The Dark Side of Thanksgiving with Alana Warlop, Spiritual Psychotherapist

Welcome to the Healing Is Possible Hot Seat. I'm Rebecca Silence, creator of Healing Is Possible with a very special episode today where we are talking about Thanksgiving, but in a whole new way. Not just looking at Thanksgiving as an opportunity to be thankful for what's quote unquote going well in our lives, but looking at Thanksgiving as a way of looking at our lives and, and reflecting and determining from a powerful place who we're going to be and what we're going to do next. As always, the mission of the Healing Is Possible Hot Seat is to take you along on a journey of hope and healing. And it's brought to you by my gorgeous team and rebeccasilence.com today. Our very special guest all the way from Hawaii today is Alana Warlop, fantastic spiritual teacher and guide on the planet that I'm so honored to bring to all of you and to our community. Community. Alana, welcome to the Hot Seat.

Thanks, mama. So glad to be here.

So much fun. If you would, let's just kick off by introducing yourself a little bit. You know, who are you and what do you do in the world that is so magical?

Amazing. I'm glad you think it's magical. I do.

I very much do.

So my training is as a transpersonal psychotherapist and I'm a trauma specialist, but based in somatic and more body intelligence rather than working with trauma just from the mind. We understand that it's not stuck in our heads. It is stuck in the way that our nervous system, primal brain and body all process that. What I do is tie in the esoteric, the spiritual, really the unseen realm of where we derive like our deepest sense of love and unity and purpose from. So as a spiritual psychologist, I've kind of bridged and used a lot of ancient practices and I give them a bit more of a modern take so that we can integrate them into our daily lives as busy people. Right. I work mostly with women, but I do have programs for men as well. And. But what I've found is that my work with women and there was like a point in my practice where I just, I closed it down and, and was like, there needs to be a reorientation. Because what I can see from this, these energies of, of healing, which are, I call, and you can call them whatever you would like, the essence of the divine feminine nature. Right. And so I started working with this energy and going on nomadic, you know, journeys and getting transmissions from lands and different people. And I traveled all over the world doing a lot of sacred ceremonies to kind of package and see, like, what is this divine feminine frequency that we are streaming down onto this earth? And how do we start to amplify that and create more women that are empowered about the divine feminine? Because it's our natural essence. And when the women understand it and. And embody it more and more, we can be more of a model and teach it more for the men. Right. Where it's not so natural for the men to tap into their divine feminine. And they almost need permission and a soft place to come and understanding. So. So when we have power around our softness, our creativity, our intuition, then it's like we kind of are able to build a new template for how that looks in the new world. So that's like the gamut of my mission. And I work. I have women's group programs, I have private containers, I have a breathwork program, and then I give retreats and workshops which haven't been going off over the past year and a half, except for my first retreat a couple months ago, where I met you.

Yes. Which was incredible. And that's why I would describe you as magical, if I could only describe.

You in one word.

That experience was truly phenomenal. And as someone who has led from a almost fake masculine place in my life and in my career and in my desire to step into my gifts and now and learning how to embrace the divine feminine, I think that skill and that tool absolutely applies to our conversation about thanksgiving and who are we being and how can we step into thanksgiving for all of it in our divine feminine and even just understanding more about our divine feminine? And then what's that ripple?

Right, Right. Because essentially, I mean, again, you can call it whatever you'd like, but it's feeling like you have emotional mastery over yourself, that you are the place where you understand how to source your own infinite fountain of love within you and then move into things with grace, whether they are the light, whether they are, you know, quote unquote, the dark. You know, it's like we don't. We don't even really need that dichotomy. It's just like we are meant to experience the gamut of all that humans are here to experience. You know, we're meant to feel it all. So in this week of gratitude, you know, it's so focused on what's positive, like, what can you latch to and what's positive in your life, which is always a great thing because so many people are super oriented to look at what's wrong with their life, what they don't have with Their life. So it's almost like, you know, but our culture kind of took that holiday and went, like, let's swing the pendulum way over here and only look at, like, what's good. Like, we're all good. We're all good. You know, because that's the kind of cultural messaging is, like, let's all be all good. And underneath, you know, there's, like, so many people that fucking disdain. Oh, sorry to start the holidays. Yeah, no, that's okay. Sure. Because of that undercovered shadow of, like, we're supposed to feel all good. We're supposed to be super psyched to be with our family. It's supposed to be happy. And for the majority, that's not true. You know, like, there's a. There's a, like, covert darkness that we're walking into, having to deal with issues like, do I belong? Do I not belong here? Do I fit in with them? Do they see me? Do I have anyone at all? Am I lonely? And, you know, am I desperate? Right? And so there's this huge shadow piece that comes up around, you know, not only Thanksgiving, but the holidays. And that's something that we have culturally just said, let's put a blanket over it, like we always do, and just say, yeah, just keep being grateful for the good things. Right? So it's like, it cuts us off from that direct, like, reverence for this massive, you know, shadow piece that's coming that could really transform us during this time. It's like a really powerful portal at the end of the year to transform as we move into a darker. If you're in the northern hemisphere, darker days and nights that we get to work with the shadow more? That's the beauty of this time. So why do we only say, yeah, let's just feel good, right?

And what would happen if instead of coming into this holiday season and the season of winter with an intention of avoiding conflict, avoiding triggers, avoiding the things that don't feel good or that don't seem to be going well in our lives. We were brave enough with this divine feminine energy, regardless of gender, gender, to go, bring it, bring it. Let's see what happens. Like, let's look and see, so that we can powerfully and intentionally grow into more of the versions of ourselves that we want to be with more access and information to what is and what isn't working about who we've been, the way we've been living. And after Pandemic, Alana, I mean, how many people maybe haven't yet, but could give themselves the gift of no more toleration, no more obligation, no more being the version of you you think you should be taking. Like what you described earlier in our hot seat. And how long was your. I'm going to put the business on hold and explore and then come back. How long did you give yourself to do that?

I mean, I took like about six months to do that. And I still saw clients. You know, this was before online work, but I said, hey, if you want to see me as a therapist online, we've got this thing called Zoom, you know, and everyone was like, oh, I don't know. And, you know, so I kept a few people, but yeah, I took some time. And then from there I didn't go back full into my office the way that I used to. And then I actually gave up my apartment and started traveling full time and followed more of a soul mission and a new creation and template for learning and doing, quote, unquote, therapy. Although it's not really. It's therapy and healing and, you know, it's many modalities in one. But I saw like the bigger vision, but I needed to have space for that bigger vision. Right? Yeah.

Well, and how courageous. I mean, for me, I didn't intentionally say let's take a sabbatical, but when I had cancer and was in bed for a could not do anything but take the sabbatical and surrender into the opportunity to reflect and really get comfortable being with all of the darkness and the light during that time, to come out and emerge much more clear about who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, and what no longer served me. I had my own experience of that. And what if we could all be brave enough to give that to ourselves? And then what would you say about how people can do that entering this holiday season?

Yeah, I mean, it's great to really note that, like, you don't need to, because so many people will kind of brush that off being like, oh, I need to have like a long amount of time that I take out of my life and I don't have that. I have kids, I have a job, I have life, all these things. And so my messaging and is that it's like, you don't need that. You need 10 minutes a day. You need 10 minutes a day to be able to sit down with yourself. And it's like 10 minutes, 20 an hour, maybe 30 seconds here or there. It's like, get present with yourself. And if you're able to actually, like, we were kind of talking about work with triggers. Name what's going on for you inside. You know, it's like, really sit and feel that energy that's going into this week. And there might be so much that you are amazingly grateful for. And that is so awesome. List all of that out, you know, and then I would list the things that feel stuck or stale or stagnant in your life. If there's a niggle with a relationship or something that you just, you know, you. You run the tape over in your head. Like you have the same conversation with that person over and over again in your mind being like, but then I speak no, when they were right, I'm right, and they said this, and that was bullshit. And, you know, it's like, write that name down, right? And just kind of, you know, one by one feel in your body into each one of these things that you're naming. And you actually might not be able to name it either. That's part of our problem with the unconscious shadow is that we don't know what's going on. So if the situation or thing isn't available to name, just be like, hey, I get this. This. There's a. There's a funky, funny feeling in my stomach when I think of, you know, having to chat with my uncle or my, you know, go to this party. I'm having social anxiety. Why is that? Okay, so I just want to go back and sit with. What does that sensation feel like in my body? And if I can get out of the mind and I'm not going to figure it out, I'm not going to be like, okay, well, it's probably because of this. And the last year it was said like that and dah, dah, dah, dah, you know, like absolutely no mind. Take all of your energy and your focus and I call it like the pearl. The pearl light pearl. Like a ball of. What am I trying to say? A ball. Oh, my gosh, I don't know. Anyway, a little pearl light in your.

Like an energy.

That's right, A little energy ball, which is mostly in your head and your mind. And we take that and we just focus on it and we bring that focus and attention down into the face. Start to feel the cheeks and the jaw and the neck and the chest, and then bring that little energy ball into maybe the sensation that you're feeling in your gut or your belly, and then just sit there and breathe with it and allow it to shift, change, get more intense, and eventually that sensation will shift and then hopefully just actually come all the way back down. So there's always an intensity to our emotion. So there's a highest expression of every emotion. And then that expression comes down and our body regulates back into baseline. If we don't interrupt the process with thoughts, so we can actually ride out that activation that's happening in your body. You're having a little trauma response, a stress response. So we want to ride out the stress response, let it come back down to baseline. And then from that place, ask the place in your belly, what's your purpose? What are you about? And don't answer that with your mind. Again, it might be a color, shape, sound, memory. And then you just kind of observe that. And then you ask it, what do you need? What do you need? It's like if our life came down to checking in with ourselves in two questions, it would be, you know, like. Like, what do I need? What's your purpose? Like, what's your. What's your purpose here? What's the purpose of this energy? And then what does this energy need? Okay, that's it. You know, and then it's like, I've worked on some of my shadow. Okay. And then you're like, okay, this is not that. This is not that complicated. Right. It just takes a little mindfulness, a little presence, and the willingness to want to go into it. We surrender into the body and the sensations, and we do our best job the best we can. Because it's quite hard sometimes to drop any story that we're telling about it out of the mind completely and let your body feel.

Yeah, I love it. And if we again can encourage you watching, to head into winter and the holidays with an intention of being willing to lean into the dark, the triggers, the shadow as it inevitably shows up at whatever time, not convenient times. Right. Just whenever it. It does. And to maybe even understand, Alana, that, you know, sometimes this shadow work, this work around the darkness, One of the things I say in my company is the darkness is real, but so is the light. It's not even just ours, right? Like, we're highly sensitive. There's generational work that's going on. So if we can get out of fear that, you know, you didn't cause it, it's nobody's fault. It might not even be yours. Guaranteed. It was there well before you. This energy and the wisdom in you to transform, transmute, and bring light to this energy, I think that can take the pressure off, right? Because we, you know, we want to not only have our stories about the triggers, but also we. We get into right and wrong as a society about triggers and Thanksgiving and How it should go and how it shouldn't go. And to me, these are traps that we have the power to not set for ourselves.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you said that so beautifully because it's again, this is leaning into that idea of full sovereignty. Because when you start to check in with your own body, your own feeling, your own needs, they are going to probably be very different than the expectations that you have perceived in that we start maybe moving from a place that has a different orientation than what culture has said or we believe we should be, and the expectations and all of that. Right. How how a Thanksgiving should look or whatever, you know, then it's like we get to that place of more authenticity. How can I actually be relating from the truest part of me rather than this surface level mask that I wear? Because I think I have to play a role with these people because they expect me to act in a certain way. And sometimes we do those acts because it', survival. You know, it's like, well, this is the face I put on because if I didn't, it would be hurtful here. It would be too much. It would be overwhelming. I would get judged, you know, all of those things. But we have to remember, like, this is our adult self now, you know, and we want to bring in that really protective. Like I'm an adult now and my inner child might be freaking out inside trying to go back with the famous, but I'm here to just allow that inner child to be seen. I see that you're anxious going into this space. Okay, I love you and you're doing a great job. And I'm going to carry you. Instead of you making the choices for me today and you creating the driver's seat of actions for me today. I carry you because I have to have a greater sensation and anchor in an orientation of self love so that I can be bigger than my inner child. Right. Like I can parent my inner child in that process.

Yeah. And one of the things that I think ultimately heals triggers is when the inner child and the healed adult come together, right? When that happens, the trigger doesn't have power anymore. And it's possible. And I love that the term perceived expectations, if we can all just remember these expectations that we think, think are being put on us or are what we're supposed to do, what we should do, and the list goes on, then we create evidence to support that. And I think this is another thing about triggers and darkness and shadow work. You know, we create evidence to support what we believe is possible and what we Believe is not possible. And our survival personality wins when we are asleep to the power we have to transform what we think is the way it is.

Because it doesn't have to be totally, totally. It's like, go ahead, I want to.

Hear what you were going to say.

No, I was like, it's like that limbic. I always tell people your limbic brain will win every time.

Right.

Your limbic brain is a survival mode. And that one has carries all the old defense mechanisms. Until you give it new and better defense mechanisms and you build those in your body, your limbic brain will hijack you every time. No matter how much you know and you've studied and growth done, you've got to really do the work that works with your nervous system and your body. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I love that you're saying it that way too, Alana, because I really think healing is a unique individualized experience. Right. It's not the same for everyone. But what I do think is a universal truth is that when your survival personality feels threatened and you're saying it will win every single time until and unless you catch it, look at it and say, hold on, as I let the survival personality die off, it will feel like you're dying, but you're not. You're actually making room for more life, more freedom and that more honest and authentic version of you that's dying to get a chance to live and express.

Yeah, I love the way you put that because it does feel like dying. Because when you start working with that limbic brain and coming to name it and see it for what it is, it's feeling the feelings that may never have been felt because that was the part of the brain that protected you from feeling that shitty and that bad and that lost and that desperate. So when you start to say, hey, it's safe for me now to live in a bigger way and create safety, emotional safety, then some of that has to come to the surface and just be felt. So it can be like, wait, you know, my process, like I was supposed to be doing this work, you know, to be feeling better, and I feel really shit. And you know, and it's like, yeah, because you're purging some old feelings and know that that's a. That's a part of this healing process is, is getting real, like letting the body let go of it, you know?

Absolutely. And this morning I actually was talking to a client about her life is exactly how she always imagined it could be. And now she's having more anxiety than she's Ever felt. And what I was talking to her about is, well, hold on a second. Let's just consider that you got your life so safe that your body is saying, hey, can we do some work to release some of this bottled up, stuck trauma stored, you know, blocked emotion, all these things, because you've done the work as a gorgeously fully expressed adult to set your life up for me to be able now to feel safe enough to deal with some of this. So don't think that just because there's some bubbling of some icky offness or just ugly energy that you don't want to face that something wrong is happening or something bad is happening. You know, give yourself some credit that you've done whatever you needed to do for your body to say, hey, hey, babe, let's go. Let's get rid of some of this. We don't need it anymore.

Right, right. And when you have that awareness, what a mastery. Because you're coming from a place of. I get it. And now full permission, like, you are allowed to be here. Right. So then that's that powerful place where we start, like, gaining that power of like, I like how you have this kind of bring it attitude with it, you know, it's like, where you are, you're like, hey, I know what's going on. Come on. I'm here to love you. I'm here to transmute you with the amount of love that I have. And I know that you don't have power over me anymore. Right, Right. I'm the one in control here.

Right. And the more we go, nothing's wrong, I just get to decide, am I going to be with this so that it can release, or am I going to fight it so that it takes me over Those the options. Right. And none of it, your. Your triggers get to become your bitch instead of you being at the mercy of them. And that really does come from a willingness to face no matter what it is that shows up in front of you, because freedom's on the other side.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to just do one distinction around that too, because sometimes people get a little bit caught up in the fact that I don't want to face what I went through in the past. Right. It was so. It was so bad. It was so horrific. Like, I can't go there. So this work is not asking you to go there, like to go retell a story or revisit, you know, a traumatic memory or something or just feelings of shame or whatever it is. We will feel, in essence, sensations and Feelings that remind us of those feelings. But it's very important that we stay out of the story. Sometimes we have to use the story just a little bit to get the activation in the body of like that those energies moving through so that we work with them in little teeny ways that just titrate in and out, in and out at a really safe, comfortable pace. And there is, when we boil it down like if we're out of the story and out of the mind and what did it mean about me and what is it, you know, most of the time if we're in shame or guilt, you know, it's, it's a story, it's a, it's a perceived perception and it's a hardcore wired one a lot of the time that we need to get into. But if you can move from mind to body sensation, there's nothing you cannot feel because they're just sensations in your body. Right. No matter how, even if you're feeling nauseous or your throat closing up. I've never seen anyone's throat close up to choke them. Right. So that they, they die. Right. Like sensations in your body will not kill you. So remember, like there's nothing you cannot feel. And feelings are sensations in your body. They are not the stories in your mind.

And they always won't last forever and have a beginning and a middle and an end. And I'm really grateful you brought this up about, you know, we're not trying to re traumatize everyone but I believe Alana, that triggers become patterns that run our lives in different costumes with different characters. So the whole point of today's hot seat and this message is to help you take your power back. Instead of being at the effect effect of you know, triggers, energy, people, expectations, environment, you're more powerful and then that inner child will keep re experiencing the trauma in different ways until you take your power back. So today is a little bit in bite sized chunks around how you can do that because it isn't overnight and it isn't again, you know, magically going to happen the way we want it to, as fast as we want it to. But if we're willing to be here as long as we need to be until it finally shifts, knowing and trusting that as long as you stay in what feels so just, you know, disheartening, uncomfortable, terrible, it will shift. Hopefully that can bring you a little bit of hope and peace.

Absolutely. And I can just feel that that's like, that is true alchemy, right?

Oh, I get chills.

You are A fucking priestess when you can do that. And that's. And it's available to all of us, Priest, priestess, all of you know, gender neutral. I always come from this like, feminine perspective, but. But it's like that is us returning to these ancient practices of high alchemy. High alchemy is energy knowing how to mix, transmute and, and like direct energy through our own bodies. And there's just like nothing more intensely powerful than that.

And we, you know, we also don't have to be afraid of how powerful we actually are. You being in your full power is not going to hurt anyone. It's actually going to have you more able to access your divine feminine, which takes care of the planet and people. Would you agree, Alana?

Absolutely.

You know?

Yeah. Right. Because you're activating a side of you that isn't. Isn't like, hey, girl, like, I'm the queen of the. The castle here and become you become the queen of your. I call it the queen of your inner king Queendom, you know, or the king of your inner. Inner kingdom, where the parts of me are the ones sitting at the round table, right? So in council, in my heart is my inner child, is my wounded teenager, is my divine feminine, my divine masculine, some of my spirit guides. And then, you know, also any traumatized part of me, like, we all have a seat at the round table of my heart. And when I am in command of that queendom, you know, then this is where I come from. I access true power. It's soft, it's. It's humble. It wants to hear others and listen. And I don't edit from that place. I'm not. Like, I have to show you who I am. That's powerful and I've got to be the best, you know, boss, babe, bitch around. And, you know, it's. It takes. It collapses the field of competition and comparing, you know, like, that's all old template stuff that weren't. That. That comes from wounds and insecurities. And so when we're really in this process, walking this path of spirit, you know, it's like we come to just say, like, I'm fine actually with being nobody, you know, and in essence, I'm everyone. So someone's coming to you. You're a mirror for me. How can you reflect a part of me? How can I have compassion for that part? You know, there's. There's just these, like, multidimensional ways of looking at our existence and what's coming to us and how we've drawn that in and built that. So that was kind of a tangent. I'm not really sure.

I love it though.

My original point was, but I think.

You know, people don't necessarily think about power as being soft. And I heard somewhere along the way someone say, you know, the most powerful person in the room is the most relaxed person in the room. And then I think we are more powerful when we are in that softer, divine, feminine version of ourselves that doesn't need to be prove anything, that doesn't need to be validated and that doesn't need the world to be different than it is. And conceptually this can maybe sound complicated, but what if this Thanksgiving and this winter, we all just step into relaxing in to our inner being and letting that inner being, the wisest version of ourselves at that round table, kind of take the reins and see what happens and not have to do, do, do, push, push, push. And to me, when I was talking earlier about the fake masculine me and leading a long part of my life for decades, you know, I didn't know yet I could just calm down and not try to control everything. Right? Because how do we trust that shit will get done if we're not in control? But man, does so much more happen.

When we give it up? Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, that some of the, the feminine and again, not, not woman or man, but the feminine mystique and the magic comes in not controlling and letting flow happen in your life. And yeah, you do have to practice with this muscle of trust. Okay, if I let go and you know, maybe somebody else gets to step in and you know, take responsibilities and. And you're like, well, my husband, he won't if I do, you know, I can't because he won't do the things and da, da, da, da. I'm like, I always am like, do you allow for it? Can you receive it? Have you emasculated somebody so much because you're always controlling that they don't feel powerful around you. So they don't, you know, it's like a switch that's been shut off. Right? So that works in these dynamics too, of like when I soften, it allows space because we, you know, we have this polarity going between, you know, two people, relationships. So when I soften, you know, someone actually will grow a little bit in their energy. And when I grow and get bigger with my energy, someone will have to come down again. Right? So this is how we play that, that kind of interwoven relational dance, whether it's with our children or our partner or our friends. You know, so if you, you have to actively take on something different and just see what happens, do it consistently. We don't do that once. And it's like, well, see, it didn't work.

I'm glad that's more evidence.

I'm not going to do that.

Right, right.

You didn't really do it. You're not, you're not doing it as a test. Right. Well, let me see if this works. You prove yourself to me, universe. Right. Don't come with that energy. That's not, that's not a universal energy. That's. It's like I'm going to open to something new and just see what unfolds and look for it to unfold, don't look for it to fail. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And it is a trust fall to let go of what we know keeps us protected and surviving in these moments of difficulty and struggle. But what if there is more possibility in life on the other side of the struggle of the pain? That's what we're here to offer you around. Some soul food for you to chew on as you head into Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Alana, thank you so much for the gift of being with us today. What final thoughts do you have? And then how do people get in touch with you?

I just loved this conversation because there's not so many people that like to bring up and say plainly and directly, like the shadow in the dark and triggers. And I'm just like, yeah, girl. Because we can talk about the expansion and the light and inevitably what you're doing is this, you know, is like trigger shadow work first. And then, you know, we do less, less and less and less as we work through the bulk of it, it gets lighter and open and then your world opens to this whole new level of, of emotional freedom. Emotional. Like when you feel that safe, you aren't afraid to make choices that kind of allow you to be seen more, to expand more, to invite in, you know, more abundance and love and true intimacy into your life. So I'm so happy to have this conversation with you, Rebecca, and I really commend and respect your work. So thank you so much for doing that in the world and to be in touch with me is Alana Warlop. Is my website on a warlop.com Alana Warlop on Instagram is another great place. I do a lot of writings on Instagram, little, little lives and things like that. And then they'll always be like announcements for events and the next programs. And just getting on my email list is honestly the best way which you can do through the website. Yeah.

Wonderful. Alana, it's an honor. I adore your work and you. It's such a gift to have you in my life and on my team now and to the healing as possible family and community. Heading into this thing Thanksgiving, my wish for you is that you find at least glimpses and small moments where you're connecting to that softer side of you that just knows cliche as it sounds, this too shall pass. There's more life on the side, on the other side of whatever it is that's showing up. And whatever showing up is gold. It's gold. It's not just some of its gold and rocket fuel for your life. It's all gold and rocket fuel for your life. When you will lean in, when you will get willing to be with it and explore it and explore different parts of you that could be leading that maybe haven't had that chance yet. So thank you all for tuning in, for being in your work, for understanding that the darkness is real and so is the light and that the mission is healing and also the cure is self respons responsibility. So let us know how it goes. Let us know how Thanksgiving goes. Thanks for being here again. Visit rebeccasilence.com for more services, more information, free material. And ladies, if you're liking what you're hearing today, you got to come and join me in Colorado Springs January 7th, 8th and 9th for the healing is possible women's weekend where you could spend three full days exploring you in a whole new way. All right everyone, thank you so much. Thanks again Alana. Love to you. See everyone soon.