Sarah (0:00)

Hi, I'm Sarah and welcome to youo Makesense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner and expert on trauma resolution, attachment parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense all parts always. So in this episode we're going to talk about the practical road to regulating our nervous system. I'm going to walk you through a step by step process on how we do that, what to expect along the way, and what you can expect as the result of doing this work. I just want to name that because so much of the time healing can feel so elusive. I don't know about you, but I've named this before. But I read so many books, I listened to so many podcasts like this one, but I just gained a lot of information. But, but I didn't actually have the tools that were necessary, the therapeutic tools backed by science that were necessary to change my experience. So my goal in this episode, but really in every episode of this podcast, is to really equip you with what you need in order to make the changes in your life that you're desiring. So when it comes to regulating our nervous system. I've said this before, I'll say it again, I've said it to you already, and we're not even that far into this podcast, but your nervous system really creates your whole experience, right? It creates your thoughts, behaviors, feelings, sense sensations, the perception of self, others in the world around you. It creates everything that makes up your human experience. And so the benefits of regulating our nervous system are quite profound because of that. It is what allows us to. I'm just going to name a few of the things, just rattle them off, but there we could go on and on, and that could be just a whole episode. It is what allows us to build our capacity when we have regulation in our nervous system, to navigate stressful experiences. So it means that we have greater capacity in our stre response. The result of that is I can navigate challenges in life and instead of becoming overwhelmed by them, I can maintain consistent regulation through them. Doesn't mean they'll be pleasant, but I'm. They're navigable for me and that makes life a whole heck of a lot easier. Other benefits of regulating your nervous system are health in your body, because research shows that your nervous system is directly correlated to health in your body. When we're dysregulated, our nervous system or our organ systems become quite taxed. And as a result of that, we can, we can experience chronic illness. So regulating your nervous system is literally like medicine for your body. As somebody who is chronically ill most a lot of my life, I spent tens of thousands of dollars trying everything under the moon that you could possibly imagine. And of course there's benefit to a lot of those things. But without having regulation in my nervous system, they did not actually give me the changes that I was looking for. Regulating our nervous system is how our sleep gets better. This is how you actually step into your calling and your purpose and get unstuck in your life. You cannot your way towards that if you're stuck. The only way to that is through showing your nervous system that the things you desire is safe, are safe. So it allows you to get unstuck in your life. It allows you to experience greater abundance. Because what's not talked about enough is that the good things that we desire in life have activation to them. So they're not going to feel good at first. The more you regulate your nervous system, the more you build your capacity to receive greater abundance financially, emotionally, and so on and so forth. It's what allows you to have ease in your relationship. So if you struggle in relationships, the same patterns over and over again. This work helps to facilitate that becoming better in your life. It is what allows you to know what your truth is, to know like you know, like you know. It's a powerful thing to know our truth. And it's what allows us to make choices in our lives that are actually guided by our highest truth, rather than choices that are based in survival. A lot of us are choosing things that are not actually for our highest good. We're choosing them because we want to feel safe. So we stay in relationships or jobs or things that might not actually be for us, but we are trying to look for safety. Or we leave jobs or relationships that are for us, but we leave them because our system is saying that's not safe. So the more we regulate, the more overall what this means is you live the life that you are here to live that only you can live. It literally has the power and will unlock the life that is waiting for you. And so I want to talk about the process on how we do this. And by the way, again, I can name as a person who was highly dysregulated for decades, that the work that I'm. That I do professionally, the work that I'm going to about to talk about now, is the only thing that changed that. And that's what research shows too. So each of us have, which we talked about previously, something called a vagal tone. And that simply means it's a shaping, current shaping of your nervous system. So some of us have, think of it like, kind of like a muscle. So some of us have nervous systems that are shaped in our sympathetic nervous system, which means you experience a lot of anxiety, worry, frustration, fear, terror, rage, racing thoughts, go, go, go all the time. Others of you have a shaping that's shaped to your dorsal vagal complex. And so for you, you're really used to having low energy feeling, apathy or malaise, hopelessness, disconnection. You feel like you can't, everything's so hard. Some of you have a shaping of your nervous system that's in the state of freeze, which is equal parts dorsal and sympathetic. So I have to, but I can't. I have to, but I can't. I have to, but I can't all the time. But you feel really trapped. And others of us, which we're looking for, have a shaping of our nervous system that's shaped to regulation or ventral. And that means the predominant amount in your life. You feel really good and at peace and at ease. And when challenges happen, you can navigate them and so on and so forth. What I want to also name is you can have a different shaping of your nervous system based on the area of life. So some of us might feel really sympathetically toned in terms of the shape in relationships. I get really anxious and I make sure you don't go away. But then when it comes to my purpose, I'm really avoidant. So that means that I'm sympathetic in relationships. I'm dorsal when it comes to purpose or making money or whatever it might be. So just know that there might be a predominant state across the board or there might be different states that, that you resource based on where you are in your nervous system. And what I wanna name is the reshaping process is very practical. This is not some mystery thing that only happens for some people if they wish really hard and doesn't happen for others. It happens very similarly to working out, like going to the gym. If I was to consistently go to the gym and also nourish my body with foods that are healthy for me. If I consistently went to the gym, what would happen? My muscles would become strong. Every time that I lifted weights, the muscle fibers actually tear a little bit and then they grow back stronger. And if I consistently did that, you would notice a difference in the shape of my body and the muscles. I would become a stronger person with time. And you wouldn't think, well, maybe that's only going to happen for some people and not for others. No, it would happen for all of us. Now, certainly our bodies will look different, but the overall strength would be something that we could guarantee. The same goes for your nervous system. And when it comes to working out, how does this happen? Right. Does it happen because you go to the gym once every two months and then you suddenly are a bodybuilder? No. You would have to consistently work out and also quite aggressively if that was your goal. You'd have to do it consistently. And no one would say to me if I said, oh, my gosh. Well, I went to the gym twice this month and I did deadlifts, and I just don't know why my legs and butt aren't stronger. What's going on? Why you would say, well, I think you have to do deadlifts and other exercises more than twice a month in order for that to change. The same is true for our nervous system. And what again, I've worked with so many people. Our general inclination is we want tools when we're highly dysregulated. So we want something that's going to change our experience when we're dysregulated. But what we don't understand is the way that we actually lessen those big moments of dysregulation and make them different is by consistently regulating when you're not so dysregulated. What we are doing, when we are doing what are called consistent neural exercises, it's like a rep at the gym, meaning I am doing something that is going to support my nervous system, to see I'm safe when it doesn't think I'm safe. That's what a neural exercise is. And we're going to talk in a moment about creating resources for that. But that's what a neural exercise is. And if you do enough of those, what begins to happen is your nervous system reshapes. And the result of that is you go from somebody who's anxious all the time to not very anxious anymore. You go from someone who's depressed or hopeless to not feeling depressed and hopeless anymore. And I've worked with people who have gone from. And I can share this because they've shared this publicly in testimonials after doing some of my programs. But going from things like needing a Xanax to just leave the house, to not needing it at all, being totally bedridden and chronically ill, to having health in their body and being back to work. People have gone. Gone from not being able to actually lean into their relationship and say yes to it, to literally. This actually happened to a client of mine. I reached out to her about another, sharing more about her experience in the programs because she previously had. And then she said we could share this, but publicly shared that she was not only able to fully lean into her relationship, but was able to actually have a child, which is the thing she always wanted and couldn't seem to step towards. This is the kind of stuff that happens when we embody this work. People that have gone from not being able to write their book, their memoir, to writing it. And I could go on and on and on, but that's the result of what happens when we bring regulation to our nervous system and we do that one neural exercise at a time. So before I go to the process of what I want you to do and what to expect as you're doing these neural exercises is I just want to talk about the difference between what a regulating resource is and what a coping strategy is. Now, a regulating resource, those are the things we're going to do when we're doing a neural exercise or like the rep at the gym. A regulating resource is anything that actually gets rid of, or what's called, discharges the activation in our body. So it actually makes us feel different when we do it. A coping strategy is anything that covers up the dysregulation. So I've given this visual before, but imagine I'm making a fist right now. So make a fist and imagine that that's all the dysregulation or activation in your body. A coping strategy is anything that covers it up. So take the other hand and cover up your fist like a blanket. It numbs you or disconnects you from the activation. And we all have coping strategies. Why do we have them? Well, because nobody taught us when we were young what to do with the dysregulation. We were experiencing all that activation. So if you didn't know what to do with the activation, it's a real adaptive, smart thing to find something to cover it up. Right. Instead of. The other option would be to be perpetually with that activation, which would just overwhelm your system. And so again, coping strategies don't get rid of the dysregulation, they cover it up. And here are just a few that I can name. I've used so many coping strategies, we'd have to do a whole episode on my coping strategies in my life. But anything like drinking, for example, that's a socially acceptable coping strategy. There's of course nothing wrong with having a glass or two of wine and with friends and connecting. But we have a society that created something called happy hour, which essentially is a coping strategy. Right. For $6 after a stressful day, you can do something to cover up your dysregulation. That's what it's doing. It's covering it up. We can use exercise to cover it up. So I over exercise to numb. We can use food. I binge food to numb. Or I restrict food to control all coping strategy. Shopping to numb. Gambling to numb. Sex to numb. Hair pulling to numb. Cutting to numb. Drugs to numb. Watching television to numb. Incessantly buying your pet toys to numb. Not that I've ever done that before. What else can we do to numb? There's so many things. Those are just to name a few. Scrolling Instagram to numb. Now, I want to say that all of the things I named aren't necessarily coping strategies, right? Like you can be really engaged when you're watching a television show. I was going to say television program. I did that the other night with my partner and it was like, wow, I'm really old. I'm calling it a television program. That's something my grandmother did. Anyway, television show, you can watch that in an engaged way, right? I'm really present to it. You can also eat food, of course, in a present way, or have a glass of wine or whatever. All those things can be. Of course, sexual intimacy can be highly connected and regulating. But what we want to look at is am I doing this to be more present or am I doing this to disconnect? Write that down. Not if you're driving, but if I'm. Am I doing this to be more present or am I doing this to disconnect? And if I'm doing it to disconnect, it's a coping strategy. Now, the thing about coping strategies is we never, ever want to pull a coping strategy away. Because guess what you're doing if you do that? You're getting rid of that cloak that's over the fist, right? That, that other hand that's covering the fist. You're getting rid of that cloak and then you're going to be left with all this activation, which is going to be too much for you. So what's going to occur? You're just going to find another coping strategy to cover it up. I used to binge, binge eat, and again, I did all the things that I have already named so far. Gambling wasn't one, but Everything else that I named has been. So I would binge eat. And I usually did this at night because nighttime, and this is true for a lot of people, is a time we have to be with ourselves more. We're not distracted. And so this is a prime time for coping strategies for most people in the world. And so what I did was, instead of being with the pain and the loneliness and all the trauma from my childhood, I would use food to help numb it. And it felt very out of control. Like, I would just keep eating, and I would tell myself not to, and then I couldn't help but get up and get more food. And then I would feel horrible, and then I would shame myself and be so unkind. And then I would, the next morning say, well, you're not going to eat. I'm going to starve myself as a punishment to this. And. And then the next night I would do the same thing. It was a vicious cycle of a coping strategy. Now, if I just pulled away food, something else was going to have to come into its place because it was too much for me to be with all of that activation. So instead of pulling a coping strategy away, here's what we want to do. When we notice that we are going to use a coping strategy. And most of us have, like, have a habituated practice of using them. Like, there's times of day that we use them. When we notice that what we want to do is we want to pause and we first want to use a regulating tool. So, and we're going to talk about regulating tools in just a second. So we engage in something that actually addresses the dysregulation, a regulating resource. What that does is it discharges or gets the dysregulation, which is just energy, out of your body. It literally causes it to leave your body forever. And the result of that is we no longer need things to cope. So the process here is, before going to use a coping strategy, you want to pause and you want to do something that's regulating. For a simple example, instead of me going to just, you know, have the food I was about to eat, maybe I call a friend, a loved one who I feel really close to, or maybe I go for a walk, and then I don't pull away the food. I let myself have it. And the more that I do this, though, practice this, I'm going to consistently discharge the energy that's underneath the coping strategy till eventually getting to the point where I no longer need the thing to cope. And now it's not a struggle to not use the thing. I simply don't need it because I've actually addressed the underlying issue, which is the dysregulation. Now, let's talk about creating this toolbox. I call it a regulating toolbox. But what are regulating resources? Now, we've previously talked about it a little bit in another episode, but regulating resources are anything that supports you to feel more present here and good. In my work, I provide somatic therapeutic regulating resources. I have a program called Nervous System Essentials. You can find that in the show notes at the bottom of the episode. That's a beautiful way to deepen the work that we're doing here. And also gives you tangible tools and resource therapeutic tools that you can begin using right away to regulate your nervous system. The thing is, we also all have tools in our own lives, meaning things that support you to feel more present here and good. The thing is, most of us are consistently engaging in those things. And the reason is because when we're dysregulated, our nervous system doesn't think we're safe. Right. That's the 101 of dysregulation. Your nervous system doesn't think you're safe. So if your nervous system thinks that you're running from a lion, do you think that it would think it was a good idea for you to take salsa lessons? Probably not. It's going to say, why would I go dancing when I'm trying to evade a threat? Right. Not a smart move. Why would I cook a wonderful dinner with my loved ones if I feel like I'm in imminent danger? Why would I go for a walk? So your nervous system is actually going to avoid regulating resources at first, meaning it's not going to feel easy to follow through on another reason why it's not going to feel easy at first. And I just want to prepare you for this. And doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Is because we're creating new neural pathways. And these are. Think of it like highway systems in your brain. And creating a new neural pathway or a habit is literally like bushwhacking through a jungle with a butter knife. It's not like you have machinery that's helping you here. So your system is. You really have to put some effort in in order to create that path. This is a normal part of the process. And I'm gonna talk in a moment about some tools, some things you can do, an action plan that's gonna make it more successful for you to follow through. But all of this is to say if you find like, yeah, it's really hard for me to consistently follow through on the regulating. This is why. So when we create a regulating toolbox, what I want you to do is literally write down the things that support you feel more present here and good. Who are the people that you can be around or talk to that make you feel more present here and good? What are the hobbies that make you feel that being in nature, being with animals, engaging in creativity, how can you move your body that makes you feel more present here and good. And of course, a number of other things. I want you to also add in things that you've never done but always wanted to try, like things you see other people doing and you thought, oh, that would be nice to do. But I don't do that. Or my friend is always playing music at their house. It's really nice. I never maybe playing music at your house. Then if you say that's really nice, it's probably a regulating resource for you. Now, if you're thinking, I don't need to write it down, I know the things that make me feel good, you need to write it down. And the reason I'm saying that is because we're creating new neural pathways, as I mentioned. And so your system is not going to be oriented towards doing this. And it's not going to be oftentimes even remember to do this unless we have a real action plan around it. So creating that toolbox is extremely important. The next thing that we want to do is I want you to set a certain number of reminders to go off in your phone. Or if you're like me and you like post it notes, I have so many around my house. You could put post it notes around your house. And when the alarm goes off again, this could be 2 alarms, 5 alarms, 20 alarms. If you want to be. If you really want to go for it, make sure it's, by the way, a sound that's nice for your system, not a sound that's dysregulating. And when the alarm goes off, your job is to ask yourself, where am I in my nervous system? Go listen to the previous episodes where we talked about the different states in your nervous system. But am I in my sympathetic nervous system? Am I in my dorsal vagal complex? Am I in my state of freeze? Those are the three states of dysregulation. Or you can just ask yourself, am I regulated or dysregulated? Then what we want to do after you ask yourself that is to engage in a regulating tool. So anything in your Toolbox that registers as good for you. I want you to go down do after you do that. Your job is to rest and notice. Is anything different really, really important? The rest. And one of my mentors says the rest and notice process is just as important as the regulating. One more thing that I just want to say about the regulating before I go to the rest and notice process. Is this that what we want to do before we go to engage in the regulating tool? When I said, ask yourself, are you regulated or dysregulated? Or are you in sympathetic dorsal freeze? We want to see if we can come into our embodied experience in a tolerable, titrated way. So when we experience trauma, we become disembodied. Most people are disembodied. They're not connected fully to their embodied experience because their bodies weren't a safe place to be. Because I don't know what to do with all that activation. So part of our healing is we have to come back into our body. Our body is the only is the place where our aliveness is. And it's also the place where the dysregulation is. So we're building our capacity to be with the dysregulation so we can discharge it or get it out. So what I want you to do is just sit for a moment when the alarm goes off and ask yourself, what am I noticing in my body? What sensations are here? What feelings are here? Is there a thought that's present? If the thought could have a color or a shape, what would that be? If there could be a shape to the dysregulation, what would it be? It might be like, oh, I feel there's like a heavy stone in my chest. You can even ask yourself, if that heavy stone could talk, what would it say? All of the prompts that I just gave you are ways to come into your body a little bit. So we want to start small. Whatever feels tolerable. And then once you notice, like, that's enough. I feel like I'm noticing a lot of activation. I don't really like that. Then it's time to discharge it. Or it's like you're dumping it out of your body. And the way that we discharge or dump it out of our body is through the regulating resources I named. So we first attune with the experience name. What it is, is what's going on. What state am I in? Then we regulate, use a regulating resource. And then after that is the rest and notice. Rest and notice what's going on. What's different? And here's the thing about regulating. If you want to live the life you are here to live, if you want a regulated nervous system where you feel good most of the time, the way to it is not just that overnight you feel that the way to it is through these consistent neural exercises or reps at the gym. Gym. And what we have to notice when we're doing these reps at the gym are subtle changes. That is what we're looking for. I want you to be an investigator, an expert in noticing subtle changes. Now, some of the overarching things that you're going to be a clue that you came closer to regulation are things like you took a deeper reflexive breath. You notice just like I just did. You notice that you feel more grounded in your body. Body. You notice that things like yawning, burping, even passing gas are all clues of regulation. That's because your GI tract in your stomach is turning back on. I know that might sound super weird, like fart. Has farting have to do with regulating your nervous system a lot? Because your GI tract is turning on. So if you notice that that is a really good sign. And you might be thinking, what kind of podcast am I listening to right now? Could this really be true? This is all very true. True. Other things you might notice is an overall better sense of the room you're in. So I'm actually present in here to what's around me. I can see the room and everything that's here. If you're in your sympathetic nervous system. So that's where there's too much energy. A clue that you're coming towards regulation is there's less energy. It's not overwhel as overwhelming. If you're in your state of shutdown, that dorsal vagal complex, what you're going to look for is more energy. So instead of feeling like a bear in hibernation, I feel a little bit more present in here, more energized. And if you're in your state of fresh freeze, that's the tonic immobility. So sympathetic and dorsal together. What you're going to look for is that I'm dropping some of that dorsal energy. And I don't feel quite as stuck. I don't feel quite as immobilized. I can move more. More of that sympathetic energy present. And we aren't looking for going from being anxious to feeling like I'm relaxed on a beach in Fiji. We're looking for literally something like, okay, I just shook my body. I just did Some shaking. Because shaking is a very regulating resource. Your animals do it. If you have a dog, you've seen your dog. My Truman does this all the time. I give him a bath. He thinks he's gonna die. He goes into freeze. He's like, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna die. He's 13 and still thinks that's gonna happen. And then I put him down on the ground and he does this running jag where he sprints around the house and he shakes. And what he's doing is he's saying, I know how to run a program on regulating your nervous system. I will do it right now for you. But truly, animals all know how to do do this. And we're animals, and this is coming back into this innate knowingness. So shaking, let's say you do that and you notice. Okay, I still feel anxious, but the energy is 10% less in my body. Amazing. You just completed a neural exercise. Complete, done. And if you add up enough of these, you will literally reshape your nervous system. This is how you get to the life that you're desiring. I know, my friend. It doesn't sound glamorous. I know maybe sometimes we're hoping there's some kinds of magic pill, but this is the magic pill, and it's practical and tangible. And how much better than that is that? Than something that's elusive and feels like it happens for one in a million and doesn't happen for me? This happens to everybody who embodies this work, one tolerable step at a time. When you do this, that's what's going to occur for you. Something that I say a lot in the programs that I run is that it's so important that we not only befriend our nervous system, but befriend ourselves. And befriending our nervous system essentially means really seeing it for what it is. Which is it is your friend. It's your closest friend. It's protected you your entire life. And the more that we can get on board with it and be a cheerleader for our nervous system, the faster the healing process goes. So a lot of times I'll say, when in doubt, think about how I would talk to you when you're regulating. That's how I want you to see if you can talk to yourself. A lot of times what we do is we talk to ourselves. We'll talk about this in a later episode. The way that we were spoken to. So I regulate. And then I tell myself, eh, nothing changes. I'm still anxious. I suck. It's not gonna happen for me. Nothing changes. That's what we can generally do. When we do that, we prolong the process and make it go a lot slower. And think about this. Imagine this isn't going to happen, but imagine that I was in a car accident, and I was also suddenly duplicated. There's two of me. I know this might seem strange. Just go with me for a. And I lost my ability to walk. And you see two of me, same experience. I'm in a hospital room, unable to walk, and the doctors are saying, we're not sure if she's gonna be able to walk again. So in one of the rooms, I am in both rooms, I'm working really hard in physical therapy every day, doing all the things. And in one of the rooms, you're in there, and you are encouraging me. And when I finally move my big toe, it brings you to tears because you know how much effort it took to make that happen. And you might say to me, if you can move one toe, you're gonn able to move all your toes. And I believe wholly and completely that you're going to be able to take a step. And not only are you going to be able to take a step, but you're going to be able to walk without support, and then you're going to be able to run again, and you're going to be able to be exactly who you were. If that was happening in one room, can you see how that would probably make my process go by faster? Because I'm having that positive reinforcement and that reinforcement that's also just based in truth. Truth. Now imagine there's another hospital room that I'm in, and the person in there, not you, because you wouldn't speak to me this way. The person in there is saying, wow, I move my toe, and they say, wow, that's nothing. You're a loser. It's never going to happen for you. You're never going to walk again. People are running marathons. Look at you. You can't even move your toe. Of course, if I was in that hospital room, I would not walk as fast. Hands down, of course I wouldn't, because I'm not having that positive reinforcement which creates more regulation. So if you want this work to go, you must. You must. You must begin speaking to yourself in your nervous system exactly the way I described the way I would to you and the way, of course I do with everybody that I'm. That I'm working with. And I can tell you that if you do this, these subtle changes that aren't subtle at all add up to a life predominantly lived in regulation. That is what happened to me as somebody who was predominantly dysregulated. I spent so much of my life, I took an SSRI for a really long time because I needed to. I didn't have all of these tools and for some of you, you might not have had these tools. So I want us to be really kind to ourselves about that. That might be our only option at some points in our lives and for so many reasons, I just thought it wasn't able to, wasn't going to change. And it's through this work that I am able to live a life predominantly anchored in regulation. There's nothing special about my nervous system. It's just like yours. And I already shared some wor. Previous folks in my programs have reported in not very long periods of time. By the way, the woman who I told you who used to take in Xanax to leave her house every day to not needing it in three months, that was the case for her. And that's profound. A profound, profound shift. The same with people stepping into their purpose, not feeling depressed anymore, and so many other things. So it's the consistency that gets you there. Last thing I just want to name is that the process of regulating our nervous system is one of expand and contract. So if you can see, if you can't see me on video, I'm putting my hands in front of me and every time they're they're butted together. So that's like being in dysregulation. Your nervous system is protecting you. When you have a moment of regulation, it's as if an opening occurs between the hands. Now that opening allows things to come towards me and allows me to go towards things. My nervous system saying, maybe you're safe, but I'm not sure how safe you are because I have a lot of data points in the receptacle, receptacle of past information where you weren't safe. So then it contracts. So we regulate, we feel better for a second and then we don't feel good again. And then the next time you regulate because that experience, the prior one, got stored in your database as your nervous system saying, maybe we are safe. The expansion becomes bigger and the contraction becomes smaller. So now I feel regulated for a little longer period of time. Oh, and then I have that racing thought again. I'm dysregulated. Contract. And then we expand and contract and expand and contract and expand and contract until still were predominantly living in regulation. So that's a part of the process. If you notice a contraction after expanding, I don't want you to get discouraged. That's how it looks. It would be very weird, right? If you've had a life where it wasn't safe to be regulated in the past, and then you regulate once and your nervous system says, okay, I think you're safe, that wouldn't be really adaptive, right? It needs data, it needs evidence. And the more you do do this, the longer the expansions become, the shorter the contractions become, the more you step into the life that is here for you. And you can do this one tolerable step at a time. We all need support on our healing journeys, so if you think I might be the right practitioner for you, I'd invite you to get on the waitlist for one of my upcoming programs. All waitlisters get access to limited time, reduced pricing before the course or program opens. Link in the Show Notes to learn more so now I'm going to answer some questions as they relate to this episode. Just a reminder, if you ever want to submit a question, you can do that in the Show Notes below. You can click on the link to do that. You can also find find a link in my Instagram or send a DM to my team. Or you could even email mediarabaldencoaching.com to do that. And the reason why I say this almost every episode, but the reason why I do this question answer part is because it's so important to see what this work looks like in the lived experience. And I care deeply about is you seeing that you're not the only one. Because so many of us feel like we're the only one experiencing what we're experiencing. And the truth is there's so much commonality in the human experience. So I think you're going to find that with these three questions that we have today too.