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Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of On the Spectrum with Sonia, a podcast where we discuss autism spectrum mental health challenges and highlight stories of anybody who's overcome any adversity to leave our audience feeling connected, inspired, empowered and filled with love.
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And speaking of love, love is what drives humans at the end of the day.
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Everybody wants to feel loved.
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Even animals want to feel loved.
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But when we don't feel loved, especially from people who were supposed to love us, this is where it becomes very demoralizing, very demeaning.
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You know, and everybody copes in a different way with this, but one guest in particular Andrea Andre.
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She used her feelings of never feeling good enough or loved enough to drive her success, which is something people don't talk about enough.
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That's why I am so blessed and honored to have Andrea Andre with us today, and she's here to describe her story, her journey, and it is a story that I feel so many of us can resonate with on certain levels, but we don't talk about it enough, and for that let's please welcome Andrea.
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Yes, thank you.
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Thanks, sonia, for having me Thank you for being here.
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So, andrea, tell us a little bit about you, tell us about your journey a little bit, tell us who you are.
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Absolutely so.
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Currently, my current state is I am a leadership and embodiment coach for high achieving women, I like to say, many of us.
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We've lived all of our lives in our heads, which is I know it will unpack a little bit in this episode too.
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And the next level of leadership for me in my world is really getting down into our body and learning how to better understand, better manage the impulses that all of us feel on a daily basis, minute by minute basis, because I believe that the more that we can be in our body and not let those impulses control us, then the more control we have over how we show up in the world.
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So I didn't start here.
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I've had a journey through corporate.
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I have two engineering degrees and, yeah, I don't know how far to go back, but I'll just say when I was in corporate, what I was was a project manager.
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I did process improvement, so I led teams.
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We worked on helping systems be better and more efficient and how work flowed through the system.
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So I did work in the healthcare space, in the insurance space, and eventually I got to a point where that just wasn't feeling good anymore and I was feeling a different sort of calling.
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Calling was more to know myself internally, and as I got to know myself, I realized some of the things I was learning about myself including being a high achiever are things that I could turn around and help other women move through and get past as well, and so I'll leave it there and figure out where you want to unpack and where you want to go from there.
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So it seems like you really went on a journey.
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Not only you know within yourself, but also your career has also been quite a journey, because it's a jump to go from now being once in corporate, being a project manager and having engineering degrees to now being a coach for high achieving women.
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So can you tell us a little bit about what drove you to make the change?
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Absolutely.
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I, like I mentioned, I was in corporate and also this was around the time I had my first kid.
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So I have got two kids now, a daughter and a son.
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My daughter is almost 10.
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So I guess we're going back eight, nine, 10 years now.
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But after I had her I had everything that was on my checklist that I thought I wanted that was supposed to make me happy.
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So I had the marriage and the kid and the master's degree and the house and the job and I finally I'm looking around and I'm realizing I'm not happy, I'm actually burnt out, but I'm bored.
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I was also just bored Like I was going through the motions of life, but there was nothing interesting or exciting about life.
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It was just rush out the door, take my daughter to daycare, go to this job that I don't like, rush to pick her up from daycare, to get through dinner and go to bed and like repeat, and that just wasn't very exciting to me.
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And so that was sort of my first awareness of this isn't really what I want to do with myself.
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And then I was starting to get just unhappy at work too, and starting to get these inner messages that were telling me if I stay on this corporate path, then I wasn't going to live up to my fullest potential.
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And, of course, high achiever I'm like, well, what does that mean?
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Because I, of course, want to do what I'm here to do and do it very well.
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And so then I started unpacking that and I didn't quit my job right away.
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I was certainly.
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I switched jobs into something that was a little bit more supportive for me, but it just kept going on this inner journey.
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And I like to say in the beginning everyone says follow your passion.
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I'm like I didn't.
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I had no idea what I was passionate about, because there was no passion in my life.
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And so another tip that I heard was just follow your curiosity.
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And so I just started getting curious and I was like what is this energy thing that people keep talking about and how do people learn, how to tap into their psychic and intuitive abilities and how are people becoming better parents?
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And I know all of those sound really random, but those are the curiosities that led me to, eventually, what I'm doing right now.
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But I just kept following those and following those until at some point something clicked and I realized I was learning all of that.
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That was my highest path, and it wasn't in corporate.
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It was somehow doing my own thing in a way that I could bring those out to people into the world.
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So eventually I made the jump and have been working on my own ever since.
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And what have you found to be the most rewarding, now that you're doing what you're doing?
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Yes, I would say one of the most rewarding things is everything is my own decision.
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Whether it's a good decision or a bad decision, at least it's mine.
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And there's just something about being in control, Although that was also scary in the beginning because, again, as a high achiever, you also kind of are a high achiever doing what other people tell you to do at least I was and so it was good and bad in the beginning that I had total control over myself.
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So that was just something I had to learn and stabilize, but I love it now.
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I love that I get to choose how I run my business.
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Do I want to offer this or that?
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Do I want a podcast?
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Do I want a video?
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Who do I want to talk with?
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I love all of those things.
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And then I'd say the second part that I really love is I've gotten more out into the community lately in the last few years.
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So I live in Madison, Wisconsin, so not too far from Chicago, where you're at, and before my community was daycare parents or school parents or work co-workers, but now just getting out into the community meeting other people doing either similar things or they have their own business or they're building things, whatever it is.
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It just feels so much smaller and so much more like home to me Madison I'm not from here it didn't feel like home until just these last couple of years when I started actually meeting people, and so that's been really rewarding as well.
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Yes, in fact Andrea and I have met at the One Stories event that Wendy Babcock hosted in Brookfield, wisconsin, about last month, and it was amazing to hear it, you know, and Andrea actually went in front of the room and spoke about her story, her journey, and I remember I was getting so emotional listening to your story and I felt like I was there with you.
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And you know you mentioned that word achievement quite a bit.
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So you know, kind of tying it all in a little bit, what was your relationship to achievement and where did that relationship begin?
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Yeah, great question.
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So school, certainly I was a straight-A student in school.
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I actually loved school.
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I had perfect attendance from fifth grade through 12th grade, so I didn't miss a single day of school in, however many years that is.
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I was always the teacher's pet, I was the valedictorian, and so I learned very early on that I took on that identity of the smart one and the achiever.
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And I know that there was some pressure to achieve from my parents at home and I think from their perspective, they pushed me because they knew I was capable.
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They weren't pushing my brother and sister as much as they were pushing me, and I believe it was because, you know, they saw my brother as the athlete and so he got pushed a little bit more that direction.
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So I think from their perspective, it was meant to push me and to drive me, but I internalized it completely differently and I internal from their perspective, it was meant to push me and to drive me, but I internalized it completely differently and I internalized it as oh, that's how I'm getting attention, that's how you know, that's my role.
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To shine in this family is to be the achiever, and so that must be what I need to do to, you know, get the attention that all kids we're all looking for love and attention from those around us.
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And so and school is a very easy place to get it because it's measurable.
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Whether that's good or bad, you know, I have different opinions about it now, but in school it's measurable, and so you can very clearly see how you're measuring up to some standard and how you're measuring up compared to other people, and so that was a very easy place for me to, I would say, harness or direct.
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This achiever in me was something that I could measure myself against myself, against other people, and that just became my motivation.
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That then I took into the workplace and took everywhere else I went, because once it's in you, unless you learn to look at it and shift it, it's going to find its outlet some other place, and so the Achiever had been born and created, and so then I took it into work and my parenting and everything else that I did after I was in school.
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What was the one thing that you were looking for then, while you were busy being like, even in the school right, you were perfect attendance.
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You are straight A student.
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What was the one thing you were really craving that perhaps you felt was missing?
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Yeah, I'd say making my parents proud was something that was driving me and it never came from a place of like I felt that they weren't proud of me necessarily.
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But again, I don't know where that came from.
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That was just the behavior that I adopted and the motivation that I had that kept me going.
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And when you look back at it and looking at that, you know always driving to achieve something, always wanting to prove something or show for something.
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If you could look at that younger Andrea self, if you could go back into that inner child, if you will and go to that younger self, what?
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would you tell, let's say, the fifth grade Andrea?
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Yeah, fifth grade Andrea.
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That was awkward, andrea.
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Yeah, fifth grade Andrea had glasses.
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She just got her period, so that was a really fun time in my life, but I would tell her that she's enough just as she is.
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She's enough without having to prove she.
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You know I love her, even if she doesn't get good grades, and I love having her around.
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I love seeing her heart, I love hearing what makes her tick and just helping her feel loved outside of her achievements, I think, is something that you know.
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When I do my own inner child work that's typically what I do is I help my inner little girl feel like she's loved just as she is.
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And that is so powerful.
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I feel like we don't get that message enough, that we are enough and people don't.
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You know, because you know society, you know, is filled with what does it mean to be enough?
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And we're constantly inundated.
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Right, you have to live in this kind of a home, you have to drive this kind of a car, you have to carry this kind of a luxury bag or wear this kind of watch or be this kind of be in this kind of job or whatever.
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Right, have these many followers now on social media, because that's also another measuring stick people have gone to.
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Now, right, it's all about numbers.
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Or having this many people subscribe to your podcast, whatever, it is right.
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It's like we're so caught up on metrics almost to kind of define whether we're enough or not, and I think people have lost sight of the fact that your worth has already been predetermined for you because you are worth it, because you're alive, right, exactly, it's non-negotiable, it's unchanging right.
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And that's one thing I work on when I do self-esteem building with my clients is, you know, we talk about this idea that you are enough as you are.
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Those other things are just add-ons.
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Right, yep, they're made up measuring sticks that someone decided at some point, and then we all just grabbed on to.
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Right.
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Have you noticed a theme, though, with the people you're working with now?
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Do you notice like there are similar patterns and stories that are that kind of resonate with your own, about like people being high achieving and, you know, driven for success?
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Do you notice that with the clients you work with that perhaps maybe they too are like searching for something and they're searching for that validation, that love they feel that they need to show for something.
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And how do you feel like you find that synergy, then, with the people you work with?
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Yeah, there's a lot to unpack here.
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One thing I will say that I found in the client so I tend to attract also high achievers, the type A, and some of the things that have come up recently, as these are the things that we're starting to get into now is how exactly, like you said, how their current behaviors might mirror something from their childhood.
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And so I know I talked about in my situation.
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I was the achiever looking to make someone you know, looking to make my parents feel proud of me, and so that was always this inner motivation that I had, although it wasn't my parents.
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It became my boss, it became my coworkers, it became, you know, other people took on those roles, but that motivation stayed the same.
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I had another client who, when we went back to her childhood, one of the things she felt unseen by her parents and she noticed as a kid her parents were always commenting on oh, look at that person, oh, look at your sister, oh, and so she never felt like they were paying attention to her certifications, where she has her own business and she has all of these achievements and certifications and things, and I remember taking her through an exercise where I wanted her to look at those and be proud of all those.
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And I said, when you look at all those things, what do you see?
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And she said I did all of those trying to be seen.
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And again, she's trying to be seen.
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As a kid it was by her parents, and as an adult it may not consciously be.
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Hey, I'm trying to get mommy and daddy to look at me, but that energy is still alive inside of us and so other people kind of take on those roles, and so it might be her industry peers or people in her network or you know, people that are around her that are taking on the quote unquote role of mommy and daddy, where she's doing all of those things and taking all these things on trying to be seen.
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You know, I've had clients on the flip side where there was one where she had to be perfect and quiet, right, she had to show up perfectly, she wasn't allowed to act a certain way or say a certain thing, and so then as an adult, she felt like she couldn't use her voice and her voice wasn't welcome.
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And so a lot of these patterns that many of us learned as kids and this can be in any childhood, this can be even in a good childhood.
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I think they're just the level of consciousness we have now around how to raise kids.
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It's so different than our parents' generation, and so I don't ever blame our parents.
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They just they did the best they could with what they knew.
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But what they didn't understand was some of these inherent needs that kids have, which is I want to feel unconditionally loved, I want to feel seen and accepted for who I am, and those sorts of things.
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If we inherently didn't get them, we found ways to get them, or we developed all these false motivations to try to get them, and then they drive us.
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And so one of the patterns that I've noticed is these high achievers.
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Many of us are driven from this pain, from this pain of not being seen and not feeling like we were enough, and so I actually like from the outside we get all of these accolades and raises and awards and everything, but I really feel like a lot of that is fueled from a pain, whether it's a conscious pain or we don't know that it's there.
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But I think a lot of the high achiever archetype is fueled by whatever we didn't get as kids.
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Now it's coming out into our adulthood.
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And I'm very glad that you said this because it's so true and we don't talk about this enough.
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We really don't.
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And you know, I also can resonate on some level with all of this as well, because a lot of my achievements is also driven from pain as well.
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Yeah, you know, and I guess you, I guess there's a big power to when you are dismissed when you're younger, right, when you are rejected, when you're ostracized, when you weren't given the kind of emotional support you needed or given the right kind of environment where you can grow and thrive.
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There's a lot of power that goes into how that affects a person Absolutely.
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You know, and you know, and here's the thing we, you know, when we see these high achiever archetypes right, this is what society celebrates, right, when we think about it, society puts this kinds on the pedestal and being like, okay, these are great examples and while it's true, it's very noble, you know it can drive anybody right, because you know, having something to thrive for, you know, can be a great asset for many people, right, but when it's coming from that source of pain, right, that's something it hits differently, it does.
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Yep, and I like to sorry, I was just going to comment too I like to say that we know more now, and so I think we can look at it differently.
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Where we didn't know this before, and so I think, as women, we did what we needed to do to sort of bring ourselves to a different level, you know, out of the home and into the workplace, and so that made sense for a period of time, to work, to achieve.
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But now I think we know more and now I think that there are ways we can look at.
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Well, maybe it's not the achievement necessarily, that's wrong, but how can I do it?
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From power and not from pain, and how can I do it from a place of this is an aligned achievement and not from I'm trying to do this to get seen unconsciously by somebody?
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Absolutely, it's about changing our perspective, right, because ultimately, ultimately, you know, your achievements are for you ultimately, right, your accomplishments are yours.
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Right, they're not about everybody else.
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And I feel like and this is what we say too, like you know what.
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I had a run coach who used to tell me this.
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She said one day she and granted, you know she's an elite runner, you know very, very fast runner.
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She said, you know, sonia, ultimately, one thing to remember your running is for you, nobody else, right, and you know, after hearing that that also was just like the light bulbs went on and I'm like you know what it is for me, right, I don't have to, I don't owe anybody anything.
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Right, what I do is for me, right, I don't have to, I don't owe anybody anything.
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Right, what I do is for me ultimately.
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I mean not in a selfish way, I mean I do this to give back as well, don't get me wrong, I do things to give back as well.
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But how much of this are we going to allow the pain to be the bus driver?
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And then, versus, how do we shift to get the adult in us, that more healed version of ourselves, to take over and drive the bus?
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Bingo.
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Yep, I love that.
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The running is for you.
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Yeah, too many people make that competitive.
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But really like what if you're running against the fastest person in the world or you're running against an average person?
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Like it says nothing about you if you come in first or second, like it's.
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You know you did your best and that really is what should matter, and so I love that.
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She said that.
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Exactly and it's uh, so like when you're doing like the work with your clients and you say, like you mentioned, like how it feels in the body, where you feel things in the body.
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So when it comes to in as far as where things are stored, how people store things in their body and do the body work, what have you found and what kind of tips can you give other people today that may be trying to explore and try to maybe tap into this kind of area?
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Yeah, I love this.
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So what I have found, first of all, is so many of us we've learned to live in our heads, and I think that's intentional, by design.
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We've got these cell phones, you know, we're always staring at a cell phone, always staring at a computer, always doing something.
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We're always busy.
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So we've forgotten to even know what sensations are going on in our body, to even know how that drives us.
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So that's number one.
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Number two, what I've learned when we talk about habits and behaviors, science says 90-ish percent of our day, of our actions, our behaviors, our words, they're driven from our unconscious, and so we're kind of moving through life and through the world unaware, in a way.
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It's like if you've ever driven somewhere and you go, I don't even remember driving here.
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It's sort of that whole idea is what part of me was driving on the road and what that is is there's an active version of you that's thinking about something.
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You've got that fight going on in your head or whatever it's going on.
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And then there's sort of the unconscious version of you that's like all right, I got this, I'll keep us safe while you're fighting your boss in your head or whatever it is.
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And so there's a version of us that's sort of coasting through life, and what I've learned about that version of us is much of it is driven by these impulses that we get through our body, through our unconscious.
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And so I like to say our unconscious does not just live in our head, it actually lives in our body, it's through the mental, emotional system that is in our body and we're always in response to that.
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And so some examples for one, one for me.
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I remember during COVID early COVID, obviously a terrible time for everybody there was a period of time when after lunch I would just ravage and I was like I need sugar, now give me sugar.
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And I would go through the cupboards and I would just eat any terrible thing.
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I could find that was sweet and I couldn't figure out why I did that until I remember I paused my door is right there, right outside the door of my office, and I said, okay, where am I feeling this impulse in my body?
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And there was actually this like really nasty feeling in my gut and if I could give it an image, it was like a sludgy image and I was like that's what it is.
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Every time I feel that impulse, my unconscious has said I don't want to feel that, so eat sugar and it'll go away.
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And so when I sat there for just a couple minutes and I said, you know, I'm just going to feel it, and I felt the sludgy crap, whatever was in there, I realized a couple of days later I haven't craved sugar in like a few days and it's because the impulse was gone.
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And so, for me, what I am trying to help people become aware of, is that we're always there's these, you know, our body is lighting up in different ways and different pressures and different impulses and, unconsciously, our unconscious doesn't want to feel that.
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It thinks feeling is death basically, which we know is not.
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It's death of the feeling, but it's not death of the self, but it does everything in its power to keep us from feeling those things.
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And so that's where we might overwork.
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So yesterday I was working with a client who's very new to this.
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She's like I want more body awareness.
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I feel like you know she lives in her head, and so I'm like all right, well, you asked for it, so we're gonna get into it.
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And just yesterday alone, our focus was on productivity and hustle.
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And why do you work so hard and why do you feel like you can't take breaks.
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And so three of the impulses we found, one was she needs to be the one in control, so that was one that was keeping her from being able to delegate things.
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She found one on what if I let people down and then I forget what the third one was.
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But then we tapped in and each of those she felt in a different place in her body.
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So there was an impulse in her chest for one of them, there was an impulse in her stomach space for one of them, and then an impulse in her back.
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And so what we haven't realized is so many of us live in our heads.
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We just know we're uncomfortable, but we don't really know why.
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And then we take all these actions to try to ease the discomfort.
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But I'm saying no, let's get out of your head into your body, then you can get information from the discomfort and then the discomfort doesn't drive you.
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So now she has the tools to say you know what?
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I'd really like a break, but my body is feeling like it wants to keep going.
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Let's tune into my body and see where that impulse is coming from, and then let's do some simple breathing exercises to see if we can dissolve the impulse and then choose differently, where, again, most of us were just kind of moving throughout the day without really choosing or doing anything with intention.
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But the body has so much information and when you can learn how to read those impulses and then take control and not let those impulses control you, I feel like that's when people really start soaring in their life.
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So hopefully I answered your questions.
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But this is amazing, thank you.
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Yes, and I feel like so many of us don't realize that it's our body speaking because it's craving something or craving attention.
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We think that we are going to quench it by, you know, maybe going and drinking that milkshake or eating that ice cream cone or whatever else, but in reality it's, you know, our body's telling us.
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The reason.
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It's telling us that is because it's maybe craving something different, absolutely, yep.
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And when you notice, you know in your case, you talked about going for all the sweets in the cupboards you know, at that time, what did you notice was the main thing that your body needed from you?
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What did it say, andrea, this is what we need, this is I want, how I want you to take care of me.
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What was it say, andrea, this is what we need, this is how I want you to take care of me.
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What was it telling you?
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What was the main lessons you were learning out of that?
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Yeah, this was an interesting one and again, I just trust my intuition and my ideas and the things that are kind of coming up, without judging them, even if I have no idea where it could have come from.
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And so one of the things and I really wish I remember what podcast I was listening to.
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This was years and years ago, but he was talking about how he was helping people try to lose weight but for some reason they just couldn't lose the weight.
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The diets didn't stick and all that stuff the weight, the diets didn't stick and all that stuff.
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And so what he found going back to their childhood, was weight was actually a protective mechanism for them, because something happened in their childhood where they were seen and it caused harm, and so then unconsciously they put weight on so that way they wouldn't be seen, because that was their body's way of not getting harmed, like if I'm big and unattractive, people aren't gonna be interested in me and hurt me in a way, like I'm being really sort of blunt in the words, but just so that way people kind of get what I mean.
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And so honestly, for me that was the impulse that was coming up was like no, we need to eat sugar because it's unsafe to be skinny, or it's unsafe to be skinny, or it's unsafe to be seen, or it's, you know, some sort of mixture of that.
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And again, I know that we can carry this sort of patterning from our ancestors and so this isn't something that makes sense to me given my current life situation.
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But we carry so much from our ancestors too that, again, that's why I don't judge anything that comes up, because it's like all right's in my body.
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That means I need to take care of it.
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I have no idea where this came from, but it's here, so we're just gonna clear it out.
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So that was what that was kind of feeling like to me was you need to eat sugar because you can't be healthy, you can't be skinny, like that's an unsafe situation.
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So, again, doesn make sense.
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But I have notebooks upon notebooks of things that just don't make sense, but they just were there.
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So there's like, well, generational trauma is a thing, right, there's a reason why people talk about generational trauma is because, in fact, it does get passed down.
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You know and I've even noticed this even within my own family right, things that people have gone through earlier generations that have gotten passed down, and you can see the effects too, you know, of how they were able to continue to hold on to certain things.
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And then you know, and having that mindset subsequently because of that right and it got passed down, right.
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So I think that you know there is a lot of truth to that and I feel like you know, generational trauma is also something that needs to be addressed, you know, with people, and understanding where their families came from also plays a huge role.
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Yeah, I heard someone at work once who was seeing a therapist and was bringing a fear up to the therapist and the therapist told him you have no reason in your life to have that fear.