try to honor our parts, but it's all about you being in control. And so if you're open to it and if your parts are open to it, Let's open the door and invite whomever you feel like you would like to bring. Maybe parts that need a little bit of support or acknowledgement, or parts that are excited to come and just want to hang out. Whoever you want to bring in. And then as they come in through the door, allow them to kind of get all cozy and settled wherever feels right. And then if you feel comfy with that, tell me about who you see.

Well, the parts that are excited to come in and join me are the parts that are confident, that feel good about themselves. And then there's also a few parts that definitely want to come in, and they're the insecurity, feeling like a failure, um, feeling unsuccessful. There's an anger too. There's an angry part of me too that, that definitely wants to come in, and a sadness. And then there's also like a joy and A really enthusiastic part, a really excited part, and they're all here.

All parts are welcome. If you look around and allow them to look around, what is their general kind of feeling about having everybody all in one place?

They kind of look uneasy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is somebody open to being a spokesperson and expressing what they're feeling uneasy about?

It's kind of like They feel like they are in opposition of each other. They're against each other. And so, yeah, it's— they feel like they're against each other and like they're on opposite teams almost. And so that feels awkward.

Yeah, yeah. So some of them are kind of looking around at the other ones, and there's this feeling of like, oh, I have this goal, but I'm looking at you and you have an opposite goal. Yeah. Is anybody being singled out as they're kind of noticing this?

Anger. That one's not allowed.

Yeah, anger is not allowed.

Yeah, it's

so—

yeah, it's kind of like taking the shape of a red fox, and like all the rest of these, like, these are kind of like animals, and they're all like, yeah, no, the fox has gotta go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so would Anger be open to us talking directly to her?

Mm-hmm. Anger?

You are so brave for being here. You are so welcome for being here. And I know you've been working really hard for Hadlee, and I want you to know I see you and I honor you. And I'm wondering If you would be comfortable telling us what was going on in Hadlee's life when you showed up, like the first time. Yeah.

I think it was covering up a sensitivity. It was feeling like I was unworthy. I was feeling like— I'm sorry. Raw and sensitive. And so anger came in to help and put a mask on.

Yeah. Is that part there? That part that anger was protecting, the sensitivity part, that part that felt unworthy? Is she there?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And so how does she— how is she responding to hearing that anger showed up for her?

She's crying. Yeah. Recognizing that there was— that she had resentment toward anger before. Mhm. And now recognizing that it was always there to protect her.

Yeah. So she, she's had that resentment and she's had that frustration about anger being there, but seeing anger today in this place, she's realizing that anger has just been trying to help her. What is it anger needs us to know?

That it wouldn't, it wouldn't need to step in if we just accepted all the rest of the emotions.

So I wouldn't need to step in if we just accepted all of our emotions. Uh-huh. How is everyone feeling about that?

Uh, relieved, actually.

Yeah, yeah. What else are you noticing?

A bit of forgiveness from the other parts toward anger. Yeah. Recognition. That it's just trying to support everyone, and that in fact it was doing a lot of legwork for the rest of them.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the rest of the, the rest of the parts were to allow themselves to be shown and visible. and honored, then the anger would just be hanging out, not be doing so much.

Yeah, the burden would be shared, taking care of you and protecting you. So Would your parts be open to getting together in meeting place and doing work together more regularly?

Yeah, this is a great meeting place.

Yeah, yeah. And so some of the initial steps is helping the other parts to become aware of who each person is. And where they came from, what it is that they're trying to do for you, and then helping to work together to create a cohesive objective or a cohesive goal. Are they open to doing some of that? Mm-hmm. Okay, so they did a really good job today, and then what we're gonna do is we are going to allow them to go and have a reward. Like they can go play or do karaoke, or they can dance or sing. And so allow them— and if you want to facilitate the process— is allow them to all find a place where they can hang out and just kind of rock and roll and know that you've got them, that you are facilitating this place, and that you will come back and keep working with them and honoring them. And if there's anybody that showed up today and they're like, oh wait, I didn't get to go, is ask them if they would be willing to write down anything that's kind of sticking in their mind. And imagine in the center of your meeting place that there's a container where they can put their, their notes and their requests. So that they don't have to keep reminding you about it, and they'll know that it's been documented and that you'll remember it later. Hmm. And then when you feel complete and you feel like everybody's been sent along to go on their adventures, we're going to allow you to slowly start coming back into this place, coming back into this present moment. You're sitting in your home now. You're talking to me, you hear my voice. And then let's just take a nice breath. Take a breath in and exhale. And then when you feel complete, you may open your eyes. That, my friend, was meeting place.

That was awesome.

Yeah. How was that experience for you?

It was, it was surprising that it ended up being anger. Although, I mean, it shouldn't be. I talk about how I have a lot of pitta all the time.

Yeah, she's got a lot of pitta.

But yeah, there's like a— yeah, it was cool to see how anger came in to protect all of the other parts, specifically the insecure, unworthy part.

Yeah.

Because if I can be angry at other people for that, then I don't have to address my own feelings of it.

Oh girl, that's so profound. I really resonate with that very much.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so the, the meeting place can be a continually evolving process. And so as you were listening to this recording and you were going through meeting place on your own, a question that you might be asking is, well, I don't have Dr. Cain guiding me through it. I don't know what to say or what to ask. And so what you're trying to essentially do is get to know all of the parts that show up. What do they look like? What are their motivations? Where did they come from? Like, knowing the first time that they showed up, that will help you go down the timeline to where that stressor or that programming began. So that when we have awareness of that, we shine a light on it, then we can start to reprogram it. And so now we have this new insight and just I think we were in there for 12 minutes or something, is we have this new awareness. And with awareness and acknowledgment comes power. And your parts are really eager to work, Hadlee. And so as you're listening to this recording, I would recommend that as you're doing this exercise, write down, maybe even draw a picture of your meeting place and who's there, where are they sitting, and map it out and draw arrows like, okay, anger showed up to protect insecurity, and insecurity showed up when I was this age, and then she was trying to do this, and she's taking form of that. And the better you understand your parts, the more you're going to be able to see in your day-to-day life how they're affecting your thoughts, your feelings, and your sensations. And then that will equip you for actually going in and unwinding those patterns. But first, we have to acknowledge and be aware, and then we will have the tools to start the unwinding process. So thank you so much for being vulnerable, Hadley, and for allowing us to be a part of that with you. I honor you so, so very much, my friend. Thank you.

Thank you for facilitating it. I'm really excited for people to be able to, you know, witness, witness it and do it for themselves.

Awesome. All right, my loves, thank you so much, and we will see you next time.

Bye, everyone.

Bye.

Bye.