Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Nobody Gets To Beat Themselves Up with Shawn Mahshie
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is Gymiferson.
- 0:04Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
- 0:07Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
- 0:11Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this
- 0:14Speaker 1: show five for three, two and one, our folks, Welcome
- 0:18Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
- 0:21Speaker 1: guest today. Sean Mashi Sean, welcome.
- 0:24Speaker 2: Thanks guy. Very excited to be here.
- 0:28Speaker 1: Appreciate it awesome. Sean is an internationally recognized author, speaker,
- 0:32Speaker 1: and self love coach based near Washington, d C. She
- 0:36Speaker 1: specializes in helping purpose driven women overcome burnout and self
- 0:39Speaker 1: abandonment through her Signature Living and Symmetry approach. The system
- 0:44Speaker 1: integrates her wheel of self forgiveness with her expertise as
- 0:47Speaker 1: a certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie to
- 0:51Speaker 1: transform anxiety into empowered action. Her methodology is deeply informed
- 0:56Speaker 1: by her own lived experience of overcoming chronic illness and
- 0:59Speaker 1: personal people by learning to stand in her own corner.
- 1:03Speaker 1: Through her retreats and coaching, she guides clients to build
- 1:06Speaker 1: the internal safety and self solidarity needed to live with
- 1:09Speaker 1: lasting peace and competence. All right, Sean, just a little
- 1:13Speaker 1: bit about you before we get go and share with
- 1:15Speaker 1: our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
- 1:20Speaker 2: Well, I'm originally from a small town in Iowa. I
- 1:24Speaker 2: had what looked from the outside to be a very
- 1:27Speaker 2: idyllic childhood, wonderful parents, and yet it's amazing the way
- 1:32Speaker 2: the brain can get wired for trauma, often passed down
- 1:36Speaker 2: from their trauma. So yeah, then by way of California
- 1:41Speaker 2: and came to grad school in Washington, d C. Now
- 1:43Speaker 2: I live in a magical spot on the Chesapeake Bay,
- 1:47Speaker 2: where I call it Chesapeake Paradise, where I hold my retreats,
- 1:52Speaker 2: and it's about forty five minutes east of Washington, d C.
- 1:56Speaker 2: And south of Annapolis, Maryland, right on the water. A
- 1:59Speaker 2: couple of country country like acres.
- 2:02Speaker 1: Is so awesome. All right, So let's start. How did
- 2:07Speaker 1: all this begin for you?
- 2:11Speaker 2: Hmm? Well, started very early, I'm quite sure. And I
- 2:18Speaker 2: think back on those dinner table moments, particularly after church
- 2:22Speaker 2: of all things, when my mom would just turn into
- 2:28Speaker 2: this massive self hatred and start just turning on herself
- 2:35Speaker 2: with disgust and also on others, and those moments, it
- 2:42Speaker 2: was as if she had completely abandoned me. So my
- 2:45Speaker 2: response was to abandon myself do whatever it took to
- 2:49Speaker 2: make it feel better for her. And I think all
- 2:53Speaker 2: that you know that when when fight and flee aren't
- 2:57Speaker 2: safe for children, they go with the other two, freeze
- 3:01Speaker 2: and fawn, And I think it's easy for the brain
- 3:05Speaker 2: to get wired to turn on ourselves. So for me,
- 3:09Speaker 2: that really became my life story of going into should
- 3:14Speaker 2: it would have could. I would call it regret hell
- 3:17Speaker 2: because there was almost nothing I could do to stop
- 3:21Speaker 2: the flood of shame and self hatred, even after decades
- 3:26Speaker 2: of inner work, until until I found what we're going
- 3:29Speaker 2: to talk about. So yeah, it was my life eventually
- 3:33Speaker 2: crashed by even though I was well known in my field,
- 3:37Speaker 2: speaking on world stages with a book in that field,
- 3:41Speaker 2: and still crashed into chronic illness, was on disability for
- 3:46Speaker 2: fifteen years. My health, marriage, and career crashed in the
- 3:50Speaker 2: space of nine months, and it was still ten years
- 3:53Speaker 2: of inner work. Every kind of nutritional Eastern Western medicine
- 3:58Speaker 2: araveda I can puncture the best energy were people out there,
- 4:03Speaker 2: and I still couldn't stop beating myself up and.
- 4:08Speaker 1: All right, So when all this started, how old were
- 4:12Speaker 1: you at that dinner table?
- 4:16Speaker 2: Oh? You know, I'm sure it was earlier, having worked
- 4:19Speaker 2: with so many women who are wired as young as
- 4:22Speaker 2: three to know what's safe and not safe with their parents.
- 4:27Speaker 2: But one that I write about in the book that's
- 4:30Speaker 2: coming out soon is I think I was eight and
- 4:34Speaker 2: just that, you know, turning into I'm going to become invisible,
- 4:40Speaker 2: whatever it takes to please play Kate, get her back.
- 4:44Speaker 2: And yet I learned later the hard way, that it
- 4:48Speaker 2: wasn't her I needed to get back, or my husband
- 4:50Speaker 2: or any of the other people I had transferred that to.
- 4:53Speaker 2: It was me I needed to get back. I was
- 4:56Speaker 2: the one who abandoned myself, no other choices in that moment.
- 5:01Speaker 2: But that's the journey I help people on now. Even
- 5:03Speaker 2: have a boot camp called get You Back.
- 5:06Speaker 1: So we're going to get there. But I just want
- 5:09Speaker 1: to get a little more specific about how this unfolded
- 5:12Speaker 1: for you as a young kid right high school. What
- 5:18Speaker 1: was happening for you during that time middle school, high school?
- 5:21Speaker 1: How is this manifesting for you?
- 5:24Speaker 2: Very much than not enough story doing what I see
- 5:29Speaker 2: so many women doing is agreeing to terms you don't
- 5:33Speaker 2: want in your relationships particularly pleasing.
- 5:37Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 5:38Speaker 2: I call them pretzel people, where we turn ourselves into
- 5:41Speaker 2: a pretzel to please playcate and put our needs last. Yeah, definitely,
- 5:47Speaker 2: So that's happening.
- 5:49Speaker 1: You go to college, I'm assuming, Yeah.
- 5:52Speaker 2: College, but I was out to save the world. So
- 5:55Speaker 2: only two years at Iowa State University. Then I joined
- 5:59Speaker 2: a volunteer serchorganization with the Mennonite Church even though I
- 6:04Speaker 2: wasn't men and I had sent me to California where
- 6:07Speaker 2: I became involved in deaf education. And that's what my
- 6:11Speaker 2: career and my master's in Sign language linguistics, in fact,
- 6:15Speaker 2: my other book that was kind of, you know, change
- 6:19Speaker 2: the face of deaf education back in nineteen ninety five.
- 6:23Speaker 2: So yeah, to California, and from there, you know, a
- 6:28Speaker 2: marriage that just started crashing very.
- 6:31Speaker 1: Soon because why, I would.
- 6:36Speaker 2: Say, out of my own self hatred, not just constantly
- 6:43Speaker 2: looking over my shoulder, the way I managed my time,
- 6:47Speaker 2: what I said, what I did. I couldn't leave a
- 6:50Speaker 2: meeting at my job without going in and finding the
- 6:52Speaker 2: one thing I could beat myself up for either I
- 6:56Speaker 2: should have said something or I said too much? Why
- 7:00Speaker 2: didn't I? And if only and I think the brain
- 7:03Speaker 2: was wired so early to replay, to really terrorize myself
- 7:08Speaker 2: with images of what could have been.
- 7:14Speaker 1: Wow. So simultaneously it looks like you're having this thriving career,
- 7:22Speaker 1: beautiful life.
- 7:23Speaker 2: Yeah, beautiful life, beautiful life. You look, everything from childhood
- 7:28Speaker 2: on has always looked good on the outside, even the marriage,
- 7:32Speaker 2: married to a professor, waterfront home, finally adopted our child
- 7:37Speaker 2: from China. Everything's looking good. And I'm speaking on world
- 7:41Speaker 2: stages and totally crashing on the inside.
- 7:44Speaker 1: Now, when you say crashing on the inside, what does
- 7:47Speaker 1: that mean? Why did the and why did the marriage fail?
- 7:56Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't having worked with so many women, don't
- 7:59Speaker 2: believe there is no necessarily one reason. But I would
- 8:02Speaker 2: say that lack of self support what I now have
- 8:07Speaker 2: come to call self solidarity, there was. I was always
- 8:12Speaker 2: giving it away, wired to sort of we go through
- 8:17Speaker 2: others that you can almost see where codependence is born
- 8:21Speaker 2: out of the childhood trauma, and we start shuttling back
- 8:24Speaker 2: and forth to get those responses. So the minute things
- 8:29Speaker 2: didn't go the way I planned, I would turn on myself.
- 8:32Speaker 2: The minute somebody was angry or even uncomfortable, particularly my husband.
- 8:37Speaker 2: So it was very easy to drain myself. And it
- 8:40Speaker 2: was combined with, you know, having had various autoimmune things
- 8:45Speaker 2: along the way that kept, I believe, being exacerbated. It's
- 8:50Speaker 2: almost like my body learned from my psyche to turn
- 8:54Speaker 2: on itself. So physical pain, autoimmune disorders, that and adrenal
- 9:00Speaker 2: just blowing out adrenaline all the time through anxiety, and
- 9:05Speaker 2: which is almost funny because now no physical pain, no
- 9:09Speaker 2: chronic illnesses, and I'm never tired. It's a very strange
- 9:14Speaker 2: thing after all those years of fatigue and overwhelmed. So
- 9:18Speaker 2: it just showed me how much the thinking would and
- 9:22Speaker 2: the way it was wired into my body. It was
- 9:24Speaker 2: very somatic, always some kind of chronic condition coming up,
- 9:28Speaker 2: one after the other.
- 9:31Speaker 1: Were you seeking any help at this.
- 9:34Speaker 2: Point, Oh yeah, lots, yeah.
- 9:37Speaker 1: And hold on a second, And were you seeking that
- 9:39Speaker 1: help because of what was happening, like something's wrong, I
- 9:44Speaker 1: have an illness, I have a sickness. Or had you
- 9:49Speaker 1: connected the dots to back at that dinner table in
- 9:52Speaker 1: a sense.
- 9:54Speaker 2: You know, I think it was both. I fairly early
- 9:58Speaker 2: on learn learned that the should have story was completely
- 10:03Speaker 2: my downfall. Even at age three, my own daughter said, Mommy,
- 10:08Speaker 2: you said should have? So I guess I've made it
- 10:11Speaker 2: into a dirty word in our house, like nobody gets
- 10:14Speaker 2: to go beat themselves up. Because I was really wired
- 10:18Speaker 2: to believe there could have been some other reality, and
- 10:21Speaker 2: I believe children's brains kind of go into external blame
- 10:26Speaker 2: where everything is about judging others and wanting them to change,
- 10:29Speaker 2: or internal blaming, and I got the internal side. But
- 10:34Speaker 2: what I've learned is is they are flip sides of
- 10:36Speaker 2: the same coin, and that everyone, you know, if you
- 10:41Speaker 2: are over there being the judgmental one and feeling the
- 10:45Speaker 2: pain of always separating yourself from life and others as
- 10:48Speaker 2: they are, usually when we start doing this wheel of
- 10:52Speaker 2: self forgiveness work, they find they are extremely self critical
- 10:56Speaker 2: underneath all that judgment. In fact, maybe the external judgment
- 11:00Speaker 2: it is a protection from looking at you know, from
- 11:03Speaker 2: experiencing their own self hatred. But because I had gone
- 11:06Speaker 2: in that direction, because of all the somatic conditions, I
- 11:10Speaker 2: was able to fairly early on spot things related to
- 11:14Speaker 2: the mind body connection. I started believing it was all
- 11:18Speaker 2: my way of handling stress and that I shouldn't even
- 11:21Speaker 2: attend to physical things. So about ten of them stacked up,
- 11:26Speaker 2: and you know, and abscess to a number of things
- 11:29Speaker 2: that were contributing. So it's always this dance between how
- 11:34Speaker 2: do the mind and body work together? How does the
- 11:38Speaker 2: trauma response get triggered? In so many different ways? But yeah,
- 11:43Speaker 2: I generally was on the path. I was a seeker.
- 11:49Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start to get there. When did when
- 11:52Speaker 1: did you realize? When did you start to get help?
- 11:58Speaker 1: When did things start? Okay, this is working, Maybe I'm
- 12:01Speaker 1: on this healing path. When did that happen for you?
- 12:08Speaker 2: You know? So many wonderful self help books along the way,
- 12:12Speaker 2: particularly getting in trouble in my marriage, but there had
- 12:15Speaker 2: always been a lot of abandonment, fear, and relationships again
- 12:19Speaker 2: causing me to agree to things I didn't necessarily want
- 12:23Speaker 2: and be afraid to leave or let the relationship fail.
- 12:27Speaker 2: But I would say really mostly in my marriage, and
- 12:38Speaker 2: one of the books I had read was Feel the
- 12:40Speaker 2: Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, and those
- 12:44Speaker 2: kind of affirmations and things were really helpful, and yet
- 12:49Speaker 2: didn't get to and never have as far as I've
- 12:53Speaker 2: seen from my clients, that the real self hatred stuff,
- 12:57Speaker 2: because I believe it's wired for revival, not for recovery. Actually,
- 13:03Speaker 2: I heard Janina Fisher, one of your guests, say that
- 13:08Speaker 2: our trauma is wired for survival, not recovery, and especially
- 13:12Speaker 2: if if your psyche believe you are helping yourself by
- 13:16Speaker 2: beating yourself up, putting yourself last, making yourself less than
- 13:20Speaker 2: not trusting your intuitions. Indecisiveness was one of the really
- 13:25Speaker 2: big ones, and I have almost completely recovered from that.
- 13:30Speaker 2: It will find that if you know how to stop
- 13:33Speaker 2: the regret health thing and stop beating yourself up, there's
- 13:36Speaker 2: very little fear of making your wrong decision because the
- 13:40Speaker 2: worst outcome was what you would do to yourself anyway.
- 13:44Speaker 2: It's those emotional states we fear. So I would say
- 13:49Speaker 2: those wonderful self help books along the way and counseling,
- 13:54Speaker 2: and yet I had counselors who are just basically listening
- 13:58Speaker 2: and didn't have a clue, who didn't really have the
- 14:01Speaker 2: tools to help. So I would say the biggest breakthrough
- 14:05Speaker 2: after all those years of seeking and even trying to
- 14:09Speaker 2: recover from the chronic illnesses was finding the work of
- 14:12Speaker 2: Byron Katie, which was just four questions and turn the
- 14:17Speaker 2: thoughts around and understanding how much everything was being triggered
- 14:23Speaker 2: by the thinking.
- 14:26Speaker 1: Okay, so give us the give us a little bit
- 14:31Speaker 1: about Byron Katie, not too much. But what was it
- 14:34Speaker 1: about her work? You said four questions? What were those
- 14:38Speaker 1: four questions? And for those interested, she has been a
- 14:42Speaker 1: guest on this podcast.
- 14:44Speaker 2: Right, yeah, Well, and I became one of the few
- 14:47Speaker 2: in the world certified directly under her in this work
- 14:51Speaker 2: over the course of six years. And yet then still
- 14:55Speaker 2: took it further for the self forgiveness part. But this
- 14:59Speaker 2: part I think what was so helpful, Well, I actually
- 15:03Speaker 2: took it further too, to call it the symmetry principle.
- 15:06Speaker 2: When I realized that whatever was upsetting me was holding
- 15:09Speaker 2: the key to my path out of it. That was
- 15:12Speaker 2: the beginning of the end of fear. If I could
- 15:15Speaker 2: use my judgments, fears, feeling victimized, reactions to life, whatever
- 15:21Speaker 2: that was, as my direct path to piece, then I figure,
- 15:27Speaker 2: no bad outcomes. You're either love in life or using
- 15:30Speaker 2: what hurts to wake yourself up. Give me so with
- 15:34Speaker 2: the work of Byron Katie that to really, you know,
- 15:38Speaker 2: how so much out there we are told in the
- 15:41Speaker 2: spiritual space or particularly religion churches will say don't judge,
- 15:47Speaker 2: and yet our judge, our brain is a judging machine.
- 15:50Speaker 2: It's wired for a good, bad, fat, thin, smart, dumb.
- 15:54Speaker 2: And so one genius thing she did was get those
- 15:58Speaker 2: judgments on paper, the wonderful thing, just in a very
- 16:02Speaker 2: simple format called a Judge your Neighbor worksheet. I'm upset
- 16:07Speaker 2: with blank because they we actually go ahead, point the
- 16:10Speaker 2: finger at them. I want them right, because no matter
- 16:14Speaker 2: how petty or you don't want to admit to anybody else,
- 16:18Speaker 2: if that's true, you get it on paper, you become
- 16:21Speaker 2: the active listener to those littlest parts of you and
- 16:25Speaker 2: not shaming them and not saying you shouldn't feel that way.
- 16:28Speaker 2: It's a safe space, or you know, all anger, all
- 16:32Speaker 2: war belongs on paper, is what she would say. But
- 16:35Speaker 2: anyway that that worksheet is, I'm upset with blank because
- 16:39Speaker 2: they I want them to. They should I need them to.
- 16:44Speaker 2: They are go ahead, cusswords, expletives, you know in marriage counsel,
- 16:49Speaker 2: they're going no labels, no characterisation, go ahead and characterize
- 16:53Speaker 2: them whatever it is. And then I don't ever what
- 16:56Speaker 2: it is. You don't ever want to experience about this again.
- 16:59Speaker 2: And the trick when I first started, she was doing
- 17:04Speaker 2: that in a very general way. But they moved into
- 17:06Speaker 2: work in a very specific moment, a specific triggering situation,
- 17:12Speaker 2: And that just makes such a huge difference from every
- 17:15Speaker 2: other kind of work I've seen, because you're actually revisiting
- 17:19Speaker 2: the moment what was I thinking and believing? And then
- 17:23Speaker 2: it turns out that with the question for once you
- 17:27Speaker 2: get those thoughts on paper and you question them, is
- 17:31Speaker 2: it true? Can I absolutely know it's true? How do
- 17:37Speaker 2: I react camera off the other person or what they're
- 17:40Speaker 2: doing on me? No judgment, just observation. How do I
- 17:45Speaker 2: react when I believe that thought? And this is the
- 17:47Speaker 2: one that I hadn't seen in any other spiritual approach.
- 17:51Speaker 2: Who would I be in that exact moment without that thought?
- 17:54Speaker 2: Imagine the thought has been lifted. You see you look
- 17:58Speaker 2: at their little face over there, the person who's driving
- 18:01Speaker 2: you crazy and feels like a siria, And you're like, oh,
- 18:05Speaker 2: look at them, they're just over there believing they're thinking
- 18:07Speaker 2: as well, and move right into compassion. And then you
- 18:12Speaker 2: turn the thought around. And I always say, that's where
- 18:14Speaker 2: you find that you're doing to yourself and others what
- 18:19Speaker 2: you thought was being done to you. It's the symmetry
- 18:22Speaker 2: principle I talk about is that whatever life brings is
- 18:27Speaker 2: not only a perfect mirror for you, but it is
- 18:30Speaker 2: created out of the lens through which you're looking. And
- 18:33Speaker 2: so the gift is whenever somebody shows up really pushing
- 18:37Speaker 2: your buttons, you get to find out how they are
- 18:41Speaker 2: actually your kind teacher. They are exposing a blind spot
- 18:46Speaker 2: and area. And when I say blind spots, it's always
- 18:49Speaker 2: linked to childhood trauma. You don't have another way. You
- 18:54Speaker 2: actually can't even see what you're doing to cause it
- 18:58Speaker 2: for yourself or the way out, you know. And I
- 19:01Speaker 2: was a person who would always go in and find
- 19:03Speaker 2: my part, then beat myself up and apologize and not
- 19:05Speaker 2: be able to change. Well, this is finding your part
- 19:08Speaker 2: without blame or shame. Just I call self solidarity, standing
- 19:14Speaker 2: with buy and for yourself no matter what were you
- 19:18Speaker 2: see what Given what I was thinking and believing, I
- 19:21Speaker 2: couldn't have acted any differently. And that's the basis for
- 19:24Speaker 2: the wheel of self forgiveness too.
- 19:27Speaker 1: All right, let me just remind one I'm speaking with
- 19:30Speaker 1: Sean Mashey. So Sean, let's kind of shift a little bit.
- 19:35Speaker 1: How are you working with individual as just women? Correct?
- 19:40Speaker 2: You know I have clients that are men. I work
- 19:43Speaker 2: with couples. This work works really well for men, especially
- 19:47Speaker 2: if they're not into talk therapy. And yet the people
- 19:51Speaker 2: we were seeming to attract to my retreats and yeah,
- 19:54Speaker 2: we've kind of tried to narrate to women, but I'm
- 19:57Speaker 2: a global mission. I know we all just don't need
- 20:00Speaker 2: to be hurting so much. And there is nothing more
- 20:04Speaker 2: important to me than getting it out there so that
- 20:06Speaker 2: children grow up knowing this way of questioning their thinking
- 20:10Speaker 2: as common knowledge, understanding the steps of the wheel of
- 20:14Speaker 2: self forgiveness so that they don't turn on themselves. They
- 20:19Speaker 2: instantly find their own innocence and know how to not
- 20:24Speaker 2: make themselves wrong and the trauma of abandoning themselves no
- 20:30Speaker 2: matter what's happening. I want so much for that to
- 20:33Speaker 2: be common knowledge. It's not just for women, but women
- 20:37Speaker 2: are the ones that often spot themselves in this self
- 20:41Speaker 2: deprecating self abandonment profile.
- 20:45Speaker 1: Okay, so let's get specific here. How do you work
- 20:49Speaker 1: with your clients. Let's use a case example. Granted everyone's
- 20:56Speaker 1: different and every case is different, but what does it
- 20:59Speaker 1: look like?
- 21:01Speaker 2: Well, I really do. First of all, I do very
- 21:06Speaker 2: deep private coaching, and one thing that's different about that
- 21:09Speaker 2: than a single counseling sessions is I have text coaching
- 21:14Speaker 2: in between, and often these relationships become an actual relationship
- 21:20Speaker 2: where people we take on a project together, they become
- 21:24Speaker 2: part of my team. There becomes almost like some kind
- 21:28Speaker 2: of a friendship where I get to have the feedback
- 21:31Speaker 2: of having my own experience of them in real time,
- 21:35Speaker 2: not just them coming in and reporting about a third
- 21:37Speaker 2: party without that third party presence. So that's been helpful too,
- 21:42Speaker 2: to really open it up, I've seen that You've often
- 21:45Speaker 2: said that the way to really help people is to
- 21:50Speaker 2: completely be your human self, and where they get to
- 21:54Speaker 2: see that in me too, but also see how differently
- 21:58Speaker 2: I handle things than I use to to that I
- 22:01Speaker 2: can risk. So in that private coaching, in my year
- 22:05Speaker 2: long Mastermind group which continues on, people become elves, the
- 22:10Speaker 2: embracing life fully programmed where women come together in online groups.
- 22:15Speaker 2: It's and it's just an amazing level of safety. That
- 22:21Speaker 2: also with our retreats, I've been having two retreats a
- 22:24Speaker 2: year for since twenty fourteen. We're going on our twenty
- 22:28Speaker 2: four to retreat, but now we're starting to do many
- 22:31Speaker 2: more per year. So anyway, the way I work also
- 22:36Speaker 2: though is to identify. Are you pointing the finger out
- 22:40Speaker 2: which in which case I tend to use the work
- 22:45Speaker 2: of buying Katie, Or are you pointing towards yourself? Are
- 22:49Speaker 2: you beating yourself out believing taking too much responsibility for
- 22:53Speaker 2: an outcome that belongs to someone else if it's aimed
- 22:57Speaker 2: at you. Then the will of self forgiveness, which is
- 23:00Speaker 2: just three simple steps that not only find your own
- 23:05Speaker 2: innocence and forgive yourself, but debunk the fears that are
- 23:10Speaker 2: causing you to go into regret. How to start with
- 23:14Speaker 2: you fear something bad is happening, that again link to trauma,
- 23:18Speaker 2: and then we go even further than that to use
- 23:21Speaker 2: what it is you find through this process about what
- 23:24Speaker 2: you want from others or life and get real specific
- 23:28Speaker 2: and find ways to give it to yourself, really really
- 23:32Speaker 2: addressing true gaps in self love. Like no cookie cutter,
- 23:38Speaker 2: We're going to drink our lemon water and meditate for
- 23:40Speaker 2: twenty minutes or whatever those and yet you're still beating
- 23:43Speaker 2: yourself up the whole time. This will really expose, based
- 23:48Speaker 2: on what you feel you want and need from others,
- 23:51Speaker 2: what it is these littlest parts of you want from yourself.
- 23:55Speaker 2: So we have various processes, but mostly mind no matter
- 23:59Speaker 2: what is based on those two pillars of the work
- 24:03Speaker 2: of Byron Katie and my will of self forgiveness depending
- 24:06Speaker 2: on whether the finger is pointing in or out.
- 24:10Speaker 1: It's an interesting concept, and of course I'm guessing it
- 24:18Speaker 1: can be both in and out at some points.
- 24:21Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, let's.
- 24:23Speaker 1: Talk about this a little more. How does what you're
- 24:26Speaker 1: doing differ than from quote unquote regular talk therapy?
- 24:34Speaker 2: Very much so in my mind, and it's partly what
- 24:36Speaker 2: helped me quiet a very overactive brain that was constantly
- 24:44Speaker 2: making connections and assigning meaning to things. With either of
- 24:50Speaker 2: these processes, we really boil it down to what am
- 24:53Speaker 2: I thinking and believing in that moment. And people may say, yeah,
- 24:58Speaker 2: but what if the trauma is pre language. I still
- 25:01Speaker 2: find that pre language trauma and so much of the
- 25:05Speaker 2: somatic reactions in our bodies can be healed by working
- 25:10Speaker 2: here and now situations that trigger the trauma response and
- 25:14Speaker 2: there's a link back to where that got wired. And
- 25:19Speaker 2: we often do go back to that childhood situation and
- 25:24Speaker 2: allow the child to say what never could have been said,
- 25:27Speaker 2: and to have an advocate that was never there for
- 25:30Speaker 2: them and sort of to in some ways rewrite history
- 25:34Speaker 2: through a simple process I do with childhood wounds. But
- 25:39Speaker 2: for the most part, it boils down to becoming the
- 25:42Speaker 2: observer of your thinking, but different than the usual mindfulness practices,
- 25:48Speaker 2: we're going further. A lot of times, those littlest parts
- 25:52Speaker 2: of us that are believing something scary, they don't want
- 25:55Speaker 2: us to put them on a cloud and just observe
- 25:58Speaker 2: them and send them. It's like a child who's really
- 26:02Speaker 2: scared about something. If you push it away and minimize
- 26:05Speaker 2: it for fears, it's just gonna hug your leg and
- 26:07Speaker 2: scream louder. And that's chronic illness and relationship dysfunction and
- 26:12Speaker 2: all of it. So what we're doing is really bringing
- 26:17Speaker 2: that part up, saying no, I see you, I want
- 26:21Speaker 2: to hear you, and exposing the errors in its logic.
- 26:25Speaker 2: This work neutralizes the thinking so that if you identify
- 26:30Speaker 2: a belief and you do this process on it, you
- 26:33Speaker 2: have turned it around in such a way that your
- 26:36Speaker 2: way over here have polarized belief. I need them to blank,
- 26:40Speaker 2: and then you find, oh, I don't need them to
- 26:42Speaker 2: and you have as many reasons for that. I need
- 26:45Speaker 2: me to with regard to myself and with regard to them.
- 26:51Speaker 2: So you find these three kinds of turnarounds that neutralize
- 26:55Speaker 2: the thinking, and so it just quiets the mind. Emotional
- 27:00Speaker 2: charges just gone. Even physical pain. People could say, wow,
- 27:04Speaker 2: you can see still the swelling and everything, but the
- 27:06Speaker 2: pain isn't there. And the same with the anger they
- 27:10Speaker 2: came in with someone, or the feelings of fear or
- 27:13Speaker 2: victimization have just been neutralized. So that's you know. For me, yes,
- 27:20Speaker 2: I listen a lot, especially during private therapy. I take
- 27:23Speaker 2: copious notes on the computer because what I'm looking for
- 27:27Speaker 2: is not history or general themes. I'm looking to grab
- 27:30Speaker 2: the exact wording of their thoughts and then when we
- 27:34Speaker 2: find the triggering situation, then we do this structured Judge
- 27:37Speaker 2: your Neighbor worksheet to really harvest the thinking. But that's
- 27:41Speaker 2: by turning around your exact wording that came out of
- 27:45Speaker 2: your own mind. That's why it so efficiently neutralizes things
- 27:49Speaker 2: that I have been working on for years and regret.
- 27:54Speaker 2: I used to be able to lay awake that night
- 27:58Speaker 2: worry about it, for we still feel the stab of
- 28:02Speaker 2: regret when months years later thinking back on a regret situation,
- 28:07Speaker 2: and it can literally be gone in five to twenty
- 28:10Speaker 2: minutes because these processes sort of just find those polar
- 28:15Speaker 2: opposites so your mind, you know. And it's a lot
- 28:19Speaker 2: of stuff too about about presence and not just the
- 28:23Speaker 2: idea of presence, because so many people beat themselves up
- 28:26Speaker 2: for not being able to be more present or more
- 28:29Speaker 2: self loving. So yeah, yeah, so anyway, it really is
- 28:33Speaker 2: moving you into it. You don't have to try to
- 28:35Speaker 2: legislate your state. You try to love yourself right where
- 28:40Speaker 2: you are being totally not present.
- 28:43Speaker 1: So okay, okay, all right, how do people learn more
- 28:46Speaker 1: about what you're doing, Sean? And everything you're doing? And
- 28:51Speaker 1: before you even answer that, you have a book coming out,
- 28:54Speaker 1: hopefully it's going to be out by the time this
- 28:57Speaker 1: goes live. What's the title of the book.
- 29:01Speaker 2: The title of the book is The Will of Self Forgiveness.
- 29:04Speaker 2: Three Simple Steps to unconditional self love, self confidence, and
- 29:09Speaker 2: self advocacy. The short version is just the Will of
- 29:13Speaker 2: Self Forgiveness and it is just three simple steps.
- 29:17Speaker 1: Okay, and give us your website how people can learn
- 29:21Speaker 1: more about you, Well, just.
- 29:24Speaker 2: With my name Seanmashy dot com. And it's an interesting spelling.
- 29:28Speaker 2: But I think for right now, the most important thing
- 29:31Speaker 2: especially for practitioners to potentially even get license in these methods.
- 29:37Speaker 2: Is the Will of Self Forgiveness dot com. It only
- 29:41Speaker 2: has a dash in there with self forgiveness. So Wheel
- 29:45Speaker 2: of Self Dash Forgiveness dot com will take you to
- 29:51Speaker 2: Right now, you can download a cheat sheet of the
- 29:53Speaker 2: Wheel of Self Forgiveness and on as soon as the
- 29:56Speaker 2: book comes out, that website will be taking you to
- 30:00Speaker 2: directly there. In fact, when you get the cheat sheet,
- 30:03Speaker 2: we'll be putting your name on a list to receive
- 30:05Speaker 2: information about when the book's available and be part of
- 30:08Speaker 2: our book launch to get this out there to so
- 30:11Speaker 2: many people who there's just an epidemic of self criticism
- 30:16Speaker 2: and we have a way out.
- 30:18Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, all right. We'll have all this linked up
- 30:21Speaker 1: here at the show notes page at the Trauma Therapist
- 30:23Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Sean, thank you so much, aspiring appreciate it.
- 30:30Speaker 1: Thank you guys, all right, touch bye bye everyone,