How to Heal Your Trauma, Beat Addiction, & Connect with Your Soul | Elisa Hallerman

When you are vulnerable, you give others permission to do the same. And until I was able to drop the veil, open my heart, extend love, that I was able to touch other people from my soul to theirs.

It's funny because you only come across. I don't know, at least for me, on an annual basis, I might come across five or six people that I'm like, the world needs to know a whole lot more about this individual and the work that they do. And, you know, a mutual friend of ours shared with me your work and was like, you know, hey, you gotta. You have to check this book out, the sobriety thing. You gotta check out the. The concepts, everything in it.

And.

And I was like, as I was digging into, oh, my gosh, this is so good. Oh, my gosh. I want to kind of maybe go backwards a little bit, if it's cool, and kind of understand from your perspective, a little bit of your backstory and kind of what led you into what would. What would become sobriety.

Yeah, definitely. So I've been sober from drugs and alcohol for 20 years. And I was. I got sober in Los Angeles. At the time, I was working in the entertainment business. And after I got sober, I had, you know, success. And I say, quote, unquote, success, because I've redefined success to look like achievements and not shiny new toys. And. And I had a wonderful career, and I was incredibly grateful, and I loved what I was doing for a very long time. And I think the healthier I was getting, the more I was starting to realize that it might not be fulfilling anymore. And that I had accomplished everything that I wanted to. And that contrary to just keep going, just keep going and getting there and there and there and there, I wanted to do something different. I was still lacking a lot of healing work that I had not yet been aware of, despite my sobriety.

Yeah.

Led me on my own journey. And I started taking classes at night at UCLA and learning about drug and alcohol addiction, which led me to learning more about neuroscience and learning about this little word trauma that no one was really speaking of. And I was fascinated by what I was learning. And I just felt like if I don't know this and I'm in recovery, not only that, but I helped so many people in my family, so many friends, so many people in the business and the entertainment business that is prior in helping them. I don't think a lot of people know. We don't know what we don't know.

Yeah.

And so that eventually led me to retire and go back to school and get my master's and doctorate. And it was going through those three years and then two years of dissertation writing that I really dove into. The orientation that I was practicing was depth psychology. And that's depth, which is really rooted in the unconscious and a belief that if we don't look at what lies beneath the surface or lies beneath the symptoms, then what is unconscious and unknown will rule us and we won't be able to really do that deep healing or growing down, as I refer to it. And.

So anyway, when I was doing my dissertation, the question I asked my participants was, could doing soul centered work lead to long term recovery? And the answer across the board from all my participants of different.

Times in recovery and different relapse stories, and all of this was a resounding yes. But the caveat was they didn't know they were doing it. They weren't aware that it was soul work. It was happening organically, and it was the unconscious rising up and showing and showing itself. But no one had language around caring for the soul. And that's really where the concept of soulbriety came in. And it wasn't until the when Covid and lockdown and I started to.

Really get calls of immense suffering. And so many people just, you know, frozen in time. And it was as if everyone was playing musical chairs and all of a sudden the music stopped and everyone was forced to sit exactly where they were. And the depression and the anxiety and the suicidal ideation, and I knew I couldn't help as many people as I wanted to just with the company. And that's when I felt really called to write, to write the book.

Yeah. Unlike the bike that you said called to it. I, I feel like a lot of the work you've been doing for the last several years, the book, the organization, is more of a calling than anything else. But I've also realized that on the, on the, on the bigger side of the calling is typically an extreme cost right. Of having to face some pretty extreme circumstances. And for me, it was, it was the person in the mirror. Like it was, for me, it was just trying to like, you know, dude, what are you doing? Like, the decisions you're making, the behavior chat, the behaviors you're acting out on, all that kind of stuff from my homeless days drove a lot from the inside out. And it wasn't until I started doing some inside out work that I started getting some traction. And I, and I know, at least for, for your work that I've studied so far. And I know one of the things we can Share on is it seems like all. All of our souls are yearnings or have yearnings for certain levels of fulfillment. But it's almost like we chase all the fulfillment in all kinds of different crazy areas. But the one place that our soul actually has for mil, you know, actually has or receives fulfillment. Out of curiosity, of all the research you've done so far and obviously life experience and everything, what have you seen? Like what. What are you seeing that's. That's driving that? One, the insatiable need to fulfill the, the. The longing. And two, why we go for external circumstances first?

Well, isn't that the $50,000 question?

Really, it's a very simple answer. We live in a world today where we're used to getting immediate gratification. We get the news and we get information and everything's really quick and timely and in real time. And that's how we want to feel better. We want to feel better now and fast. And we're not comfortable being uncomfortable anym. And there is a really short. And you know, for a lot of things, whether it's an addiction to.

Substances or shopping or sex or behavioral addictions or buying shoes or whatever that thing is going to be that's going to fix that mood and give you that dopamine hit that. All of those things that are external have a really short expiration date on them. They're not lasting. And so we do them and we do them and we do them and we'll bounce from one to the other. But inevitably it's not going to work for the long term.

Yeah.

So for those of us that are really sick and our life is depending on it, where we might not live another day if we don't change our lives, that's when we are really forced to make that decision of all right, it might not be the easier, softer way, but like, fine, I'll do it for me. I didn't even know I was an alcoholic or a drug addict. I thought that there was something seriously wrong with me. And I could not understand why I couldn't manage it or promise myself that I wouldn't do it or drink like a quote unquote normal person I hear. And I just had no awareness of what was going on in my brain and also in my body and the way trauma was. I was experiencing it in the present day in my nervous system. But at the end of the book, I talk about the soul journey.

Yeah.

And.

You know, the soul journey is my version of something that exists across all cultures and societies and in mythology and Joseph Campbell talks about the hero journey, but essentially, right, we're all walking through our ordinary life, and things are fine. They're just fine. And that's good enough. Mm. And we do hear these whispers. We all hear them, but they're really big questions. You know, am I happy in this relationship? Do I love my job? I want to live here anymore? And those are big. We're like, not now, not now. I'm in my ordinary life. I'm good. I'm going to work. I'm coming home, making dinner, watching Netflix. Like, quiet over here. And we will quiet and quiet and quiet those whispers. But the thing about soul is those whispers will continue to get louder and louder and louder until a brick house falls on your head and you're forced to be still and really listen. So that had to happen a few times before I started to learn to really heed to the whisper and not change my whole life. Going back to what you were talking about, my calling is not making an impulsive, rash decision because I had this quote unquote calling that I needed to get to, but really start to.

He, like, pull the threads and be curious about what those things were and ask myself hard questions and meet guides along the way, whether that was a person or a book or an article or a show or something. And then you slowly start to take the leap of faith.

Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's so interesting to me. I like the. I like the phrasing around the calling side, because I feel like all of us that are searching for purpose, you know, some would say I'm searching for my calling or I'm trying to get to my calling. I like the fact that you made it. Not a destination, but more of an example of an existence that once. Once you've done the. The soul work, if you will, that you begin to kind of. It's not until you get to look back that you kind of see that it is, in fact, like a calling or a yearning or something that's pulling you towards it. I want to may a little bit about trauma, a little bit, because, you know, I feel like trauma can be a loose word or it can be a very defined word. And at least for me, trauma is anything that impedes my soul's existence to move forward. It could come in a variety of different ways in the work that you've done around trauma. And one thing about trauma is it's like breathing, right? It affects every person that's ever breathed. Like, it's. There's. There's some form I Think of what I would refer to as trauma that we will all experience at some time in our life. Some traumas are seem to be a lot deeper from a outside looking in perspective. But to the person feeling it, it's oftentimes about as traumatic as it can possibly be. So help me understand maybe the research and even your own journey with trauma and getting to that place of allowing trauma to begin to heal itself.

So if I like to divide trauma up into three different types, because you're right, everyone thinks of it a little bit differently. So an acute trauma would be a one time event, an accident, an assault, something like that. There's chronic trauma which is something that's ongoing. So maybe the child of divorce and having to go from home to home, or maybe a new school and making new friends, or working for a narcissistic boss and going in every day and experiencing that sort of psychological or emotional abuse. So something that's ongoing, that might seem small in that day or that moment, but because it's ongoing, it starts to chip away. And then there's complex trauma, which is really a combination of both. And then it also depends on when you've experienced this trauma. If you think about children that have.

Attachment rupture with a parent or a caregiver, they're experiencing trauma, but they're preverbal. So they don't have the words to describe it and they don't see themselves as a separate individual. So. So when you're young and something is happening to you, you don't realize that that is about the other person. You think it's about yourself. We start to put little post it notes on our soul that say, I'm not good enough, I'm unlovable, I'm not pretty enough, whatever it is. And those really become our narrative and how we walk around in our belief system. So that's one aspect. The other aspect of trauma is exactly what you were saying. It is subjective. And two people can be in the same horrific car accident, witness same exact thing and come out of it where one person will in a couple of days be back to themselves and the other person will be experiencing the effects of that trauma. So the trauma is not necessarily about the event. The trauma is when we say people are suffering from trauma, it's not that they went through something, it's that they're continuing to feel as if that is happening in real time.

Yeah.

So they have then an encounter where they're driving down that street or another car cuts in front of them and they have a Panic attack. Or you finally got out of that job with that narcissistic boss, and now you're in a relationship, and that person says something to you like, I don't want to go there for dinner. And your reaction is a 20 because it triggered something in you. So that's the part that we can heal. We can't take away the events that have happened to us in our life, but we can heal our nervous system and our body.

So that we're not experiencing the same thing in the present day.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's so good. You know, it made me think of something else that I read in Sobriety that I love so much as you actually. You have a really good way of putting new words around things that have been difficult to articulate.

And at least for me, like, you talked about this term called soul loss. Right. That I just thought. I thought. I. For me, it was profound when I read it, when I was going through it. And for that reason, I'd love for you to share kind of your perspective on soul loss, why those words, you know, resonate so much and. And what we need to know as an audience to hopefully better ourselves through our own soul journey.

Yes. So studying depth psychology, I studied a lot of Carl Jung, James Hillman. I was first introduced to the concept of soul loss from Thomas Moore, who's written some incredible books, and he was a protege of James Hillman. And James Hillman was an incredible psychologist who was always making up words, describe, you know, what he was trying to say, because he spoke in images and poetry and myths. And.

Essentially that is how we speak about soul. Right. And that's why the book is told in story instead of, here's how you do it, step by step.

Yeah.

So Hillman talks about something called the acorn theory, which is essentially that an acorn knows exactly that it is going to have this blueprint of growing into this great big oak tree, and it needs no instructions, it needs no help. It's just going to happen if it just let. Let it be. But, you know, as human beings, we can't just let it be. We want to take control. We want to do it this way. We want to move it.

Ain't that the truth?

Yeah. Like, no, let me do this. Let me scheme whatever it is. And so we don't always listen. Right. And essentially, when we talk about caring for the soul, it is about that conscious contact between our unconscious and our conscious making what is unknown known.

Yeah.

But if we have this acorn, so to speak.

And something traumatic happens.

We will hear ourselves saying, I've broken to pieces. I'm falling apart. It feels as if a piece of me is missing. And that's essentially what I mean by soul loss, is we've become fragmented parts of ourselves.

Yeah.

And, you know, I give a very specific example in the book of much later on in my recovery going through something traumatic and knowing what trauma was just the way I described it and having studied it and having to process it are two different things that the truth. The first time I really had to put sobriety into place in a real dark night. And.

Going back to what we were saying before, like, everyone wants to feel better quickly.

Yeah.

But when you experience soul loss and if you think about it in that way and you think about the pieces of yourself just sort of fragmented on the floor. And I tell a story of the imagery that I came up with so that I could do the work. Because just saying I was heartbroken was just not enough for me to be able to do the real work.

Yeah.

And so soul loss is this lack of connection to self and therefore a lack of connection to others. And if we believe as I do, that soul is a meaning making machine. And how we find meaning and purpose, then that becomes lost. We've lost the ability to make meaning out of our life. We feel lost.

Yeah.

And we're sort of forced into this dark night, the underworld, whatever you want to call it. And it's learning to be comfortable in that space.

Yeah.

While also dealing with life as it comes each day and not wanting to fix it. Because the growth and the wisdom and then the wisdom to share with others, which is the meaning and purpose of life in general.

Yeah.

Is not going to come by fixing it quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's really good. Gosh. There's so many different. Different things I want to ask and go. Go through. Let me. Let me kind of do it this way, at least for me.

Some. You know, I've heard it referred to as a dark night of the soul. I've heard it referred to as the crushing. I've heard it referred to with all kinds of different analogies, acronyms, if you will, that basically say it's a moment of immense suffering, or at least it feels like a moment of mint suffering that later turns into an immense awakening. Right. So it's almost like this is the epitome of that brick house getting dropped on your head. Right. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except for to feel it. Right. And to let. And let those emotions kind of like Work their way through the processing power. I'm curious, what. What does it take? The reason I'm asking this, this next question, because I. I kind of think there are a lot of people who are still sleepwalking. Right. They're sleepwalking with their traumas. They're sleep walking with their addictions. And I would dare say most of us have struggled with an addiction of some kind, Whether it's TV or work. I'm a workaholic by nature. That's the one thing that I'm actively, still to this day, working on. Because I do, like, I love helping people and I love building businesses and all that good stuff. But at the same time, I also realized that that's not necessarily too much of that. It's not great for my family life. Right. So making sure there. So I say all that to say for me, my journey started with, I don't know, that people would. Maybe someone would call it a rock bottom. I call it more of an ultimate awakening. I'm curious, in your work, one, what was your awakening like? And two, is an awakening required almost as a. Almost as like a starting point to begin sobriety?

That's a great question. So back to the soul journey that I map out. I don't believe we have just one. We go on any.

Yeah, I agree.

So let's say we're at the point, which is step five, where we've taken this leap of faith.

And now we're in this new world.

Yeah.

And we're doing something different. And this is the phase where I kind of talk about, I call it the lions and tigers and bears. Oh, no. Where all of a sudden we've started something new. We're really excited about it. This was it. This was our quote unquote calling. And now there's brick walls and left turns and speed bumps and things we didn't think were going to come up. And now they're coming up and we're like, oh, my God. But you're like, okay, lions and tigers and bears. I know this was going to happen. Like, we got this. Let's push through.

I still have my slippers. Let's go.

And so you. You push through. You push through. You get to the threshold and you're at the moment of truth, which is like step eight. And you're like, I've done it. I got through the lions and the tigers and the bears, and I'm at the threshold and. And I'm ready. And life on the other side is going to be a breeze. And you go to open the door and you realize you don't have the key.

That the truth.

Yeah.

You're like, I don't have the key. The door's locked.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. And that's essentially when you kind of hit that moment of whether it's rock bottom or soul loss or something's going to happen where you're not quite. You're not quite done. You haven't really. You're really prepared, but you're not. You haven't done that Deep dive.

Yeah.

And that is when it's time to. For me, during those moments, it's like I go into the cave and I talk about that. And that's going to the cave and give yourself a minute to alchemize essentially, that pain into purpose.

Yeah.

So. And that could take a week, that could take a year, that could take four years. It's not about rushing that process and feeling like you can't have both happiness during your day and be working on this sort of self discovery, if you will.

Yeah.

And I think that's where people get conflicted, that either they have to feel good all the time, but that's not the way that life works. And so we make time to go into the cave. We make time to do the work on ourselves. We make time to go deep.

Yeah.

Give ourselves time to alchemize. Then step 10, we come out, we're enlightened, we have this wisdom. We've done lots of work, and now we're ready for the ultimate challenge. We. Which is to share your wisdom with others.

Sobriety, for me, being this most recent offering of that.

Yeah.

And I think knowing where you are, and this is what I tell my clients, knowing where you are on that soul journey.

Really helps in.

Feeling like there's. There's going to be light at the end of the tunnel. Because it's not. It's not perfect and everybody's going to be different. But essentially, like, we've all experienced one of these, and it makes you feel a little bit better knowing what's coming.

Yeah. No, that's. That's so good. I was just thinking too, you know, it's. It's the. I think the hardest thing to try to figure out a lot of times is where we are in the journey, because again, you might. You might have. Okay. I went through some really tough stuff. Things seem like they're clicking along now and then, oh, my gosh, there's another freight train. You know, so it's like, how would we know? Maybe we're. We're in the process of what I refer to as emergence. Like, we're now emerging out of that cocoon, if you will, of the old life and into the new life that, you know, I think in theory, you get to enjoy a season before it starts all over again. You know, how would. How would someone know that they're maybe in the process of emergence?

I wasn't really. You know, most of us are forced into this dark night. Something happens, and we're thrown into the underworld.

Yeah.

What I've learned to do and what I think is important and what I teach my clients is practicing going in on our own time. So that when, inevitably, through grief or loss or heartbreak or some tragedy, we are forced into the underworld, which will happen to all of us, that it's not a scary place. It's a place that we're familiar with going in and doing that internal work. And so I think just knowing that you have that and that there's another place internally. Henry Corbin, who was a French philosopher, he coined this term the imaginal, which is different than the imagination, because the imagination, to him felt like you were talking about something magical and made up and a fairy tale and childlike. And he was very clear that the imaginal was that inner realm. It was the place where our complexes and archetypes and. And where we could talk about these Personas that existed. I talk about Trixie, my addiction in the book, and naming her and really letting her develop into her own autonomous person. And, you know, we talk about soul loss, and we could talk about the dark night. And before I had any of this language, I was like, where is this inner work?

Yeah.

How do you get there? What are you talking about?

I'll do it if you can somebody show me how.

Like, yeah, I feel smart, like I want to do it. Where do I go?

Yeah.

And it was really creating the language and getting understanding of creating my own inner world.

Yeah. No, it's so good. You know, I've also realized that, at least for me, I guess one of the things that I was going to bring up is you mentioned earlier, it's like six months, a year, two years, four years, 10 years, whatever, for this. This evolution of this particular journey to kind of transpire. It seems to me, at least for me.

It wasn't about being fixated on it, but it was about being intentional with it. And it's almost like the more intentional I was, the quicker I made it through that particular season. However, I didn't want to go at it with such an intensity or Intentionality that it almost became an obsession because then you're basically undoing the good work, if that makes any sense.

Mm.

You know, and around that, it seemed like the one thing that shook me out of that was a term that I've always phrased as radical honesty. Like being radically honest with myself about where I was, about how I was behaving about the things that were going on in my life, my role to play in it, but doing so without judgment and condemnation. Like, being aware of, like, okay, you're here. This is what happened. What can you learn from it? Let's move forward. One of the things I love about your work, and this is something I think we both share in common, is this power of vulnerability. You know, even this beginning of the book is, like, about as vulnerable as you can possibly get with the book, which I think is pretty incredible. Now, someone who like to almost overshares on a regular basis. I was like, you go, girl. Tell it like it is, like, kind of thing. Right. But I'm curious, how important is being vulnerable not with just with others, but being vulnerable with yourself as part of this. This dream worker, this healing journey.

It's everything. There is no soul work without vulnerability is what I learned.

Yeah.

And it is really hard to.

Practice vulnerability. I don't think any of us walk around feeling vulnerable all the time. I think it's a practice.

I literally just got asked this question last night in an event, and I said, and this is the truth. I must have watched Brene Brown's I Love Bernay Talk on vulnerability.

40 times while I was writing the book to remind myself how important it was to remain vulnerable in. In my storytelling. Because.

You can't write a book about soul and leaves without.

Like, how the.

Soul was created and how the soul was molded. Yeah.

You gotta go with it. Now there is something to be said from sharing from your scars and not from your wounds, and sharing your own story without sharing other people's. And that's a bit of a dance when you're writing a book. That being said.

It'S important when you are vulnerable. You give others permission to do the same. And unless until I was able to.

Drop the veil, open my heart, extend love, light.

Boundaried as well, that I was able to touch other people.

Yeah.

From my soul to theirs.

Yeah.

It's a practice. It's an everyday thing for me still.

Yeah. It's interesting because I. At least I'm sure you probably experienced something, your work. But when you step out and start putting yourself out there on A regular basis.

You know, I'm sure there's a part of our ego that wants to say, well, what we need to share is the kind of. The good stuff, the success. And, you know, maybe I'll. Maybe I'll dip into a little bit of the, you know, I kind of did this wrong rather than saying, no, I really screwed that up. Right. And it seems to me that when at the end of an event or an end of a piece of work, when we. When I get feedback from an audience member or something like that, in almost every single circumstance, the feedback is coming from a direct connection to something I shared in that vulnerable place.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah. Which is where to me, I'm like, like, I don't know.

For.

For you and all the work that you've been doing, one. I'm. I'm just great to have stumbled onto your work, to be honest with you. I'm like, it's. It's profound, and I think everybody needs to do a major deep dive. Soulbriety is an absolute, like, an absolute, like, must read. I would. I would do so with like a journal, like, you know, so you can kind of, like, maybe take some chapters and kind of ask yourself some questions. But, you know, I guess. I guess I'm kind of getting to a roundabout way of saying, you know, you went out and created a. An almost an entire end. Like, not an industry, but you created a. An agency that did not exist in the marketplace, the Recovery Management Agency. And I'm curious what was missing in the marketplace that you saw maybe on your own journey, that you're like, you know what? There's a problem here, and I think I can come up with solution for it.

Yes. So I was saying when I went back and I was taking classes at UCLA prior to grad school, I was still working as an agent. And the more I started to learn about addiction medicine and psychology and trauma and so forth, I realized that we don't know what we don't know. And, you know, when I was an attorney and practicing, people would come to me for legal advice, and when I was an agent, they would come to me for career advice. But we have a mental health crisis, and we're asking our next door neighbor or we're asking our dentist a good therapist, or we're googling it. And that seemed nuts to me.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I was doing that for myself, for my family, for my friends, and it just. That didn't seem right. So that's initially where I saw, okay, there's some white space here that I don't feel like anyone's doing a good job of fulfilling. But in order to know what you don't know, you have to be willing to constantly be learning new information. And I needed to have an education about a lot of different things so that I could educate my clients and that I could have an opinion on this person's great at this, or this person's great at this. Because I knew enough about everything, I didn't have to specialize in every single modality, but I had to know enough. And I also had to be willing to continue learning about every new thing that came out. Because the world of neuroscience is changing every single day.

Yeah, absolutely.

So.

When I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to create an agency where individuals and families and now companies will come and they'll either walk through the door of there's some sort of substance abuse or behavioral addiction, a mental health crisis, whether that's anxiety or depression or suicidal ideation, bipolar schizophrenia and so on, or trauma, and they can walk in and be like, here's what's going on now. What? Like, we don't even know what's wrong.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then what we do is full assessments, and we really look at the entire person and figure out what they have done, where they have been, where some ruptures in their life might have been, but also where their strengths are, what are the things that light them up, where are the entryways, where I'm going to be able to tap into, helping them to begin to start to do the healing work, and then educating them on everything that it is that I know in working with whatever clinical or medical team they have and then marrying them with the right treatment.

Doctor, lawyer, anyone, and really managing their life, reducing their stress and helping them to heal and move forward.

Yeah, no, it's so good. I'm so glad you. I'm so glad you took on that challenge, because it's not. It's not work for the faint of heart, you know, because as human beings, we have a variety of different circumstances, a variety of different things that affect us on a day in and day out basis and over, you know, decades, you know, from, you know, childhood all the way to adulthood and different traumas along the way. And you got this layer on that layer and that layer on this layer and that layer, you know, so on and so forth. And I'm just. I'm so happy to know that we got people like you out there doing this kind of work to help people like truly get themselves together at a soul level. Right. Because they there is fulfillment at the soul level in all this craziness that we chase. And a lot of times is we kind of miss the point there. I got a couple more questions for a few minutes we got left. But before I do that, I wanted to make sure that everybody could actually go and find you. And the book itself, what do you suggest people follow more about you in the book.

So the book you can buy anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anything online in bookstores.

Soulbriety. And then you can follow me on Instagram @ Dr. Elisahallerman and it's D R E L I S A H A L L E R M A N and on my website, which is Dr.hallerman.com and if you put in your email, we'll send you classes that are coming up, workshops, more on sobriety, fun, interesting things and you can keep in touch with me.

There. Love it. I love it. You know, it's funny, I wanted to. One of the things that I took away from sobriety, by the way. And by the way, I have now three. Three cop. No, I have. Yeah, I have three copies. I have the ebook, I have the audiobook and I have the physical copy. I consume a lot of audiobooks, which I was very happy to hear your voice on the audiobook, which I thought was kind of cool. But yeah. So everybody go out there and figure out what modality works for you with your book. But make sure you pick up the book. For sure. But you know, one of the things that I saw and there were two things that I'm gonna start with one, and I jotted this note down, it says longing to be saved versus searching for one's soul. You made a comment throughout the book and a couple different places about this need to be saved by an external force. A person, a place, a thing, what you know, that kind of thing versus doing the soul work itself. Talk to me a little about that transition and why it's so important to kind of get to the soul.

Work. Because no one else is coming and nothing else is going to be long lasting and there are no shortcuts.

I wanted someone or something to fix me. And the minute I realized, which of course wasn't a minute, it was over time that I didn't need to be fixed and I didn't need to be saved. I just needed to heal.

And that became an internal job that only I could do. And I didn't have to wait around for anything else or anyone else's timeline. There was nothing that someone could say or do or be.

It was just an inside job. And that is very.

Freeing in a lot of ways, because when you're waiting or you're expecting everybody else to get the script that you wrote in your head about how things are supposed to go, I can assure you they didn't get those.

Pages.

Yeah. And you will be disappointed every time. But when you can take back the power and you can feel.

Energized by your own step by step, tiny little right actions in the right direction, that's. That's where it's at.

Right?

Yeah. That's what lights me.

Up. Yeah. Well, the crazy part. What the crazy. I think to me the crazy part is, is once you've gone through that transition a few times and you've been able to kind of come out the other side and like, oh, wow. Like, not only is there an. A new awareness, a new level of wisdom, there's a new level of confidence that comes with each layer. Right. So, you know, people are always like, well, how do you develop self confidence? It's like, you're gonna have to do the hard work first. Like, you can't do the easy. Like there's. And I had the same issue in trying to, you know, shake up my own journey is looking for every shortcut under the sun. Like they're, you know, if I get this, if I do that, if I date this person, if I. If I hang out with that person, if, you know, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I think one of the things I'd love for the audience to just know is, you know, for me and you together is like, you have to do the hard work. Like it's. Quit. Quit shortcutting yourself because you're actually causing yourself delays, because you're shortcutting yourself and you're constantly doing shortcuts. And the other thing that I wanted to bring up, and this would be my. If you feel indulge me this last minute, here is the power of pattern recognition and then kind of observations and how we actually begin to recognize power patterns, because that's, to me, was the. At the fundamental level of transitioning from a subconscious reaction to a conscious choice. So let's talk about pattern recognition for just a.

Second. Well, I'm a big believer in telling your story and whether that's writing it down, you don't have to go into deep or telling it to someone else. Not necessarily going into detail about your trauma. Not meant to re. Traumatize yourself, of course, but to look at your story and that in that you'll be able to identify a timeline of.

Ruptures and patterns and maybe be able to see.

Things.

Yeah. But I think that working with the right person is also really key. And if you do have extensive trauma and you do know that you're suffering, then I would find someone who is trauma focused, not trauma.

Informed.

Yeah. Trauma informed means they have an understanding of what trauma is. Trauma focused means they've actually studied different modalities and how to heal trauma, which is just really body centered work as opposed to talk.

Therapy. Yeah. No, I love it. I can't thank you enough for spending time with me today. I always. I always know when there's a great conversation because of how quickly the conversation moves and how quickly you can burn through 40 minutes. And today was like a blink of an eye. I just love your. Love your work. Love you to death. Thank you so much for spending time with.

Us. Thank you so much. This was awesome. And yeah, this was great. It was so great to meet you and you asked awesome questions. I loved.

It. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. Being unstoppable doesn't mean that you are not going to be stopped at times. In fact, you need to fail at certain points. Because if you don't, it means one of two things. You've either set the bar too low or you're not moving with enough aggression, with enough.

Determination.

Right. Like pick up the pace or elevate the buy. You've got more to give. So being stopped is actually what will make you unstoppable.