508: How To Heal From Trauma + Regulate Your Nervous System For Greater Love with Bela Divine

Would you ever wanna be someone's friend who was not sure about you, who kind of ghosted you for a while, but then would like show up and wanna be your friend again? It's like, no. You would just be like, this is a weird friend and I'm not entertaining this. But why do we entertain in romantic relationships? It's like interesting. It's like we're willing to withstand so much more and behavior we would never tolerate from a friend if it's a potential lover because of, I think that unknown. And also often, especially if you're heteronormative, often women didn't feel as comfortable with their dads as they did with their moms. The dads were a bit further away and kind of cross culturally, dads worked outside of the home. They were the one who was working exhausted at the end of the day, didn't really have the same level of emotional capacity and time. So I think a lot of us, it's like kind of like all women have some element of daddy issues and all men have some element of mommy issues too. Of like, I want you to nurture me, I want you to be there for me, but if you're there for me too much, I'm going to lose interest in you because then you become my mom. So it's like no one would identify as that openly. They don't put on their dating app, hey, I got mommy and daddy issues. But it's like every single person is going to be mirroring those unhealed aspects of themselves until they dive into their traumas. And that's why for me, in dating, it's like, if you haven't dove into the depths of your consciousness, like, I am not interested because I know how much can be there. Welcome to the Highest Self podcast. My name is Sahara Rose and this is a place where we take spirituality and make it grounded, fun, diverse, relatable, so it can actually serve the needs of today's people. For me, the spiritual journey is not about leaving your body and ascending and being perfect in wherever, nirvana, but rather it's about being in your body, in community with people, with life and relationships and our pain and suffering, as well as our joy and our sensuality and just being our full spectrum selves. And that's what my journey has been about. Diving deeper into my dharma, my soul's purpose, and that journey bringing me to areas of my life that I wasn't looking at, my inner child, my ancestral healing traumas I had overlooked. And the more that I can heal those aspects within myself, the more I open up on the other side with my gifts. You know, I stepped into being a dj, and now I'm touring festivals all around the world. I've ridden four, four books now and created the Highest Self Institute, and so many different things. And really, it's a result of me going into the depths of my soul, into the depths of my consciousness, and finding those gems as well as those painful things that I had been suppressing. And on the other side, it's like you're letting go of this weight, and the balloon can soar higher and higher and higher. So for me, it's about the spiral going deep and coming up and knowing that the spiritual journey is not linear, but it's constantly growing and unraveling and approaching it with a more feminine lens, rather than looking at it from this masculine, rigid lens of like, okay, I'm broken, I need to heal, and then I'll get better. And it's mindset, mind over matter. If you have enough willpower, you can do anything. Just wake up an hour earlier and drop the excuses. And it's like, if that were the case, then every single person that read a personal development book should be happy, and they're not. In fact, some of these things make us even more rigid, which then leave us feeling burnt out. And then we feel like we can't believe in ourselves to follow through on the things that we want to do. And then our self confidence goes down low and it actually creates a spiral, the other direction. So for me, the spiritual journey is really about embodiment. And I love bringing in teachers that are personal friends of mine, people that I'm inspired by who are really walking this walk as well. So the person I'm bringing on today is Bella Devine. You might know her from Instagram. She is a mentor, a coach, a psychotherapist in Mexico, and she really specializes in inner child healing, the feminine ancestral healing, and trauma healing. So we're gonna be having a conversation on all these things and really looking at ways that we may have childhood traumas that we're unaware of. And yes, they' may be denser topics that come up in this conversation. And so if this is something you don't wanna dive into, then this isn't the episode for you. But my invitation, if you are someone that maybe feels like there's something there for you, that maybe you're overlooking, is to come to a regulated state, breathe, and approach this conversation in a way that feels good for you. In my own journey, the more that I can create safety in my body. The more I can dive into my shadows, and then the more wholeness and then on the other side, joy and pleasure I can find. So I'm excited to bring this convers with you because the healing journey isn't always pretty and sometimes it does require going into those really tough moments of our lives, but knowing that the only thing to fear is to feel. And the more that we can feel those things that we're letting go of, the more that we can blossom on the other side. So welcome, Bella, to the Highest Self podcast.

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you.

The first question I'd love to ask you is, what makes you your highest self?

What makes me my highest self and what makes me feel connected to my higher self is probably my imagination and then also movement, because when I'm moving my body, I'm honoring my energy and I can kind of move out anything that is my ego, really, really anything that's preventing me from showing up in devotion to the divine and to Source and being used as an instrument for the divine as opposed to, like, letting my petty human things that we all struggle with kind of take over. I think that's what the higher self expression is for me.

I love that. And the imagination is such a part of the inner child. And I would really love to start the conversation there because a lot of the things that we experience in this lifetime are patterns that we have created in childhood, ways that we have made ourselves believe. If I act this way, if I hold my energy this way, if I hold my body in this way, then I will be safe. But a lot of that is an illusion. So I'm curious, what are some signs that there may be some suppressed childhood traumas that we are unaware of and how they could be showing up in our lives?

So actually, I think lack of imagination is probably one of the really big ones. If you struggle to tap into visualization or even your emotions or to create a vision of your desired future, it's likely because you didn't have the freedom in childhood or you didn't have the safety to be able to explore those things. I think another really big one is negativity bias. When you learn that life is hard at a young age, your mind is going to be looking for proof that that is how it is. And, you know, what you focus on is who you end up becoming. So that ends up becoming your reality. And then you perceive all of life through this perspective of, you know, a wounded little child.

Absolutely. And it's like, these things are so normal for us. And that's why I think it's important to note that trauma doesn't necessarily have to be this big thing. It could just be like, my mom was always late for picking me up. Always. Persian people are just late. We have, like, Persian Standard time. I'm sure. I know Mexican.

My students are too.

So like, every day, like, I would wait like an hour outside school waiting for her. But that was actually really traumatic for me as a kid because I knew I couldn't depend on my mom being there in time. And sometimes she would actually forget. Like, she would forget that it was a half day. So it would be like, at 12:30, the school ended, and then I'm there waiting until like, 3pm it would be a long time. So I couldn't really trust that I could depend on my mom picking me up on time, which was a traumatic experience that now I'm almost, like, noticing when I'm doing, like, group things, especially with travel, I'm like, can I actually trust that you will follow through? And when they. I don't, then I'm like, see, I can't trust.

Gosh, time is one of my highest values because there's, like, nothing more valuable in life. I mean, it's the only thing we'll never get more of. And so I hold that with you. And my mom was always late for things too, so I can totally relate. But I think you bring up a really important point, which is this idea that a lot of childhood traumas get kind of overlooked, or a lot of people think they don't have childhood trauma because their traumas might not seem big enough. But the. The reality is that trauma is defined by not the event that happened, but how much it continues to impact you. I know that one of my traumas from childhood that was maybe small or appeared small was having a boy in middle school say to me, ew, you don't shave your legs. And I went on to shave my legs from this place of like, oh, I need to do this in order to be accepted or loved. And that totally stuck with me for a long time, even though even I was dismissing it as a small thing. So I think it can be as simple as having been bullied in, having moved around a lot. I mean, having immigrants as parents, even just feeling people looking at you different, speaking a different language, a learning disability. There are so many different things that can definitely lead us to become traumatized adults. And the reality is that all trauma begins in childhood. So pretty much all of the roots of our triggers and our unwanted behavior stems from when we were little.

Yes, it's the big T and the small T traumas and, you know, big T being like something really big. So can you differentiate the difference between those?

Yeah, so I would say that a big T trauma are the things that you think of when you think of trauma. So maybe you think of like having, you know, PTSD after being in war or sexual trauma, or having been abused or having, you know, been abandoned as a child. I think those are some of the ideas that come up around a big T trauma. But. But small T traumas are more so little things or things that we might dismiss as being little that continue to have big impact.

And both can impact us. It's just how it shows up in our memory. So I want to talk about what is important for us to do before diving into our traumas. How we can regulate our nervous systems and our bodies to be in a safe space. And this concept of titration and how we can apply that.

I love the concept of titration, but especially when I think of what we have to do before we dive into trauma and what everybody needs to know. The first thing that comes to mind is establishing safety. Because if you don't know how to create safety, especially within your body, you're not going to benefit from the breathwork session or the two hour long transformational journey. And I believe that all healing journeys should really incorporate safety first, then experience and then integration. So, you know, I think for anyone who's diving into their healing, healing, make sure that when you're finding a practitioner or taking a course or learning a new practice, that you first know how to establish safety for yourself if your teacher's not doing that for you, and then also make sure that you create space to integrate. I think integration is where most people kind of fall off. People will just kind of think, okay, you know what, I'll just think about what happened and move on with my day. But we usually integrate through the body. We usually integrate through actually allowing the emotions to flow through. And oftentimes after experience is when we're kind of flooded with emotion and when we really need to slow down and honor our bodies through breath, through movement, and through sound.

It's so true. The integration, especially coming out of a medicine ceremony or a big cathartic release, it's actually, I would say, even more important because you might have a realization of something in the ceremony, in the therapy, et cetera, but it's how you actually apply it into your Life. And when those patterns come back, because I see a lot of people, they'll do ceremony to ceremony. And the problem is still there because they're not really integrating it. But notic. I'm in this situation again. Being awake within that dream, okay, I'm here. I am again. But now I have the awareness that this is a pattern. How am I going to respond differently? And sometimes we're, like, waiting to be healed, as if being healed is this point that we reach, but it's. You can just choose to show up in a different way right now. You can just choose that pattern to be done and that you're gonna respond in a different way. And so it is, and it's done. But if we are waiting for, like, something to happen, and then it's like our default, it comes with practice. It comes with creating a new neuropath and creating that safety. And then the body also responds, because if we are realizing, I am safe when I speak my truth, okay, here I am in a situation that my default might have been agreeing with the person, people pleasing. I'm speaking my truth. I'm tuning into my body. I'm breathing, I'm creating safety there, right there. You're healing the trauma in real time.

Yeah, that's such an important point, because I think a lot of times when people are newer or even intermediate in the healing journey, there's this tendency to get addicted to healing. And there's this tendency to, like, keep diving deeper into the wounds and to think that going deeper into your trauma means more healing. But the reality is that healing trauma also gets to be fun. And healing trauma, the principles, the tools that you learn, gets to be applied in the real life moments when you choose to show up differently. I like to call those power play moments. And I notice even as a facilitator who knows all the concepts and who does all of the somatic practices, when I go out and in the real world and someone triggers me, those are the moments when it's like, oh, okay, am I gonna put this into practice? And it's a microsecond, like, choice. And yet it can be the most difficult thing to do.

And it's so beautiful when you witness yourself responding to a situation that normally would have triggered you in a different way. You're like, I've grown. Here I am. And it feels so freaking good. And then witnessing, like, wow, had this happened to me one year ago, I would have responded in this way. And now I'm, like, in peace. It's like, that is when the growth journey. It's so worth it. So I wanna talk about something that a lot of people who've experienced any kind of traumatic memory, whether it's from childhood or more recent. Could it be from a breakup? It could be from a friendship breakup, divorce. Sometimes you have flashbacks. Maybe those flashbacks are a sad memory that happened or even a happy memory that happened and you're like going down memory lane again, or you're thinking about when that person broke up with you or that thing happened. How can we deal with, with this flashbacks? It almost feels like all of a sudden you've like disassociated and you've like gone back into that reality and then you're starting to feel the same anger or sadness or whatever it is because your body thinks you're back in that state. So how can we bring ourselves back into the present moment when that happens?

I would say that the first thing that is the most supportive to know is like how your nervous system works. And I'm not talking all of the technical terms because I think everybody there's polyvagal theory. And that can be so scientific and so many big words that it can lose a lot of people. So I've taken to teaching the nervous system in a different way, where I like to teach people to imagine that your nervous system is like this wave and the wave has three parts. There's the charge where you get triggered. There's the peak tension point where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm about to snap. And maybe you do snap and then there's discharge. And each one of those phases requires something different to help you move through. So when you're getting charged up or when you're at peak tension, interrupting with a sensory tool to bring you back into your body and out of the mind. Because the mind is what gets you stuck in the story and gets you stuck in the thought spiral and sends you into the flashback and sends you back into that experience. It helps your body remember that you're in the present moment, you're not there. So like holding ice cubes, I keep sour candies in my purse and essential oils and just little easy things that. Because when you're in that flashback state, you don't have the capacity to listen to a meditation or to do an hour long practice or anything like that. So you need something simple. And then once you've broken that state with whatever sensory tool you use and maybe your breath, just like a simple, simple breath work technique to bring you back, even just inhaling in and out and counting. One, two. It could be so simple. Whatever works for you. And then afterwards, once you start to discharge, that's when you really have more space to begin working with, with somatics and to, like, get into your body and to let the emotions kind of be processed. But just feeling into where in the wave you are, I think is a supportive metaphor.

And that's such great advice, because it's like, when you're, like, in your peak and someone's like, take a few deep breaths, it's like, that's the last thing you want to do in that moment. But when you are in a more regulated state, that's when you can do the embodiment practices. And I feel like these practices also build up your nervous system's capacity over time. But it's like, if I'm in this frantic state, I'm not going to be like, to the window. Like, it's just not the time for it, you know? But maybe right then, I want to rage, I want to stomp, I want to punch a pillow, scream. Because that energy needs to be released. And I think it's so important, too, like, to have safe spaces. That's the one thing I noticed in myself of, like, I never had a space. I think most of us never had a space as a child to be loud, to scream, to grunt. It was always like, you're crying, be quiet, you're yelling. Yeah. So I noticed in myself when I started stepping into more of a somatic approach, I would feel like, even if I was alone, like, I shouldn't be loud. What if someone hears me? What if I scare someone else by me being loud? So what advice do you have for people who have a hard time actually feeling their emotions?

That's a great question. I think that if you struggle to feel your emotions and you've never really had a safe, safe space where you can. Finding community is absolutely important. And also little, tiny baby steps. So, like, whether it's singing in the shower and just learning to feel okay, making a little bit of sound or challenging yourself to sing when you're in the car, or just a simple movement, such as, like, shaking your body or seeing what it sounds like to yell into a pillow, preferably just because you know that when you scream into a pillow, it's a little more controlled, and so you're not going to disrupt anybody, but just beginning to test your power and beginning to test that expression of your emotions. I also really recommend trying things that you're not good at and being a beginner and Coaching yourself through it, essentially, and just being really kind to yourself. Like, I love going to dance classes where I'm the worst person. Because one, it checks my ego and I get to feel my feelings and I get to kind of practice saying, oh, okay. I feel like I'm the worst person in here. And I'm gonna be so kind to myself, and I'm gonna let my inner child have fun. Regardless of how good at this.

I love also going to those dance classes. And I noticed, like, for example, when I started my pole dance journey, I was like, this isn't for me. There is no way I can climb up this freaking firefighter pool thing. I'm not even a, like, upper body strong person whatsoever. And every single time I went to the class, halfway through, I would be like, you know what? I'm gonna leave. Like, I wanted to leave, but I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna leave in the middle of the class. Let me stick through it. And by the end, even if I got one trick, I would be so proud of myself. And it was so worth it. It was so worth the whole hour of being frustrated for that one moment of having. And now, over time, I can climb the pool, go upside down, spin on the pool, like, do all these things. Because I kept meeting myself in this discomfort and this discomfort. And it was like shadow work for me, all the stories that would come up. Because how we do anything is how we do everything. So it's like, are you that person who. I have a friend that she's like, I don't wanna go to a dance class. Cause I don't wanna be the worst person. So it's like, so what else in your life are you not trying because you don't wanna be the worst person? And then when you can step into that, then that's how we continue to grow. So on the subject of making sounds, I have found being in my car is the best place. Because when I'm driving, it's almost like the first five minutes of my car are always gonna be, like, grunting, screaming, like, whatever the emotion is. And I am actually excited for it because I know I can just be loud. I don't have to worry about it. And then I'm, like, playing my whiz kid music and I'm vibing and stuff because I let my inner Kali Ma out at the beginning of the car ride. And if you don't give that part of it a voice, it actually becomes like, this toxic energy in your being that it's like that passive Aggressive. It's that underlying tension and anger. And I noticed that the angriest people, like the ones who snap really easily and they're always on edge and you're always on eggshells around them. They're actually the ones who've never felt their anger. They've never fully felt it. So it's like this simmering teapot that's like seeping out a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit there. Instead of you just took off the lid and just screamed and cried and grunted and felt. Then it's like, ah, I don't need to be so defensive. I don't need to be Karen anymore, you know?

Yeah, yeah, you gotta, like, sit with your own shit. For lack of a better way of saying it. You've got to sit with your own shit because if you don't, it's going to show up as reactivity towards other people. And that's not fair to the people in your life. And you can't show up as your highest self if you are not addressing the shadow aspect. I think so many people in the spiritual world, they get into this mindset of like, I have to be all love and light anymore. I love my shadow. I love expressing my shadow because.

Oh, she's sexy.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm so connected to the dark feminine because when I express that part of me, there's the dimension that kind of like colors in the light, right, and paints this beautiful whole human. And I think even in the beginning of my spiritual and healing journey, I was like, I have to be pure. I have to be perfect. And that's exhausting. So, you know, I just. I think that's so important.

I mean, I have found that my trauma has made me sexier, to be honest, because it's made me more real, more just like alive. Heart open, like full spectrum fearless, bad bitch energy that I would not have had without it. So it's like, if we can actually look at how we can transmute those really painful things. For me was going through my divorce at the end of 2022, which was like such a dark night of the soul, like hitting the darkest levels of pain I've ever experienced in my life and coming on the other side of like my most liberated version ever before. It's like, that's that duality right there. Like, you can't have the Lakshmi, the Saraswati, the beautiful, radiant sultress goddess, without the Kalima, without the Durga, without the Sekhmet, which are like more of those dark feminine Rage ones. And that's actually what makes the goddess so beautiful, is that she's not just one thing.

It's all about the range, baby. Like, it really is about tapping into the lows and not making them wrong. I think that's one of the biggest things that I try to teach people, is, like, your emotions, your anger, your rage, your shame, your jealousy, whatever it is. There's nothing wrong with your emotions. They're always trying to push you deeper into alignment. They're always trying to show you or teach you something, to align you with your higher self. They're little messengers from the higher self.

So I have a vulnerable question for you. Do you ever listen to this podcast or maybe some other ones, too, and think, holy shit, I would love to be on this podcast one day? Hell, I would love to start my own podcast one day. But the thing is, I don't feel like a confident speaker. Well, if this is you, that is no longer going to be an excuse, because I have created a revolutionary model called Speak with Soul that can take anyone, I'm saying anyone, from an awkward to a confident speaker in just 21 days. I teach you everything I know from over seven years of hosting this podcast, which is now the number one in spirituality, including how to tell a story, the tone, texture, and quality of your voice, what type of speaker you are, and so much more. If you see the testimonials of people who have launched podcasts on IG lives, gone to speak on stages, or just had better friendships, relationships, communication with their colleagues, I mean, this shit is insane. And I'm super excited to have your testimonial on the website one day, too. Hopefully in 21 days. So if interested in getting started, you can head over to speakwithsoulcourse.com again, that's speakwithsoulcourse.com and you can find that link in the show notes. So let's get you on this podcast, baby. So I want to talk about going into negative thought spirals. Here's what I sometimes struggle with, that balance between. I'm thinking about different potential things that might happen, which I think our egos do that for protection of, like, well, let me see all the possibilities that could happen. And sometimes that helps us find clarity, and it helps us make decisions and see the pros and cons, and we make our list and all the things. But often it leads us just to more anxiety because then we find more things that we're not sure about. We come very, very overwhelmed, and then we're like, oh, my God, like, I don't know what to do. And we just end up feeling confused and very disembodied. So if we're noticing we're getting into this, like, loop especially we're like repeating the same thoughts. How can we get out of it?

Yeah, so that's a great question. The first thing you should do if you find yourself spiraling, and I think the key to knowing if you're in a negative thought spiral is do you feel like you're moving lower and lower when it comes to your energy levels, when it comes to how you're feeling, are you draining yourself? Are you getting sadder or madder or whatever it is? Because that's when you have your first flag that it's time to do something. But the most important thing to know is that your mind cannot fix your emotions because the emotions are the language of the body and your thoughts are the language of the mind. But your thoughts are going to look for anything that they can to validate what your mind is already thinking. Your mind kind of has an agenda. And so if you're stuck in this thought loop, you're just going to keep looking for every example in your history of when you were wronged or why you should feel sad or why your life sucks. So if you want to be able to move through that, you have to create space for that sadness. And I personally, when I get triggered, I like to ask myself, when was the first time I felt this way? Because I think that helps me to actually get to the root of the trigger and the root of the thought spiral and not stay there for very long, but just say, okay, and what does that version of me need to be? Okay. And I'll usually do that after I move the emotions out of my body. I mean, I think the flow of when you do what changes intuitively? But, you know, if you're feeling a lot of rage because as a child you weren't heard, you feel unheard because someone was interrupting you the other day, you gotta get that rage out. And then you gotta let yourself be heard by you. You gotta make sure to meet that need of your child self. And then you can respond from an empowered place instead of reacting and projecting and, you know, acting even more childlike.

Yes, I love that question of when is the first time I felt that way? And there was this tool I learned called the spiral. I don't know if you've heard it of it before. Yeah, it's like this, like, Australian tool that someone taught me in Bali. And basically it's you go into whatever it is that's bothering you. You feel where it is in your body and it has this whole chart of these different like Chinese medicine elements. And then underneath it you do this like muscle testing thing and there's like all of these different organs related to. So is it spleen, is it kidney, is it liver? And then you ask yourself, when is the first time I felt that way? And whatever memory comes up and then you feel that thing and you emote it and often you go back to that point of view. So for examp for me, when I did it last year, there was like this feeling of like rejection, of like, I'm never gonna find a guy, no guy's ever gonna like me. And I'm like, when did I first feel that way? And it took me back to seventh grade. Seventh grade. I had a crush on this boy. I'm not gonna say his name in case he listens to this podcast. So he doesn't. Okay, I'll say his name. His name was Keelan. And he's probably never gonna listen to this podcast. But he didn't like me back and I was so upset about it and I just had it in my head of like, he's never gonna like me and I'm not pretty enough. And like all the stor, like that energy was still living in me now like 20 years later. I want to say. And that voice just wanted to feel loved and wanted to feel chosen and wanted to feel beautiful. And so her pattern when she didn't feel that way was to go back to the hurt 12 year old girl. So then when I gave her a voice and I let her feel and express and she was just like, like so miserable and I just let myself embody that, that then she was heard and now she's no longer running in the background of my life. And now I know it's like rejection is just protection and redirection and like why would you try to be like winning someone over that can't even see you? Like what kind of relationship dynamic would you even be stepping into? But my inner 12 year old girl didn't understand that. And we have these versions of us still making decisions in our lives and it's only until we go back and we give them center stage and let them say their part and feel their feelings, feels they keep controlling our lives.

Absolutely. The closure piece is so, so important and we really do. I mean until we go back and give these younger versions of ourselves the closure that they need, which can feel so silly and it's so humbling in moments and sometimes a little awkward and embarrassing. But when we actually do that, we end up showing up so much more empowered than we even thought possible. And especially in love. I feel like in love, that's. Or in any relationship dynamics, dating, that's where my shadows have come out the most throughout my entire life. That's where I really am. Like, oh, okay. Like, that's really still alive for me.

Yeah. Why is it that in love it brings up all of our traumas and wounds? Do you think it's like our soul chose that person to mirror those traumas back to us? Or do you just think those traumas are alive with us, that no matter who we're with, they're just going to show up?

I think that it ultimately comes back to what we experienced witnessing our parents in love, and those patterns tend to continue playing out. And so we kind of break the karmic loops that our parents didn't fix. Especially when there's a lot of secrets in family lineages, things will just keep popping up. That's definitely been my experience. I feel like when two people intersect, it's like a car accident at an intersection, and the parents pieces land in different places every time. And the purpose of it is, can you kind of put yourself back together even stronger? Your traumas intersect and you're gonna bring each other to the point of having to face whatever it is that is unresolved within you. So I don't know. I don't know if it's our subconscious or if it's our souls. And ultimately those things are probably more connected than we even know. But yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's so many philosophies, right? Like, there's the karmic relationship that they talk about that you guys came into each other's lives to. To help clear the karma. So you're gonna bring up all my karmic wounds, I'm gonna bring up yours. A lot of ancestral stuff that comes up, I've definitely experienced that in my life. And I think because that person feels so familiar to us both on a subconscious and conscious level, that that's where the attraction comes from. But it brings up all of that trauma. But I do believe ultimately it's for it to be healed and cleared and transmuted if you learn the lesson. If not, you just keep attracting the same person in a different body and you keep looping through the same cycles. And then people talk about the twin flame, where they say it's like one soul split into two Bodies, which again, that I have not experienced that. It's not something I personally subscribe to. And I do think people often use this term to just mask a trauma bonded relationship where they're like, it's my twin flame. So that's why they're bringing up all my traumas and shadows. But God wants us together. And it's like, would it be this hard if God wanted you together? And it's like, maybe you are. Again, I don't think any two people are meant to be together. I do think it does come to a choice at the end of the day. And I think that we can often spiritualize traumatic things to make us feel like there's a greater sight to this. And on the other end of that, there is an undeniable connection between two people. And I do think it's something that's godly and divine. And I think any relationship is going to bring up your trauma because it's in you. And different people are just gonna bring up different aspects of your trauma. So some person might bring up your abandonment wound, some people might bring up your trust issues, some people might bring up your not enough thing. But those things were all you, baby. Like, they were all living in you. It's just like every single friendship brings up a different side to yourself.

It's a mirror. And that's what a relationship should be. Ultimately. It should. I think if you're not growing with another person, you shouldn't be with them. That's the point at which your work together is done. Personally.

Yeah. And I think that we have different soulmates in our lives for different lessons and reasons. And some of them might be a very short chapter of, like, you learned the lesson in one, and it was just like you were just meant to exchange those codes and that's it. Some people might be a month, a year, 10 years, a lifetime. It really just depends up to you. And ultimately. Exactly. I think love is such a coveted emotion. It's like the highest vibration possible. And it's at the same time it's a drug. You know, we're like addicted to that feeling. So I think it's like almost like by design that we want that love so badly that we're willing to go through those traumatic memories and the childhood stuff and the abandonment issues and all of that because we want to be back in love. If we take that path of healing for love. Or we could blame everything on that and be like, well, I had this, this, that, and it's that person's fault and continue to Find. So it's like, do you rise in love or fall in love? And that's up to you.

Yeah, that's a really beautiful way of putting it. My partner always says, he's like, we're choosing, we have to choose to rise in love. And I think that's so important. Yeah, I think also, you know, we tend to pursue relationships that remind us of what's familiar, of what we saw play out within our own families, and that can almost be more attractive. I know that for a lot of the relationships that I had, which were really toxic when I was younger, I was like just playing out my parents divorce story. And when I finally got into a really healthy, good relationship, my partner grew up with really loving parents. And so he is really good at loving in a way that sometimes in moments it's been so like chill and beautiful and civil that I'm like, I've had to work through a lot of my own minds almost looking for problems or almost looking for that familiarity because it has been totally unfamiliar to me. And I think that's something that people need to consider, especially when they're thinking about the twin flame thing is like ultimately like love that's good for you if you hadn't experienced it before is going to be completely uncharted territory. And sometimes, sometimes it's not even gonna be like what feels best in the moment.

Totally. And our nervous systems, if they're used to being in this like, wired, like uncertain state and we enter a really stable relationship, we're like, well, this is boring. You know, like I'm used to some element of the unknown, the chase, something to make me feel we're addicted to the drama of it. And then. So if we enter into a stable relationship, we often self sabotage it because we're just like, well, this can't, that can't be what love is. It's just too calm for me. And once we're able to create that safety, that calmness in our own nervous systems, then we're no longer attracted to the up and down and chaotic people. But I find often we choose the person who mirrors those unhealed traumas of like, you're too busy for me, so I'm gonna be obsessed with you until you have enough time for me, because my dad was too busy for me. So if I can get your attention, that means I'm important. Just like if it meant if I got his attention, I would be important. And then there you are, like trying to fight for someone's attention and then it's like you feel high when you get it, you feel broken when you don't. And you're just repeating that inner child that felt that way.

I've also heard that specifically, like, successful, powerful women who are like, used to succeeding and winning tend to go for unavailable men or men who are wishy washy or men who are like, for lack of a better term, beneath them or who aren't putting in the work because they are used to being able to succeed or be able to win someone over. And so that can be like a really, like, intense and toxic challenge. And so I think, you know, it's important to recognize that even though in some areas of your life you might have absolutely everything together, the shadows can show up in really sneaky ways, especially in relationships.

Totally. And I think it's like, would you ever want to be someone's friend who was not sure about you, who kind of ghosted you for a while, but then would like show up and want to be your friend again? It's like, no. You would just be like, this is a weird friend and I'm not entertaining this. But why do we entertain in romantic relationships? It's like, interesting. It's like we're willing to withstand so much more and behavior we would never tolerate from a friend if it's a potential lover because of, I think that unknown. And also often, especially if you're heteronormative, women didn't feel as comfortable with their dads as they did with their moms. The dads were a bit further away and kind of cross culturally, dads worked outside of the home. They were the one who was working, exhausted at the end of the day, didn't really have the same level of emotional capacity and time. So I think a lot of us, it's like kind of like all women have some element of daddy issues and all men have some element of mommy issues too, of like, I want you to nurture me, I want you to be there for me, but if you're there for me too much, I'm going to lose interest in you because then you become my mom. So it's like no one would identify as that openly. They don't put on their dating app, hey, I got mommy and daddy issues. But it's like every single person is going to be mirroring those unhealed aspects of, of themselves until they dive into their traumas. And that's why for me, in dating, it's like, if you haven't dove into the depths of your consciousness, like, I am not interested because I know how much can be there? If you say you have zero trauma, biggest red flag, because it just means you haven't dove into it yet. So I would rather, much rather be with someone who's aware of their traumas than someone who thinks they don't have any.

Absolutely. I think my three biggest criteria in relationships, well, the most important one I'll share with you is a willingness to work on yourself. Like you have to be growing on your own. And I'm not going to be the person to push you to do that because I will outgrow you because I'm going to continue growing. So you got to be doing that too. It's so important. And something else to touch on that you were just sharing about family constellations is one of the modalities that I studied and trained in. And it's really interesting because women tend to follow. And of course, these are generalizations, so it may not apply to you, but women usually tend to follow the karmic patterns of their mothers and the lineage of the women. And men tend to follow the patterns of their father. And so one really good piece of dating advice is ask people about their parents. Ask people what their parents are like and about their relationship with their parents. But specifically, like, what did the man that you're dating, if you're dating a man, learn from their father? And that that will tell you so much about that person that has been.

Spot on in my experience, both in myself, in previous relationships. And sometimes you're like, I never want to be like my dad or I never want to be like my mom. But unless you actively do healing work around that, you're going to become that them annoying you, even you hating them sometimes actually makes it worse. You know, I had an ex that was like, my dad is a womanizer, and I never want to be like that because I saw how upset it made him. And then lo and behold, just became that, you know, because he hadn't worked on that shadow. So I think it's like, like holding the rage is not enough. And actually sometimes that creates more tension which draws you to that thing, because what you resist persists.

Yeah. And the deepest thing that we're here to heal karmically, in terms of trauma, in my opinion and in my experience, in my own life and just with my clients, is the ancestral piece. Because when you're born into this human reality, you're born into a family for a reason. You spend so much time around these people, or not enough time around these people, specifically because those are the lessons that you are here to learn. And they're also patterns that usually perpetuate for many generations. So it's not just you. It's this, like, heaviness that started a long time ago. And the best way to work on breaking it, in my opinion, is through ritual and through initiation. Initiation meaning like active pursuit of your growth. But I think one of the biggest things that culturally we have lost is this idea of, like, elderly elders to look up to and elders who teach us and initiatory rites of passage, whether it's through ceremony or women's circles or community or whatever it may be. Right. And so people seek it out in. In this, like, addicted to healing kind of way.

It's so true. And that's what we're completely missing in our society. Because healing doesn't just have to be talking about the thing that happened. In fact, that doesn't actually heal it, but it's to. To decide I'm gonna be the one that changes my lineage. And I think it's so important. You know, there are a lot of women's circles out there, but the men's work is really, really needed because a lot of these men are, you know, facing these shadows in really shadowy ways. You know, addiction to porn, to smoking, the juul, to drugs, video games. I think the masculine is really hurting right now as a collective. And the feminine, our gift is that we support each other and we're really collectively rising right now. And I find that a lot of us women are having a harder time finding the men because there hasn't been as big and as quick of a divine masculine movement as there has been with feminine. I'm seeing it's coming online and it's happening now, which is so exciting, but we are in deep need of that. I'm seeing a lot of powerful, conscious, aware women are like, no, I'm not gonna put up with this anymore, and are leaving. I'm seeing so many people are leaving relationships, and I think that's sometimes the only way the masculine learns, too, is like, sometimes they need to realize I'm gonna lose the thing that I want the most in life, which is love, which is the attention of this woman and the nurturing and all the things that she provides in my life. Because the feminine is such a muse for the masculine. And sometimes it's only in our absence sense that they're catalyzed to change.

Yeah, I think it's partially because I heard this quote. I don't know where it came from, but that women, we spend time with each Other face to face. Whereas men spend time with each other shoulder to shoulder. We're, like, connecting at the heart, looking into each other's eyes, and really being with each other. And so for a lot of the masculine, they taste that for the first time in relationship. And my partner works with men. He's a men's coach and mentor, and almost always all of his male clients come to him When a girlfriend is either like, if you don't do the work, I'm leaving you, or they have already left them. And I think that, you know, that's why, coming back to this idea that the best thing you can look for in a relationship is someone who's willing to put in the work, to grow. I actually Mia Magic, a friend of ours, she said that you can't resent that. You have to be his teacher. And that's been my experience. I mean, the partner that I'm with, he's done a lot of inner work, but it was like, I might have shown him to the water, but he was the one who drank, and he was the one who kind of continued the journey, and that's 100% what I look for.

So was he spiritual before you met him? And how did you guys meet?

Yeah, so we met at a warehouse party. So just randomly in passing in Mexico? No, we met in Philadelphia, and we just kind of were magnetized to each other. I mean, if there's a twin flame story, it's probably ours. We're both half Mexican, from the same region. We're born in each other, parents, birthdays, like, a lot of really weird synchronicities, and neither of us wanted a relationship. We were just kind of like, whoa. And we just spent a lot of time talking, like, nothing physical even happening, and kind of went on this. This journey to help complete some ancestral karma for him. His father didn't have a headstone yet, and so we were, like, sent on this adventure to Spain to talk to his grandpa and get us at a headstone, and the relationship just kind of flourished after that. So I think he was actually pretty jaded from losing his father at a really young age. But I came into his life and was like, there's no such thing as a random universe. Everything has a reason, and spirituality is real. And it was really cool because I got to witness that become his reality. He was a little resistant, but he was open. And I think as soon as he saw that magic in life for himself, he took it upon himself to seek out specifically those initiations, those rites of passage. Like, he did A dark retreat. And he's really been doing work that like, personally I'm not called to like, I love the sun too much. You will not catch me in complete darkness for more than 24 hours. Probably. But you know, getting to witness that in the masculine has been very healing. And I do trust that there are other good men out there doing the work as well.

Yeah. They say women are the leaders in love. And sometimes we're like waiting for this man to have it all figured out and to say the right things and to know our bodies better than we ourselves and to take us to the this place of the unknown that we can. And it's like that happens through building trust. And building trust requires communication, which also means there's gonna be some rejections happening, some failures happening. Like no one nails these things on the first time, some uncomfortable moments. And you have to get through those discomforts in order to then co create the relationship that you both want. And I think exactly. It's a willingness on both parts. And for a lot of us women, we are waiting for that perfect person. So then we're just like waiting for dating like forever. Right. And it's like looking at someone and it's not even, it's like kind of potential in a way, because it's like you could see his openness and his willingness, but you weren't like, okay, I'm gonna change this guy, I'm gonna change his outfit, I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna change that. But rather you're like, I feel connected to him. I can feel his depth. Maybe he doesn't know the jargon.

Right.

Maybe he hasn't done the things I have done. But I'm going to lead by example and lead him in love. And then that love, love took him on his own path. Which looks different from yours.

Exactly. Yeah.

It's so beautiful. And I have full trust that a lot of men right now are rising and are feeling that call. And you know, we can't do this just woman or just men or just non binary. We need, we need everyone together rising. And there just have been such deep traumas around feminine and masculine dynamics that I would say this is probably like the biggest place where trauma lives is like, look in your relationship, look at what you're not looking at. Looking at the lies, the secrets, the patterns. And yeah, it's generational. I mean, I know in my lineage forced child marriage for every woman in my family. That's just. There was no such thing as a love marriage in Iran. And you Know, for a while I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe my grandpa forced my grandma to marry her. That's so messed up. But then I even had compassion to. Well, in that time in Iran, that's just what society was like. There was no questioning of that. It doesn't mean he was a bad person. Just everyone's operating from what they're told to do, you know, they're operating from the best they can. And then once I was able to find more compassion that I found more compassion for men in general. And I could see them as these, like, beautiful little boys that just want to be told that they're, like, doing a good job and they, like, want our approval so badly. And when we can see them as that, we, like, lose that. Like, all men are this or all men are that instead. Like, first of all, there's no all men or all women. Everyone's different, but everyone is just a little boy and a little girl who's hurt, who wants love, who's doing what they believe will help them get there.

Yeah, absolutely. I always say when you have conflict with your family, even an adult, you're like, they should know better. They're an adult. I just try to look at my parents and be like, they're a five year old. They don't know better. I'm just gonna treat them like a five year old that doesn't know better. And it's been super helpful.

So can you speak a little bit about family constellations work and how we can start diving into.

Oh, my gosh. So this is the perfect bridge because I got into family constellations after I had my first family constellation with my longest term mentor. She was visiting in town to see her guru and we went out to dinner and she pulled out her shamanic wheel and she did a constellation. It's kind of like the way she teach. She was a direct student of Bert Hellinger, the creator of family constellations, but she also brings indigenous wisdom in. She's also native Mexican. And so we did this beautiful constellation for. For this belief that I really held, like the heaviest karma I had, which was love will never last for me. And I met my partner the next day. So I was like, okay, like, what is this witchcraft? I must participate. I must learn how to do this. And I started training in it. Family constellations essentially allow us to tap into what is called the knowing field, which is the field where all energetic information of our family lineage exists. And whether you're using in person representatives like physical people or objects or you're recreating it with pieces of paper or on a shamanic wheel. Essentially what you're doing is you're bringing the energy dynamic forward in space where you can see it and where you can create energetic corrections where there are imbalances. Because essentially when something is left unaddressed, hidden under the rug, or a pattern is not broken, it will be passed down onto someone else, and it's not their fault. So if you are repeating a pattern, a lot of the times it has nothing to do with you. It's just that it has now become your responsibility to take care of. And that's why it's so important to liberate yourself from these patterns. Because, you know, until I did, I was replaying my mom's scenarios in love over and over and over again. And it's not like she ever taught me anything negative about love through witnessing her experiences in it. I just kind of internalized, oh, that's how it is. And for me, it was literally, you know, it's one session. I always like to say that it can accelerate healing, like, where it could be the equivalent of like, 20 therapy sessions in one, just because of how profound the shifts are. And we can physically feel the energy of the people that we're working with. So even if you didn't know a family member, information can come through, and it's just really profound.

So good. I did family Constellations, and I actually got my mom and dad and brother to all do their own sessions, too, which was so beautiful because they've never really done therapy. But I just told my dad, I was like, you're just going to talk about yourself and your family, which he loves talking about. So he agreed to do it. And he was like, I noticed that my dad this, and it was just, like, so beautiful to witness that, like, notice their patterns with their dads. And I had this thing with my dad that I told him. I was like, you know, I feel like you weren't really there for me as a child, like, emotionally. And he's like, well, I didn't even have a dad. And it just gave me some perspective of, like, he's right. You know, he had no role model of what a father was like because his father was sick and then died when he was very young. So if you have no role model, like, how am I expecting him to be, like, the dad from Full House who's, like, picking me up and, like, having deep conversations with me and, like, helping me my guy problems when he's never even had a father? Figure, you know, and it like gives you so much more compassion because you realize they all really are doing the best that they can. And a lot of our parents are just like literally operating with like no manual, no example, and often are moving to a new country where the standards of fatherhood and motherhood are very different. In many countries, a father is not even involved in the child's life. There's no concept of this. It's like a father works and he provides. That's the, the father's role. Whereas this very modern and very Western interpretation is the dad is home and the dad is talking to people and emotionally there. And I think that's beautiful. But I was like pegging my standards of my life to why didn't my relationship with my dad look like that? That's what the white families on TV have. So I must have a broken childhood. But rather if I went to Iran, I would just pretty much have quite a normal father experience. So it's interesting how even the standards we put ourselves to can create what we perceive as a trauma in our minds.

Yeah, I had the same experience with my own dad and honestly that was one of the biggest sources of my self inflicted traumas, which is something that I never see people talk about, but I think it's so important because sure there are the things that happen to us and those can be very traumatic. I definitely had quite a few traumatic experiences in my life. But it's almost as if the self inflicted traumas that came as a result when I started kind of recreating these self sabotaging patterns or putting myself in dangerous situations in my teenage years, those almost stick a little harder because, you know, then there's this aspect of like, blame and like, oh, I, I chose to put myself in that situation, even if you didn't know better. Right. And a lot of the times that's what our parents are doing too. It's just putting themselves in these situations because they never had an example.

So true. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this. And where can listeners connect with you further?

Yeah, absolutely. So you guys can check me out on Instagram, my username is Bella Divine. Or at my website, bella divine.com. thank you so much for joining us for this episod episode.

Thank you so much for tuning in. If you love this episode, please share it on your social. It helps create a more conscious world. We need to have more conversations like this. It's going to elevate your friendships, your relationship, just your overall community. And like attracts like. And if you leave a review for this podcast on the iTunes store, I will send you a free gift which is my Womb Meditation. So this is a meditation to connect to your sacred womb space, the home of your divine feminine, and receive her answers. So leave a review and take a screenshot and email it over to me@saharaamsahararose.com you can find that link and all the information that we talked about in the show Notes. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you in the next one. Can.