Untangle & THRIVE - Angela McKinney

Hello, hello, hello everybody! Oh my gosh, welcome to day 6 of the Hope 2021 Business Summit. I am So incredibly pumped to be here today with you guys, to be sharing all of these amazing things we're going to be going over. And I want to know who here is ready? Who here is ready to kick this off and rock it out like never before? Because we are going to talk about some incredible, amazing things today that I would just love to You know, really dive in with you guys. We have 2 incredible, powerful speakers that are going to be sharing with us all the different things on how they've started their business, built their business. They have some amazing, incredible things to share with us. And I am so excited because our first guest is an incredible woman. And for those of you who don't know, my name is Val Nichols. If you are jumping in here and this is your first time watching, welcome. I am so excited you're here. If you are— have been watching since the beginning, give me a shout out. I would love to say hi and thank you so much for tuning in. If you are on the email list, you did get the replays yesterday, so you have all of the replays in your inbox. Go check that out. If you're not on the email list, that's okay. You can message me your, your email and I will get that forwarded to you for all of the replay information. Plus, you guys are going to have exclusive information coming in there, so don't forget to sign up for that. So our first speaker, I am So excited. You guys, this woman is incredible. We had this conversation, um, we jumped on a Zoom call a couple weeks ago, maybe a week and a half ago, and it was just like, it was so incredible, right? Like one of those people that you just meet and you're like, oh my gosh, I could just talk to you all day. This is so cool. This is so incredible. And so, you know, our first speaker, she's gonna hop in here in just one second. And she will be live with us. So you guys give a great big excitement energy for this woman because you are going to be so incredibly blessed by her message, by her story, and by all the things that she has to share. So she's going to be joining in with us any moment here. And we have— if you guys will welcome our guest, Angela McKinney.

Hi there.

Welcome, Angela.

Hi, how are you?

I'm so good, how are you?

I'm good, thank you. So we're live?

We are live, yes.

Okay, fabulous. Caught me all a little off guard. I thought we had a little window, but that's fine, that's the way life is. So let's go in.

Yes, absolutely. So we are live now, and I was sharing a little bit about you in the group, in the live stream. I was saying that, you know, we got in this conversation and we had such a great chat that it's like you're one of those people that, you know, you have this, this wellspring of knowledge. You have this wellspring of just positivity and a way of explaining things that is— I guess it's more like a way of articulating things that is so beautiful. It's like an art.

Oh, thank you. That's lovely to hear. Thank you very much. You're so welcome.

I'm so grateful that you're here. And I would love for you, for those people who are just joining in and they don't know who you are yet, I would love for you to introduce yourself and share a little bit about what you do.

Sure. Again, I'm Angela McKinney, and I basically set an environment for my clients to untangle from their disorganized, cluttered, reactive self and find an integrated growth organizing structure to really thrive, to really leverage their skills, their talents, their visibility, to really belong to this world in a very meaningful way.

I love that. So beautiful. And I love that you say untangled because I feel like that's a good language for what's going on in the world. A lot of us feel very tangled up in so many things, whether that's information from outside of the world, if that's turmoil within us, we're all kind of in that tangled spot.

Yes, so often we are, right? And how do we untangle? And we get trapped often thinking we've got to collect a lot of data, we've got to fix ourselves, we've got to attack our life. And untangling it is an artistry. It really is an artistry. So I love that you articulated art with our conversation, because I find it is science meets art. We need to understand the neuroscience in order to differentiate the part of us that is our dominant reactive part that really overwires to threats, fear and uncertainty.

Hmm.

And we do have that part. It's not bad. And often we hate that side of ourselves. We don't want to be that way. We want to fix that way. But often it's getting a more humanistic approach to untangling from its spell, as I call it, from its unconscious spell that's really hijacking more presence and more creativity in our life. When we learn how to do that, I call it, we get a stable— we get access to the stabilizing floor. That really neutralizes the threat response, but also can then convert it into creative energy, because we're either destroying or creating. It's really, you know, it's kind of like many of us are looking for the sweet spot where we just get relief. I'm like, yeah. We like to chase relief in all sorts of different ways, but it's really getting stabilized in order to transform it, which requires vision, creativity, and energy. And the tangled self drains our resources. It drains our energy. It sends us into destructive natures and impulsive natures and out-of-control natures. And then we start to constrict and get rigid and inflexible. And then we get disorganized. And then we're out of sync. And then we wonder why we're so stuck and why we're so tired and why we're so exhausted. And why, you know, we're not feeling better or doing better or performing better.

Hmm, that's fascinating because I think you described a lot of people in the world right now, right? And we're feeling exhausted and wondering when, you know, things are going to go back to normal and when things are going to change and, you know, all of that stuff. I love that you talked about, you know, we're looking for that distraction, right? And I know you do work a lot with people who have addictions and—

Yes.

I just want people to hear the distraction piece. Yeah, because I know for me, you know, I went through a chemical addiction. However, addiction— we talked about this the other day— like, it can look like so many different things. So can you explain that a little bit more? Because I think a lot of us think of like an addiction and we think of like the person, you know, with the, the bottle or the drugs, but it can really be so much more.

You're right, it's very nuanced and it's very complicated, and most of us You know, most of us get addicted to avoidance of different sources. We find we're looking for relief. Our pleasure drive gets a little tangled, as I say, in that it's looking for relief in sort of unresourceful ways. So that could be looking like addiction to shopping, addiction to escaping through the internet, addiction to food and Netflix and shutdown. We can stay frozen and manage disconnection and then chase again to look for relief. So it can take this myriad— it can have all these murky faces. And it's complicated. It's complicated water. And it's important to know that we all get addicted to our routines on some level. We are creatures of habit. Some routines are better than other routines, right? And so it's kind of working with our system to know that we like certainty, and addiction gives the brain certainty because it's It's a sense of, I know what we're— I know this makes me feel crazier, maybe long-term, but I know right now it helps. It helps provide me some sense of relief, some sense of, I can just breathe. You know, most often addicts are looking for connection, relief, and just feeling calm.

Mm-hmm.

And that can get construed as this moral— it's not a moralistic Oh, you're bad, you have an addiction. It's really a system that's looking to get secured in calmness and safety and relief. Doesn't feel calm. And so a lot of my work is about getting safe enough to push into better habits that require more of us. You know, often we are wanting new results, but we're not bringing more to the table. We're not understanding how to elevate our value and our time. and our talents in ways that bring more of us inside of our life versus addiction that takes us away from ourself and doesn't demand as much of ourselves. It's easy. It's the go-to quick easy fix. And so when we're in a period of uncertainty like COVID, for example, which is very triggering and traumatizing for lots of people— it's funny, I have 2 different clients. I have a variety of client groups. My more complex shutdown clients, COVID sort of matches their more slowed-down state. So they actually feel kind of happy.

Nice.

In the sense that I'm not alone anymore. The world is kind of matching my rhythm of slowing down. For my busy, busy, go-go chasers who are looking for validation outside of themselves, and they're addicted to work, or they're addicted to external performance, They've had a real struggle in coming into this slower rhythm and getting more still. And it's stirred up their trauma in a different way. It's forced them to confront their trauma, to be quite honest, because our society really validates, oh, you're busy, you're working all the time, you know, yay for you, right?

Yeah.

You have this great life. And they're the most— some of them are the most disorganized people I work with. So it's Ironic, but COVID really is a, is a, is a grounds for unresolved trauma. It affects all of us differently. It's an interruption. I always say we need interruption.

Hmm.

Just like an addict needs to go to get an interrupting intervention in order to neutralize the space and learn from it, learn from what's flying around, learn from all the things that you haven't had the environment to to hold and look at and examine. And so COVID to me is a great intervention and an interrupter for us to get stronger in our system so that we are not hyper-focused and vigilant on when's it going to get back to normal, when's it going to change, when, you know, when, when, when, so I can then get back to my life, but really how to create a new life inside of it. in the middle of it, to bring out maybe some skills and talents you've abandoned, you didn't even realize you had, or you've forgotten about them, so that you're working more dynamically with this space, with this stillness.

I love that. There's so much of that that I just want to like pull on the threads of. And one thing that stood out to me that you said was that, you know, you're talking about how there's this extreme balance, there's the people who love this. They're like, oh, isolation, slow pace, I love this. Now I can avoid, I can go into that shell. And then you have the women like a lot of my clients and like me, you know, who are just always go, go, go, go, go. And this has kind of caused like a neutral—

Yes.

Thing that's happened, right? And I agree with you, it does kind of bring up all of that stuff. And so for the people who are sitting there and, you know, either one of these extremes, or maybe you're somewhere on that spectrum, And they are saying, you know, I will— I'll get back to life when, or when is this going to happen, all of those things. Can you describe to us people who are in that space of almost like waiting or the when? What happens in that case? Like, what are they experiencing and how can they get out of that?

Okay, great question. I call that an ambivalent structure. It's a horrible structure to live in. It's always waiting. And underneath waiting is terror of commitment.

Hmm.

It's terrified. It's afraid it's going to miss out if it commits. It has this unconscious pain relationship to commitment. And so it doesn't feel safe to commit. So even if COVID has made that more pronounced, it's probably been with that person for a long time, is my experience. So anyone who gets stuck in the wait, and it sort of creates hypervigilance, it creates self-doubt, it creates noise, it creates head noise, which then produces a lot of anxiety.

Hmm.

And the wheels start turning, and it's uncomfortable. And there was a great study out of Harvard. I forget the gentleman's name, but he said, 90, you know, 100% is easy, 98 is difficult.

Hmm.

And I love that so much because it's so true. 100% in is easy once you're in. There's where we get the medicine, as I call it, of connection and commitment, which fuels learning and growing and experiential play, so to speak. 98%, 80%, 70%, very hard. You open yourself up, To all that possibility of noise, noise, noise, noise. Maybe I should do this, maybe I should do, you know, all the maybes. And it becomes a wrestle, it becomes hard. And you don't get the momentum that you need. So what I do with people who have this terror in their system around commitment is I kind of create little baby pools in their life. So I help them circle off. You know, in my town, we have this great swimming community, and there's like baby pools, and then there's the middle-sized pool, and then there's the adult pool. And I always say, let's just get in that baby pool. Like, let's figure out what 3 baby pools in your life would be where you jump in 100% and you can jump right out if you hate it. There's no sharks. You're not gonna drown. There's a lifeguard. There's 3 lifeguards around you, and you get access to working the muscle of commitment so that you're training your system to jump in 100% and have a little experience, whether that's 30 minutes doing something with your day so that you walk away and you feel, okay, what was that like? How did that feel? Did I get pleasure from that? Did I, you know, and you get to reshape your relationship through that process. So, baby pulls, and I do them in my day all the time because it just bite-sizes it. So the system doesn't get too overwhelmed and complicated with this, oh my gosh, the drama of commitments. I'm going to be stuck there forever. No one's going to be able to get me out. I'm going to drown. And some of my high-performing, really smart people are just terrified that they're not going to get pulled out. They go too deep. They go too hard. They go too fast. And so this is a chance to kind of break it up a little bit and build again— you'll hear me say this a lot— a new relationship. To that word, which is commitment. And commitment melts ambivalence. It dissolves that structure so that you're getting access to more integration and growth in your whole system, which is what we need.

That's beautiful. You know, I'm thinking about my past, you know, having come out of addiction, and then when I was learning how to do that, you know, I love that, that description of the kiddie pools.

Yeah.

Because it was. I used to joke that like I couldn't even commit to a 6-month insurance policy.

Yes.

Because I got to that place where I was so much in my head overthinking perfectionism. I had learned how to not trust myself because one, I always failed. I never followed through, whatever that was. And it created that cycle you're talking about. So it was, it was like, I guess it's called like the cognitive behavioral therapy kind of in a way is what you're saying. And it's like, if you want a result, you want to be able to make those decisions, you have to start making those tiny decisions.

Yes.

Same for me, like one commitment and showing up. And I was like, oh, I can do this. Okay. I love that you talk about that.

Yeah. And also, I love that you brought up trust, because at the end of the day, most, most disorganization is a lack of trusting your impulse signals. And so what we do in my Untangle Method is we pull the tangled selves, that part of us, out, because that's where the impulse system is firing incorrectly, or not helping you restore trust.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's a survival state that's dominated with safety. Doesn't matter, really, how you're showing up. As long as you're alive and safe, that's all that matters. But the restorative system, which is the creative system, really does need a practice that's rewiring those signals to restore trust. And we do it bit by bit by bit. We— it's not a one-time event. It really is a living experience.

I love that because you talked about the neuroscience earlier, and I'm a huge neuroscience nerd. I love it, and it's so fascinating to me. And you're talking about reinforcing those Yes. Right? So I know for those people who know neuroscience, it's like those signals, the pathway, the— I always describe it like a road to get there.

Yes.

So if you have the road to procrastination, you have the road to not making decisions, you want to pave the new road and the new path.

Yes. So it's always oppositional, right? But what we know about trauma resolution and the works of neuroscience with a traumatized brain, which I think I'm going to define trauma as relational trauma and that we all have it. We can't escape it. Being human in itself is a traumatic experience. So I'm not going with rapes and car accidents and this. I'm talking about relational trauma that has happened to most of us in our life at some point, right?

Mm-hmm.

So what we know is trauma resolution does not get unwound through cognition down. The system doesn't work with thoughts jamming down a system. So often people who do have unresolved trauma are, are so in their head, confused, trying to change their thinking, and really frustrated because it is, it is a— it's in the lower part of the system that needs a somatic body approach. So— I just want to say that because I think a lot of people get stuck and angry at themselves, like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I get this? And I'm always like, it's a capacity issue, it's a body issue, it's not feeling safe. So to your point, we want to— why, why we want to pull out the tangled self is to give it some airspace, because it's unconscious. And unconscious, the, the threat is happening on that other pathway, the one you just described. That's where all the charge is.

Hmm.

So in order to get access to that pathway, We have to make it safe in the body's experience, and often that's not safe. So getting bigger, not safe for a lot of people. Getting seen, not safe for a lot of people. Taking risk, not safe for a lot of people's bodies, right? So there's why people really struggle to just access this other pathway, because the bridge is safety. To, to access it and experiment with it, it won't build those neural pathways that we know are so helpful to a balanced brain and a thriving brain and an integrated brain.

That's fascinating because, you know, I hear this a lot from women that I work with. They say, you know, when I first thought about trauma, I heard like PTSD or trauma, like I would think about these, you know, people going to Iraq and coming back and they have trauma or big car accidents. And I don't think, you know, I'm so glad that you're a trauma-informed person because I do believe that, you know, more people in the world need to be, need to have this conversation that, you know, trauma isn't just these big huge experiences, that sometimes our body and our brains don't know the difference between this huge like catastrophe that happens and going through COVID because that's a huge— we're going through a trauma right now.

Collectively going through a trauma, you're right. And it's helpful to have a framework, and the big traumas do get these frameworks, which is great. It's helpful, makes it easier to treat. It's the relational trauma— I had a brilliant doctor working with me on a case once, and he said it like this. He said, it's like a coffin with 1,000 holes in it.

Hmm.

And everyone's just trying to plug the holes up, but they don't know where's the story. Where's the story? Why am I so overwhelmed, exhausted, and in hypervigilance, right? And relationship— relational trauma is way more insidious in that we're rebonding with it in our space, in our environment, in our money, in our work, in our time relationship, in our food. We're reattaching and rebonding with it constantly, and we don't even know it. It's so insidious.

Hmm.

And so what I loved about our initial conversation was talking about space and how space can help us locate this unconscious relational trauma bonding of anything that's overwhelming or cluttered or we're avoiding. Those are the— those are, I always say, those are our keys. We want to work with those keys because they can unlock us from this unconscious reenactment that probably traveled us to age 4 or 2 or 12 or whatever. It tends to travel us back in time. But how do we work with it in present time, in real lifetime, so that we're breaking it down, deconstructing it, and rebuilding in the face of it?

I love that we went there, and I want to press in a little bit more on that topic. You know, we had talked about, um, Speaking of the space, you know, like the space around you, I know that, you know, that can really be a reflection. I always say like your space around you is kind of a reflection of what's going on inside.

Yeah.

And creating that beautiful space, creating that beautiful space to thrive and be in, just like, you know, I know a lot of people are working at home now. You and I kind of have that, that luxury already, but you know, a lot of people are working from home. Yeah, they're looking around and noticing like there's a lot of stuff in here. And so what is that a reflection of, really?

Yeah, that's right. What is it? It really, to me, um, we want to dive into those roots because those roots hold transformation as far as I'm concerned. You know, there's a lot to be said for just hitting it on the physical level and cleaning and tidying and getting a great system. But how many people have reorganized like that and just found themselves in the same spot, in the same spot? So it's a little bit of a trap sometimes. I'm going to say not always, but sometimes in that I'm going to finally get this solved. And I'm never going to be cluttered again. Right. And it feels so like empowering and like strong. And then you're overwhelmed with clutter, you know, 2 months later. Right. So I call it clutter intelligence. And I look at it from a deep reorganizing of not only mental, but emotional, the physical, the physical sort of lets us into the mental and emotional and relational intelligence that wake us up, right? We're looking to wake up, we need to be jolted. We don't just wake up one day, like we do. Open our eyes and wake up. But how are we doing that in our space? How do we look at a pile of bills and let— instead of just numbing around them and avoiding them, how do we wake up to all of the intelligence inside of those bills?

Mm-hmm.

That's what I love to do. That's what I wrote my book about. That's what I want to give people, an application to untangle anything. The video camera was Fought with terror for me. I couldn't stand the video camera. I hired a business coach 5 years ago and she's like, you are invisible online. And I felt like, yes, I am successful and I am invisible. I mastered the greatest, the greatest thing ever. And then I was riddled in shame. Riddled in the, what is wrong with me? Why can't I get seen in front of a video camera. It was such a trauma bond, but I untangled it. And in that process, I had to get safe. I really had to get safe to get seen in a way that my 4-year-old traumatized little girl— there was just no way I was going to ever get seen from that state. Wasn't going to happen. So how do we, how do we wake up to our overwhelm? How do we wake up to our clutter? to get right with ourselves on a deeper level, to get free within ourselves, to belong to our life more, more powerfully, our business more powerfully, our family life more powerfully or purposefully, I should say. Yeah. I love it.

I love how you pose that question, like, how do we wake up? Because I know you're— what you're saying is very much like resonating with a lot of what I hear, you know, from people who are like, what's wrong with me? You know, there's this belief of like, I, I don't know, like I'm kind of not for affirmations. I'm going to be honest because like some people will say affirmations, affirmations, affirmations. They create the vision board and they're like, why is it not working? Because it's, that's like surface level and you're not actually hitting those things that like you spoke to. You said my 4-year-old girl.

Yeah.

So, you know, for people who are watching this that don't know this yet, like A lot of times those deeply rooted beliefs are anchored before we're the age of 7.

Yes, definitely. Mostly money in particular, early, early childhood. They get, they get encased in what I call a paradigm, one of these structures, one of these views of the world that are limited usually, and that are based in, I have to survive this family. I don't have agency yet. I've got to survive this, and I'm going to construct a view of the world to help me do that.

Hmm.

And often, for, for many of us who had very traumatic childhoods, without the big stories, but our bodies experienced a lot of trauma, invisibility was one. Disassociating, getting invisible, getting, um, gone, uh, learning how to master invisibility. was, you know, I was— it was brought to my attention and I was deeply proud of it and then deeply like, oh my God, horrified that it was so terrifying for me to get visible.

Hmm.

So it's— it is— it is these— it is dive— I always say it's diving into this unconscious water in a way that's playful because Dr. van der Kolk, who wrote The Body Keeps the Score, he's really the neuroscience of research for trauma resolution. He's the first to say that without getting present and creative, we don't unwind trauma. So if you just take those 2 words, how does one get present and then access creativity?

Hmm.

So that we can unwind trauma. So I think that's my lane. So I found a way to get playful with clutter, to wake up, to get present, to differentiate past, my little my young trauma tangled self from my present organizer self to then access my creative self. And the creative self's impulses is very different than the tangled self. The creative self, its impulse is to belong, to contribute, for novelty, adventure, growth, learning. So it's got a very different operating system. And we have both of them inside of us. So when we can dip into one, we can— they can start to collaborate and work together versus working apart, working apart.

I love that. That's beautiful. I love that book. And I actually just recommended that to someone the other day. I'm like, you've got to read this book because it explains so much, you know.

And I think it really does.

I think, you know, for me, like, I had spent years and years and years with the stack of self-help books trying to figure out what was wrong with me, you know, like, yes, what label can I put on myself, or what can I do to fix myself, what can I do, until I really truly learned and understood the exact same things you're talking about. I didn't have that, that breakthrough.

Thank you. I would say the biggest addiction that we all suffer from is what the heck is wrong with me. I would say that is the biggest addiction that we all suffer from, and it is addiction because it's scanning for what the fuck is wrong. Excuse my language.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I gotta attack, fix, attack, fix, which re-traumatizes a system, does not secure a system, does not safeguard a system. So we become our worst abusers in that system. It fragments us, it disconnects us, sticks us in our head, and it doesn't draw forward the deeper intelligence that really— the medicine, as I call it— that gets us well, which is safety and connectedness. Without that, we don't get well, we don't take risk, we don't uplevel our life, we don't get more vibrant and more visible in the world. We just don't.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's the medicine to me. And in my book, I talk about it as a magnolia tree because I love metaphors and I love sort of seeing nature working within nature into— you know, nature is an integrated system. We have a lot to learn from nature.

Hmm.

And I compare it to this magnolia tree. I have one in my front yard. It's this, you know, brilliant tree that's so beautiful with all these branches. Some of them are broken, some of them are strong. And imagine the magnolia tree just screaming at the wounded branches. The little buds aren't going to ever bloom on those branches. They're like weak. They're vulnerable. They're like, I know I can't do it. You know, like that. And just how crazy the tree would be if all it did was pick, pick, pick, fix. Fix, yell, scream. And I always say that the magnet, you know, the little wounded buds don't need to flower.

Mm-hmm.

The tree needs to wake up. The tree needs to wake up to its wholeness. The tree needs to actually locate all these strong branches, resources, talents, other parts of it that are like starving to be seen and recognized and can bloom, can bloom. And to me, that's what an integrated whole system really looks like. So it's getting out of the war of what's wrong with me, waking up to the growth, the learning, seeing these parts but not being at war with them, creating a safe structure where they can be what they are, but also to know there's so many, there's so many other resources. And what trauma does is it blocks us from all these other resources. We forget all the good memories of our past. We forget all of our skills, all of our experiences, you know, all of our talents. We forget— all that gets gone. And part of it's re-remembering all that. And that's where we get leverage. That's where we start to— it's like we cross-section and we start threading, and then we start finding This value to contribute to the world in this mysterious way. Hmm.

Gosh, what a great example. I love that. And my mind's just like thinking about, you know, because you and I both work with, you know, some pretty successful women. And it's interesting, you know, just like me, how sometimes those most successful women who are, you know, striving, getting the accolades, doing all those things, are the ones who are beating themselves up the most for That broken branch, that one thing, or they can skim over their their accomplishments so quickly. And that what you said really kind of triggered that thought about you know that's why it's always like do do do do do okay what's the next thing what's the next thing what's the next thing that's so interesting.

So they're chasing right they're chasing value external value and usually my experience with people who are high performing chasing validation. externally, is they are very vulnerable in the need of love and connection.

Mm-hmm.

So it's real intimacy issues and visibility and reception, receiving issues. And no matter how much they chase, if that's not getting a lot of airtime and exploration, they won't find that balance. They won't find that balance, and their relationships will be very frayed. They won't find the bandwidth to really grow and stretch relational-wise, intimacy-wise, and really being seen.

Oh my gosh, that's— you are literally like calling out because, you know, I don't want to make anyone feel alone in this, you know, or yeah, that we somehow have some magical formula that they don't know because, you know, in my story And I'm just going to share this because I'm very much like, I have, you know, all the awards, the walls that prove that, you know, I'm good enough because I was always trying to prove that. And something that a mentor of mine pointed out, you know, when I really started diving into this exact work that you're talking about 10 years ago, was that I didn't have a single person in my life. Like, even though I had all these things going on, I was completely alone. I didn't have a single, like, real friend in my life. I didn't have a single real relationship. And you know what, this is so common for, for women who are really successful, and I'm sure for men too, you know, that, that we can strive in one area, but a lot of times another piece of us really suffers.

Yes, yes. So often, so often, um, yeah, it's a rebalancing the value need and the love and connection need. There's usually a reversal that needs to happen So the top performers, it's the vulnerable spot is love and connectedness.

Yes.

And relationship. And the people who are really stuck and frozen and sometimes get hijacked in love addiction or fantasy addiction or love is their number one need, it's all about love, they actually need help boosting their value system and getting more pleasure and shaking up how to contribute their value to the world more, and then that love connection sort of organically gets met. Same with the other people. When the love and connection gets met resourcefully in ways that are restorative and, um, securing as far as trust goes, then their value shape-shifts.

Hmm.

And they get off that rat race of chasing, and they actually can leverage it In more powerful, dynamic ways. It's fascinating. But they have to get still and safe enough to get access to that vulnerable intimacy stuff, material.

And so that's the hardest part. That was definitely the hardest part for me. It was like that painful, like, ugh.

Yeah, and if it's painful, you don't want to do it. Yeah, that's the other thing we know about neuroscience. It's pretty simple. If our body's saying pain, avoid, you're gonna find every re— you will avoid and go. And, and the idea is to interrupt that, that pain-pleasure and, and check in with it and, and reshape the confusion around it so that pleasure, receptive pleasure, starts to be a little bit— again, baby pools—

Mm-hmm.

A little bit new, jumping in and having a new experience with it. So you're training your body into, oh, this could be pleasurable. This doesn't have to be terrifying or scary, so I avoid it.

Beautiful. And I know there are people who are watching this right now who are like, oh my goodness, maybe this is something they've heard before and it's reaffirming, or maybe this is something that they have just now heard and discovered, and maybe it's clicking for them that, oh my gosh, this makes sense. Like, some of these behaviors I'm noticing right now in this moment or throughout my life are making sense. So I know that they're going to want to get connected with you. So where can they find you?

UntangleAndThrive.com, for sure. I have a program I'm going to be re-releasing or re-upping my home program, which I'm really excited for. I have a book coming out. And I love, I love this idea of embodying home. I always have. I had a vision of it 20 years ago, my first Passover as a Jew, which is all about the home. Slavery to freedom and how to help people reorganize this threat response in every life story, in every room of their house, so that again, the, the outside's matching more coherently with the inside, and the inside starts reshaping the outside in a healthy way. So yeah, so untangleandthrive.com, you can go to the program page if you want information about that program, just Why don't you put yourself on the waitlist? We'll be in touch.

Perfect. And I do know you also have a gift for the audience, which is the webinar.

I do. It's actually a few pieces of, um, of a conversation that I thought would grow, like, would, would stack on this safe enough idea, getting safe enough to take more risk, to engage your space differently. And again, to continue this conversation of untangling, how to untangle the part of you that gets like this and hijacks your life to the part of you that can transform it.

I love it. Oh my gosh, you guys, go out and grab that. That sounds beautiful and amazing. I am so— I feel so grateful and blessed that you came on here today because I know this—

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome. It's lovely to be part of it.

Oh, thank you so much. And you guys, we will catch you here in about 20 minutes or so. We're going to take a short break and then I will be back with Gail McDonald. But Angela, thank you so much. This has just been— I mean, this is something that I wish everybody could hear this, and I hope that they do. I hope that people share it out because this is such a great, powerful, beautiful message.

Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day.

Thanks, guys. We will see you soon.

Bye.