Latest / ShameOver - The Drink Less Podcast / Your Behavior Is Not Who You Are: Self-Sabotage, Trauma, & Healing w/ Elani Engelken (Part 2)
Transcript
- Erica And ShameOver: Alright, this is part two of my conversation with Alani and wow, this one gets deep in the best of ways. We talk about free states, functional disassociation, and why self-sabotage, which comes up a lot, is usually actually a symptom and not the actual problem. You'll also discover what healing can look like when you finally feel safe enough to stop overwriting yourself. And if you missed part one, please go back and listen first because it sets This was such a powerful conversation and I hope what you're taking away is this. not broken. You are ⁓ not failing. And your patterns are not your identity. Whether alcohol, shopping, scrolling, overthinking, ⁓ any other coping pattern has become your go-to, ⁓ is always something underneath it asking to be seen. So be sure to check out Alani's work and the show notes. And if this episode hit home for you, please send it to a friend, up this conversation in such a big way. So let's get started. I'd love to what stood out to most. As always, like and subscribe. It's the only that I can continue doing this ⁓ passion work and help other people and continue ⁓ And if you do want more help, if are just getting started in this area, ⁓ if you just feel stuck, if you feel you just need a refresh, check out my new reset. It is four weeks, me literally in your pocket every single day. Helping you to really uncover what's underneath. So, what's better than that? Not much. Go get it now. Cheers, we'll see you next time. Erica+ShameOver: So what is, you've talked a lot about the intuitiveness. ⁓ So ⁓ how does show for you and how do you bring that into your practice? Elani Engelken: Yeah. again, so it's something that has always been there. And I think I'm really just starting to realize like, everybody's kind of got their level of receptivity to these more like subtle of being in relationships. So I love to geek out on quantum physics, but ⁓ is energy, right? Like everything has an energetic vibration, animate and inanimate objects, everything has energy. And ⁓ know, when we talk about intuitive, right, like it's like, what are you tuning into? So, you for me, I feel things physically. So sometimes it's goosebumps, right, like we all do sometimes, you know, people get joyful around us, like we feel that's the pack animal part of us. That's the co regulation, we all have mirror neurons. So we're all Erica+ShameOver: Mm-hmm. Elani Engelken: Constantly bouncing off of the nervous systems that we're in relationship with that's why it really matters for you to be clear about what sorts of environments you want to be in because Environment helps define how healthy we feel right? So ⁓ for I feel again I get physical I Can feel like my my ⁓ stomach drop Erica+ShameOver: Yes. Mmm. Elani Engelken: Right? And so for me with clients often that will help them start to tune back into their bodies. Right? So when people go into a trauma reaction and we all do, we all go in and out of trauma responses. That's a part of our biology and physiology that is play for us to survive. So when we go into a trauma reaction, we have ⁓ flight, fawn, and then freeze. So freeze is disassociation. So people that shut down, people that of like daydream, people are super clumsy are often highly disassociated. And many people, especially in this culture, walk around in a functional freeze. We call it functional, right? Because they're still showing up, they're getting their work done, they're eating, whatever. But they can be so tuned out from Erica+ShameOver: Mm-hmm. Elani Engelken: from their physical experience. So part of what can be helpful in session when I'm feeling it in my body is that I'm then using my nervous system because human beings are much more affected by the bodies than what's happening ⁓ the communication, right? So ⁓ cueing them back to their body. Like, ooh, I just felt that in my gut. Like that felt, you know, I felt Erica+ShameOver: Mm. Yes. Elani Engelken: really scared or I feel fucking mad. Am I allowed to cuss? We're have to put an explicit on this. ⁓ Erica+ShameOver: Hmm. Well, good. I typically have a mom. It's me, you know me. Elani Engelken: So, and that helps them, right, because we're such an intellectualized culture. People will analyze it. They will tell you why, they will tell you the background, the thing that happened and like, you know, but they often will stay disassociated from the emotional reality because they haven't had a safe place to process their emotions. Goes back to the behaviorism. It goes back to the way that we were disciplined as children. So when you tune them into it, it's like, I want to pull you into it because energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it can be transmuted. So when I pull you into the emotion that you are overriding or you're disassociating with your thoughts and we just stay there, actually moves quite rapidly. There might be an entire backlog. There might be decades of back... and it's like as soon as we go through that moment, we're gonna have the next one come But that's the work, that's the work. Erica+ShameOver: Wow. So, because I have one person that is just glaringly obvious to me in this moment. So if there's someone who you've known like most of your life, maybe your whole life, I don't know, who is kind of in this disassociated state, is that something that they could still, like they could get out of it? So not, like after 40 something years of being, you know, it's their personality, essentially. Elani Engelken: Totally. Totally. Yeah, so it's interesting because when you go to complete a trauma response, so we all have the ability to complete trauma responses. It is built into our physiology. Human beings have just interrupted it or ⁓ it so much because again, behaviorism, Like shaming, punishing, banishing. So we learn to shut it down. Erica+ShameOver: Hmm. Elani Engelken: You know, don't throw a fit. You're going to get in more trouble. Don't show them your heart. They're going to shame you for it. They're going to embarrass you. So we stop ourselves. So when we go to complete a stress cycle, and I've got a whole ⁓ episode on trauma and energy and how to complete stress cycles and what happening in the of it. But oftentimes, we follow the body. So all of this is instinct. We can't do it with our brain. So you have to follow the body. And so sometimes for people that are highly disassociated, that means just staying in the disassociation because the freeze response is the protective mechanism. So whatever happened when the initial trauma happened or in complex PTSD, which I think... Probably most millennials are walking around somewhere on the spectrum of complex PTSD because of that disciplinary pattern. part of the mechanism of healing is accepting what the body's doing. So it's just staying with it, right? And that's where the co-regulation of the therapist is really important because Erica+ShameOver: Not trying to fight it or judge it. Yeah. Elani Engelken: I'm not rushing you through it. Your body's gonna be the one that completes it. And what your body needs in order to complete it is safety. And so if I'm like, oh, this is getting uncomfortable, they're not feeling anything, like if they're not feeling anything, I'm like, great. That is the protective mechanism. So we just stay with it. Erica+ShameOver: Hey, wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, which I'm sure can be the hardest thing, because I know that just, ⁓ yeah. Elani Engelken: Do nothing. especially in this culture. We want to do, do, do. We want progress. We want results. operate on a linear timeline. Like, am I going forward? Am I going backward? And it's like, we are cyclical beings. We are organic. We exist. Our bodies are nature. Nature works in cycles, day to night, season to season, especially women. Our hormones operate by the cycle of the moon. Erica+ShameOver: That's so fascinating. So this kind of something that's come up a lot and I feel like this is a perfect time to kind of go into it a little bit, but self-sabotage. Self-sabotage I feel like comes up so much. mean, especially with people that I work with, it's, you you feel like you're doing really good and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, which when we're, when we really dig in, very little is out of nowhere, but. Elani Engelken: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Erica+ShameOver: A lot of it really seems to come down to self-sabotage. And obviously I have my thoughts and reasons as to where a lot of that comes in, but is that something that you see a lot and what, what kind of, you recommend channeling when you're that coming on for you? Elani Engelken: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, think part of it relates to what we just talked about with like the linear timeline, right? So it's not like there's a forward and a backward. So and I think one of the things that can really help that our behavior is not who we are. So, you know, when people and people bring like the thing that they're most ashamed of, like the darkest thing that they thought they were never going to say out loud. And when I hear it just as like, okay, that was a behavior. That was something that happened. Like that's not who you are. And then they're like, ⁓ so I think, know, with self sabotage, usually people are like, ⁓ my God, I'm failing. I'm the worst and whatever. And it's just like, okay. So that happened. And let's come back to you. So what was that play? Right? So just like drinking, right? Like, and the self-sabotage can be in the drinking behavior, right? But it's like, it's just a symptom. It's just the expression of the underlying thing. a Jungian perspective would say, that's the thing that wants to get integrated. That's the part of yourself that wants to be invited in. That's the part of yourself that you haven't listened to yet, that you've been ignoring. And then you enact something. Erica+ShameOver: Yes. ⁓ absolutely. All the time. Elani Engelken: that brings that to the forefront, right? Like you enact some crisis, you could create something crazy. For years I was the cheater. I cheated on like almost every boyfriend I had. ⁓ I was the like life coach, I would get like wasted and cheat. And I was like, what the fuck? ⁓ so funny. This was my lifetime before you, Erica. ⁓ I was like, what the fuck is this? Erica+ShameOver: I do not see this out of you well. Elani Engelken: Like, does this, why do I keep doing this? But right, like it was, it would happen when I'd be drinking and you know, your, what do they call it? Erica+ShameOver: and ambitions. Elani Engelken: Yes, your inhibitions are down. ⁓ part of what I realized years later when I really got into my own intensive therapy was that it was this enactment, A, of my own rage, of having to be the one that was always responsible, that always had it together, that was always caretaking other people. Part of it was my deep need for affection and attachment. And it was like, Erica+ShameOver: Mm-hmm. Elani Engelken: I'd cast some fantasy in my mind, which the booze would help with. Yeah, and then it'd be like, maybe this is the person, right? The Disney fairy tales also would play into some fantasy, because it's much easier to believe a fantasy about someone you just met than about the person that you're dating and in the day-to-day shit with. And part of it was this enactment of external chaos. Erica+ShameOver: ⁓ totally. Hmm. Elani Engelken: that kept me managing things externally so that I didn't have to confront my deeper shit. And so I just spin a drama for myself over and over again. I'd have to beg for forgiveness from my person and just like, I don't know why I did it and like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I do it again. Erica+ShameOver: ⁓ yeah. So how did you, obviously through this work, you came to that realization, but then what? How did you get over that? Because like I said, this is not the Elani I know. So like, obviously a lot happened between A and B. Elani Engelken: Yeah. a huge part of it was, was my, kind of the beginning of like my healing crisis of just okay, I'm doing this ⁓ thing over over. Like let, ⁓ I need go somewhere else. And I went somewhere else that I didn't even know I needed to go because I was so used to being the one that everybody else turned to for help. So it was like, I needed to start to be, to get supported in a way I never had. And I started in pretty intensive therapy when I was ⁓ out of ⁓ ⁓ that had a lot of emotional abuse dynamics. I was very much the co-regulator, the caretaker. He was reactive, he was manipulative, ⁓ I was wrapped in it. And I stayed for a year, even though the dynamics were obviously, obvious, like literally from date one. And so that was at 31. I started being like, what is going on with me? Like what is going on? And so I was blessed enough to find a really great psychotherapist who also is about the same age as my father, actually looks quite similar to my father. And I started doing a lot of my healing work and I got to be in many ways, reparented in that dynamic. And I started to have this father archetype of guidance, of safety, unconditional love that I didn't have in my own experience of being parented. Erica+ShameOver: you you Elani Engelken: And so I don't have to create this crazy enactment, this crazy melodrama in my life if I'm getting what I need. And that's where in many ways in the West, therapy has kind of become the modern paradigm of the medicine person, the person in the community that you go to to get Erica+ShameOver: Mmm. Elani Engelken: get some of those healing needs met, and then that trickles back out into our lives, right? So the is great. And to be you don't need somebody the same age as your parents, ⁓ but you need somebody who has done their own work. Because you do need to remember that our nervous systems always off ⁓ of each other. Erica+ShameOver: Mm-hmm. Hahaha! Yes! Elani Engelken: So if somebody hasn't been to their own darkest corners, they're not gonna hold you in yours. It does not matter how many books they have read, and that's part of what is so difficult about therapists is it's an academic pursuit in many ways, and so you can know a lot of really great orientations. But it's... It's the energetic exchange that is really the heart of the healing. Erica+ShameOver: ⁓ wow. Never heard it that way. That is super powerful. And as you know, I'm just a coach in the sense that I don't have all the letters behind my name. And I know in the beginning for me, it kind of like was something that was like, well, why are people going to trust me or whatever if I don't have these letters? But, you know, to your point, like it's it's about talking to someone that gets it, that knows what you're feeling, what you're going through and actually understands it on that deep level. Because, I mean, even Elani Engelken: Yeah. Yes. Erica+ShameOver: Unfortunately, at so many rehabs, which I understand why, but most of the people that work in rehab have never had a problem with drugs or alcohol or, you know, sex or whatever the rehabs for. They're there because they have the knowledge, which is super powerful, but they don't actually know what it's like to have that addictive side, to have that, you're just thinking about it nonstop, you know? So it's, it is a very different dynamic when you do have someone who gets it. Um, so. Elani Engelken: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Erica+ShameOver: I want to be respectful of your time because I know you do have something coming up and I think we'll probably schedule another chat you and me anyway. ⁓ But I guess key takeaway if someone was listening and was just like, okay, I don't know what to do. I'm stuck. Like I feel like, yes, everything that you said, but like, I don't even know how to get in my body. I can't sit with that discomfort or you know what. Elani Engelken: Yeah. Erica+ShameOver: since you're so intuitive, what is one thing that's coming up for you that you would like to like share or on for this conversation? Elani Engelken: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that there are so many paths to healing and so many things work for different people at different times. so whatever it is that you're choosing to do, yes, I want it to challenge you and I want it to get you out of your comfort zone, but it also needs to speak to you. Sometimes people like choose the thing because that's what someone else did or but they're not inspired by it. They don't feel comfortable in it. And like, if you don't feel comfortable, like it won't work because again, circling back to our nervous systems, we have to be able to give ourselves over to have a baseline level of safety. That doesn't mean that the person like lets you off the hook or babies you, but that you are able to let your guard down enough Erica+ShameOver: Yes. Elani Engelken: that you can go somewhere new. sure it speaks to you in a deep way and challenges you. Also thing, like if you want to do somatic work, I think ⁓ a necessary to any sort of thing you're doing. ⁓ And the that I've been doing recently is this woman, Liz Tanuto, she's got an online program, it's called The Workout Witch. Her base program is called Trauma Release, I believe. So just get that. It's like 60 bucks. It's a month-long program. I do somatic work with clients, but doing that program, ⁓ there's much more that you can do in a month to have that level of consistency and help calm the nervous system down that it will make Erica+ShameOver: Mmm. Elani Engelken: everything else more effective. Erica+ShameOver: Hmm workout which you had told me about that on Friday and I meant to ask you so I'm so glad you brought that up again. Elani Engelken: Yeah. You're welcome, Liz Tinuto, for the plug. I've spent lots of people to her program. Erica+ShameOver: Okay, perfect, awesome. Well, thank you so, so, so much. How can people find you or connect with you after this? Obviously I'll have everything in the show notes, but. Elani Engelken: Yeah, definitely plug in my my because there are episodes on there that will just give you really easy like tidbits of psycho education and applicable exercises and stuff like that. My website Alani Nicole calm. My practice is currently full so I'm not taking new clients right now. ⁓ But I do a lot of workshops and group work as well So you can always like join me for one-off workshops or get on my wait list for for future clients box Erica+ShameOver: Awesome. I'm so honored to have you here today. Thank you so much. Again, I'll be sure to keep all that in the show notes, we will definitely be talking more. have a feeling. So, all right. Thank you. Elani Engelken: Yeah. Thank you, Erica.