Healing Doesn’t Respond to Logic

Opening and Guest Introduction 0:00

The truth though, that's certainly a good place to start is how do you help someone identify with the truth? Because often is we try to avoid trauma and walk around it or avoid it as best as possible. I think that you have to walk through it and sometimes you have to walk through the fire, but I'm eager to hear kind of step one is awareness. What is step two? Yeah. So I think a lot of people, they are either, let me push that away. Let me separate myself from truth or let me hold onto it so tightly that I'm OCD and I have an anxious attachment disorder and like they're either in between or they're either extremes.

And really in a lot of this work, it's about bringing people to the middle. bringing them to the unknown, bringing them to the intangible, to the liminal space of like, can we just be in the in-between? And I think that part of what's interesting about this work and the way that you're asking these questions is spurring on a way that I have not thought about this before. Welcome to the TBD Fit podcast on Dr. Talks. I'm your host, Daniel Keeley, and I will be guiding you through this wellness journey in terms of optimizing health and longevity, where we unpack the science, the do's, the don'ts, and everything in between.

Come join us. Look forward to seeing you inside. I'm your host, Daniel Keeley. I'm a functional medicine practitioner. And my goal is simple, to find out who's doing best in their category and bring that conversation to light. Today's conversation is one we're super, super excited about. We're joined with Amanda Curry, a trauma-informed doctor of physical therapy, certified oncology specialist, And training camp for the sole master facilitator. She's also a breath work facilitator, which I've dived quite deep into a couple other podcasts because breath is so critical and proper breath even more so.

And inner child and re-parenting coach who brings a unique and deeply compassionate perspective. to healing and transformation. She has a fierce commitment to supporting those who feel like they're quote unquote too much or individuals who are just tired of living in shame and denial of their true essence. So she spent nearly two decades walking the path of the high achieving perfectionist. I can very much understand that very much resonates. Sound familiar? Checking all the boxes of success while silently wondering there's probably more.

And that question has led her away from traditional therapy and to self-help and more profound world of somatic healing, which we'll dive into. Through that process, she's not only healed herself, but also transformed how she connects with her husband of 16 years, her two children, which I'm super eager to learn more about since I got three lovely little rugrats at home, which is a completely a blessing. And the way she shows up for the pediatric cancer patients. she once cared for as a clinician.

Now Amanda guides women, especially moms, to release deep limiting beliefs, reconnect with the nervous system and step into their full authentic selves through somatic breath work and inner child integration practices. How are you? So I love starting each conversation with getting to know the guests a little bit better and helping our community understand who you are, Yeah. So I mean, that mouthful explains a lot of it. The majority of my story comes from my own inner strife while also wearing the wonderful mask of everything's okay, you know, nothing to see here.

So I was one that really just struggled with a lot of inner criticalness. Now what I know to be is, you know, dysregulation, a lot of just rigid type A you know, pain in the ass type, this has to be a certain way for me to be happy. And anything that deviates from that is not okay. And I, as a young mom, had no idea anything about, I mean, I knew about postpartum depression and anxiety, but I didn't necessarily know about any sort of hormonal fluctuations. I just didn't know how to support myself.

And so that's why these last three to four years have been more about supporting overwhelmed moms. But actually in the last six months, it is definitely, I've had a wave of men come through and I'm supporting four right now. So this work is for everyone. But really for me, it was born out of my own dysfunction and just crazy. And of one, we each have a story that we're looking to fix and often we're trying to overreach to to figure out what is the solution, right? And then we're pulled in several different ways.

Let's probably define what somatic work is so people can understand the power of somatic healing.

Somatic Healing and the Body-Mind-Spirit Connection 4:30

Yeah. So I'm actually in a year-long embodiment program with a group out of Australia. And it's really funny because the way that they articulate and discern somatic work is one that I don't typically use because people will hear it and they'll be like, their head will just fall off. They'll be like, I don't even understand how you put all of those words together. And so I will just continue to stick with how I describe it and how I've described it up until this point that somatic work deals with the soma, which is your body.

But in the way that I was taught it from a very like gen pop, not distilled down in a way that's just like what you maybe see or feel on Instagram, but something that meets you in the middle from this like very big worldly view that was just shared with me this week and distilled down is that your soma, your body has a physical body, an emotional body. a spiritual aspect to it. And so you get to not only take this dome piece that you've used probably your entire life to try to figure things out and force and manipulate things, you get to take the gifts of that while also starting to introduce yourself to your physical soma, like the body aspect of your beingness.

And then with that, you know, there's a little bit of like a trifecta there of also entering into the equation, your spirit body. And that's something that it doesn't matter if you're in the deep south, like, well, I'm not in the deep south, I'm from the deep south, but you're in the Bible belt, or you subscribe to anything else, everyone typically believes in some sort of higher power. And it allows that to come into the equation too. So it's not just healing from the sense of my mind, not just for my body, not just from a religious spiritual realm.

It's taking it all into account, putting it all together and allowing that to be really the thing that is lasting and transformational. Let's unpack that for a moment here because the spiritual self I think is often either A, misunderstood or B, neglected, right? In terms of medical practices like myself as a practitioner, my colleagues. We're almost never referencing the spirit or the soul. And I often say in modern medicine, probably the biggest category I find overlooked is mental health. Obviously that's a whole category in itself now and we refer out for specialization.

But really is mental health is an extension of every other biological system impacting cognition, thoughts, emotion. Now when looking at the spirit or the spiritual side, how do you define that work on that change? Yeah. So it's, it's very interesting in the fact that I may on a connection call or in passing talk about these three components of somatic work, but it's not until my clients We don't necessarily dive right into that unless it's super present in their life and they're one that's connected to source, spirit, they're super religious, whatever it is.

A lot of times, like, I meet people where they're at. So we may talk about more of the two aspects of the mind and the body in the somatic practice. But I think that they start to notice what they notice and that there's something else in the room. There's this liminal space, this omniscient energy that's present. And I think that it gets their wheels going before I even have to say anything. I'm one that has to typically come to my own conclusions. And whether it's been said to me seven times, once I hear it and know it to be true, then it will land.

And I tend to treat clients in that way or just offer really subtle reflections. Because again, when we're dealing with the body, that also opens up a whole array of things that people have not experienced, whether it's emotions or sensations that are. part of that emotion or like energetic things that are shifting. And I think that just gives this natural segue into how does spirit play a part of that? Is spirit all within that? Specific to the modality that I use for healing, there is an element of that also being able to be super present.

But again, like we get to crawl before we walk, we get to walk before we run. So it's a really stair-stepping approach, depending on where people are coming in to this work. So how I often will equate it is a frequency that we emit and it's such an energy that we attract. And I've very much talked to Deepak Chopra's work where everything is energy and everything is connected, everything in here. So someone's breath, not only adjacent, but in India or elsewhere, or the energy that reverberates off of a tree impacts our health and our outcomes because of the ripple effect.

And as such, if we're affecting a lever outside of ourselves, it still will impact our children and even generations of children. And we see that with stress and trauma and doing work on the fascia. So I'm curious how maybe, because when I mentioned your whole bio as a DPT, I presume that you're probably working on the fascia at some point or not. Actually, no. Like in the breathwork sessions that I do, there is some body-based support that can happen, but for the most part, no, this is very like subsegmented out.

Again, everything that you just shared about frequency and all of that, absolutely subscribe to. And what I find is that like that's what we're going towards, but so many people are overwhelmed or in a space resistant to that truth because they have associations to other things or they have their own self-limiting beliefs around that because that takes a lot of ownership. My frequency affects other people. What? Like that? No. So I love that people are that forward about the truth of what's there.

And I find that when people start to experience it, you get to layer in that offering and they're like, I mean, yeah, yeah, actually, yeah, that makes sense, right? So I 100% agree with what you're saying and the work that I'm doing is not necessarily what you would say where I am dealing with their frequencies on a body-based level. I am holding them in that space and they are emitting that frequency, shifting that frequency, but it is not from a space of me manipulating fascia. Although that is, well, I think there is a lot of power to touch touch to me is very, very therapeutic, but that's not something we, we ever neglect.

I mean, we see people, patients here, all ages, it's all the way to seniors for rehabilitation and especially with our athletes. And we do a lot of fascial work because we know now that it acts on the muscle. it doesn't just encase the muscle, it can manipulate and move muscle. And so when there's fascial adhesions or restrictions, because there is trauma, now we're having to take things one layer deeper. And we have people on our table that start bawling, crying, that have releases. So I want to get that in, but looking in terms of truth and doubt and belief, let's go there for a second, because I say this all the time is that most of our patients that come to us, are stuck because they've adopted a diagnosis with their identity and then their self-sabotage in their choices.

And so that further exacerbates these self-limiting beliefs. And something we'll want to underscore with children is we are as powerful as our own doubts. And whatever we doubt, we tend to then believe. But to me is this is why Adidas slogan is so powerful, impossible is nothing. So how are you talking to kids about that or even adults about that in terms of doubt, but then also finding their truth, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, and I, the work that I do, I mean, I was in a pediatric oncology hospital for eight years.

And so there was an element of. being able to meet them in a new way once I had this work under my belt. Now it is strictly adults, 18, 19 and older, but they, with the inner child work, they are children of themselves. They are coming just as that child in the background, you can hear. kind of kicking and screaming, this is what I need to do, but like, this is not at all what I want to do, what feels comfortable, you know, and fully okay to be resistant in that. And so, yeah, it is something that I think that a lot of people do not even have the awareness of how deeply enmeshed they are in their own self doubts and fears.

And that is the first stage of the five stages of healing is awareness. And a lot of that awareness is not just, this is the way that I am, but it is looking at specifically like their mother and father learning and how that has informed where these limited beliefs come from, where these doubts come from. And again, like this frequency that they have taken on zero to seven and beyond that imprinted on them this very hardwired hard drive of This is not safe. I can't do this. If I do this, this will happen.

Blah, blah, blah. I mean, we could go on and on about that. But yeah, it's really them coming to their own awarenesses and then being able to move into the somatic acceptance. I think acceptance is definitely a key term here because Like I said, we now see that trauma can be transgenerational. And so how that affects microbiome, which affects every other biological system to the body.

Truth, Trauma, and the Five Stages of Healing 14:00

That's been my passion for the last decade, but how you can reverse unpack that I think is certainly very, very tricky. Is there a way for someone to follow a rubric to do that? Like, do you have a blueprint or a guidebook that will be to that? Or does someone have to see a therapist? Because in our day and age, I didn't realize that all my friends have therapists. And I understand why now because we are constantly under stress, whether it's from toxins or whether it's from our finances or whether it's from our societal that dictates that we got to constantly press go and the goalpost keeps moving or that we're never good enough or this perfectionist mentality, which then develops these OCD behaviors.

And now we're in this vicious cycle of. eventually just getting burned out where our health suffers and then we have no idea where our spirit falls into any of this. So how does, what are the practical tips? Like where does someone start? Yeah. And I think it's, it's, it's very Western of us to be like, what are the steps? Tell me, tell me what to do. You know what I mean? And I think that the first most accessible thing is like you said, is therapy is just getting it up and out in the form of cognitive like dumping, but like just talking it out.

And for me, like I was 15 years on off of talk therapy and it did, it served me in a lot of ways to a certain point. And so the five stages of healing that I use now in this inner child somatic reparenting is one that it does have a rhythm to it. It does have steps to it, but it's one that like from one day to the next, you may only get to step two because this may be like your mothership of what you know your hallmark limiting belief that you are operating from 95% of the time or maybe something that we're kind of like taking off the top that is easier for you to move through and to repair it and feel and be with and so most often when people ask me that question even if it's like prospective clients it's about can we get you to be more aware of the patterns and the limiting beliefs that are running?

And can you connect with your body in a way that you feel safe, i.e. you're not intellectualizing, you're not minimizing, you're not dissociating, you're not stuffing all of the energetic charge that is housed within those limiting beliefs? Because a lot of times people either don't want to look underneath or they're obsessed with looking underneath, but they have not fully felt what it is to hold the charge of, I don't trust people, right? Like, and so that's where we get to go first before we even go to like the root experience where that happened or being with your inner child or re-parenting your inner child or integrating it.

It's about like, can you even drop from this into here? Being present certainly I think is step one. I know you said awareness. I say this all the time in terms of we all have our biases. Right. And even in my patient population, I have a bias of what works as an example. I think the biggest component is understanding that bias, acknowledging that bias, being open to more. Cause I always equate it as we're a horse with blinders. We often can't see the periphery, right? We see what's in front of us really well, but we don't, we don't always see.

how our biases sometimes impact our decisions and we don't know what we don't know. And often those that are most foolish upon us always have the answers. I just have more questions. So when you said the truth though, that's certainly a good place to start is. How do you help someone identify with the truth? Because often is we try to avoid trauma and walk around it or avoid it as best as possible. I think that you have to walk through it and sometimes you have to walk through the fire, but I'm eager to hear kind of step one is awareness.

What is step two? And does that kind of uncover your trauma or truth? Yeah. So I think a lot of people, they are either, let me push that away. Let me separate myself from truth or let me hold onto it so tightly that I'm OCD and I have an anxious attachment disorder and like they're either in between or they're either extremes. And really in a lot of this work, it's about bringing people to the middle, bringing them to the unknown. bringing them to the intangible and to the liminal space of like, can we just be in the in-between?

And I think that part of what's interesting about this work and the way that you're asking these questions is spurring on a way that I have not thought about this before. So your audience is going to get something that I've not ever shared before in this way. And that is this, that people will come and say, I've had issues with communicating with my partner. Or maybe it's specific like, I was sexually abused. Or it was, I was in an emotionally abusive relationship when I was in high school or whatever.

And it's really not about those X's and O's, those data points. Really what the key is, is what is the limiting belief behind that? Like what are the beliefs that created you to come into that situation? Now again, respectfully speaking, those that are abused, there's not necessarily always this, you did this to yourself. So this is not victim blaming at all. But in the intake form that all of my clients get, I basically will go through that and read back all of the limiting beliefs that I see here feel in that form.

So let's just take an example. Someone that is a firstborn. I inherently, both from experience and just like my own experience and the experience of my clients, it's always up to you. No one's going to help you. You know better. Those type of energies are the energies that are informing how they show up day to day as an overachiever, as a have to go it alone, as a hyper independent. But they're not aware that that is from potentially them being the oldest or from them never getting help from mom and dad.

So it's not necessarily about the thing, it's about the belief that was rooted in or grew from the thing. And I think when you do the backdoor approach, I have so many people on that first call when we go over their intake form that they're like, like faces melted. And they're like, I've never felt so seen in my life. And I'm like, well, I didn't make this up. All you did was answer the questions. And this is what I would imagine someone that experienced this, what they would believe. And then from there, they're like, well, yeah, I mean, let's do it.

And so that's the conduit into the deeper layers and to more of like the somatic learning and what energy your body's holding. It's not like, hey, can we be with the breakup again? Or hey, can we be with the time that your dad spanked you? You know, it's not just that. It's like the learning underneath behind it. Well, the step one, I think, is your tier two is avoidance. I mean, we're very much stuck in our limbic reptilian brain where we are constantly risk averse. We see danger and we want to avoid danger at any cost to keep us alive.

That's evolutionary biology. That makes sense to me. But because of that, there is this mentality of kind of stuck in this perpetually negative state and often fight or flight systemic response where we're constantly under stress. We're constantly catabolic. We're secreting inflammatory hormones or cytokines. And then there's immune dysregulation inflammation. And now we're actually sick and now we have a disease state. And often it's a product of what I want to provide context is used for something interesting too, is our conditioning.

What we don't recognize is our environment conditions us, but let's define our environment. Our peers, the people we spend most time with, our friends, our social network, our parents. And obviously then school too, which I think that my kids have more conditioning now in their schools than they do at home. So who's actually raising our children? It's our peers and the teachers. See, I'll push back on that because people will say all the time client wise that like, oh, it's something that I learned from culture or society.

But mom and dad are the gatekeepers of that. If mom represents self and dad represents others, the universe, you going home and telling mom or dad, let's just say dad, that like this thing happened and him ignoring you or not addressing it or not speaking in his truth or even supporting you. That, it's like, what is the reflector of the outside cultural experience or the societal experience? I tend to, because people will give their power and their healing, transformational potential away to society, culture.

I'm like, no, no, no, come on back. Come on back to mom and dad. Like, come on back to you and how that applies to you. underscore that we control our environment, that we can control the conditioning. Case in point is my children were playing with their cousins, they did a sleepover, and all of a sudden they're using different diction that doesn't adhere with our philosophy, whether it's profanity or otherwise. They have different tendencies which doesn't adhere to, again, our norms of respect and kindness.

I see that they change. Now it goes back to us, the prudence as parents is, okay, let's come back to center. This is the values that we hold true. I just want to help you recognize how you're speaking now, how you're acting that has changed with one interaction. So we could intervene, but even further still, When I was growing up, and this is very common I see in Eastern European culture is I was bred, I had to be the best at everything. Failure was not an option. So I was very, very fearful of doing anything new because I didn't want to be seen as a failure.

I had to get the best grades. I had to be the perfect student. I had to be the best soccer player. And because of that, I didn't recognize growing up. Until I had that kind of cathartic realization is that I'm a people pleaser. I'm a risk averse to failure. And I want to make sure that everyone else is okay. And then I put myself last. And until I had that awakening years back that like. This was from the conditioning of my parents. It doesn't mean they were doing anything wrong. They were just trying to raise us the best they can, but we don't realize the impact with the environment that we create or how we dictate certain things or how we raise our kids will have, again, that generational impact.

Step one is awareness. I'm curious how, so how do you speak to parents about this? Because we see kids all the time and I don't think parents can understand their impact in terms of optimizing kids' health. Cause we look at through the lens of health optimization, right? So my foundation five, very simple. You got to eat right, sleep right, move right, talk right, coop right. Right. That talk, right. I think that's what we're really touching upon, which again, to me, that mental health, the talk, right, is often overlooked because people don't realize what their self talk is and how fast that can stay, change physiological state, including breath, which is free.

Yeah. So how, I guess, how do you start with that with, with parents or with children? Yeah. So, and this is, this is like such, we could do a podcast literally just on that. We could riff on this for 90 minutes. We could Joe Rogan it and go three hours. Like this is, there is like not enough time to talk about this. And what I will try to like synthesize it down to is, is two things is kids more than anything, again, beyond the talk, kids get to need to, should, I never use should and need to, but this is really how much I'm a proponent for this is being able to be with their emotions and with sensations.

These children are learning about their nervous system. They're learning how to modulate and titrate their systems just like most parents are because they've never learned that either. And so even if this work, like inter-child re-parenting work is not for those that are in adolescent, pre-teen, late-teen stages,

Parenting, Conditioning, and Modeling Emotional Safety 26:00

you have an obligation and a gift that you get to impart as parents on learning about your own nervous system and being able to start to model when you are pissed off. when you are overwhelmed, when you are sad, when you are confused, when you are grieving. Because a lot of times we as parents want to like put on the happy face and be like, yeah, you can do anything you put your mind to. Absolutely. And then you are terrified in the corner to like make that next step in your business or leave your job.

And what happens to these children? This is why like you cannot duct tape this. guys, like you just can't. Your kids will still be growing up in this conflicting nature of, mom or dad says that this is okay, but energetically, I feel something different. It goes back to the frequency. My mom said to me, as the day is long, Amanda, you can do anything you put your mind to. But I did not see that reflected in her own living. And so I have had to move through the waves of, I can do this, but wait, am I supposed to?

I don't know. And so that is why for parents, you have to do your own work. So many on these blog groups, I hear moms being like, I need to support, my kid has anxiety, my kid has ADHD. I need to find something to support them. And my first question is, what about you? How are you managing your anxiety? Do you have a ADHD or ADD diagnosis? Are you doing anything to support yourself for that? So it is so much about us as parents leading the way and really from a real big like zoomed out meta perspective, our own healing is at minimum about our kids being able to come back to us when they're in their 20s and to say like, hey, when you did this, felt really shitty.

Or like when you did this, like I was scared. And for you to just show up and say, you know what, mom and dad were doing the best they could and I'm so sorry that you felt that way. Like, because that's what more of the older generations need. There's no going back. But can you allow yourself to be in that acceptance of that's how you showed up and that you're willing to just hold space for. Two things come to mind. So one is I was with my daughter yesterday or it was the other day, but. I, we had a play date and there was another parent there and she didn't realize my daughter was in the room.

So I tried to be loud and intervene because what she was saying is, I was talking about like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and how they're not real and trying to, how to kind of navigate that. And my daughter then comes up to me and after, and she's like, I believe in the tooth fairy. Is the tooth fairy not real? And I believe in not lying. I believe in truth and integrity. And so I sidestepped. And I said, I don't know. I've never seen the tooth fairy, but I know she used to come to me and take my teeth and give me a quarters, even though now you're getting a hundred dollar bill, which is crazy from her grandfather.

I hope she doesn't hear that, but the point being is like how, uh, How do you maintain a level of truth and integrity? I guess in that respect, because I don't want to that later she comes to me and say, hey, actually you lied about this, but I also want to retain their youth and not rush any of that and certain things that societal has adopted that I think generally can be okay things, even though I think most are backwards. How can I maintain or how can parents maintain that level of truth and integrity while as also creating that safe environment for everyone to be open, right?

Because you said, I think is, is we have to feel safe in our skin to be able to come to someone to be vulnerable with their emotions. And my, interestingly, my, my partner. because we mentioned about, you know, talk therapy or going to see a therapist. And she goes to me, well, Daniel, that's what friends are for. And I'm like, ooh, I don't think that's accurate. I think you're missing the point. I think there's a reason why I don't do my own taxes. There's a degree of benefit to... It gets to be both, right?

Like, I mean, yes and, right? Yeah, you get to talk to your friends, but like, what's... I would ask someone, how's that working out for you? But again, if we don't know, we don't know, we're blind to that. Again, going with our biases, they're like, it's good, right? We don't, they don't realize, you know, the next level you can. And I see that in my partner's reactions, very sometimes irritable or quick to kind of erupt or sometimes even hostile with their kids. I'm like, you're, you're, you're yelling at a three year old, like.

put yourself back and then sometimes she at least has the hubris to step back and say, yeah, that was wrong of me. I apologize. But going to your point is what behavior do we want to model? What behavior is acceptable? It doesn't mean that we can never be angry and that's not a viable motion. The question to me is why are certain things met with specific reactions? What is the underlying trigger? How can people step outside of their skin, which I think is very difficult, not necessarily walk in someone else's shoes.

That's a whole nother level, but at least objectively see, okay, what did I do there? How can I have improved that? How can I have I changed that? Yeah. Let me pause and rewind to address Tooth Fairy first. So Dr. Becky, Dr. Becky on the good inside, great. Love her. She shared something on a recent podcast and I totally agree with this is that If your kid is old enough to be asking a direct question, you answer them directly. Like it's about radical honesty and it's about radical responsibility.

Because if I were to ask you, or if I were to say that to you and hear, see the thing that you did, what is that actually rooted in? Is it rooted in you not wanting to feel or wanting to circumvent that feeling that she is getting older or not wanting to hold the sadness and maybe whatever else that she may feel as she receives that news from her, right? Like I'm never going to tell a parent what to do or what not to do. Like this is Bible, you should do that. But from operating from the lens of radical responsibility and radical honesty, my kit, I mean, let's just, let's roll with this.

My kids are about to be 11, he's born on Christmas, and eight and a half. They have never asked me specifically. I have never offered up. The moment that they do ask specifically, I know that I get to be in radical honesty, and I also get to hold them in their emotions of disappointment, sadness, questions. And I think a lot of times as parents, We don't want to hold that feeling in our own selves, and so we just avoid, right? We push off. And then going secondly to, and this continues the thread of radical honesty, radical responsibility, is that as friends, you know, your partner's saying, like, I have my friends.

Great. Are your friends radically honest with you? because I actually had a situation yesterday with a friend where she had shared with me something that happened that she was really, really angry about. So much so she's never reached out to me before that she was like, I need support. And I was like, okay, cool. Like, and I gave her some first steps and then I checked in with her a couple days later and then she shared with me yesterday. Um, yeah, I'm better. Things are good. Yeah, good. And so I, in my radical honesty said, love you and I'm curious if it feels like you're sweeping this anger up under the rug because it's shifted just a little bit and you have time and space and just inviting like if there's any more that could be felt into that or any inquiry around that so if you're not and again I don't do that with all of my friends but if your friends are not able to have the capacity to lovingly reflect to you what they see, then you may not want to reconsider them as friends, but see where else you can also get support.

A lot of us, again, we don't want to have the hard conversation. We don't want to have the pinging in my chest of like, oh, I'm going to be too much if I share this. I felt into that a little bit with this friend, but I love her enough and I am committed enough to my radical honesty and responsibility to be able to lovingly reflect. And then if they don't want to take that, awesome. Like that's okay. Just like you did with your partner. Hey, like you kind of popped off at the kids a little like.

A little quick there. Curious, is there something that you need support with? Curious if there's something going on that we can talk about because that feels like out of the norm for you or that feels like that's been a pattern recently. Again, radical honesty, radical responsibility, holding them in that experience. while also being able to hold yourself in the experience of like, oh, is it going to be like I'm calling them out and it's going to cause more issues? Or am I going to be like held to the fire now?

Or you know what I mean? So it's not even stepping out of your skin. It's about like staying, being in the experience of all of it. The curiosity question is often met with further negative sentiment in the sense of I'm reacting because you're not there and I need support or you're not doing what I want to do. And this to me becomes a blame game of who can yell louder. But the problem I find is often internally and too quickly we point the finger instead of the thumb, but the individual or the partner in this circumstance negates that and always continues to demonstrate, no, it's because you're not doing this, you're not doing that, you're not doing that.

And clearly that person needs a lot of self-help and self-quirk. Now, it doesn't mean that it doesn't take two to tango. I think there has to be balance and compromise. The issue that I have with radical acceptance, which for the longest time is how I live my life, is that I think often people cannot handle the truth. And let's go back to the spouse equation because I have maybe one regret in life. And it's one thing that I did say to my partner that I know cut very deep and the intention wasn't there.

It wasn't met with malice. It was trying to improve a specific health outcome that she was experiencing that wasn't met favorably. And needless to say, without going to the weeds, I had just said it very black and white. I don't know if that was the best way, if I could have said it differently, it would have been received differently. Again, it wasn't me being malicious, it was just me speaking radical truth. And sometimes I feel that, I don't know, you resonate or not at all in your dimensionally post and it is radical, it's radical truth no matter what, like in terms of half's truth.

So we don't necessarily hurt feelings or are you suggestive that, well, maybe we have to reevaluate who we think we're potentially hurting and maybe where they're at in their whole learning curve and understanding their own truth. And just as long as you're radically honest and. accepting of who you are in your own skin and you're living by your own kind of moral compass, then you're okay. The question becomes like, when is it too much? And should we dispel that or should we get that off our chest?

Or should we bite our tongues? Yeah. Yeah. Again, other podcasts, podcast three that we'll do together. We'll talk about this as well. So yes, you like, there's a lot of nuance to this, right? First and foremost, another C word for you is consent. If I ask for consent, you are responsible for whatever I say, right? You, hey, can I give a reflecting point to you about something that I noticed that you're struggling with? They say yes, again, radical responsibility, you said yes, right? And don't think that this doesn't come with some sticking points because I'm radically honest with my husband.

I've also gotten so much better with consent, but there is an amount of acceptance that we automatically just say is self-acceptance. But there's also a, can we have acceptance of ourselves and what we think and what we believe and what we wanna share? But can we also have radical acceptance of how someone's showing up? I accept that you are overwhelmed, that you have had a really long day, the kids have been bouncing off the walls, and I am able to have acceptance that that reaction that you had is based on your nervous system overwhelm.

And so what I'm going to bring to that acceptance is curiosity, both in how you're feeling, what you're experiencing, and this is huge for my husband or for me and him, is I notice this, I'm curious about this, tell me more about this. Also, what can I do to support you in this? What does support look like for you right now? I think that when that is communicated and it's communicated with an energy of openness, softness, non-pressure manipulation, most partners will not come at you like that. If they do, then you get to be like, okay, I'll give you a little bit of space.

If you want to discuss further, let me know and we can talk later. Absolutely, I am one that tends to have the things that aren't going to be said that I really want to say. But I think that the gatekeeper of that is consent, because you give people back their autonomy to say yes or no, and you also allow yourself to be in the fullness of your own perspective, truth sharing, and also be in acceptance of maybe how that's received, even if they are a yes to that information. I love the word consent.

So I think that's now has refrained my paradigm. I forecast perhaps inaccurately that often enough it's going to be met with no. So that because in the height of the moment, no one wants to hear anything, you know, that they're doing wrong or whatever the case. So do you then allow the individual to reflect and pry open that door later or knock on the door later? Because I think it's important to get things off your chest too, to be able to be open and erratically honest. So do you try to have a conversation later?

And if it's consistently met with no, then how do you kind of alleviate that friction? Yeah. So John Wineland does a really good podcast about like the art of containment. And so again, even before you say, can I have your consent to share something, you want to make sure that you're sharing that from a place of like, let's just take my husband has been on a health journey and has lost like 45 pounds and has done it from macros. And I'm just so proud of him. We've been together for 16 years. This has only happened this last year, okay?

So I had my own thoughts, right? But I also had to move through and be in the containment of the expression of worry, fear, frustration, confusion around why we had this problem and how I wanted this to shift. So you also, again, radical responsibility, you get to ask for consent, absolutely. And you get to make sure that before you're even asking that, that you have done your own work, moved through all of the extra energy in your system that's charged around this topic. And if and when they say no, that also gives you a moment to be with the frustration, the worry, the anger, the sadness to the no.

Radical Honesty, Consent, and Relationship Communication 41:00

And you get to offer, like, hey, is there at any point that you would want to talk about this or it would feel good to talk about this later? Yes, no? Yes? OK, can I, next 24 hours, I could bring it up and see if it's a good time to talk or set a time to talk? Yeah, OK, whatever. Usually that's what they'll do. OK, whatever. Just go away. OK. And then you, again, it's all about coming back to self and tending to all of the story, all the charge, all the energy that is coming up in your system around the yes or the no.

And being able to, this is sometimes, especially for like, well, men and women, I won't generalize, but like, that's where the friends come in. Go hold yourself in your own energy, but also get reflections from friends, right? You don't always have to be having the flow of conversation back and forth between you and your partner. And sometimes this happens more so with male partners and not having as many friends to be able to like, hey, will you spot me in this? Will you hold me in this? So sometimes that's more pointed towards men, but a lot of times the sharing that women are doing with each other is maladaptive as well.

So you get to like notice, you know what I mean? Like, do I need to self-contain this or do I get to have the gift of being held by trusted friends? Yeah, you're circled. Obviously the dodge, you know, you're the reflection of the five people you closest that matters. Again, going back to conditioning, you said something else that kind of stirred thought in terms of going back to my daughter and me saying that kind of half-truth. In terms of that, you know, I don't know if this, the chief fairy is real, but certainly I, she had visited me when I was a child and she's asking more adult questions.

And in that instance, when you said it's like, I wanted to retain her youth because I am conditioned to see the world very jaded and corrupt and people. cheating, lying, stealing, whatever the case. And so I want to kind of keep her in this bubble that reflects one of safety. But again, that's my conditioning, which is my perceived bias. So going back to that answer, typically, well, almost always I speak to her like an adult, not like necessarily a child. When she asks questions, it's, it's very much, um, fluid conversation rather me imposing of what the world is or what she, how she needs to experience the world.

I want her to do it on her own terms. I just didn't want to rob her quote unquote of her youth, but I realized that is certainly an imposition. Um, and maybe with radical truth, I should have said, uh, you know, that's no me, but I don't know in that moment, I guess for me it made sense. The thing that's coming up for me is what you just said. There's a very like nuanced thing that you just said is that typically you treat her like an adult. You shoot it straight. The one occurrence that this doesn't happen makes me think that it has nothing to do with her and it has to do with you.

Is that like, Ooh, there's something about her innocence. There's something about her growing up. There's something about me believing in this magic too, that it has to do with the charge in your own system. And the one thing I will say is an invitation if you're open to it. See, he nodded yes, there was consent there. Is that there is never an expiration date to stand in your radical truth or honesty or to give a reflection of gratefulness or to come back and say like, hey, when this happened, I felt this way.

So you can still go back to your daughter and say like, hey, I wanted to talk to you about something. Like, can we talk? Yes. So you're asking about the tooth fairy the other day and you know, I feel like I want to tell you more. Not I lied. I want to tell you more about that. Like, are you open to tell me more? So, I mean, do I put your money underneath there? Yeah, yeah, I do. But I also had that for me. I got to believe in the tooth fairy as a kid too. And it was the most magical thing. And I want you to still be able to believe in the magic and the specialness of the tooth fairy and anything else that you believe in that feels magical to you.

And I just felt like I didn't want to take that away from you. And asking her, how does that feel for you? Like hearing that like dad puts the tooth fairy, like the money underneath there. Like how is that? And sometimes, honestly, these kids will be like, I mean, does it mean I'm going to get five next time too? Like they literally don't care. They don't care. And then if they are super sensitive, it's an opportunity for you to hold them in that. Yeah, babe. Like, absolutely. I was sad too when I found out.

Like I absolutely like it stinks. You know, it just stinks. And You are able to model that like others, the world, you get to be vulnerable, you get to be honest, you get to be truthful and that whatever their response is, is not too much. Like it is perfect just how it is. So take it, leave it, no judgment here. I love what you did because the theme is self-reflection. And it goes back to this philosophy of the present, future, or past. So the present is called the present as a gift, but people who are stuck in future mindset, trying to plan for the future.

One of my, we did a podcast with him too, Ilya. So he said, Daniel, have you ever heard that a man plans and God laughs? Right. So the future, that's why there's, there you go. Hold my beer. I see people who are stuck in this future cause and mindset, not that you don't have to plan for the future, but it doesn't yet exist. And now you have these anxious tendencies, or if you're stuck in the past or trauma, now you have these depressive tendencies and trying to go back to the center, be present, be mindful and reflect.

So you said it's not a her problem, it's a me problem. And again, this could reinforce my philosophy. We're constantly pointing the finger instead of the thumb and how can we be more reflective in how present we are and the verbiage we use or the choices that we make or the truths that we uphold and constantly questioning that too is I tell my partner all the time and. Um, she's amazing too. I don't want to undermine what she brings to the table, but I say this all the time is my goal is 1% better every day, but how can I reflect on my actions and how that impacted you or the kids or my parents or my brother or my patients?

So understanding it is the principle of being open and open to receive and kind of putting out that, that positive energy, which then kind of attracts and kind of, I think we negate how much power we have. in that. So we just had parents come in with their son's autistic and the parent at the end was saying, I am so grateful because you have now educated me more than any other physician that I've ever spoken with on the power and impact that I have in terms of changing the health outcome of my child.

And it started with something as simple as nutrition, going back to the microbiome and whatnot. But needless to say, the principle is that We have so much innate power, I think that it's often outsourced and then we become stuck in this perpetual trauma in due state or self-limiting state, or certainly this self-sabotage state that I think to go full circle. Step two is acceptance. What I actually want to double click on is a step two for what you're talking about is, you know, with the situation with your daughter, it's like, you know, oh, wait, that's my problem.

I think step two for a lot of people is even with the awareness and acceptance is the. noticing the language of like, oh, I'm the problem. I'm doing it wrong. I'm broken. I'm the mess up. And being able to notice like how much we can soften to ourselves of how we're showing up. Like how much we can be in acceptance that like I did what I did. I showed up how I showed up. I said what I said based on these beliefs placed on this energetic patterning and being able to give yourself a break. I think we are not only obsessed with awareness, but we're also obsessed with like the, oh my gosh, I'm so terrible.

See, it's true. And being able to use like what you said about how powerful we are is that with that power, like we can get super rigid. We can compress the shit out of that and we can just like make things just so right. So we show up really perfect and amazing or like how powerful is it to be like. Yeah, I said that to my partner and like, damn, like that was kind of terrible. And like, but you know what, like I can address this, like, like, and softening to yourself instead of hardening. So much of what we're doing in the West is just like hardening, hardening, hardening.

And so I think for most people, no matter if it's like specifically in the stages of healing or not, part of that being able to open is also to soften, is to be one that like kind of falls into the arms of yourself to say like, Of course I showed up that way. Like I hate when the house is messy and I come home and like the kids are off the chain, right? Or of course plans change and I flew off the handle because I love predictability or you know, like whatever it is. So I think that the next step is being able to orient yourself to something other than this like disciplined or transactional or authoritarian way of relating to yourself when you are human.

Right? When you are in pattern. So, I mean, I would say, like, for the sake of time, that would be second step for, I would say, for people around the acceptance piece. Can I be an acceptance and can I soften to that? My question is, you know, we were just at a conference and one of the speakers had mimicked one of my quotes, and which resonates deeply with me, when we're selfless, we lose our sense of self. Now, how do you find balance in that? Case in point, partner, finally, she sent me an Instagram video on this.

She proposed an idea. I live by the mantra right now of hell yes or hell no. Yes, I want to do this. I want to be present. I want to be devoid of everything else and be completely immersed in the moment. Or like, yeah, that doesn't really resonate with me. But now this was centered around the kids, which is the layer complexity. So she's like, hey, let's do this X activity. I was like, hmm. Yeah, that to me isn't a hell yes. If you're not opposed, you know, I'm going to hang back and do what I need to do with catching up on work or the case.

And in reflection, I was like, I probably should have been there. But to me, that doesn't live in my self-truth now. And in terms of softening that context, do I then approach and say, well, how about, you know, we do this, not, I don't want to say instead, but this at a different time, does that resonate with you or How about, you know, you take the kids to do that and then I'll take the kids to do another activity where it's up to you if you would like to be involved. If not, you can take a break, even though unfortunately I don't have breaks.

It was me doing more work, but needless to say that the premise remains the same. Like where does compromise within context. begin to play the role of whether you're now, cause she sent me a video saying that that was her way to try to connect, to have me there, which is always the pushback that you're not present, you're not there, you're not with us. I'm having to carry that whole burden. All I just want you to do is kind of be there. And I'm like, ah, well, here's the dynamic now. I don't like the blame game.

It's not who's right, who's wrong. How do you just solve that? Where's the solution there? Where's the compromise? Yeah. And again, I think that this is, again, the like, what is the right thing to do? What is the thing that is going to yield the most optimal result? And this is, again, in that liminal space in the messiness is, number one, my first question would be, to a partner that shares, let's do this together and frames it around the kids, but then comes back later and says, well, I really just, I wanted you to be there.

Like it wasn't really about us doing it and the kids doing it. It was about us all being together and being able to, again, two things can be true, right? She, he, them could offer I want to do this thing." And you're like, oh, I had a really crazy week. I need to go do some breath work and I'm going to be overstimulated if we go to this thing. Or I have this work deadline that I need to make and it's important to me and I've set aside this time and you make some sort of physical biomechanical compromise.

You go here, I'll do this later. So that from an aspect of do we not do we kind of gets taken care of. Then you go underneath of like what's the actual like need or expectation that isn't being communicated here. And I think that that's the biggest thing that you get to start to men and women get to be able to be more in their masculine of like can I hold the container of my partner's emotions or needs or expectations and really be able to just be this bystander. Like, I see you. Yeah, I am working a lot.

I can imagine that that's really frustrating to you and that you miss me and that the kids miss me and you feel like you're holding a lot. Yes, absolutely. What else? Tell me all the things. And then being able to hold them in a space of, I hear you in that. I see you in that. what does support look like for you in that realm? Because lots of moms, they're like, well, I actually don't want to do anything with the kids.

Closing Remarks and Where to Find Amanda 54:00

I just want to go on a date with you, right? So then you're like, you just want connection with me? Okay, cool. Like, let's make that happen. Same thing gets to be true. And it's I won't necessarily go into the mechanics of like the term holding the bucket, but just as your partner gets to share with you all of the underlying kind of needs, hurts, feelings of the situation, you also as, well, just because you're a male, like male partner get to Hey, thank you for sharing all of that. I don't want to do it now, but like I also have some things that I really want to share with you.

Things that have just been like kind of mulling around in my brain. I've kind of just been feeling it like settle in my chest. I want to share those things with you just to kind of loop you in like when would be a good time to talk about that. Maybe she says now, maybe she says later. And then you also get to be held, you get to be in your feminine of like, I feel like all I'm doing is working. Like, I feel like the kids sport stuff is coming up and it's like, you know, we're going into the season of like less patience.

And there's just like so much I feel like is I'm holding and I'm riding on me. And again, they get to hold you in that they get to see you in that and they also get to ask or you get to offer like this is what feels supportive to me is that like we look at the next month we do two family activities and like beyond that we don't commit to anything else if you want to go do some other things with the kids great but like Is it okay if we just make these two things? So see how it's like going beyond the mechanical of like XYZ moving pieces and more to like, again, the somatic piece of what is my body speaking that I'm afraid to think or say, right?

And I'm telling you, you're going to be met with a completely different partner in those types of dialogue. Then like, I'm always doing this and you're always working and we're always, you know, like never ends well. This has been a genuine pleasure. I certainly appreciate your time. You definitely have provoked both curiosity and just. a way of asking better questions to try to connect. And while compromise still remains at the root, I think the context matters and how we approach and consent and communicate has been very, very eye-opening for me, very cathartic as well.

So I appreciate everything that you shared. We've only scratched the surface, so we'll definitely have to do part one and two. This is like a perfect cliffhanger for our community because they still need the three last parts. But if someone wants to reach out to you because you've already spurred interest and wants to learn more before we can get to round two, where can people find you learn more? Yeah, so you guys are in Chad today, correct? Well, so my bar opening is Satellite Office. My main practice is Chicago.

We're doing another satellite office in Miami. There you go. We do telehealth as well, but yes. Okay. Awesome. Well, I am in the South, as I said before. I'm in Memphis, Tennessee. So if you're ever in that area, I do in-person events, so you can check me out there. But I have kept things really simple. As of right now, this moment in early November, I have Instagram and all of my stuff is on Instagram. It's TheSomaticDPT. D as in David, P as in Paul, T as in Thomas. my credentials as a physical therapist, all the resources you could want there.

If you do follow me, I send everybody a personal message. So I will find you if you find me. And yeah, I just want to keep it simple. I do monthly breath work sessions and have offerings that are rolling offerings one-on-one in group. But All of that info just to keep it simple is on Instagram. So I look forward to chatting with anybody that absolutely love it. Definitely expect, um, people to be knocking on your door. This has been very profound and I'm super excited for round two. Last question that, uh, I am each episode was if you could have one superpower, what would it be?

My gosh, why wasn't I given this one superpower? What would it be? Can singing be a superpower? I don't see why not. It's super, you know, that's so interesting because I can, we can end on that too. Singing can put you into that parasympathetic rest and digest and we can only heal at the speed of our nervous system. So guard them very intentionally. There we go. That could be your superpower if you want. There you go. That's what I'm doing. The singing somatic deep beat. Listen, it's number two way, just like your husband, right?

After 16 years, fructose to him. Absolutely. Absolutely. Give me another 16 years. It's never too late guys. Listen, this has been absolutely awesome. You are a rock star. I definitely looking forward to around two here very soon. So everyone else stay tuned. I know it's a cliffhanger, but needless to say, check Amanda and her workout on Instagram. Thank you again for your time. And until next time, everyone stay healthy, stay wealthy. Thank you for tuning into the TBD fit podcast on Dr. Talks, where we unpack all things health and longevity.

You enjoy the show, like review and subscribe. This allows us to have a greater reach and help others on their health and wellness journey.