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As a practitioner, Varvara originally trained in psychotherapy and spiritual development. Because of her personal journey, she later found out that our fear of relating doesn’t necessarily come from our brain, but from our body and the lack of safety we experienced as an infant. This is where her passion for somatic teaching comes from.

Varvara joins us in today’s episode to explain how developmental trauma can limit intimacy and connection in adult partnership, how our implicit memories can create conflict in our relationships, and how healing can help us take responsibility for our experience and reach out to our partner for support.

Varvara Erochina is a somatic teacher and coach dedicated to personal and collective healing. She offers a multi-disciplinary approach to healing, informed by trauma resolution, Gestalt psychotherapy, spirituality, and life coaching. Her popular course ‘How to Feel' offers practical education and embodied practice for feeling your feelings. She is the creator of Cards for Self-Care and offers 1-1 and group coaching, workshops, retreats, classes, and more.

In this Episode 

04:35 The lived experience of each individual comes from the very first relationships we form with ourselves and our caregivers when we were born. It also goes back to how that relationship is built upon memories that form in the body as we grow.

13:51 Talking about trauma can scare and put so many of us into defense. However, it’s essential to recognize trauma as a chronic experience of not having our needs met as an infant.

15:44 The habits of blaming our partners or shutting ourselves off emotionally are the wise survival mechanisms we unconsciously developed as infants. Reclaiming those habits as such will help us move into greater self-connectedness.

21:03 Implicit memories, which is a formal term for feeling memories, are the thought patterns developed in response to a feeling we couldn't process as an infant.

23:18 Corrective experience happens when a new neural pathway gets created. This neural pathway gets deepened when we’re being honest about how we feel, and when we experience appropriate co-regulation and safe attachment.

27:02 Corrective experience is also one of the best ways to experience a newfound safety, freedom, and possibility in our relationships. In order to access this, we must start by acknowledging our feeling of shame, understanding why it has developed in our younger years, and naming its impact by knowing whether it works in our relational life.

33:20 Whether or not our partner is ready to work with the process, we should always start with ourselves; then we go on and take that as far as we want in our relationship.

37:26 Babies experience chronic stress responses when parents appear frightened or frightening to them. If we have this kind of parenting, our infant implicit memory gets activated when we experience ourselves or our partners being frightened or frightening. Therefore, it's incredibly important to use our sensation and non-verbal clues at that moment to notice and differentiate between our adult selves and that very young response.

42:31 How to get in touch with Varvara

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Understand that trauma is a result of unmet needs as an infant. None of us had perfect caregivers so it is something that’s completely normal to talk about.
• Don’t be reactive when feelings of panic or shame arise. Instead, take a moment to reflect on your bodily sensations. Acknowledge how wise that shame is and be grateful for it.
• Be honest about how you feel and practice appropriate coregulation. This will help deepen the ‘neural pathway’ leading to newfound safety, freedom, and possibility in your relationships.
• Begin with yourself. Be curious about how your relationship dynamic is reflecting something that’s happening inside of you. If you can, go get the support you need from a therapist, journaling, or meditation.
• Remind yourself to go slow with this healing work. Be gentle not just with yourself but also with your partner. They might need some time too so that they'll not be frightened of your emotions. Think of this relational work as like building some new muscles; it’s going to take a long time.

Mentioned

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About Today's Show

Varvara, thank you for joining us today.

You're so welcome. I am delighted to be here.

Yeah, me too. I'm excited for our conversation and the little brief time that we've had to connect. I can just feel so quickly how excited I am to share your wisdom and your voice with the Empowered Relationship audience because I think what you're doing is so powerful.

I actually got to know you from a client of mine who was speaking so highly of you. She's like, “I was following her and being trauma informed.” She shared about what she was learning on Instagram, and then engaging in your work, and helping really work with feeling and emotions and your somatic orientation to really have the experiential processing. And so, when we met and just had our meet and greet and just your background, I'm excited to share and be with you today.

Oh, thank you. I'm so excited to be here. And yeah, same. Like, all the same feelings. You’re a bright light so it's a pleasure to be in your company.

Wonderful. As you know, most of the people tuning in are really looking at how to improve their skillfulness, their consciousness in relationship. I am interested in learning and maybe you would be willing to share a little bit more about where you're coming from.

I mean, I spoke about the orientation of somatic, being trauma informed and how much this all lives in our system, what we've known our imprint as what we've known in our lived experience and how it lives in us. Yeah, let's just start there. I would love to hear from you around where you want to start and help people get to know you a little bit.

What comes to my mind when you talk about where this all begins in terms of relationship – I have a little photo of myself as a 13-year-old sitting in front of me right now. I can't help but think about the very first relationships we form, the first relationships we form with ourselves and our own body, the first relationships we form with our caregivers when we are born, and the way that relationship is built based upon memories that form in the body as we grow.

As we grow up, as we develop as babies and have either secure or not so secure attachment, our bodies are built of the relational materials and resources that are around us. So literally, our flesh and blood, and brain and cells are all shaped by what resources are available in our environment. The majority of those resources are relational in nature.

How we relate to everything, how we relate to the world, whether we're talking about other people, we're talking about ourselves, or we're talking about how we perceive circumstances or potential threats or safety, all of that comes from relationship. It comes from what we are taught about our experience of ourselves and each other.

And so, for me, the body is where I find my grounding. As a practitioner, I trained originally in psychotherapy and spiritual development but really have found my way to the body because of a personal journey, because of wondering.

Why is it after all this work that I've done, I can still feel so unsafe in the world? And then realizing, “Oh, it's because those experiences of fear or fear of relating come not from my brain, but they come from my body and the lack of safety I experienced as a little person.” How true that is for so many of us. So, that's kind of where I see that coming from and where also my own passion for it comes from as well.

Yes, thank you. Just even the way you articulate, I feel my body responding of just the acknowledgement of the relational resources. Every part of us is informed by those early experiences.

I also hear you speaking to, even with a tremendous amount of study and insight, perhaps still isn't helping us navigate and work with our nervous systems when we are in relationship experiencing what we're experiencing, be it threat or insecurity or whatever it might be, that the insight doesn't necessarily translate to putting it into practice. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you've had other speakers talk about the difference between our left and right brains. But you know, so much of that comes from the fact that our left brain is our linguistic center. It's our center of being able to have these very communicable thoughts and ideas, whereas our right brain holds a lot of our emotional feeling memory.

And so, often, we expect a cognitive understanding of something like “My partner says they love me. They're here for me. I have all this evidence that they are present.” They're not. Or a parent that was emotionally unavailable in the past. I might have all this cognitive evidence. I might have all these stories. I might have this cognitive understanding, but if my right brain and my body are filled with feeling memories that say, “It is unsafe to be close to the person I want to be close to.”, it doesn't matter how much mindset work you do. It's not going to make a difference because the body and the brain are convinced the closeness and intimacy means danger. And so, the more we try and move closer to our partners, the more dangerous it's going to feel.

Yes. If I can wonder with you, most of us when we're negotiating these boundaries, this is all happening sometimes below the field of awareness.

Yes. Yeah. It's why we get caught in the content tube, right?

Right.

I can guess that you've talked about the content tube on here. This was revolutionary for me and my wife. My wife and I have been together for almost 10 years, which is very exciting. Within the first year of our partnership, we had to take a psychoeducational course together for three months because we broke up.

I was like, “If we're going to get back together, we are officially going to do some work because this whole getting together and then splitting apart is not working for me. I'm not okay with it.” So, we did this psychoeducational course based on emotionally focused therapy. We learned about the content tube, which is like the content is what you think you're arguing about.

You think you're arguing about the dishes. It's like the classic example, right? Or you think you're arguing about your partner's work colleague who's so attractive. Or you think you're arguing about kids, or money, or whatever it is. But what's actually happening is on the subconscious level, on the body level, on the deep attachment level, there's a cue that's going on in your body that says, “I've got an attachment cue going off. Something is endangering our attachment, either to each other or to ourselves.”

And so, what's happening? If we can't be aware that often what's happening is on a body-based level or an unconscious or subconscious level, then we get stuck in this content tube, which doesn't get us anywhere. We know that. It just gets us to blame and self-defensiveness and isolation from one another.

The other thing you speak a lot about is the developmental trauma. So often we're in our tendencies and our coping strategies and our protective mechanisms, which is really where we're wired as humans to get by. It makes perfect sense. We might underestimate little T's or even minimize big T's. I know there's a lot here, so I don't want to overwhelm our conversation but I do want to weave that in if you want to speak to that at all, because I'll say for myself, when I started to look at the language I use, it’s what's on the inside. Right?

The more we start to glean, the more we start to see how much this informs how we show up. Who do we think we’re kidding sometimes? When we really look at it, we think we're sophisticated and yet, these things are all so present, and evident, and being picked up on by our partner through coregulation.

Yeah. And so often they are running us. We don't even know that younger parts of us are running us in a situation. We just think we're being strong and powerful and addressing something with our partners being like, “Why didn't you do that?” We're like, “Look at me being so direct and forward.” But what we're being run on by is like a two-year-old inside that's saying, “Am I ever going to get my needs met?”

I don't know. For me when it comes to this, and Jessica this has been a really good question I've been sitting with all summer, is talking about trauma. I think that diagnostic language can scare so many of us and can put so many of us on the defense, to be like, “I don't have trauma.” Or like, “Yeah, I grew up fine. My parents love me. They put a roof over my house.”

And so, I kind of just want to invite everyone listening to this who kind of irks a little at the word trauma to think about the new “science of trauma” is just a better way to really explain the human experience and a part of the human experience. A part of the human experience that is common to all of us because all of us have nervous systems. All of us move into fight and flight and freeze when we are frightened. Whether because we are frightened because a car is coming towards us or because we're an infant and our caregiver has left the room and we don't understand why we're not getting the attention we need and we don't even understand that we're upset because we're an infant, right?

And so, for me, what I want to just invite the possibility of is that when we're talking about healing, things like developmental trauma, which is like a chronic experience of not having your needs met exactly as you needed them to be met as an infant, I want to normalize that. That's totally normal. That's really okay. None of us had perfect caregivers and that's totally appropriate.

The kind of imperfection you particularly grew up with, I particularly grew up with, the audience particularly grew up with, each of us, that shapes how we relate in our adult relationships. I mean, we talk about this all the time. But I think where the science of trauma and the science of the nervous system is really helping us understand is that these ways that we react to our partners, that now we often feel maladaptive, that feel problematic, right?

The ways that we blame our partners, or shut ourselves off emotionally, or are critical, or are unable to commit or “pick the wrong people”, right? All of these patterns are actually such wise survival mechanisms we developed as infants unconsciously in order to experience a sense of belonging in our families of origin, and in order to get our needs met. We figure that out as babies. We figured that out as toddlers. And so, now as adults, when we're ready to move past those habits of survival that are no longer necessary in our adult lives, the first thing we need to do is reclaim those habits and patterns of wise adaptive mechanisms, and be so profoundly grateful for that.

And then as we do that, we stop turning against ourselves. We move into greater self-connectedness. And then, it becomes safer to actually, instead of saying with the outside stuff when we're in conflict with our partners to move into the inside stuff and say, “You know what? What I'm having coming up actually is this feeling, like this really old feeling, and suddenly I feel so young and have this really old feeling that says, “My needs are never getting met. And I know that's not about you because you're such a great partner, but these feelings are coming up. And I think what I could really use is just, you know, could you just hold me for a couple minutes? And then together, we'll just sit down and talk about what we need to do with the trash? You're not in trouble. I'm clearly having a response that's very young. I can feel that. Can we just take a couple minutes to care take that?”

And then often what happens is as we do that, our adults always come back online. And then, it doesn't feel like such an emergency that your partner didn't take out the trash and you don't have to put up this like Herculean effort to be like, “I am a powerful woman. I can tell you. You made a mistake.” We can drop that. Which doesn't help anything. It doesn't help intimacy.

We talked about intergenerational relational, right? It's so interconnected. It's also reinforced, right? Even if we have some basic tendencies and protective strategies, I mean, it's so powerful even before we have language that we're already orienting. It's in our essence and are in the fiber of what we've known and how we're living. It's reinforced. So, whatever given adult age we are, how early it was developed, how much it made sense, and the wisdom, and then the repetition of that, that's enormous.

Yeah, it can be really intimidating. Yeah. Because I mean, we developed that lens. And then we just keep returning to it. And then, those neural pathways get real strong. And that is one of, I think, the reasons that healing and changing our patterns takes a really long time. And we have to be so gentle with ourselves in the midst of it, and why that affirmation of our patterns is so important because the more you resist your patterns, the more they're going to persist. Whereas, you can be like, “Oh, I have this pattern for really good reason.” The more ease you're going to have in shifting it.

Yes. And probably had some success with, right. So, it’s confusing that it's worked a little or had benefits in some ways. But then there's all these potential side effects because it's like you said, they are not necessarily needed. And so, I just want everyone to know this. I'm grateful that I have a platform to be able to help support the broadcast of just how gentle and how much time and iteration. And yes, the gentleness. I want to also just comment and reflect on another part of what I was hearing you say which you gave example and language for so beautifully in relationship if we can reveal the inner experience and really help create safety with another that it's really quite possible to get a direct soothing and comfort experience that is so corrective and healing. Can you speak to that a little? Am I hearing that right?

Yes. I love corrective experiences. I mean, they're so important. I always teach on them. Corrective experiences are times when we literally get to kind of go into our neural wiring and update the hardware, if you think about it. Like, actually update the neural pathways in your brain.

Okay. Let's do a little neuroscience geekiness here. We are talking about the right brain, right? Where our feeling memories live. There's a formal term for feeling memories. It’s called implicit memories. When an implicit memory, which is like a memory that doesn't have context, so you're not going to remember, “Oh, when I was four and my mom did this, and then I felt this.” No. It's going to be like suddenly you feel very young and suddenly there's a lot of shame, there might be a lot of panic and there might be a thought pattern that accompanies that feeling. Like, I'm the worst, or I chose the wrong partner, I have to get a divorce. Or, “Why do I always do this?”

Whatever your thought pattern is that you developed as a response to that feeling that you could not process as a little one. And so, the feeling comes up, you're right, you're with your partner, they didn't take out the trash. You're like, okay, suddenly, you have this feeling happen, a feeling memory. You're so upset. Let's just say the thought that always comes up here is critical. “You never do what I need you to do. Why are you such a problem?” And then, there's kind of a backlash thought that says, “I'm such an idiot for having chosen you.” This is a very, very common pattern that we see. It's like blame the other, blame the self, blame the other, blame the self.

So, in that moment, if that implicit memory arises, that implicit feeling arises of panic, shame, and then it turns so quickly to judgement and blame. If we can backtrack from the blame for just like a hot minute, we can develop the semantic skills mindfulness enough, a bit of distance from our thoughts enough so we can learn their thoughts enough as our thoughts are not backed. We can do that work, and create enough distance so we can backtrack from the thought and be like, “Wait. Now the thought, what's the feeling? What are the feelings I'm having? What are the sensations I'm experiencing?” I'm feeling hot in my chest. I'm suddenly feeling kind of like weightless. Suddenly, I'm feeling like there's a lot of urgency and emergency in all of my body pumping, right. We're talking about these are nervous system effects that are happening. There are hormones. There’s physiology. Your system is online.

At that moment, your brain in many ways is being run as if you were four. Not 44. Not 34. You're four in that moment. If in that moment, you can interrupt that cycle and actually create the kind of capacity either within yourself or even better within relationship to feel the feeling and process it and have a different experience of attachment. So, experience soothing from your partner, experiencing self-soothing from yourself, experience some level of coregulation, where another validates you, sees you, witnesses you isn't frightened or frightening, which is really, really, really important. Where they're not afraid of your emotion of your feeling like, “Oh, I just feel like I'm going to be abandoned.” where they're not frightening to you by getting angry at you for having a feeling.

If in that moment, you can get those needs met, that is literally suddenly to your four-year-old brain teaching, “Hey, actually, there's a different possibility.” And in that moment, what happens is a new neural pathway gets created. And that neural pathway, let's be honest, that thing's not going to be very strong at first. The old ones? Those are well grooved highways. This neural one is like a tiny alleyway. It's not even a residential street. It's just an alleyway behind the block. And so, what you're going to do is you're going to build the alleyway.

And then over time you're just going to deepen it, and you're going to groove it. And with every attachment cue with your partner, with every moment of being honest about how you feel and experiencing appropriate coregulation, safe attachment, you're going to deepen and deepen and deepen that neural pathway.

Look at you two years later. Or sometimes six months later. It depends on the person, what you've survived, and how your brain works and neuro divergence and all sorts of things. But yeah, that's how corrective experiences work and they're one of our best ways to experience a newfound safety and freedom and possibility in our relationships.

Thank you for breaking that down.

You’re so welcome. I love teaching.

Yes, I can tell. I'm so enthralled just with your ability to kind of really bring this to clarity because there's a lot around this in the process. As I'm listening to you, I'm recognizing how much training we have around being socially appropriate or what we might think is attractive in relationship and we have the propensity to hide what seems unlovable or shameful or messy. It feels as though what we're promoting is a whole new language and new way of existing. Where do you start with people to even begin to access what we're you're describing?

The irony is, the place where I begin is the shame and how wise that shame is, and why it was so important for all of us as young people to develop shame to hide the emotions that were displeasing or unbearable to our caregivers so that they would give us the kind of attention that we desperately needed to develop.

And so first, where we begin is like, oh, that shame is so wise. It has protected you for so long. It is so important. Of course, you use shame to hide how you felt so that your parent didn't have to tell you go to your room with those feelings. Or, you know, good children are to be seen and not heard. Or, “You're being such a girl.” Or, boys don't cry, right? Like any of that.

As kids, we don't want to disappoint our caregivers. For one, just because that suck. And for two on a survival physiological level, we're completely dependent on them. It’s so wise kids without thinking of it. We’ll cut parts of themselves off emotionally, incremental compartmentalize powerfully fragment, powerfully, in order to be the version of themselves that feel bearable to their parents. And so, first, we want to acknowledge that and applaud it.

I think then comes the tough piece of being like, “Okay.” Is what you're experiencing in your relational life right now working for you? Why are you here? Why are you in therapy? Why are you listening to this podcast? Is it working for you to be hiding how you feel with your partner? Is it really that satisfying?

Yeah. It might feel in some way “safe” but not the real you is safe, no. And so, let's also name that. Let's name that impact. And then from there, let's begin to get curious what else might be possible. Slowly, over time. Gently over time, you know. There are ways I function in partnership that I still hold on to because anything else feels unbearable to me. There are ways I still can't be direct in my partnership and partnerships, my relationships in my life, because I'm still scared and I'm still healing.

Those young parts of me are still getting on board. And so, can we be gentle with ourselves? Can we give ourselves the time that we ideally would want to give a child? A child doesn't develop in six months. A child develops over many years. And so, can we give ourselves the kind of time that we actually needed as a child now?

Yes. Thank you for naming, again, just how this has developed, the length of time that it's been reinforced in us and how much it makes sense around the shame and how we learn to negotiate. Also, there's layers here around safety. Myself included. There are things that I continue to learn and come into contact with that perhaps I had insight around or had some understanding but the depth of what we're discussing around the real sematic and then being with it, and learning to consider other options and being connected to it. There's a certain amount of courage to be willing to turn towards that. I love that you're really confronting a bit about, “Okay. Well, what's the result that we're getting? Or what's the result that I'm getting by continuing this way that I've known and the limitations of that?”

I will say also, that part of the reasons that I would always want to encourage people to go slow with this work is because it is relational. Whether we're doing it with ourselves or with a partner, it's relational. But I feel like relationships actually give us a really clear reminder of that because it's an external person.

It's like, if you're working on feeling safe with your person, your partner, guess what, your partner might need some time to become a safe person, because they also might need to change the neural pathways in their brain very likely so that they're not frightened of your emotions. And so, they don't get reactive. They're going to have to build those muscles. It's like, you're both going to have to build some new muscles, and those muscles are going to take a long time.

And if we use that as a metaphor for our relationships with ourselves in a secure internal attachment between your adult self and your child's self, your adult self has to develop new muscles, and then your kid self has to also learn how to get on board. Both your adult self and your kid self has to grow and develop. And so, it takes time. It's always relational work. Whether we're doing it with an external person or with our own deep selves.

Thank you for saying that. That was the thing that I wanted to ask about because it is so true. The second part to that, if I'm hearing, is how we're showing up in relationship and that we almost are saying, “Okay. New rules. Not throw everything out but let's really throw this, turn it on its head. Let's really recraft how we show up. And that we're both going to be in practice around how we're orienting.” I'm curious, because some people listening might be like, “Well, I'm game but I don't think my partner's game.” Or, how do we do this? Because it is a self and it is a relational and we're always in relationship. Can you speak to this at all?

Yeah, I'd love to. You begin with yourself and you take that as far as you want and can take it in your relationship. You won’t be able to take it all the way on your own. That's not going to happen. I'll say this in my personal experience.

A lot of what we feel like I think has to change in our relationships, those changes often start within ourselves. And I don't mean that to blame ourselves. I definitely am not talking about any situation where there's any kind of violence or abuse or harm at all. I'm talking about the human process of growth and projection, and the fact that so often, our lives are acting as this perfect, beautiful funhouse, twisty, crazy mirror to show us what's happening inside of us.

And our lives are just constantly telling us, “This is what's up inside of you. This is what's up inside of you.” Oh, look. Your partner not taking the trash out drives you crazy. Makes you feel completely inadequate. I shouldn't say crazy, but like, you know, makes you feel like you were “too” again. Oh, something's up inside of you. Right?

If we begin to relate to our lives that way, into our relationships that way, where we say, I can't change on my partner's doing but I can get myself on board. I can get curious about how what's happening in my relationship dynamic is reflecting something about what's happening inside of me.

And I can get the support I need, whatever that looks like – therapist, group, books, journaling, meditation, dance practice, yoga practice, to begin to get curious about what is happening inside of me. “Oh, I saw something outside.” What if just for a second, I assume that that something outside is reflecting something that's happening with me? Even if we're talking about your partner getting defensive. You and your partner, and me and my partner, mirror each other in this way, right?

Let's say you address something with your partner. Your partner gets really defensive, and their reaction is really strong. Even if their reaction is about them being really high, if that really, really bothers you because that really bothers me, I should say me because that's what happens, then the question is what's happening with me? Why does that really bother me? Why does it bother me that my partner got so upset? They're not yelling at me. They're just really upset. Is it okay for me to just not control that my partner is really upset and not taking responsibility for it because actually it's not my responsibility what they're feeling?

And you've given us so many keys just even in this conversation here today around the sensing and perhaps getting in touch with just the acknowledgement of bodily sensation that can be such a direct path to just recognizing something's happening. I love your giving permission and naming that our partner might be frightened of us or they might be frightening and vice versa. And that is so real, right, based on what we've known. And the stakes are incredibly high when we have this love and connection. It is hooking our survival attachment. So, I appreciate you just even naming. I think it's really difficult to even acknowledge sometimes how scary and frightening this can be.

Yeah. And that terminology, for anyone listening like fright and frightening, parenting is when parents appear frightened or frightening to an infant, that's very often been shown to set off chronic stress responses in babies, that then kind of lead to more disorganized attachment. So, to less secure, safe bonding.

And so, if we experienced that kind of parenting, because let's say we grew up with a parent who was the child of an alcoholic, or we grew up with an alcoholic as a parent, or we grew up with a parent during a social crisis, whatever it was, that then as adults, whenever we experience ourselves, or our partners being frightened or frightening, that's going to be a fast trigger to infant implicit memory.

That's just really hard to work with because it's super preverbal. It's going to feel like it's us. We're going to be like, “Oh, I'm feeling that way.” We're going to self-identify with that feeling very, very strongly. But often, that feeling isn't the result of us in this moment. It's the result of something that happened maybe 30 years ago. That is incredibly important to begin to, in that moment, like you said, use our sensations, use nonverbal clues to notice and differentiate between yourself and a very young response that's now coming up in the present moment.

Yes. Just because you don't have language doesn't mean that it's something deep, dark and shameful and like problematic and flawed, that there's not language for it, and to stay in curiosity.

Yeah. And there might be language like, that's judgmental, but if you're noticing yourself being like, “They didn't take out the trash. What an asshole.” Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They didn't take out the trash. Maybe not worth feeling like “What an asshole” or let's say you've had a fight with your partner, like I still experience this sometimes. Tanja and I will have a conflict. I will be like; I'll give them some time to breathe and do their thing because that's what they need to be able to re-engage again. And so, I'll be like, “I will go take care of myself.” I will get into the bathtub and I'll have a roaming thought that's like, “maybe it's over.”

What? I'm in a deeply stable very happy marriage. We've worked our asses off to be here. We have gone hell and high water to be where we are now. And yet that thought will arise. As soon as that arises, it is a clue from my brain that some very young part of me has gone activated because that thought is not accurate to what I'm actually experiencing in this moment. And then, so then, when I have that clue from my brain, that's when I go straight into the body. And I'm like, “Okay. What sensations am I feeling?” “Okay, I'm hot. I feel heavy. I feel really small.”

And then, usually what happens is that as we tap into the sensations, usually emotion will come up, right? Or suddenly I start crying. And suddenly, I feel like I'm so afraid. Suddenly, I feel a kind of terror. And suddenly, I'm like, “Oh, terror, is what I'm feeling.” And there's no reason to have terror because we got into an argument about our cottage weekend. So, that terror must be very young. Now, it's time to shift my energy away from my partner, away from the conflict, into that young part of myself that's feeling terror and comfort her and show up for her.

Thank you for that example.

You’re welcome.

I know we're winding ourselves down here in our time together, is there anything you want to say before we pivot to how people can get in touch with you, your teaching, and your work? Is there anything you want to close out?

This is such a powerful and profound journey.

If you're listening, I'm so proud of you. I'm so glad you're doing this work. I'm so glad you're showing up for yourself. We are with you. Jessica and I are with you. There are so many people out there with you willing to imagine a new way of relating to ourselves and each other. It's worth it. It’s absolutely worth it. You don't have to live like you've lived before. You're not stuck the way that you are. There is hope. I want people to know that. I want people to know that.

Thank you for being an example in your partnership and just what you’re sharing with us today.

You’re welcome.

Yeah. How can people get in touch with you and what you're up to?

Yeah. So, folks could head over to my website bewith.org. Look at that. It's a perfect fit for this podcast. I've always said that my tagline is supporting people to be with themselves with each other, and also with whatever is bigger than all of us. So, bewith.org. There you'll see a link somewhere to subscribe to my newsletter. That's kind of the way that I'm in touch with folks most regularly and where I put out my most intimate writing.

I do have a class coming up called How to feel, which is kind of my foundational course where I teach a somatic embodied approach to feeling our feelings and help people begin to learn about the nervous system, learn more deeply about implicit memories, learn about our coping mechanisms, and learn to love themselves and welcome their feelings and communicate better and all so much of that.

And then I also do hang out on Instagram. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. There, the handle is BeWithVarbara. They'll all be in the show notes.

Yes, it will be in the show notes. I'll make sure to put these links and then everything that we've talked about will be the on today's show notes as well. Thank you for spending your valuable time with us here today.

Oh, you're so welcome. Oh, and I should mention, if you love podcasts, there's a good chance there might be a podcast to listen to with me once this is out. So, just look on my website. It should be there.

We look forward to it.

Thanks.

Signing Off

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