Dr. Kelly Brogan (2:29)

To talk about, you know, the. The shadow of fawning and just the. The hollowness that ultimately characterizes a life built on the good girl archetype. And my primary qualification. I mean, you mentioned that I'm a psychiatrist. I was a neuroscience major in college. Like, I have been very invested for a long time. In cracking the. Of human behavior and attempting to validate so many aspects of our lived experience through, you know, the microscope. And my primary credential is that I am many decades into good girl programming and have in so many ways achieved the promise of what is on offer through the sort of external validation that is available for women today, thanks to, you know, the feminist agenda. You know, there's so many ways that we can come into a sense of security, and I've achieved so much of that that I don't have any sort of, like, any farther to go up the summit of the mountain. Like, I can't quite tell myself, like, oh, it's still over there. And the gaslight just sort of spontaneously resolved for me in an instant where I saw, you know, it's not here, Right. Like, whatever that strategy is that says if you secure approval, and approval, by the way, is not only, like, you're nice, we like you.

Podcast Host (4:00)

Right.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (4:01)

So approval is also collective approval. Right. So you could argue my credentials, for example, are one of the ways that I have secured approval even as I've stirred the pot, you know, in terms of controversy and other. Other ways that I've been challenging, pushing the envelope, so to speak. But that approval will take you to a place where you're watching, right, in this dissociated way. You're watching what you are achieving, you're watching what you're securing. You're watching what the. The many products of your efforts. You're not actually there. Like, you're. You're not actually the one experiencing this. And so probably the place where this often comes home to. To roost is in our relationships, and specifically romantic relationships and partnerships and marriages, right, where you can, um, you can find yourself really at that glass wall of intimacy and recognize that there's, like, a yearning in your heart for something different and just have no idea, like, how it is. How do you penetrate the glass? Like, how do you get to the other side? How do you touch someone's, you know, skin through that kind of a barrier? And I guess the moment that you recognize it's an inside job, it's up to you. Nobody else can deliver you there. And your partner doesn't have to change. Your employees and your job doesn't have to change. There's no amount of money you can manifest that's ever going to make this feel better, that you finally get to that place where you're like, all right, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and take responsibility for my experience as an embodied woman. And what the hell does that actually look like? And so, you know, that's how there's like thousands of us, millions in our 30s and 40s, trying to figure out what it means to be a woman. Like, what are we even doing here, right? Like how, how do we approach this seeming dilemma of having it all and yet feeling so little of that havingness?

Alyssa Nobriga (6:03)

Yeah, I really hear the kind of hollow goals. And at some point we realize it's not in the next partner or the, you know, 5 more pounds or the financial goal, that it's really in a deeper presence in our being. But we have to be really honest with ourselves. Is this what I really desire? And I know that say that women's desire is one of the most powerful forces we have. And I also know that women feel very guilty for having desires. How do you suggest women really find their truth and claim their desires without all the guilt?

Dr. Kelly Brogan (6:35)

So you mentioned earlier, you know that this is a nervous system matter. And I think that that took me a long time to recognize. And I feel like now, again, it's in the zeitgeist, like we're starting to see that this isn't a will based operation, right? There's no way that you can learn how to be a softer, more abundant woman. This isn't something you put on your to do list and it's not something that you just sort of like pray for or put on your Pinterest, like manifestation board or whatever. You have to have a literal system, right? The, the, the neurophysiology must be aligned with having more. Right? Because there's all sorts of ways that having more has been tagged as dangerous, right? And, and the having can be literal, right? So like, you know, monetary assets and evidence that you are in a certain kind of class, right? But it can also be intangible, right? It could be more love, more erotic energy in your life. It could be more of a sense of belonging. And our systems will contract around that expansion when presented with the opportunity. If we are still in the programming that says, you know, I would refer to it as a mother wound, but that says stay small for me. And when we take that programming into our adulthood, we end up living in, especially as women, living in comparative dynamics, right, where we assess other women and we sort of hierarchically organize ourselves in ways that are not native to a woman's sensibilities, right? Women are not natively hierarchical. We are collaborative and yet our wounding. And you could, you know, get more conspiratorial around it. The societal agenda that serves the fragmentation of women, you know, and women, of women and men, and even of women and children has delivered us to this place where we now reflexively assess, right? Like, how do I measure up against her? And that's why one of the deepest portals that I've accessed in my own reclamation process as a woman is the judgment of other women, right? So there was a time, you know, several years ago where I could have. I could have drawn up like, you know, a scroll of all of the ways that I. I judged women, right? Whether they were too overtly sexual or flirtatious, whether they dressed inappropriately, whether they were, you know, shallow or lazy, incompetent. Those were like huge ones for me. Ditzy. Like, you know, all of these ways that I, a kept woman, right? Like a woman who's not doing meaningful work in the world, who's not contributing all of the ways that I judged these women. And again, sometimes I would admit to that, but often it would be like an internal little experience I would have while, like, scrolling on social media. Ultimately, those were. Were little portals for me to make contact with dimensions of myself that were not allowed to belong, right? And it's like at a certain point, like, who cares what the origin of that is? That's just the reality, right? Like, I was not allowed to be, like, perceived as attention seeking, for example, right? Because I was very, very aligned with attention seeking behavior being wrong and bad. So what happens to. Especially that, that little girl inside of me who just wants to put on the fucking tutu and run around the room and have all the eyes on her, right? She doesn't get to exist. And so what happens is she ends up pulling the, the strings behind the curtain, you know, like Oz and I feel this conflict, and you referenced it earlier, it's often felt as shame, right? I feel this split inside of myself of the rejected parts of me wanting my attention, right? And that is so expensive, energetically. It ends up being such a drain. And I would say the fullest expression of that drain is what we call illness. But it ends up being so costly that it is responsible for the stuckness that is a kind of like Sisyphusian hell that we find ourselves in as women, where that, that stuckness, that. That silent scream of this can't be it, right? Like, what is. What is my life, right? Like, what, did I really come here just for this? Really? I think that that's like the. The origin of that.

Alyssa Nobriga (11:27)

I love that you took judgment, though, as the doorway in to see what am I judging outside of myself. And how is that mirroring to me parts of myself that I've disowned or not welcomed? Is that what you were saying?

Dr. Kelly Brogan (11:41)

Well, yeah, and I. And I should offer a bit more context, which is that my initiation, I guess, to this work, which, of course, this is like Jungian. I mean, this is like many, many people have been speaking about this concept before me, but of course, until it's, like, embodied, it's not yours to really own and experience. But my greater context for this was that I began to represent myself publicly, right? So I already had a public platform, but I had a public platform as like a credentialed white coat wearing activist and, you know, intellectual academic. And I began to represent, you know, this other side of me, I guess, publicly and specifically on social media. And. And this other side of me, you know, will dance on a pole in a bikini and we'll create like a little video mashup with, like, a costume and the soundtrack and, like, my own little editing, and we'll find no more delight in anything in the world. Like, that would be the most pleasurable thing I could possibly do to create that little piece of my own artwork. And of course, the feeling that I had was that inner girl, right? That little girl who said, like, hey, do you like what I made? Right? It's like a. It's like my fingers were wet from the paint still, and I went through a whole phase. And that's not to diminish it, to suggest that, like, oh, it was just a phase. It was a literal maturational process that I moved through where I exposed this aspect of myself. And I was, understandably, I received a good amount of pushback and judgment and cancellation. And I think many of the people who were following me were like, what are you doing? You know, you're embarrassing yourself. You're confusing us. And maybe even worse, you're undermining the mission and you're. You're recklessly endangering those you purport to be here to support and help. And so in that sort of like, witch burning experience that I had, it went on for, I don't know, six, nine months. I was able to, you know, it was a fork in the road, right? So I have. I have a big mouth. I know how to use it, especially when I feel affronted, right? And that's how I survived a lot of my upbringing. And so I could have, you know, gone to bat, right? And I could have really showcased my skills and made sure I got my audience to see how wrong these People were for judging me, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So the defending posture, I could have adopted that. And for whatever reason, instead I decided to make a spiritual practice of this. And every single time I came across a comment in real life or in on social media, so the anonymous condemning voice, I would try it on. And ultimately I called this simple practice wearing the villain crown, where I would just make a very short practice, like literally would take minutes. This isn't like some elaborate thing. And I would try on the possibility that I am what it is that I'm being accused of being. And so it was just kind of a way to take the piss out of it, right? So to, to experience the worst case scenario and the privacy of my own body in my own home with nobody watching and to start to titrate into the possibility that I am more than my behavior, right? And that that requires a kind of fluidity and plasticity in what I am defining as the codified rules for my behavior. And only through that portal, at least for me, could I make contact with the meanness, that is not the doctor, that is not the mom, that is not the this, that is not the that, and start to develop some literal neurophysiologic resiliency. So that portal trained me, but it was also something that came into my field after I had a very strong foundation of my, you know, health and body and my orientation towards self care, right. So that's why I do think that there is, there's an order of operations and when you start to do this kind of work, right, shadow work, reparenting, and your literal nervous system does not have the capacity to hold these energies. I mean shame is, feels like an immolation. It feels like there's like a, like a fiery cavern that's opened up that you're literally going to get like sucked into. And you kind of like hope to, right? Like please, can I just disappear? Like I'll feel anything but this. And our elaborate sets of defenses, also known as our personalities, are designed to mitigate even the slightest of those sensations. And when you just let it rip, right, like you just let it happen, you'll discover the arc that most of the time we never even visit with. We just feel the very, very tip of most of our emotions and associated sensations. But when you allow it to exist and move. And again, I used to be really, I did Kundalini Yoga teacher training. I used to be really into more cathartic expressions, right? Like punching the pillow, screaming, and there's an absolute place for that. But the kind of maturational development I'm now interested in. There's almost nothing to see from the outside in. And that kind of alchemy can only happen when there's a really strong container, like a kind of a crucible. Right. And in that container, this. This movement happens and this motion occurs. And you are. I call it self husbanding, but you are. You're there in devoted presence. And it was interesting because last thing I'll say is that I have a colleague, Yolanda Norris Clark, and she is a. I would call her like a birth advocate. And she wrote a book, actually, called Portal, and we were talking on my podcast about it, and she was talking about how her more profoundly blissful births out of 10 babies. Yeah. Were. There was like, nothing to see. Right. There was no moaning, no screaming, no, like, you know, movie level, like, catharsis. Right. And that kind of being with. Right. So you're not getting it out. You're not even really moving anything. It's just becoming. Eunice. Right. And that reclamation of your vital force, it's yours. You came here to embody it. That's literally why you incarnate it. It's yours. So that embrace of it, that approval of it, that integration with it, opens up exactly. The experience of creative inspiration and fun and play and pleasure. And the most important thing I would put on the list these days is a relaxed system that isn't otherwise available through the, you know, the habits that we have of relating to ourselves with and through rejection.

Alyssa Nobriga (19:04)

Yeah. And. And just to kind of summarize how I'm hearing, because it's very aligned with how I see things, what I really understand is, like, we're told to be a certain way, and if we don't, if we don't conform to that, then we are afraid that we're going to be rejected or abandoned. And so we disown parts of ourselves. And the only way to see it is to project it onto somebody else. And as we project it onto somebody else, we can use them as a mirror to say, what am I not accepting within myself? And instead of. And I do a very similar practice, instead of defending, which actually creates the hurt, it's opening to the possibility of, like, how could this be true? So that there's a softening around it. And then just to fully allow the emotion to be there. Because my experience is feelings don't hurt. It's the resistance to feeling them that hurts. And so just fully allowing it to move through the nervous system for 90 seconds is this more subtle path instead of the. And I think there's a place for like rage rituals and like really getting it out, especially for that good girl archetype. But that was really empowering for me. That pushed down my anger because I saw anger being expressed. Overpower, underpower. And so both from my mom and dad and I needed to learn and I'm still integrating that to deeper levels, to the rage. And that that physical, more expressive part was helpful. But I think in the 70s and 80s they really hung out in over expressing. But what you're speaking of and most of us are here with the somatic work is it's, it's just fully allowing it. You don't even. And it's then not separate from who you are. It is part of the totality of your being. We are all of it. And so I love your story about this and I honor the courage and the work that it takes. And I do. And I also hear you saying that it depends on having either healthy ego structure or having some self care. And really like safety is the key ingredient and safety is really only found in the present moment. And so when we wake up out of the fear based thinking, we can access a deeper safety that's underneath the fear that's always present. And as we access that, everything else starts to integrate. And so you and I can see why one of my students wanted us to connect because I can see some of the parallels to the work and it's, it's powerful, it's profound.

Podcast Host (21:15)

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Alyssa Nobriga (23:07)

Now I also know that you, you know, talked about integrating the, the victim mentality. Really starting to integrate your shadow waking up out of that. Can you talk to us more about what you found to be helpful with that? Because I think most of society is still living there.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (23:22)

Yes. And this has been the through line I guess in my, my work from the health reclamation side of things. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune so called autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis. What feels like a million lifetimes ago now after my first pregnancy and I was a completely like total normie, like completely in the matrix, like card carrying cult member of the allopathic medical system. And somehow I had this dissonant inner opportunity arise that you know where I just said I don't want to take a prescription for the rest of my life. Like I am not interested. And I also had a lot of patients at the time who were on Synthroid and were taking thyroid support medication and they just didn't ever really feel well. So I also had that disincentive and so that set me off. My investment in not taking a prescription for the rest of my life sent me off on on this path to exploring what my other option was, which was to stay with myself, to be on the team of my own body and to see what the message was like why the hell is this happening? What does it mean in My narrative that I have developed these symptoms postpartum and that I could view this as my body is broken, something is wrong with me, I need to fix it. So colluding against the body, typically with the conventional medical system, is so programmed into our awareness that I actually have quite a small group of colleagues who have broken out of that, right? So it's, it's, it's so rare, right, that even if you understand a lot of victim dynamics in relationship, right, so you understand the zero sum game of a romantic partnership, wherever you are finger pointing and blaming your partner, you're fundamentally undermining the capacity that, that this union has to offer you the experience that you want, right? Like, a lot of people can start to get that, right? Like, how can I stay on my partner's team? How can we repair in this more coherent way? Well, often that invites you to learn self containment and emotional mastery and taking responsibility and the kind of shadow integration you and I were just discussing. But for whatever reason, applying that same rubric to the body is very, very, very challenging. And you know, I could come up with all sorts of metaphysical reasons why that is the way it is. But most people, when they experience some symptom, I mean, whether it's like a migraine or something more, you know, they find a lump in their breast or, you know, their hair is falling out, they need it to stop, they need it to go away. And they come into their child energy that says, somebody outside, help me fix me. Like, make this experience of being in this body this way stop. And so what happens is you end up in that victim triangle. Like, you end up colluding with a rescuer of some variety. And this could be literally a supplement, right? So it could be anything that you have decided has the power to fix you and to make what your body is doing stop, you collude with that against yourself. And so that self betrayal, that triangulation against the self ends up being the foundational premise from which you are then trying to inhabit this body. When challenging emotional things are happening relationally, right? So I, I like to rewind, I guess, back to the basics. And I do think that coming into an understanding of the body's wisdom, and I don't say that like Hallmark Cardi, right? Like, like I, like truly, what would it be to live in your body where it's never a problem? Your insomnia is literally not a problem, right? Your diarrhea is not a problem. There are no problems, right, that your body is expressing, to reprogram on that level Means that you have come into an orientation towards yourself that is like a radical. Yes, you're here for it.

Alyssa Nobriga (27:50)

I love everything you're sharing. And I live this way with a more micro. And I had not applied it to the medical system. So I really appreciate you combing through. And I wanted to ask you about healing your thyroid condition because I have Hashimoto's hypothyroid. I was put on pills when I was 12 and I'm still on them. And I know that there's wisdom in it. I can feel that it gets activated when I push. It's not a problem. But I also don't want to create that dependency. And I've tried to get off of it. I would love, and I also am just fascinated that 80% of all autoimmune diseases are with women. And so I think there's connections with all of this psychosomatic. And I would just love to hear a little bit more about how you healed your thyroid and how you really took your power back from this sort of quote unquote broken system.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (28:39)

Well, it's interesting because I was one of the first like 300 in the world psychiatrists to specialize in medicating pregnant and breastfeeding women. Like when I was, you know, in my conventional avatar, I believe so much in the pharma model that I actually prescribed to pregnant and breastfeeding women. That was my specialty, right? All kinds of meds. And I had many, many, many, many women who were multiply diagnosed, which means that they had comorbidities like autoimmune conditions, lupus and, you know, rheumatoid things and bowel things. And. And of course, Hashimoto's extremely common in the population that I was working with. So when I was diagnosed, like I said my no, thank you, was informed by what I already saw to be on offer from the system that I was aligned with. Okay. So I was not in a rejection moment yet. And my, I don't know, call it sacred laziness, whatever it was, whatever led me to not want to deal with taking a prescription led me to a naturopath. So I went and I saw, because I was in New York at the time, I saw a naturopath. And, you know, I was very identified with my like academic self at that point. And she was not like burning sage, no crystals, okay? It was like not that kind of vibe. And that was perfect for me. So this was like a totally divinely ordained experience. And she was extremely academic, brilliant woman. And she started me on a New diet. Okay, so I'm Italian American. I grew up, you know, eating literally, cheese and bread and McDonald's. I've always been naturally, like, thin, which sounds awesome, except the shadow of it is that you end up treating your body like a rental car. I mean, I never exercise a McDonald's. Like, I drink six cups of coffee a day. And this was the relationship that I had to my body because I was never invited to have any other kind of relationship, right? So, like, literally decades into my incarnation, I'm, like, still figuring out, like, what my body wants, right? So I changed my diet. And I did it because I had a why that felt more compelling than eating the, you know, bagels and pizza or whatever. And the why was the liberation from the burden of, like, taking this prescription, right? So I committed and I committed, like, hardcore. And I watched in the space of. I don't know. So I went on, you know, like, armor, thyroid, nature, throid kind of a thing. And if, you know, you know. So there's, like, all these different. Right. I'm sure a lot of the women listening know what I'm talking about. All these different kinds of glandular versions of the prescription or whatever. And within about a year or so, I came off everything. And it's been decades now, and I. Well, not decades. Decade. Almost two. And I have never looked back.

Alyssa Nobriga (31:43)

By cleaning up your diet?

Dr. Kelly Brogan (31:45)

Well, that was the primary thing that I did. Okay. What I started to. When I started to apply this to my practice, I recognized that there was, like, something bigger at play, okay. Because I cleaned up my diet, I put this into remission on paper, and then I was given a book called Anatomy of an Epidemic. Okay. I would. By a colleague, and I read this book because I had already had this experience of dissonance, right? Like, in medical school, we don't learn about nutrition. It's like, who cares? That's not important. Like, we're here to talk about, like, actual legitimate things. And because of my experience, I was, like, opened up to consider some of what I hadn't been taught, which is that you could put a condition like this into remission, which is that that, you know, nutrition matters. And I read this book, and this book was about essentially, the ways in which medications, and specifically psychiatric medications are driving disability, like, mental health disability. So it's basically an indictment of psychotropic medications, the same ones that I prescribe. So I say all of this to illustrate that I was at this moment of like, a. Like a fork in the road of my story as a woman, and I ended up, like, starting my activist career on the back of that book where I was so ignited by this and the, and the simultaneous experience that I was having of healing myself without the system, in spite of the system, that I like, took my sword aloft and I dedicated the next mo. I don't know, decade of my life to helping women come off of medications and exposing the dark side of all these medications. So what was actually going on there, right? Like, what actually was being invited through this diagnosis in my life story? Why might I have had to have experienced that? Right? And in, in your case, I would say, like, I'm sure there is some relevance to the timing of your initial. Yeah, diagnos and the moment, if there is one, that you decide I want to, you know, enter through the portal and come out the other side med free. Which again, there's no, there's no better or worse. It's just an adventure, right? Like you might try that adventure at some point. There will be significance to that moment, right? And so for me, this moment was like the individuation journey for me. Fighting the bad daddy, right? And bad mommy, I call it, you know, mommy medicine, daddy, government, right? Like becoming a notorious, internationally notorious, like anti pharma activist, like, that was my adolescent phase of individuation that was ignited by this very experience that of course manifested in my throat chakra, if you will. Right? So it all had to be this way. Like it literally needed to be.

Alyssa Nobriga (34:47)

Exactly.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (34:48)

I wrote it this way. That's what I believe anyway. And, and so when I saw, when I could see and appreciate the significance of it, it helped me to neutralize any poor me, no fair energy that might have been living underneath the impulse to heal this, right? Because the victim threads that come through our identification with our diagnoses are very real. They're there for a reason. And alchemizing those into it had to be this way, and I couldn't have designed it better, is a part of the narrative evolution of and reclamation of the diagnosis. So anyway, all that is to say that because I now had this purpose that had somehow effervesced out of this diagnosis, I developed a protocol to help women move through this experience. And I started to recognize pretty quickly that, yeah, I can prescribe the diet I recommend, I can prescribe the detox I recommend, I can prescribe the like, you know, here's how you send your nervous system a signal of safety, contemplative practice, I recommend. But what really needs to happen here is you need to be defragged in your programming. Like, you need to like, have the opportunity to expand the permission field of what you can believe, okay? And that's where my mentor, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, who came in and divine timing to offer me and I, I would even say, like, anoint me with his belief field and his. If you don't. If anybody listening doesn't know who he was, you know, he was arguably one of, in my opinion, the most important clinicians to exist in our lifetime. Where he had 27 years of validated clinical practice putting into remission terminal cancers and neurodegenerative and other degenerative illnesses with long term remission. Okay? So like I'm talking stage four pancreatic cancer with 34 years of survival. It's an unmatched in the conventional world. And he did this for decades. And I had the opportunity to be mentored by him in the last year of his life. And he translated to me this like, unshakable alignment with the body and that the restoration of that is the framework within which all of this healing happens, right? That's how you get to the place where whatever is going on is not a problem you're eradicating. So when women come off of these medications, be it thyroid or otherwise, if they do so from the get this thing off me kind of energy, it's like if you leave a toxic relationship with a big, you, you know, all the, all, all y'all know what happens. You're taking that guy with you sometimes for years of your life, okay? Hating him and wanting him to be punished and hoping he's miserable, like lying in a ditch, right? So. So when you can come in peace and go in love from these experiences, you can integrate the memo, right? You can integrate the message. And so the impulse has to be, in my opinion, from that place. So my specialty became taking women off of medications. And I did that for many years. And it only worked because it was not, these meds are bad. Let's get rid of them, right? It was like, I'm actually ready to look at myself now. I'm actually interested in what this is all about. And I'm here for me. I'm here for it. And so usually there's some kind of a ritual. And again, I have my bias, obviously, because I have my own protocol, but there's some kind of a ritual initiation of the I'm here for me energy, right? Which I would call a masculine energy. You show up, you commit, you choose, you follow through, you exercise that kind of integrity of attention and discipline. Discipline's got a bad rap. But I, you know, I'm of the, you know, the school of thought. There's an etymological interpretation of discipline. That is to say it means, you know, the gaze of the teacher who loves you, right? So, so how do you show up like the good father? How do you show up like the devoted husband, right? So I like to invoke these archetypes so that you can almost have this lived like theater inside yourself and you can feel like what that's like to show up for yourself that way. And it's not self flagellating. It's not like, I better stick to the diet or else I'm a shitty person, right? It's, it's a different kind of energy.

Alyssa Nobriga (39:49)

Devotional, more from love.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (39:52)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a presence. It's like a sacred presence. That of course is anathema to most of us in today's society because of our, our collective wounds, right? Like we are entrained to look outward, to assess our own inner safety, right? And, and there's, there's a reality to that. It's. It's called neuroception, right. Like, yeah, assess the outside. But until you've initiated yourself in, in this way, again, this is my bias. You're gonna see a perpetrator where there's a pile of laundry, right? You're going to see like a unicorn where there's a leaf. You're going to misperceive on both ends of the spectrum. You're going to develop relationships predicated on that. You're going to fight your body in all sorts of wild ways that end up destroying any capacity you had for wellness and vitality, right? Like you're going to develop all sorts of complexities and it's not to say those are bad and wrong. It's just, it's a path and it's a kind of adventure that you're going to take and you're going to have until it's not compelling and you're interested in like the real courageous adventure which is to just be with yourself, show up for you, and to pattern disrupt all of that programming that it really narrows the bandwidth of what you're allowed to believe and be and even hope and dream for. Like it puts such a low ceiling on all of that, you know, so there's a big metaphysical component to this that, you know, you can't prescribe. You have to just arrive in the right container when it's your time. And you will, every, everybody will, you know, if that is the journey you're meant to, to go on. And obviously I offer one of those. But there's many different ways to initiate.

Alyssa Nobriga (41:41)

And I love that you're focusing on the inside out. It's got to be that order. It can be outside, but it's also, it's got to come from within because otherwise those filters get projected onto other things. And, you know, you asking, like, what was going on when I got diagnosed, I think is such an important. I wish more doctors would have been curious about the psychosomatic connection because, yes, that was probably the hardest time of my life and knowing that there was a sacred initiation in that. So I can hear, and I really hear the maturity of you understanding some of the pharmaceutical industry. And, you know, we can talk about that just from a higher perspective of like, like why things are set up that way. And once you understand, it's like, now what do I do with it? This is not something wrong. The answer is not outside of me. How do I be with myself? Can I take some of these other principles into my health and wellbeing and insource and have my own authority in this, in the conversation so that I'm not thinking something's wrong, projecting it outward for me, even as you're talking, I just realized I did try to heal it, but I was 20 and I didn't do the psychosomatic work, so I was just doing it with diet and ayurvedic lifestyle. But now, you know, having been a somatic psychotherapist, I know the value of doing the inner work and having the tools to actually navigate and integrate it into my nervous system. So I love that you're. You're pulling it all together. And I also know that you talk about the subconscious purposes of illness, which I love this conversation, but I. And I know this conversation, but for people that don't get what that means, can you share that with us and also the role of the mother wound and how that shapes our experience, because I think going to be fascinating for people. Yeah.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (43:24)

So I had a couple of experiences with patients again, once I started to focus my practice on helping women come off of medications, I had a couple of experiences of women who were completely, you know, discontinued off of all their meds. We, obviously there's an end date then to our time together. Right. And they were ready to fly the nest and go off into the, you know, wild blue yonder and live their lives without doctors and without appointments and without prescriptions and, you know, walking it over to CVS kind of a thing. And in These instances there was like a very dramatic regression, like out of seemingly nowhere, where I could start to appreciate again, because in these instances it was so dramatic, I could start to appreciate, like, oh, they're not ready, they're not ready to shed the sick identity, right? There's, there's something that they're collapsing back into, even though, you know, I'm trying to kind of like push them out the nest. And I guess that's when I first started to explore, like, what kinds of needs are being met by an illness that we've otherwise been told is a random, unfortunate, you know, emergent phenomenon of just having a body, just having a flawed human body. You know, it gets sick sometimes, shit happens kind of a thing. And this perspective, obviously is very confronting for a lot of people because the. Well, for the very reasons we're talking about, because having a random illness that has an ICD10 code allows you to what, take literally zero responsibility for the experience. And so the victim posture is built in to that diagnosis that says, this thing happened to you and too bad, so sad. So most you can do is just be a good patient, take your meds, show up to your appointments, and, you know, this is just life. So the defiance of that victim identity, that victim posture, I think comes through the appreciation of, of how being in the victim actually works. Like it meets our needs the same way, you know, drinking alcohol, even if you understand yourself to have a problem with drinking alcohol, it's meeting needs, it's working. And as long as you are in rejection of that thing or obviously embrace of it, like you're not going to be able to see the relational aspects. Right. So what is your relationship to your symptoms and your illness is affording you? Well, usually to really reduce it down. There's yeses that we get and there's no's that we get. So the yeses that we get through a diagnosis are usually in the realm of connection, compassion, attention, and the no's that we get are in the realm of boundaries. Right? So where, if you have this thing, you often don't need to learn how to say no. You know, like the other day I was thinking about this because my daughter asked me. I have teenage daughters and my daughter asked me to drive her somewhere. I didn't feel like driving her somewhere. I live in Miami. The traffic is like actually unhinged recently, like I don't even know what's happening. Everyone from LA and New York is moving here and for me to take her somewhere 50 minutes away would have been like an Hour of something and driving. And I really didn't have any good reason it, like, not to drive her, right? And I had this immediate thought that if I, like, had a migraine or a cold or really bad, really super bad menstrual cramps or something, that I could just be like, oh, I can't. I'm sick, or whatever, right? And then what would I get? I would get, first of all, off the hook. I wouldn't have to do this thing I inexplicably didn't feel like doing or explicably didn't feel like doing. And then I would get. Get, you know, her understanding, and I might even get, like, a kind of softness and gentleness, and maybe she would be, like, extra nice to me or whatever. I'd get all that stuff. So I'd get the not doing the thing that I didn't want to do. And then I get extra bonuses, right? So when you think about, like, anybody who has a chronic diagnosis, or it's not even just chronic, because I could. I could tell you lots of stories about, like, you know, things I. I meant weird things I manifested right before I would, like, start traveling with my daughters. As a single woman, I wish I had, like, a lot of blocks and resistance to doing. And so I would, like, develop a weird, like, dental pain or something, like, right before we're about to, like, take off to Paris or whatever. And so it was almost a way for me to construct subconsciously, of course, a way for them to be, like, to lower their expectations a bit. And if I mess something up in a reservation here or there, like, it's okay to bother Mama. She's got this thing, right? So when I. I look at it through that lens, I'm asking these questions, right? I'm asking, what do I get to say do and be because of this, right? What do I receive because of this? And then what do I not have to do or say or be because of this, right? So what is the utility in this seemingly futile experience? Like, what actually is it conferring what needs are being met that I just don't have the maturational, you know, awareness or practice to otherwise ask for, right? These. These needs and these boundaries. So I. I find it to be part and parcel of having, you know, these symptoms, especially if they're persistent. And so when you identify that there's a part of you that feels it needs to be this way, that feels you need to have the panic attacks, you absolutely have to have the digestive issues, you have to have the allergy, you see it differently. And again that's confronting for a lot of people who aren't interested in looking at that way and just not a problem. It's just more, it's more.

Alyssa Nobriga (49:58)

But a good roadmap for people that are. So it's like, and I do this in the opposite, which is fun. And I'll do it around, around money or relationship where it's like what do I fear would happen if I got the goal? And most of the time people are like wait, I don't fear anything. And it's like no, listen deeper. It's like, oh, if I made the money I wouldn't have time with my family or I wouldn't I have more responsibility or you know, there's. And you can listen. So we have that wisdom and these types of questions can help open us to the answer of like what's the benefit? What's the payoff that I'm getting that I don't want to admit 100%.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (50:29)

And it just applies as equally, maybe even more so because there isn't really a collective awareness around this co creative experience that we have with our own bodies that is, you know, that, that mainstream. I guess. Yeah, it's, it's the, the downside of vitality and wellness is very real for most of us. There's, there's just like that wide open space of I can do anything because I have a healthy body is paralyzing, you know, in most cases.

Alyssa Nobriga (51:04)

But these perspectives are less against us and resistance and more just tapping into the wisdom and coming into harmony and alignment with what is so that we can actually shift it in, inside and then out. And I'm wondering how you play and address that with unlocking our erotic sexual desires and our hormones. What do you see as the connection and how vital is hormonal health for our desires?

Dr. Kelly Brogan (51:28)

So when I think of hormonal health and obviously this is like my training, I think of it on a spectrum from stress physiology to sexual physiology, if you want to call it that, reproductive physiology. And they're intimately related. So anybody who knows about, you know, cortisol and progesterone knows that there's, you know, a toggle between like this is a time of crisis and not a time of procreation. And this is a time of procreation and harm. Right. So that toggle that biological system attunement and alignment is operative beneath our very complex patterns of relating to our lived experience. And that is also why I have come to appreciate this experience of safety in the system as being the ultimate goal, right. Whether it's the resolution of a condition that has a name and a diagnostic code, or whether it's, you know, coming into a more expanded experience of your day to day or sexual pleasure, the imperative is the same. Your system has to slow down, has to soften, and there is a kind of quieting that happens. There's a relaxation that happens in the whole system before you are ready to hold more pleasure and to work with challenges as alchemical possibilities. And so the. When you're pushing your system to experience, you know, peak erotic adventures or to have more pleasurable sex, before your system has the capacity for that, you're going to go into dissociation and freeze and a kind of shutdown that I actually think is like in many ways more eerie than fight or flight, right? So that functional freeze that a lot of us live in is, you know, I call it behind, you know, living behind a glass wall. Like, it, it's. It's this sense of what could be happening in a moment and it's just totally unavailable to you. It's just completely inaccessible. And you don't really know what that is. It's like you become a ghost in your own lifescape. And so when you're insisting on a certain kind of erotic access before your system is ready for it's, it's pretty rapey energy, right? It's like. It's like putting pleasure on the body rather than allowing pleasure to be an emergent phenomenon. You know, I'm a big fan and I've attempted to translate Betty Martin's work where she teaches about the wheel of consent and waking up your hands and your skin to the pleasure that's already there. And a lot of that work involves understanding boundaries and consent, including even with your self, right? So it's like a. It's like a simple thing like, right. Like I can. I can touch my own wrist or my own hand and I can feel the touch of my hand. I can focus on the feeling, right? So I'm using my hand like a tool, right? Or I can flip my attention and I can focus on the sensation of the hand that is doing the touching that is for most of us, totally dead, right? So that the taking, for I'll speak for women if I can, the taking of touch is something that has been registered in the realm of taboo, right? And so this alignment with our desires, this ownership over what it is that we want, this experience of self mastery to the extent where we can translate our pathways for pleasure to Another. I mean, it's like most of us are literally in our 40s, maybe beyond just beginning to think about this for the first time in our lives. You know, I used to do this hand exercise with my daughters when they were like tweens, because I was like, you need to start to understand, are you giving touch? Are you taking touch, right? Like what's actually happening? Because otherwise there isn't any responsibility taken for what it is that you want and where it is that your pleasure derives from. And you take that into the bedroom where you start to have a kind of sex that is mostly performative and you're mostly externally focused as a woman on his pleasure and the evidence that you're doing a good job as a lover. And meanwhile, many would argue that your responsibility is to be inward. Your responsibility is to attune so completely to your own felt experience that you can express that even more fully and more fully and more fully, right? So how the hell can. Nobody's even home, right? If you're so externally focused and you're watching yourself, like, be this sexy woman, do the sexy things, you're in your trauma, right? Like you're in your. I'm a little girl and I've learned how to, you know, do it the right way. Am I doing it the right way? And you're not actually home in your body to feel what's happening. So it can start with like some very, very basic practices. You know, like I can pick up for a couple minutes a day an object, and I can touch this object and I can focus on the sensation that the object gives my hand rather than what the object feels like, okay? So it's using what I would say is the masculine gift of your attention to access your feminine pleasure and that kind of maturation. There's no way to shortcut the basics and to come back into this, like, very rudimentary, like almost like baby bird level of exploration. And that is the kind of thing that grows your system's capacity. So that when you are dedicated to bringing more pleasure into your life, more erotic energy, meaning more life force, you're not applying that same task and goal oriented kind of psychology to the experience of unlocking your body's like, innate pleasure, right? And when, and when you start to, you know, titrate into it in this way, like you'll eat a mango and it'll be like a quasi orgasmic experience, right? Like, and you'll decide to take a minute to actually focus on that, put your phone down and be with the inbuilt pleasure. Like the last thing I'll say is there's a really simple practice that I like to recommend that has to do with like peeing. Right. So like the good girl programming would say, like, I'll be right back. I'm gonna pee quick. Just give me a minute. So my biology is secondary to your needs. Okay. And the pattern disrupt of that, it's just epic. It's massive. It's everything to say, like, my biology, my needs that are basic physiologic needs at this point are actually my primary responsibility. And I'm going to regard them with honor. Okay. Respect. And I am going to go to the bathroom. The end of the sentence. Okay. Not with any sort of adverbs. And I get there and I have this opportunity to experience the inbuilt pleasure of literally peeing. Going from the discomfort, if there is of having to pee to the relief of having peed. And it's an arc that is built in there, right. So I can focus all of my attention for that minute or whatever on that physiologic experience. And I can start to see that when I align with my needs, I listen, I offer my body proper, you know, guardianship. I have inbuilt pleasure that gets unlocked here and there and everywhere.

Alyssa Nobriga (59:57)

Right.

Dr. Kelly Brogan (59:58)

And it doesn't have to do necessarily with G spots and clitoral stim. And it's just literally being in this body can be pleasurable. I can experience a breeze this way and it tastes this way. And my senses become not only a portal through which I can start to reclaim myself from that good girl programming, but also a portal through which I can begin to expand into probably what I know on some level is my birthright as a woman, which is just the pleasure of being in this body. Yeah. You know, in these simple ways.

Alyssa Nobriga (60:29)

I love that because it. It's something innate that you will do multiple times a day. So it becomes this pattern in a room rubbed to not only I can so many times I'm like, I'll be right back or I'll be real quick. It's like get to change it on the psychological, but also on the physiological. I love this conversation and I really want to acknowledge your courage for really speaking out about what you find helpful and true and really connecting the mind, body and being a stand for people to look inside and to take their own life and health back into their. Their own hands. I think it's really courageous and beautiful and I want to thank you for. For doing that work and sharing with us. Some of the gifts. I felt like there's so many places we could go to and I know my audience is going to want to stay connected. What is the work that you're currently up to right now and where do they stay connected?

Dr. Kelly Brogan (61:18)

Oh, thank you. It's really wonderful to have, you know, such an aligned conversation. And it also is very delightful to me, like how many women are coming to these similar conclusions that, you know, the hustle, the achievement, the success, the man, the money, you know, the beauty. It's bereft if you're not home to experience it, right. And if you can't hold it, you're just one of those lottery winners, right, who loses it in six months. And that there's. There's a maturation being asked of us that involves some confronting decisions and an exploration of our priorities, you know, and that's a whole other conversation. But a lot of what I've recognized is that my priorities are fundamentally and have always been in the safety realm, right? Always been that I want to feel safe in my body, I want to feel safe in my relationships and I want to really, especially as a reformed activist, like, I want to feel safe in the world. And so, you know, if I am the nexus and locus of control for that safety, it's a very different life experience than if the safety has to come from, you know, the medical system, from my partner, from the government or whatever it is, the systems that I'm feeling oppressed by. So it's. That ultimately is, you know, the nature of the reclamation. And yeah, so let's see, I have a system that of course, you know, based on everything in my own life experience that is designed to bring you from the physiologic to the relational levels of, of safety and is two six week programs. And my intention is really to create this initiatory experience for women to begin their next chapter, you know, to record Scratch their story of complaint and struggle and bitterness and resentment and frustration and to ease into a complaint free life. It ain't easy. It's truly a practice and involves readying the system for that level of unbothered experience and fulfillment. And so that's what I have after a decade in the game, packaged up and tested and have on offer. And the entry part of that is a program called Vital Beautiful.

Alyssa Nobriga (63:45)

And we'll put the links here below in the show notes. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your brilliance and your open, vulnerable heart. It's such a gift to drop in with you. Thank you so much for doing this.

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Alyssa Nobriga (64:41)

Wait to share with you and you.

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