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When confronted with situations that make us feel distressed, it's so easy to project those feelings onto others, and sometimes we don't even realize why we are feeling that way.

This can be caused by deeply ingrained childhood beliefs that we might not be aware of. If left unaddressed, these can interfere with our ability to show our authentic selves to our partners. 

In this episode, Beth Miller shares how she overcame extreme anxiety and depression and how that transformed her personal and marital life. She explains how understanding your inner child leads to a deeper understanding of your relationship conflicts and so much more.

Beth Miller is the founder of Soulify Wellness, a marriage coach, a teacher of psychology, and consulting hypnotist. She has coached many women who are on the verge of divorce and helped them transform their marriages into relationships filled with mutual love, connection, and support. 

One of her secret weapons is Hypno-journeying, a deep meditation that's rooted in psychology, and neuroscience. It helps women release beliefs that are keeping them stuck in relationship struggles. And while Beth focuses a lot of her work on supporting women, I do believe these principles are very applicable to however you identify in your gender.

In this Episode 

3:35  How Beth's brain bleed affected her marriage and what she did to save it that ultimately led to her journey of helping other wives with their relationships, too.

10:11  Using hypnosis to recognize triggers and how accessing your subconscious helps you heal from deep-rooted issues inside you.

17:16 How understanding your inner child can help solidify your marriage.

21:38 The beautiful transformation that can happen once you start addressing the root causes of your problems.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Slow down and listen to your subconscious. 
• Recognize your triggers. Honor and celebrate them so you can release the negative emotion and replace it with something good.
• Seek help from a hypnotist or an expert in accessing the subconscious mind
• Love yourself.
• Be open with your partner.
• Do individual therapy sessions first. You might not need to come in together in a couple's therapy because if you both work on your own inner issues, you are not looking to each other to fill voids.
• Ask yourself simple questions like what you want to eat right now. That's a great way to strengthen your intuition muscle so you can trust it.

Mentioned

3 Ways to Save Your Marriage 

True You

Connect with Beth Miller

Website Soulify Wellness

Instagram instagram.com/soulifywellness

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Beth, thank you for joining us today. 

Oh, it's great to be here. 

I'm looking forward to some of what you're going to be sharing today. I know that typically the people that you're serving are wives in a marriage. Before we get started on our topic today, I'm curious what got you into helping people on this topic? 

What a great question. I didn't originally set out to start helping wives at their marriages. I kind of fell into it by accident. What happened was I was experiencing some extreme anxiety, and I think I was diagnosed with what they call severe anxiety, moderate depression. 

I experienced a brain bleed when I was 39. Really, it was random out of nowhere. I'm a healthy mom. I have three young boys. I just slowly started to lose my ability to walk. At that time, I thought I just needed to go to physio. My husband is like, “Go see the family doctor.” And I was in denial that things were getting worse. It happened over the course of five days. I didn't realize my brain was bleeding. It was a really slow bleed. And finally, I wasn't even really able to take a step. I really should have gotten to the doctor earlier. 

I was tripping up the stairs, and when I got there, they were like, “Your brain is bleeding.” It was a good Grey's Anatomy kind of moment. I was just in disbelief. I remember having to ask the ER doctor, “Can you say that again?” And then my next question was, “Am I going to live?” And then it was after that we called my parents and my husband. They rushed me off in another ambulance to another hospital, where I spent a month there learning to walk and write again. So, that's really where this journey started. 

Oh, my goodness, that's intense. 

It definitely was intense. It's a transformational point in my life. And because of that extreme anxiety and depression I was experiencing, my life was flipped upside down. I didn't know what my life was going to be like as a mom. I had been working full-time as a teacher of psychology. I was all of a sudden riddled with fear that my brain was going to bleed again. Every sensation in my body, I thought, “Oh, my brain is bleeding right now.” I was a puddle. 

My kids were always like, “Mom's crying again.” I kept saying, “It's okay. It's just me.” Because I didn't want them to start taking on those emotions of mom crying, and maybe she's mad at us. Oh, it was a really trying time. I had a great psychologist at the time. She really helped me in those acute stages. But I remember saying to her at one point, there's got to be more. I can't keep talking back to my anxiety. I can't keep talking back to this fear. Because I was constantly saying, “I'm safe. I'm okay. At this moment, I am good.” I just couldn't do it anymore. I was exhausted. 

And so, I went on this journey to try and figure it out. There's got to be a route. I just had this inner knowing that there's a route to this feeling, this fear. I luckily had, through some of my rehab work, I had a social worker that I was working with as well, and she had a shaman background. She would take me on these beautiful journeys into my subconscious mind, and we would get to the root. It wasn't comfortable, but when we got down there, it released a lot of those emotions, those fears that I had about dying, those fears that my brain was going to bleed again and that my life wasn't what I knew. 

And by releasing those, it freed so much for me. It was incredible what happened because all of a sudden, I started to love myself in different ways. I started to accept myself. I didn't realize it at first, but my relationship, my marriage to my husband, was a huge shift in this process because I'd done so much inner work to release stuff within me that had been creating these really unhealthy patterns like tension and conflict and silly petty arguments and resentment over silly things like not helping put the kids to bed at night. So, that's what really started this journey, was me diving into my subconscious mind to release this fear from my brain bleed. 

And also, as you are at this point in your life, being able to look at your marriage back in those times and how that anxiety or the tension and the worry and the depression even was perhaps filtering the ways in which you were perceiving your husband and how you were interacting with him that perhaps contributed to a lot of the difficulty that you might have been feeling with him? 

Oh, absolutely, yeah. We were oil and water a lot of times. We met in high school. So, we were high school sweethearts. Kind of broke up, got back together, broke up, got back together. But he was the love of my life, my best friend. I couldn't imagine my life without him. But he was just as confident, very opinionated, like a strong personality, which I was really drawn to because I was not terribly confident, very shy. And so, he was kind of like my match. He was things that I didn't have. He kind of gave me. He filled a void within me, now looking back at the time. 

And so, as the years progressed and we had three young boys under the age of four, there was a lot of stress in our family, and that put extra stress on our marriage. And all of a sudden, I was taking things he said really personally. I wasn't feeling loved. I wasn't feeling supported. But what happened was, I wasn't loving myself. I didn't think I was enough. And because of that, I was projecting those feelings onto him and wanting more love from him, wanting more support from him. 

In my experience, if I'm feeling a lot of inner distress, and I'm not even aware of it, it's easy to project that out. You're kind of speaking to that. It also interferes with my capacity to show him my vulnerability or to be relating to him in these very genuine, authentic ways so he can respond. Right? So, it's almost like there's all this interference. I mean, you are talking about the demands of life and the stress of that, and that's absolutely legitimate. You're also saying some of the things that you were challenged with interpersonally really got in the way of relating to your husband. 

Oh, for sure. Yes. I see this with a lot of women I work with. What happens is they hit this constant resistance. They're asking, “Can you help me with dinner?” Or “That thing has been broken for like two weeks. Can you finally fix it?” They just hit this resistance over and over and over again, where they don't feel heard. They don't feel seen. They don't feel like their needs are being met. And after time, when they constantly hit this resistance, it then builds this resentment. 

And then, when we have that resentment for long enough because our expectations aren't being met, that's what resentment is. When we have these expectations, they're not being met, we have resentment. And then, from there, we then eventually feel rejected. We feel rejected. We feel like they don't support us, love us, care about us. And that starts to create this story which breaks down all intimacy in a relationship. First goes that emotional intimacy. And often, that leads to a lack of physical intimacy unless you feel like you're just doing that as a kind of a duty of the marriage. 

Beth, I'm curious. As you're talking about some of these root causes or real underlying issues that really need confronting and you had a shaman help guide you to that place of meeting, and you talked about releasing, can you speak a little bit more about how you work with these root causes, and how you confront that and what that process of release looks like for you? 

It's hard for me to speak to the shaman perspective because I'm not versed in exactly the practices they use. But I can speak from the hypnosis standpoint. I'm a trained consulting hypnotist. That's a method I use to help the women I work with release these beliefs that they have rooted down deep that have been there, maybe since childhood, past relationships, current relationships, and what that process looks like. 

It all starts with identifying a trigger. Triggers, as I'm sure your listeners all know, that's often when some sort of words, behaviors occur from our spouse, from our kids, from our parents, from coworkers, even just driving down the road. When something happens, it then creates this unwanted feeling within you, a difficult or a dark or challenging emotion within you. 

We can even trigger ourselves. I could drop a dish, and all of a sudden, I'll say, “Oh, I'm so stupid.” I triggered an emotion of anger within me. So, whenever these emotions come up, these are the very first things that we need to identify in this process. So once we do that, then I can take the women I work with to the next step. 

Okay, I would love to hear more. 

Oh, absolutely. Once we identify this feeling, this emotion, just say, “You're just so sad and angry.” Like, you just feel even like a horrible mom or a horrible wife. Like, you just feel like you can't do things right. Your partner is kind of complaining that the laundry is still sitting around. Why is dinner not done yet? You just feel like you're not good enough. You're just feeling like kind of picked on a lot. 

And so, you have these feelings of not being good enough. And so, that's what's coming up. And then what I do with the women I work with is we do like this priming. We almost mentally talk about it on a cognitive level, very conscious level, which is 5% of our brainpower. Our conscious mind is where we do our thinking all day, our planning, our organizing, and it's only 5% of our brainpower. The other 95% is in our subconscious mind that we don't really realize but is totally driving all our behaviors throughout the day. 

So, what happens when they get women into their subconscious minds? After we've kind of talked about things on that conscious level, it's then time to go inward. And we start with that feeling. So, what I do is I get them very deeply relaxed, and I put them into what's called a theta brain state. And the theta brain state is, as I like to call it, magical, but it's really this transformational state within your mind. It's that state that if you know when you just wake up in the morning, you kind of know it's time to get up, but you still have some remnants of dreams. So, it's this powerful state of the mind where you're really driving the subconscious mind, and you're not thinking or analyzing your thoughts at that point too much. 

I get them really deeply relaxed. Sometimes I'm counting back. Like, listening to the sound of my voice, I'm going to count back from 10, you're feeling deeply relaxed, nine eyes are shutting tight, and we go back, and they just fall into this wonderful state where they're completely in control, but their subconscious mind is driving our journey together. I'll just ask them to bring forth a time where you felt like you weren't enough. 

In an example that I did the other day with a woman, all of a sudden, she went back to a time, not that long ago, maybe five years ago, when she was getting divorced from her partner. And what happened was, it was a picture. She felt like a horrible mom because her son was crying, being like, “Why are you leaving?” Because it was a time that she was driving off. And so, she had this horrible mom guilt. And then the next step was let's go back again. So, we progress even further. 

And what came up that time was when she was about eight years old, and she was in the kitchen of her house when she was a child, and it was her dad yelling at her for not getting the dishes done. She didn't feel like enough then. Well, we keep trying to go back until we kind of get to one of the first experiences of not feeling like enough. We reparent that little version of you. And that subconscious mind is so powerful. So, what happened with this lady I was working with the other day, we got back within her subconscious. It revealed to us that. I'm not telling her, go back to the time where you were in your house doing dishes. Her mind brought that forth.

So, it just brought it forth. All of a sudden, she sees. She literally sees herself in her kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes. And at that moment, it brought back a memory, our subconscious mind. And with that memory, we form a belief. So, that's the next step. She had this belief from a child that she was not good enough. She's in a panic state. Her parents work really hard. They expect her to take care of the house. If not, they get very mad. She feels like a horrible person. 

And from there, what happens is that belief that she had from a child is then still driving our thoughts today, which then creates her habits where she's in a relationship right now with her husband as a 40-year-old woman, but she still has these feelings of not being enough. Consciously, that 5% of your brain that's thinking and analyzing, it should say to you, “I'm over this. I'm over my past. I know my parents are doing the best they can.” But subconsciously, you're still holding on to that belief. 

So, what happens in that state is she's in the kitchen. And I often have her bring in, like her authentic self. And what your authentic self is this beautiful version of yourself. This could be an older version, or it could be a time from your past, where maybe you were on stage singing, or it was the day your children were born or the day you got married, and you just felt no one could knock you down. You're unstoppable. You're just full of grace, confidence, and worth. You bring this force. 

It's almost like you have two versions of yourself in this kind of journey that we're on, and that person will talk to you and ask you like, “What is it that you need right now?” Often, we need to give ourselves love. It's just this beautiful conversation that happens between your authentic you and you. And since a lot of times, we can't necessarily get that feeling of love or those needs fulfilled by our parents. In that situation, her dad was an alcoholic, her mom was very emotionally disconnected. She didn't feel love. She was internalizing that “I'm not good enough.” But really, her parents just didn't know how to love her the way she needed to. 

So, you bring in this other version of yourself, and you reparent yourself. It's amazing. You physically feel this exhale or release within your body. You realize you know what, it's not me, it's them. And then what happens is I bring them back to today's time within their mind, within their subconscious into their current relationship and they kind of see things play out differently, and they feel so much different. They come when I release them from the subconscious journey that we went on. They just feel so much better. It's amazing. They're tired because it's quite the mental journey they go on, but just the sense of like, lightness to their being. It's an incredible thing that happens. 

And the reparenting for the authentic self perhaps can offer guidance to the younger or the little girl in that environment that her dad being an alcoholic, didn't have the capacity to really help her manage, identify, organize, and work with the emotions that were at play in that scenario, right? So, the authentic self can perhaps, even just as we would do with any child, right, look at, “Oh.” Like, if we can see and read on their face, they're scared or that they're overwhelmed, or they're having a reaction to this intensity of like, “Why didn't you do these dishes?” Right? Like, “Oh, no, it's okay.” And like, you know, help them identify. Like, “Here's what's happening.” in a very appropriate way, but then also to support them in how to manage what's happening. 

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times, what we needed was that little inner child, that wounded child. We often just need to feel loved. We feel like we need to be seen because maybe we feel like we're invisible. Sometimes we need to be heard. We feel like we can't even speak our opinion or share that we don't agree with something. And a lot of times, maybe our needs aren't being met. There are things that you desire, but they are shut down all the time. 

And then within that, maybe there's some self-forgiveness too. Sometimes some really horrible things happen to us, such as abuse or even just being bullied. You internalize that, and you just need to forgive yourself that that wasn't you. You're just little. You were five years old when that happened to you. This isn't on you. These were the adults that did it. And it's this little dialogue that happens. It's almost like just saying, releasing you from that burden, that emotion, that feeling and replacing it with something else. 

We can never change the memory. It always happened. But we can change the emotion, the feeling, and neutralize that and give it something else so that you can create this new belief, which then creates these new thoughts today, like in today's world right now, your present life, which then will drive these new habits. And it doesn't happen, I should say instantly. Sometimes what happens needs to happen, and we're changing habits is. We need to do some; neuroscience is what I call it, where we're rewiring the brain. We're actually pruning some of your neural pathways within your mind. The neural pathways that used to drive the thought that said, “I'm not enough in my marriage. I do things wrong all the time. No one likes me.” 

We actually want to kind of snip that neural pathway and create a new one that I am loved. I love myself. And over time, when you practice outwardly, whether it's saying mantras or journaling, or just being more conscious of your thoughts, eventually, that old, not enough neural pathway will be pruned. It's a scientific term called pruning. It's kind of like when you did calculus or took a history class. Those dates, those formulas are still in your mind, but your mind to be efficient has to prune them, so they're not necessarily accessible at this point, but they're still back in there. 

And what I'm hearing you speak to, Beth, is some of this journaling or even repeating and really letting the old atrophy and building the new isn't maybe that dissimilar from what you were describing with your psychologist initially. But without those deeper connections, and the real subconscious activation and the emotional connection with those beliefs. I would even say there's an attachment thing happening there, right? The attachment working model and the system around that in a relationship that's being impacted, that it's difficult to just alter. 

I'm glad you brought that up. I actually find the work that I do works really well with a psychologist like yourself. Depending on what the psychologist or the social worker's kind of modalities are, that they use. Kind of like talk therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy. I find the work I do works extremely well together, where we can kind of consciously work on some of those behaviors outwardly, but then do a lot of the inner work with the subconscious mind, which is hard to do if you don't know that stuff is there. You don't realize your unhealthy behaviors today are still driven by, let's say, that little girl that was upset because her parents were mad at her for the dishes. We can't see that because often we don't know it's there. So, the two works so well together. 

You've mentioned the transformation that can happen once we start working with these root issues. And you talked about the example of asking our partner, and in your example, the husband isn't responding and feeling resentful, and then even rejected. What does that look like after some of this deeper work happens? 

Oh, you know what, it's wonderful. It really is. What happens is, when you can really do that inner work and release a lot of those mini or major traumas from your past—one of the mini traumas could be you're in grade one, and someone put their hand up to answer that 4+4=7, when the answer is actually eight, and the class laughs at that student. You realize I don't want to raise my hand. I don't want the class to laugh at me. So, that could be a mini trauma that then impacts you in your adult life, not being able to speak up for yourself or wanting to stand up for yourself or share your opinions. 

And so, what happens is, we have these little mini and major traumas. And when we released a lot of that, we then show up within our marriage and all other relationships, but I find, like you just said, marriage is like a magnifying glass. It's like this vessel that everything kind of bubbles and filters because our partners are these mirrors for us. 

Like, “You know what, you triggered me.” And you don't need to say that to their face, but you could be like, “You know what, that's awesome. I was just triggered. I am so curious. I'm a detective now. I want to figure out what the root of that is because I know that emotion is mine. That energy in motion is an emotion, and it's mine. It's not you causing me to feel upset. This is me. It's not that I need you to change, you to talk to me nicer. It's all on me.” 

And so, when you can release the stuff that's been holding you back for so long in these unhealthy patterns of resentment or feeling unappreciated or bitter, you then see your partner so differently. It's almost like you can just see them with such love. They aren't necessarily doing the subconscious work that you're doing but based on like kind of the laws of the universe, like the law of vibration. We all have these like high vibe or low vibe emotions. Low vibe being sadness, disappointment. High vibe being content, excitement. 

And when you're in this more loving vibe, and not that you need to be there all the time, like you still need to feel your emotions. When you're there more often, you're going to attract like vibration, so your partner's often going to up level with you without even doing all that subconscious work because you're so much safer to them. Your partner can then open up to you more. They feel more secure because they know that you're not going to necessarily maybe nag or put them down or criticize them. So, without your partner necessarily doing all this work, it's incredible how the whole relationship can transform. 

And do you have any specific examples of what that kind of asking or maybe even some scenarios, nagging and partner being resistant, how would that transform? What would that look like? 

Okay, let's see. Let's say you went shopping at Costco. I feel like everything that goes in the cart is like $10, $10. Let's say your weekly budget was $300 for groceries that week. You come home, and you end up spending, say, $400. Your partner is upset you spent an extra $100 on the budget. 

And so, the old version of me that had these feelings of like, “You don't appreciate me because I just took the effort to go to the grocery store.” Or feeling resentful that you're mad at me for spending too much money. I think you were cheap because I spent too much money. 

You then are in a place where, you know what, you love yourself, and you realize you did a good thing. But you see your partner, and you might see that they have a scarcity mindset. So, maybe they grew up in a family where you only spent the money you had. You didn't buy extravagant things. Or you only bought the necessities or the things on the list. 

And so, they may have this kind of money mindset that comes very much from a place of not having enough. They very much want to save, and you have kind of the opposite. You're like, “You know what? We need it. We buy it.” And so, you then see them with such love because you're like, “I can see your shadows. I see your baggage.” 

And instead of judging them, criticizing them, you can say more from a place like, “I really understand that this is upsetting to you.” And you can have a more open discussion about it instead of just being so annoyed with them for having the same ongoing argument about money and spending too much. You can then kind of put a pin in it, and really, those arguments aren't going to happen the same way anymore because you're not going to engage in them the way that you used to. 

And what I'm hearing from what you're describing is that if, let's say myself in this example, if I previously got so hooked and triggered that I would get wrapped up into this, I'm not good enough or feeling unappreciated and resentful, and the whole story that gets created. And that just gets me on that train track, right. And I'm often running. And what you're describing is that there's a bit more steadiness in my position of being able to feel my own authentic self and that worth, as I've done that inner work, and it still might trigger a little, but I'm able to manage it. So, I have more perspective. There's more space. I can see my partner, and I can actually understand that. “Oh, he's got his whole stuff happening.” And between the two of us, there's a little bit more opportunity to be compassionate, and engage, and dialogue, and be curious so that we can learn how to work together better. 

Yes, that's exactly what happens. And even if your partner wasn't one who really talked about feelings, they may start to talk about feelings more because they may hear you talking about it. I know with my husband when I started this work without even realizing I was actually working on my relationship. I was just kind of doing some inner work. I would then call myself out to him and be like, “You know what, you're right. I do like to do things perfectly. I have people-pleasing tendencies where I would be really hard on myself if I got things wrong, or if I didn't do things right because as a child, I felt like I was really honored, recognized, praised for getting good grades, for doing well at sports.” And so, in my adult life, in my relationship, when I would do something wrong, just say like, “Oh, see, I've scratched up the car. I actually hit a post in the parking lot.” I then feel so stupid. And then my husband's upset because I scratched the car. When I could release those beliefs on myself, I can talk about it and be like, “You know what, you're right. I have had these perfectionist tendencies in the past. I'm going to own it. And you're exactly right. I don't need to be right all the time. I can forgive myself.” 

It opens up this dialogue because you're outing yourself to your partner. All of a sudden, you're like, “You're right.” You say you're right, and do you know how good that makes your partner feel? All of a sudden, they're like, “Oh, I've been seeing this for so long.” So, when you can get to this place where you can out yourself to your partner, and you're doing this in such a loving way, you being like, “You know what, I have had these behaviors in the past. I have acted this way. And it wasn't the authentic me. I was really trying to cover up my own insecurities.” 

Or I was reacting, and I was caught in trigger land.

Exactly. When you can notice this stuff, it's so cool. It's so much fun because you're learning about yourself in such a different way. It's so empowering to be able to see yourself this way. You don't feel the same kind of guilt or shame or worry anymore because you realize that you're human and you make mistakes and that you know what, we don't always have to necessarily be perfect kind of things. And that's how I felt growing up. I wanted to do really well. I want to please others. And when you can do that, you can love yourself so much better because you can give yourself what you need. You can take that time for self-care. 

Before, I used to feel so guilty if I wanted to go for a run that was longer than an hour because I was taking away that time for my kids. Now I know it's okay, that's what I need. Or if I need to go meditate for half an hour, I can go do that and realize I'm a good mom even if I had to put my kids in front of the TV for half an hour so I can do it. I'm just taking the time for myself. So, it opens up your world in such a beautiful place and transforms your marriage. 

And it feels like as you're talking about authenticity and authentic self, it also feels like authentic relating because it is a genuine relating of what's actually happening to the best of our ability. Right? The real meeting. Whether or not it's with children, or your spouse, or your partner, right? That there's a real contacting because I can say if I'm triggered, that's interfering, and I'm actually not in a relationship because I'm too triggered activated, and I'm kind of spiraling about whatever the thing is that I'm caught in. Or if my husband is, right? He's actually not available to really relate to me if he's caught up in his own stuff. 

Yes, absolutely. And it's just so incredible when you can get to that place where you notice your triggers, you honor them, you celebrate them. You then get really curious, and you can go inward. And you can do this even on your own, even if you don't necessarily have a hypnotist or someone who's an expert with the subconscious mind. It's as simple as just getting in a deeper meditative state. The brain states we have is what I said the beta state where we're thinking planning, alphas, that more kind of present, kind of relaxed, very in the moment state. So, if you can even get into that state, that's really helpful as well. 

And if you can get in that state, you can do some meditation and some journaling. It's amazing. Your subconscious will bring forth some things. It will be like, “You know what, I am feeling sad.” All of a sudden, you've been kind of doing your busyness throughout the day. You sit down. You're like, “You know what, there's some heaviness in my chest, and I am actually feeling sad or overwhelmed.” And that's your subconscious, that's your body talking to you on kind of an energetic level. And when you can just even tap into that feeling, some great things can happen. 

As you're describing this, one of the things that I'm feeling is like this is in us. This is natural. This is part of our natural state. And that perhaps in our modern-day living, we don't provide enough slowing down to access these states more. And that there are other ways to do this. It's almost like being in nature, or even, it's this liminal space that you're describing, from like, between sleep and awake, or even being awake and falling asleep, or meditation or even sometimes massage. 

And so, it's not only that relaxation and helping the brain get into that state, but it's also the question that's being held if I'm hearing you right, right. So, when somebody goes to work with you, Beth, it sounds like you talk with them, and you get the sense of what the challenges or the concern or where they're struggling, and then helping them with that beta state and relaxation process and then journeying. And then also with that question, right, it helps the brain be able to give information that subconscious to come up, as you said, it almost percolates up. 

So, it's almost like if we were to go hiking, or I don't even know hiking or be in nature in a particular way, that if we're holding a question in mind, memories might come up, or things might come up. And so, a lot of us, I'll say, myself included, at times, choose not to get curious about that and will just divert attention to, “Okay, I'm going to go do this thing.” versus really staying with it. Are those elements of what you're describing? 

It's exactly what the process is like. I'm just really a guide, a facilitator. Your subconscious mind, your body, the energy within you, you heal yourself. You transform yourself. I'm just there to give you some prompts and just help you relax to quiet that conscious mind that's constantly going to put in these like limiting beliefs into your mind or start to judge some of your feelings. You don't even really need to think when you're in this process. You really are just relaxed. 

So often, I find throughout the day, you're like, “Oh, why am I so upset about this?” Or, “My husband did this.” You start to analyze it and think about it. But really, when you're in that relaxed state, like you said, whether it's even walking in nature, massage, journaling, meditation, your mind just kind of does this, like daydream-like thing. It takes you on your own journey. And if you have someone there to kind of facilitate that, you can pinpoint it and kind of navigate it a little bit easier. 

So, it is incredible. Our conscious mind, where we act from throughout the day, really is just these beliefs that we have stored. Sometimes they are limiting beliefs, things that we picked up from, like obviously childhood thinking. Like, “Oh, we only spend the money that's in the bank.” Or we don't say I love you or I hug you. You just need to do well. And when we can get into our subconscious mind, that's where we are. That's like the true you a bit in there. 

So, all those beliefs that we kind of live out day to day, the societal things that are put on you, like you're supposed to go to like say University after high school and then you get married then you have kids like all these like rules. When you get into your subconscious mind, the rules aren't necessarily there. That's where you can be your true self, which is why some of that creativity may come out because maybe day-to-day, you aren't encouraged to have those types of thoughts. 

I'm just even a little astounded when I think about the pace of life and modern living and the demands of family, domestic, career, health, self-care, right? All of these things are social, family, extended family, like all the different elements that we want to nurture, usually in a well-rounded life. And I think in modern-day life, I don't think we prioritize this. I don't know how many people actually sit down to consciously be in this space of stillness or relaxation or let the mind be. I think a lot of people typically will watch a show or even listen to music, but there's still a stimulus that the brain is responding to. 

And as you're talking about, right, even with the 5% of the conscious brain, that what do they say? Like 90% of our thoughts are repetitive, and 70% of those are negative, right? So, not only did we have these early experiences that we developed certain relational imprints from, beliefs from, that gets reinforced by repetitive experiences in a relationship, but then we think about the brain and the repeats, right? You're talking about pruning, but we're also talking about what fires together, wires together, and when we repetitively continue to believe and think these certain thoughts. That's a lot to counteract. 

Yeah, absolutely. I often describe it like this. At some point in our life, we decide to take the easy path because it's the path of least resistance. It's like I kind of just gave that example, you go to high school, then you go to university, maybe your parents think, oh, you know what, let's go into science, or let's go into math, or let's go into like this field, but your passion is really dancing. You just love the arts, you love to dance, but your parents are like, there are no jobs in it, you'll be a struggling artist. And so, you take the easy path. You go take your biology degree, but it doesn't really feed your soul. It's not really who you are. But you go into that career, you get married, you have kids, and we kind of mold with our partners too. It's a compromise, of course, but sometimes our partners like things a certain way. 

And if we're people-pleasers, we'll kind of mold to them more so just so we can get their validation. And over time, this path that's the least resistance actually is what shuts us down. I always say it often just comes out in a big bar, like whether that's panic attacks, whether that comes to like a mental breakdown, whether it comes from extreme stress or disease starts to fester within us because of that anxiety and those stressors that we have. And that's just your inner body telling you, “You know what, you're out of alignment. You need to stop. You need to stop and get still and listen to me. I'm screaming at you. I'm so stressed out I'm giving you these panic attacks, but you just keep going. Would you stop already?” 

And sometimes they even look at my brain bleed as that was my body yelling at me, “Stop that. You need to reset because everything changed.” Like I couldn't walk, I was in a bed. I was like, I had nothing to do. I couldn't care for my kids. I was in a hospital for a month. And so, our bodies have ways of communicating. But like you said, we get so busy with these programs that we've had within us for so long that we forget to just listen and get still because there are these amazing messages within us that are there for us to know. 

It sounds as though you're advocating for this individual work that allows for the relationship to really flow and engage in a healthier way. So, it's kind of both ends, is that right? 

That's correct. And I would always suggest individual therapy or, like you said, an individual coach doing that individual work first before you come together in a couple's therapy-type session. Because when you can each do your own work and really out your own shadows, your baggage, when you can kind of do that individual work, you don't have to do that work together in therapy, you can kind of come as more kind of almost complete whole person because you're not looking to each other to fill voids. 

I know in my dissertation, this came out of the research that both are possible, right, Beth. And I know that you're really advocating to do this individual work and that that can actually shift the dynamics. When one person shifts, it shifts the whole dynamics. You can't do the same dance if one person isn't participating, and they're moving in a different way. And the work that I do often is in couplehood, and it is a lot of individuals, but it's something really beautiful when the partners witness to this deeper on excavating if you will, to these deeper attachment wounds, as I might call them or you're referencing root issues, and there's a sensitivity and empathy that gets created because it starts to shift the perspective of like, “Ah, that makes sense.” or “I get it.” I didn't understand that this was on a deeper level. I didn't understand that this was what was happening on the inside, and it shed so much light, so I think they're both incredibly powerful. And I think both are really useful. 

Absolutely. I agree with that 100%. And those aha moments are incredible. And so, yeah, if you are coming together to do the therapy together, but then when you're not in those sessions, really doing that individual work, and doing that together work, but the individual work has to happen. So those aha moments happen individually and together. I just got such wonderful feelings thinking of those areas. 

And I really want to emphasize, what you're saying is that we are standing on our own two feet, that we have our responsibility for our lives and our becoming, and that as much as we might love someone and be partnered with them that this is our individual growth. And I appreciate you're just helping assure that and support that. 

Yeah, I agree 100%. You are driving the ship. You are in control. You have the power to really transform your relationship. And the biggest advice I could really give is just to listen to your intuition. And it starts as simple as just asking yourself, what do I want to eat right now? Do I want that chocolate bar? Do I want to have an apple? And just seeing where you feel that within your body. And that's a great way just to start with strengthening that intuition muscle, so you can trust it. And when you start to trust your intuition, it'll guide you so much better on this path, too. 

Beth, how do people get in touch with you? And what are you offering? And what would you encourage people to engage with? 

Yes, so you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, @SoulifyWellness. Or you can go to my website as well. I have a great guide that you can download from FreeMarriageGuide.com. Three ways to save your marriage. 

And do you want to say any more about that guide, what people would be getting? 

Yeah, there are three really great tips that you can implement right away to start this path of really identifying those triggers and beliefs and just really starting to ask yourself some important questions. So, I have a bunch of journal prompts there that'll kind of help you do a relationship audit to see what's really important to you. 

And for those that are really interested in trying the Hypno Journey, I have one on my website that you can download. It's called The True You. So, yeah. Go to www.SoulifyWellness.com. And yeah, you can hop into that True You and really connect with who you are at your soul's level and enjoy that process of guided meditation. 

That's a beautiful gift, both the free marriage guide and the helping identify triggers, and then also the free audio around journeying or the Hypno journeying. 

Yep, that's correct, yes. Hypno Journey. It's like hypnosis but a guided journey all kind of wrapped into one. 

What else do you offer on your website?

I have a 12-week program where I work with women. It includes four one-on-one sessions, where we'll dive deep into hypnosis, messaging access to me throughout a week, and all these collections of Hypno journeys that really help you dig into the subconscious mind when I can't be there to do the one-on-one work with you. 

Well, I will make sure to have all of these links on today's show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. 

Thanks for having me. This was lots of fun. 

Signing Off

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