Latest / Thrive After 45® | Life After 45, Self-Trust, Midlife Women / Stop Self-Doubt NOW: The #1 Belief Holding Midlife Women Back - with Sabrina Trobak
Transcript
- 0:00I'm Denise Drink Walter heart whisperer, midlife mirror and mentor.
- 0:04And every week I am honored to share energy and space with inspiring guests whose stories reflect so many possibilities of thriving beyond Together we'll uncover the whispers of the heart, the power of midlife transformation, the wisdom that fuels expansion.
- 0:26Welcome to Thrive after 45.
- 0:29What if the quiet voice inside that says you are not enough, has been running your life?
- 0:39Sabrina ACH knows that struggle of the quiet voice inside and out, and she's dedicated her life to helping others break free from it.
- 0:51It is an absolute honor and a privilege to welcome Sabrina Roach to our show today with over 15 years as a registered clinical counselor, clinical supervisor, speaker, and author, plus 20 plus years of teaching experience.
- 1:10She's guided.
- 1:11Thousands of people to untangle self-doubt, ease, anxiety, and finally see their own worth.
- 1:20Sabrina's work is about more than therapy.
- 1:24It's about transforming the beliefs that hold us back so we can step into lives that feel whole and true.
- 1:34This conversation.
- 1:36We'll leave you questioning the stories you've carried ready to claim something better.
- 1:42Sabrina, I am so excited for our conversation today and to help our listeners discover how we can shift that voice into empowerment.
- 1:54Welcome.
- 1:54Thanks for having me, Denise.
- 1:55I'm glad to be here.
- 1:56You have spent, let, let's go back and get a bit of your story and then I'm gonna bounce right into, into some questions.
- 2:05So let's start with how did you get where you are today?
- 2:09So, you know, I was a, a teacher for 20 years a a and honestly I've wanted to be a teacher since I was probably in kindergarten.
- 2:16Uh, so that was just the path I always knew.
- 2:18A big part of that was I actually didn't know what other options were out there.
- 2:22Um, you know, when I went to high school, you took the test.
- 2:26That told you what you should do and you were either a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher.
- 2:31Um, and uh, so I didn't like blood and didn't really wanna be a secretary, so I was a teacher.
- 2:37Right.
- 2:38One of the three there it is exactly.
- 2:41Just affirmed what I believed about since kindergarten.
- 2:44Um, so I started, uh, as a teacher and uh, was a learning assistant teacher.
- 2:49So spend a lot of time.
- 2:50Working with smaller groups of kids where you just more, have more of that connection.
- 2:54They open a bit more about their anxiety, their stressors, their, you know, worries, their fears, and really kind of realized that I liked working with people who were struggling with that kind of stuff.
- 3:06So I decided to get my master's in counseling, psychology, and, uh, start to work as a school counselor.
- 3:13So I did that for a few years, and then I went to a workshop that was about suicide, but it was looking at suicide from that core belief of feeling not good enough, not important, not valued at the end of the three day workshop, I just, it, it just, it just resonated with me.
- 3:32And so I talked with the presenter and we went back and forth for about a year and he agreed to teach me his model of therapy.
- 3:39So I quit teaching and started my own private practice.
- 3:42In this model of therapy, that was back in 2010 and within six months I had a waiting list.
- 3:49Uh, and I've had a waiting list ever since, and I hate having to turn people away.
- 3:55So that's when I decided to write a book so I could at least provide a resource for people who can't access counseling for whatever reason.
- 4:03Right.
- 4:04When did the book come out?
- 4:06Uh, two years ago, this past summer.
- 4:08Okay.
- 4:09I'm, and I imagine it's still flying off the shelves.
- 4:13Oh, no.
- 4:14It hasn't started to fly off the shelves yet.
- 4:16Well, it needs to, it's slowly, it's slowly.
- 4:24You know, uh, Canada produces something like 10,000, uh, self-help books a year or something along that lines.
- 4:32Okay.
- 4:32And I'm little peon Sabrina in Northern British Columbia.
- 4:36So it's just trying to get it out there.
- 4:38People who read the book say, this is great, this is wonderful.
- 4:40I wanna buy another copy for a friend.
- 4:42But it's just trying to get it out there so people are aware of it.
- 4:45For sure.
- 4:46Yeah.
- 4:46Yeah.
- 4:47So can you give us a bit of a snapshot of the book in terms of what it gives the reader?
- 4:56'cause books present in all kinds of ways, so don't have to give us meat and potatoes, but just an idea of how it reads and what types of things for sure people would receive.
- 5:06Yeah, right.
- 5:07So, you know, I think one of the biggest things.
- 5:09Um, it, me being a teacher, I know that people with anxiety struggle with reading.
- 5:15So how do you write a book about and mental health for people who don't like to read?
- 5:19But I learned as a learning assistant teacher, there's things you can do to build confidence so that you feel more confident in reading.
- 5:27And so, you know, there's a few things in the book that are done specifically to help readers stay focused.
- 5:33It's written in a larger font, so it's not as overwhelming.
- 5:37And it's chunked into really small sections.
- 5:40You know, I, when, as a teacher, I'd take a page and I'd say to the student, you know, read this page.
- 5:44And the, I can't, it's too much, it's too overwhelming.
- 5:47Mm.
- 5:48Half the page with another blank piece of paper.
- 5:50And I'd say, okay, just read that paragraph.
- 5:52Well, no problem.
- 5:52I could read that paragraph.
- 5:54And then you just slowly move the page down and they were more able to read it in smaller chunks.
- 5:59So the book has a lot of visuals, a lot of diagrams, a lot of charts, um, and it's broken into really small chunks.
- 6:06So really you can read like a half a page and stop.
- 6:09The other thing I did was I provided, made it interactive.
- 6:13So you read a little bit of information and then you complete an activity based on your own experiences.
- 6:20So it allows you to kind of really apply that information in a written format where it allows you to really think through and sort through things.
- 6:28For sure.
- 6:29When you speak about anxiety, and I'm totally hearing you, former educator here.
- 6:35Behind the mic, um, chunking, is that the same concept, not only for reading, but do you do the same concept when you are supporting the anxiety of all of your clients chunk things so that they can manage piece by piece?
- 6:53I do that with everything I do.
- 6:55Okay.
- 6:55Um, we really talk a lot about baby steps.
- 6:59So not even normal steps.
- 7:00We need to take really baby, baby, baby steps and then before we take the next step, we need to practice that step until it feels comfortable.
- 7:11Once it feels comfortable, then you take another step, right?
- 7:15A lot of people think anxiety is kind of about the event, right?
- 7:19I have in school, I have anxiety test writing.
- 7:22Not, it's not about tests.
- 7:24If it was, every single student would have anxiety writing tests and they don't.
- 7:28Anxiety is about belief in your ability to handle it.
- 7:32So if I believe I can handle writing tests, I'm not gonna have anxiety.
- 7:35If I believe I can't handle writing the test, I'm gonna have more anxiety.
- 7:39So the opposite of anxiety is confidence.
- 7:43Okay?
- 7:44The more I feel confident in something, the less anxiety.
- 7:47So whenever you're learning a new skill, you wanna build the confidence.
- 7:51How do you do that?
- 7:52Practice, practice, practice, practice.
- 7:55So we chunk practice, chunk practice, chunk practice.
- 7:59Really, really, really important.
- 8:01We want slow, gradual change over a significant period of time.
- 8:05Gonna be way more sustainable than great big jumps and leaps.
- 8:08That makes a lot of sense to me.
- 8:11Like a lot of sense.
- 8:12What my father always used to say, Rome was not built in a day.
- 8:15That's right.
- 8:17Yeah.
- 8:18And yeah, for sure.
- 8:20Yeah.
- 8:20Right.
- 8:20And probably a lot of trial and error I would imagine too, right?
- 8:24Yeah, totally.
- 8:25And is there, um, something that you see with the people that you work with, with your clients, with your history?
- 8:35When people fall.
- 8:38It's harder to get back up.
- 8:40So they're doing the practice and it doesn't work out.
- 8:43Ah, right.
- 8:44Back to ground zero.
- 8:45How does that work?
- 8:46Or does it?
- 8:47Yeah.
- 8:48You know, again, it, it's about that building that confidence, right?
- 8:54So there's confidence that comes from succeeding.
- 8:57Right.
- 8:58There's also confidence that comes from failing and getting back up.
- 9:02You know, in the schools we have the kid who's a straight A student, a strong athlete, got lots of friends, and now you know, his girlfriend breaks up with him and he's absolutely devastated because he's never had to deal with frustration.
- 9:15He's never had to deal with failure.
- 9:17Whereas the kid who struggles academically, who you know, has to really work on creating friendships who you know is, is working hard.
- 9:25They're fine with failure'cause they deal with it all the time.
- 9:29So anything new is going to create more insecurity, more anxiety.
- 9:35It's getting better at realizing, hey, this is new.
- 9:37Something I haven't dealt with before.
- 9:39But I can handle it.
- 9:40And the more we practice building that, whatever it is, whether it's hiking or writing a test or anything in between, the more you practice it, the more confident you're gonna get.
- 9:50So there's, you know, there's confidence building in doing, but there's actually even more confidence in failing and getting back up and figuring it out and moving forward.
- 10:02I love that.
- 10:03I love that.
- 10:04That makes so much sense.
- 10:06And for women in midlife years, when everything seems to be changing in the world in terms of our family unit, for example, children going off to post-secondary.
- 10:19Life, physiology, physical stuff going on in our bodies and we're like, this is all new.
- 10:25And I thought I was fine.
- 10:27And all of a sudden these things start hitting.
- 10:30Do you notice that people have a new experience with anxiety that where they never had it before and is it the same process you go through in terms of your support?
- 10:43I think anxiety can kind of change and adapt as we, as we get older, for sure.
- 10:49But I think for a lot of people it's always been there.
- 10:52We just have been too busy to recognize it.
- 10:54So when you're busy working and taking care of kids and doing all these other things, we just avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid.
- 11:00Right now those things go away and it's like uhoh, what is going on?
- 11:05Um, and so we often, when when I talk with clients, they kind of come to that realization, you know, that was there before.
- 11:12I just didn't recognize it.
- 11:13I didn't acknowledge it.
- 11:15And again, there's a confidence piece that has to come with that.
- 11:17If I don't believe I can handle recognizing my anxiety, I'm not gonna do it.
- 11:22But once I start believing in myself more and believing that I can handle doing those things, then I can start to see things that before I just blocked out because I wasn't ready to deal with them.
- 11:34Right.
- 11:35So does Belief come before.
- 11:40Or does it come during the practices or does it come after?
- 11:44Or is it all encompassing?
- 11:45All of the above.
- 11:46All, you know, I think it, it is needed in the beginning stage.
- 11:51Bottom line, if you don't believe you can handle something, you're not gonna do it.
- 11:55So you've gotta believe in yourself that you can handle it.
- 11:57But then once you do it because you believe in yourself, then you believe in yourself even more.
- 12:03Then if it goes well, you can believe in yourself after, if it doesn't go well and you go, okay, well I could do these things differently next time, it's gonna believe in yourself even more that you can do it.
- 12:12So it's definitely the seed, um, that needs to be planted when you start, but then you, you are watering it throughout for sure.
- 12:21I love that.
- 12:21Yeah, I love that.
- 12:22And you are part of not only the watering, but you are also the sunshine and you are also the opportunity for the oxygen to be put in as the growth happens, right?
- 12:33So that people can reflect.
- 12:35Do you find people are really good reflectors, self reflectors?
- 12:38Or is that a journey as well?
- 12:40That's a journey as well?
- 12:42Yeah.
- 12:42You know, I think we've spent most of our life just kind of suppressing things.
- 12:46Definitely suppressing emotions.
- 12:48But we often, so many people are just in survival mode.
- 12:54Right.
- 12:54Yes.
- 12:54Just I get through the day.
- 12:55I gotta get through the day.
- 12:56I gotta get through the day.
- 12:57Well, there's not a lot of opportunity there for really understanding why you're doing what you're doing, seeing things at a different level.
- 13:04Once that you can slow that down a little bit and actually live rather than survive.
- 13:12Yeah.
- 13:12Then you all kinds of things that before you just weren't able to see because you weren't ready.
- 13:17There was too much other things on your plate.
- 13:20I love what you're saying.
- 13:21Can you say that again?
- 13:22You said very clearly because you weren't ready.
- 13:25It's not because you didn't do what you were supposed to do, it was because you were not ready and available.
- 13:31Right?
- 13:32Yeah.
- 13:32There, you know, you really, you have to believe in yourself.
- 13:37You can handle doing it.
- 13:39Otherwise, you're just not going to do it.
- 13:41Whether that's responsibility, whether that's awareness, whether that's feeling your emotions, whatever it is, if you don't believe you can handle doing it, you're not gonna do it.
- 13:50And that's often where that core belief comes in.
- 13:52If you feel not good enough, not not valued.
- 13:56You are not gonna believe in yourself.
- 13:57You can handle things, so you end up avoiding all kinds of things.
- 14:00The more you avoid, the more you're feeding that anxiety.
- 14:03'cause you don't believe in yourself, you can handle it.
- 14:06The more you're reinforcing that core belief.
- 14:08So it all, all, they all spiral into each other and just create this massive snowball effect that we end up carrying with us.
- 14:15And it nothing stays the same, either gonna get better or get worse over time if you're not making a real conscious effort to challenge it.
- 14:22It's gonna be getting worse, right?
- 14:25Right.
- 14:25So if you're in the audience right now going, oh, that makes sense because things are getting worse for me, so I need to step back and take a different lens of opportunity here.
- 14:37Right?
- 14:38Right.
- 14:38And so what I even challenge my clients on that is, no, you don't need to, but you can choose to.
- 14:46That feels different, right?
- 14:47Need is again, it's that survival.
- 14:49I gotta get it push.
- 14:51No, I choose to do this.
- 14:52For me, that's way more empowering.
- 14:55That's got more ownership, more responsibility, right?
- 14:58So we gotta be careful of even the words that we're often using for ourselves.
- 15:03That, are they actually feeding that insecurity, that self-doubt, that core belief, that anxiety, are they actually allowing us to challenge ourselves to do things a bit differently?
- 15:13For sure.
- 15:14Right, right.
- 15:16When you say about, um, choice.
- 15:21We always have a choice in the way we think, in the way we respond, in the way that we decide we're gonna show up or we're not gonna show up.
- 15:29Every day, choices are being made and if you take it through the lens, you want to share so deeply in terms of you are enough, then that will help with that shift, won't it Long term.
- 15:48For sure.
- 15:49The, the more you believe in yourself, the more that core belief is good enough, important and valued.
- 15:54The more confident you're gonna believe in yourself, that you can make choices.
- 15:58Um, if I, you know, if my core belief is not good enough, not important, not valued, I'm gonna struggle with making decisions, I'm gonna struggle with having a voice.
- 16:07'cause I don't believe in myself.
- 16:09I can handle doing it.
- 16:10So I don't do it.
- 16:11As that core belief shifts, now I feel more confident in myself that I can make those choices, make those decisions.
- 16:18So instead of letting life happen to me, I am now actively creating the life that I wanna create.
- 16:27You mentioned at the beginning of the show.
- 16:29This is so good.
- 16:30Thank you for all these nuggets.
- 16:32I'm just like lapping them up.
- 16:33Thank you.
- 16:35You mentioned at the beginning of the show that you started in education because that was the litmus test that came out, that you were the educator, right?
- 16:43No blood.
- 16:43Nope.
- 16:44Not going to nursing.
- 16:44Thanks anyway.
- 16:45Even though they're helpers that do all the amazing things differently, it's all cool.
- 16:49Right?
- 16:50So.
- 16:52After years of helping so many people get untangled about that painful belief that they're just not good enough.
- 17:01Is there a time you can recall that you came face to face yourself with that voice in your own life?
- 17:09And what did it take for you to stop letting that take over the show and you took the reins and made that choice and decision?
- 17:19No.
- 17:20I'm doing this.
- 17:22So there was a significant impact that happened when I was teaching, but I didn't clue into it until I went to the workshop.
- 17:32So when I went to that workshop and he was talking about the core belief, not good enough, not important, not valued.
- 17:38It was just like this whole ripple effect came into effect where it was like, oh, now I see why I did what I did.
- 17:45When I was working as a teacher, I was teaching science.
- 17:49And I remember going into a classroom and, um, I forgot the beakers.
- 17:55We needed 250 milliliter beakers and I didn't have them.
- 17:58And so instead of going, okay, kids, gimme two minutes, I gotta run back and grab the beakers, I'll be right back.
- 18:03I said that, but on the way there, I beat myself the whole way.
- 18:06Beat myself up the whole way.
- 18:07Oh, you're so stupid.
- 18:09How could you forget those beepers?
- 18:10Why do you have to do this now?
- 18:12The kids are all gonna think that you can't even do anything.
- 18:14You're so incompetent.
- 18:15Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 18:17Right?
- 18:18I didn't even realize I was doing it because I did it quite regularly, right?
- 18:22Mm-hmm.
- 18:23Shortly after that, I ended up in the hospital because I was getting these really, really bad headaches.
- 18:28They did, uh, lumbar puncture because they thought I had some sort of a brain aneurysm or something like that.
- 18:35When they, uh, removed the needle from the lumbar puncture, it didn't seal up.
- 18:40So I continued to have fluid, spinal fluid, um, coming out of the the, um.
- 18:47Spinal cord, whatever it was, right.
- 18:49I'm like, I said, I'm not Gotcha.
- 18:54Anyways, I ended up in a black room for five days.
- 18:57My head felt like it was going to explode, and they said There's nothing wrong with you.
- 19:02And I was like, there's something wrong.
- 19:04And so I did start to realize then, okay, there's nothing going on here.
- 19:08This is stress.
- 19:09This is me kind of beating myself, putting up too much pressure on myself.
- 19:13So there was a slight awareness and a a bit of a shift, but I still continued to do what I did.
- 19:19It wasn't a.
- 19:20Until I really became aware from that workshop of, oh, this is way deeper than what I was doing before that I was really able to kind of heal and sort through things for sure.
- 19:33Wow, wow.
- 19:35Can you still, this is maybe a bizarre question, but I have to ask it.
- 19:40Can you still remember that pain that you went through in those five days or no.
- 19:47No, I, I remember I was in pain, but I don't actually.
- 19:51You don't recall?
- 19:52You don't like I don't.
- 19:55I remember it, but I don't feel it.
- 19:57Yeah.
- 19:57Perfect.
- 19:57Right.
- 19:58Like when I think about it, I don't feel that pain.
- 20:00No.
- 20:01Which to me tells me you healed.
- 20:06That part of you?
- 20:07Yeah, for you know, and since I've started, because I still was getting headaches, they definitely got a bit better'cause I was managing my stress a bit more.
- 20:15But I was still getting these really bad headaches.
- 20:18I haven't had a headache like that now in almost 11 years.
- 20:22Because I'm aware of what my stress looks like or my anxiety looks like.
- 20:26As it gets higher and higher, I put strategies in place.
- 20:29So I manage it before it gets to that point.
- 20:32And in the book we talk about all these more subtle symptoms of anxiety.
- 20:37That we often don't realize.
- 20:38We know what our anxiety looks like when it's like at its highest peak, but we don't necessarily know what like it's like as it's growing, which means we're not doing anything about it until it's really, really high.
- 20:50Whereas now I know what my anxiety looks like at, you know, a two out of four, a three out of four put strategies in place.
- 20:56I don't have to get to that.
- 20:57Four to four.
- 20:58I love that listeners.
- 21:00That's perfect.
- 21:02Perfect information for you to sit back and reflect, whoa, imagine what could happen if I started understanding that I am enough, and understand where the anxiety begins so I can do that reflection and grab the book.
- 21:22And also Sabrina, you are doing some amazing things on YouTube.
- 21:29Tell us about what's going on there.
- 21:31'cause that's exciting for those in the audience who were really visual people, right?
- 21:37Yeah.
- 21:38So, um, yeah, just a couple months ago I started working with a guy to help me kind of promote my YouTube channel as a way of hoping to try to sell my book.
- 21:46You know, I've spent the last two years trying all kinds of different things.
- 21:50One of them was podcasting.
- 21:51So I have done quite a few podcast interviews.
- 21:54I did this one podcast interview where this guy said, you know, I can help you get your YouTube kind of up and running.
- 22:00I had a YouTube channel before that for, I don't know, maybe two, two and a half years or something.
- 22:06Mm-hmm.
- 22:06Put a little bit on it.
- 22:07Not a lot.
- 22:08Uh, my total views in three years was 764 or something like that.
- 22:14Okay.
- 22:14Yep.
- 22:16In these last two months, really promoting and putting a lot of shorts out.
- 22:19Right now I just reached a hundred thousand views, total views, um, in, in my videos.
- 22:25And now we're starting to do more of the longer videos where we're going into more detail about some of this stuff as well.
- 22:31So, you know.
- 22:33Hopefully it sells book, but really I'm, the purpose of doing the book is just to provide more information to people so they can see and understand things differently.
- 22:42And if people are able to do that through the YouTube channel, that works for me too.
- 22:45That's still the, you know, the purpose of doing this is to try to provide support and help as many people as I can.
- 22:52For sure.
- 22:53Exactly.
- 22:53Like you shared near the beginning of the show, the wait list is huge.
- 22:58There's a reason because what you do is help people come home to themselves.
- 23:05Right.
- 23:06And I, and, and that's why you're on my show because you're so aligned with what we talk about here.
- 23:12You are in the driver's seat, and there are times where you feel like, I can't do, I don't know.
- 23:20Well, where am I?
- 23:22I am lost.
- 23:24Sabrina will have, will have all of her contact information in the show notes so you can find her, you can find the channel, you can find the book that as you explore the book, you'll be able to piece together what's going on behind the scenes for yourself and come up with the strategies that work for you as part of that journey.
- 23:48When we are getting ready to do our close, I always love to ask this question.
- 23:52Is there one thing that you would love to make sure that our listeners, our audience, our community, really hears from you as a last nugget of truth that you wanna share?
- 24:09You know, I'm 57, um, and you know, I think that, you know, 45 after really even after 40.
- 24:17Once the, the kids are gone, things are kind of quieting.
- 24:20It really is your time to figure out who you are.
- 24:24And I have a lot of clients that kind of say to me, you know, I, I lost who I was.
- 24:28And I often challenge them on that and say, no, I don't think you did.
- 24:32'cause I don't think you ever really found out who you were in the first place.
- 24:35You spend your whole life trying to please your parents, please your teachers, please your family.
- 24:39Please your kids, please, your partner.
- 24:41Please.
- 24:41Please your, please, your boss.
- 24:43You never really stop and think about who you wanna do.
- 24:45So I think, you know, at this stage in your life where things are a bit quieter, this is a great opportunity to really stop and think about.
- 24:53Who do you wanna be?
- 24:54Who are you?
- 24:55What are your passions?
- 24:56What are your challenges?
- 24:58You know, what are the things that you, you know, you, you wanna learn and grow and figure out more of, you are way more resilient than you give yourself credit for.
- 25:07And if you take little steps on exploring that, um, in a year, you're gonna come a really long way.
- 25:15I love that.
- 25:16Sabrina, thank you so much for being with us today, sharing your wisdom, and like I say in the show notes, we'll have all the information that you need in order to contact Sabrina and see what she's up to.
- 25:29She's all over social media.
- 25:30I follow her everywhere.
- 25:31It's.
- 25:32Great to see her snippets and her shorts full of such great information.
- 25:36So thank you.
- 25:37Thank you for taking that journey that you had to take.
- 25:42I believe always have believed and will always believe until my last breath, that what we have been given, we are exactly where we are supposed to be.
- 25:51So thank you for taking the journey you've taken and doing what you do every day to make a difference for yourself and those around you.
- 26:01Thanks for having me.
- 26:02I enjoyed our conversation.
- 26:06What activated in you Claim your Sovereignty Me Academy expands you.
- 26:19Until next time, have a wonderful day everyone.