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Ego Death and the Messy Art of Becoming Your True Self · The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to the spiritual shit show, where the magic meets the mess and we make it all feel just a little more human.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Today's episode is called the Art of Becoming and let me tell you, it is not for the faint of heart, but it's definitely for the brave souls like you and me who keep showing up even when the path is murky and the growth feels like it's scraping us raw, uncomfortable.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about it.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about healing, let's talk about ego death.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the weird, uncomfortable joy of not knowing who the hell you are anymore and the strange peace that can start to emerge when you stop efforting so damn hard to become someone.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: This past year I have been deep in the work, which sounds impossible because I feel like I've been deep in the work for the past eight years.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Hello, spiritual shit show.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But this last round just hit differently.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I enrolled in a nine-month soul-based, trauma-informed somatic therapy course and it cracked me wide open.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I was learning language for things I had only felt.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I started to understand the nervous system and really how mine has basically been living in fight or flight my entire life.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I learned about trauma, attachment, styles, parts work and how we can't heal what we can't feel.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: That healing isn't about thinking better thoughts.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: It's about feeling safer in your body.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And now, on the other side of this big internal initiation, I find myself in what some call an ego death, and it's kind of like what I am calling an ego death.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I've never experienced this before and this is what I want to talk about, and really the word ego death used to annoy me.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: It sounded so dramatic, like why do we have to kill the ego?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Why is the ego not spiritual?
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: And I think that we have to have an ego because the ego is that part that gives us structure, identity, safety.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: It helps us to survive in the world.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: But what's shifted is this I no longer need my ego to lead the way, and I can see that up until this point in my life, my ego has been front and center because it's wanting to be someone so bad.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: It's wanting to be someone so bad and through this work there's just a new type of quiet that's inside of me.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: It's a softness and honestly it's awkward because now I can hear old patterns loud and clear.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I can see the moment I start to grip, to hustle, to doubt myself, to shit, talk to myself to overperform and instead of merging with these old patterns, I can just notice it and or I can move through the negative self-talk a little bit more quickly, and I think this is what healing is and I am sitting in my days feeling content and happy and even if it's uncomfortable, at least I'm aware that I'm feeling uncomfortable and it's like.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Is this what it feels like to have a regulated nervous system?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Is this what safety in my body and safety in my life actually feels like?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And in the somatic therapy class, the very first thing that the teacher said was trauma cannot be healed if you're still in it.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And for me, my trauma story really started when I was three years old, when my mother passed away and then that led into a really turbulent and interesting story of childhood and home life and realizing that at a very young age I began to dissociate from reality.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I did a lot of drugs in high school to kind of keep me in this safer space of dissociation and then in my 20s at 18, I moved away from home.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I was on my own, literally independent, at 18.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I started a business at 21, which was a dance studio.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: So that came with dance moms and contracts and people quitting and people coming, and then I was also deeply rooted in a very narcissistic relationship for all of my life until I left that at 36.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: So it was just it's been wild.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: And then after that I was taking care of my dad who had Alzheimer's, and I was kind of doing that by myself, all the things.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And now I'm realizing that now that trauma story is relatively over and I am learning how to be, to be in my life, to not be constantly protecting myself or needing to validate my position in life or who I am or prove my worth.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And now it's this weird part of what I call the becoming, the part of the healing that not enough people talk about, which I'm going to talk about because it's where I am in my life.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: It's this moment when joy starts to come back into your life and you feel off truly because your body's still learning how to trust the joy.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: It's like the nervous system is side-eyeing happiness Like wait, are you sure?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Are you safe?
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Is this a trap?
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: We're not used to this and, like I said, in my 20s I worked to become something, to become something, and I was successful, like I really had success.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And if you asked me back then if I was happy.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I was, but not really.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I was so riddled with anxiety and overworking and, you know, shaming my body and never feeling enough.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So I think in many ways I was performing happiness.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: And then, when all of that went away and I spent years trying to survive and hold my ego there, trying to prove that I could rise again, that you know that this is, that I'm going to be the phoenix rising from the ashes and I'm going to effort my way back into some version of myself that's even better, some shiny, healed, impressive identity that my life has gotten life and the dream that I had of becoming something after things kind of disappeared.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: That dream didn't fully come to life, but something deeper did, and I have to really accept that I am finally tasting the peace I always longed for Freedom, simple joys, the nervous system regulation, what it feels like to be safe and happy and able to receive goodness.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And now I find myself at this very interesting crossroad.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Do I keep striving to become someone?
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Do I keep efforting these old dreams that still are there?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Do I let them go?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Do I let them go?
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Do I still try to achieve that old version of success or do I surrender?
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Do I let myself live a beautifully simple, joyful, anonymous life, a life that doesn't require external validation to feel magical, external validation to feel magical, a life that maybe I don't have a good answer when somebody asks me so what do you do?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: And in all of that is the part that I'm working on, which is the worthiness, because if I'm really going to surrender to this version of life, I have to remind myself that I am worthy of it.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I am worthy of the joy, I am worthy of the magic, I am worthy of the good things that flow with ease.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I am worthy of not hustling for my healing, that I am worthy of not hustling for my healing, that I am worthy, and so are you.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: There's a quote that says maybe this journey isn't so much about becoming anything.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn't really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And reading those words sounds so poetic and so real.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: But to embody that, to allow that truth to be a part of your existence, can feel very scary and uncomfortable.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: So here's to the becoming, to the unlearning, to the beautiful, messy, uncomfortable, scary surrender and to remembering that, moment by moment, you are already enough.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And again I'll ask you we hear this all the time that you're enough as you are, but the question is do you believe it?
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Do you believe that right now, as you're listening to this, that where you are in your life right now, that you are already enough, that you are already enough?
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: What I've learned in this healing journey is that it's a daily practice of self-awareness, self-love, self-compassion, and really having people in my community that hold me accountable or help me to reframe some of the sometimes negative self-talk or complaining that I have, and or just hold space for me to work through.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Whatever it is that I am working through has been an incredible game changer.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Am working through has been an incredible game changer.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: It's also nice to know that you are not alone.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: If this episode landed in your heart today, I'd love for you to share it, tag a friend or come join me at Energy Club that I host on Mondays, and you can find all the magic at the website, which is wwwnuminouswisdomcom.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here, thank you for being a part of the journey, and may the art of becoming the uncomfortable ego death that comes with that lead to incredible, incredible unfolding of a magical life for you, for me, for us, until next time you.