When Healing Hurts First: The Honest Path to Emotional Balance

Holistic healer Linda Dieffenbach joins Nikki to unpack real self-care — not the spa-day kind, the survival kind. Together they explore anger, resilience, and the hard truth about boundaries and burnout. Healing begins when you choose yourself, not when everything collapses.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Linda Deba. I am the owner of Wellness and Harmony, and I am passionate about guiding women to heal and re heal their lives, reclaim their gifts, and confidently share their light, empowering them to step into their personal power and brilliance.

And for today, I want to talk with you about. Ways that you can, some self-care tools that you can use to help navigate stress build resilience. And because we're navigating some very challenging times right now, and self-care is such an essential part of being able to navigate the ups and downs and the challenges and the uncertainties that we're facing in the world right now.

So I wanted to actually, if I can throw a question to you, Nikki. I'd love to hear what is your favorite self-care tool?

Speaker 2: I'm not sure what you mean by tool.

Speaker: A practice that you use to help support yourself help you navigate when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed or just something that you do daily to help support your wellbeing.[00:01:00]

Speaker 2: That would be reading. It takes me out of my own head and I get to escape into sometimes. Weirder worlds that, I love that Never gonna happen. But that allow me to have that suspended. I'm not in my brain, I'm in the story. So that I can distance myself from it and come at it from a different angle once I'm ready.

Speaker: I love that. Reading's a wonderful way to just get out of your head. 'cause of course we can get so caught up in, the mental spinning and churning and anxiety threads that can run through our mind and just overwhelm us. So reading's a wonderful way to, just get out of that spin and get into a whole different world.

So I love it. It's a little bit escapist, but it's not a bad thing. I think it's a really positive way to to escape in a healthy way.

So some things I wanna talk about first is just understanding stress and resilience, because of course, [00:02:00] like stress is just a natural response to the things that happen in our world that, over time whether it's our work, whether it's things going on in our family lives things going on collectively that can build up and just cause stress.

We have a lot to do. We may have things that we're worried about, stressed about feeling some anxiety about but over time there are stress response can be come very chronic if not managed. So if we're not taking time daily to. Do our self care to help ourselves to relax, unwind, calm, calm down disconnect from the daily stressors that we have.

Then it can become a chronic state of being where we're always in a heightened state. Because when we receive stress, when we experience stress, what happens is that our body, it triggers our fight flight response, our survival responses. So our body goes into fight, flight, or freeze.

And that [00:03:00] is a natural hormonal response that happens when we're faced with a stressor or faced with danger. In our natural state. That response is meant to be very temporary. So it triggers those hormones to run through our body, to help us to get out of danger, to help us get into a place of safety.

That our body is then able to unwind. What happens in our society is that we're in this chronic state of stress, oftentimes, many of us are. So we're always in that heightened state. So our sympathetic state, our stress response is almost constantly activated. And then that of course is, I'm sure you've all heard that just wreaks havoc on the body.

It wreaks havoc on our mental health. It wreaks havoc on our relationships, our ability to fo focus function in the world. So it also, when we're in states of chronic stress, we become less resilient, meaning that we're not able to cope as well. So when we're in that chronic state of [00:04:00] stress, small things, seemingly small things that.

When we were in a more balanced state, we would not really have much of a response to. But when we lack that resilience and we're in that state of heightened stress, little things just can set us off to where we can become extremely angry or enraged or extremely emotional at the drop of a hat. And that's why taking time to really focus on our own self-care, manage our stress is so essential for us to be able to navigate the ups and downs of life.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, I totally believe that. I know that for most of my teenage years and everybody's oh, all teenagers have anger in them. Yeah. Maybe not as much as I did. I had been in bad situations. I was going through bad situations, like everything was not [00:05:00] okay.

And, I was mad, I was not picking fights at school or anything like that.

'cause that wasn't where my anger was.

It was decidedly directed where it needed to be directed. And I just felt obviously like nobody cared, nobody was listening. My mom and I would get in a fight and I would tell her I hated her because reasons. And she'd send me to a counselor who after a couple of visits would be like, there's something actually wrong.

She needs to be seen by somebody who can prescribe meds and do, the right therapy kind, more than what a counselor can do. And my mom would immediately take me away from that one, wait until the next bite and put me in a new one. It was. A thing. And so I know that for a lot of that time, I would, at the drop of a hat somebody could link at me wrong in the house [00:06:00] anyway, and I was pissed and I would be punching the wall and screaming, and I was just, there was nowhere for that anger to go because it didn't matter to anybody that I had it, nobody wanted to help me get the handle on it.

And I don't say any of that for sympathy, but for other people to be able to identify with that. It wasn't until after some really bad stuff happened way later that I finally got somebody who could prescribe meds, who could diagnose me with things that were wrong. And you have nice little alphabet soup after your name because that means you were smart and went to college and got the alphabet soup.

The alphabet soup after my name does not come with that kind of distinction.

It proves the point that what I was going through was not normal. And I got the therapy I needed or I'm still getting like the, that's not ending process. And so [00:07:00] now I can get angry and deal with it in a healthy way instead of punching everything. Because it's not the wall's fault, although it feels, I don't know, cathartic to do that.

Absolutely. And, but that's destruction if you put your fist through it. So not recommended that, that's not what I'm saying. But it's just. To now have skills that I should have had way back then. I am doing so much better. And I have a stepdad who thinks I'm a failure at life because, he didn't help me with any coping skills either.

But yet he'll go around telling people that I'm a failure and I'm useless. I am neither of those things. I am doing pretty good for myself, working with my own business and a podcast and all the other things that I do, but in some people's eyes, you'll never be any better than at your worst. And so [00:08:00] you working on yourself to do what you need to do to be good for you is the most important thing because that shows you that you can do it.

And it doesn't matter what it shows anybody else, because you've changed, you've grown, you've done the work. And you can stick your middle finger up at the people who still will say that you're the failure still because you at one time were going through so much stuff that you couldn't handle it and you know you didn't do so hot.

So self-care for me was the only way I was ever gonna be anything.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I had to do it for myself, not by myself. 'cause I had my therapist and stuff, but I had to do it for myself. There's no external reason that will get you through all of the hard work you have to do.[00:09:00]

Speaker: I love that you shared that because there's so much within that story. In the importance of self-care. I actually, I'd love to hear some of your anger management tools in a minute, but

It really speaks to how powerfully trauma affects us. And, as a child living in an environment where you're experiencing trauma on a regular basis or, and it doesn't have to be a regular basis, you're experiencing trauma growing up. You're so reliant on the adults around you to help you get through that.

And when you're surrounded by adults who are contributing to the trauma, who are not supporting you, who are not helping you learn how to navigate what's happening in your world, it compounds so exponentially. And I love your story because it also speaks to the fact that you can heal from that and you can grow from that and you can overcome that and you [00:10:00] can be successful.

So I love that. And with your stepfather, it is such a powerful reflection of his own projection that he's not able to see you and it's a powerful representation of your strength and your resilience that you are able to rise above that and continue and not take that in what he's sharing with you.

So thank you for that. 'Cause that's a very powerful story. And I would love to hear what are your go-to things instead of punching a wall? What are your go-to things to just help get that anger outta your body?

Speaker 2: I'm very verbal, like I said early before we started the recording. I can say the bad thing.

I can't do the bad thing. Yeah. So I will tell my friend, oh, they're driving so slow, I wanna punch 'em in the throat. And she's laughing at me. 'cause she obviously knows I'm not gonna get out of the car at the next stop sign and putting somebody in the throat. That's, you are endangering the lives of a lot of people if you're doing something stupid like that.

[00:11:00] So I know all throughout my brain, I cannot actually do the illegal thing.

Speaker: Yes. Let's not assault people today

Speaker 2: or any day. But by, letting off the steam and not bottling. 'cause my coping mechanism for a long time when I was a kid and everything was I have whole ass teachers out there who had me in their classrooms for a season who thought that I was shy, who thought that I was just quiet.

I have whole other teachers who absolutely would wreck those other teachers' world with how loud I can be.

Because for me, I was ignored. I look, there's that whole, thing about being the middle child, right?

Speaker: Oh, me too,

Speaker 2: right? So everybody's [00:12:00] oh yeah, you're just pretending sure you have whatever. Your family didn't have a golden child. Actually, technically my house had two. And then there was the third that was just, oh, okay.

So my family has four daughters. Me, it's my older sister, me her sister, and then the sister. I actually there's four of them. Okay. My older sister was, my mom's absolute favorite. In fact, when I was a teenager, after my mom had kicked me out of the house and I was still in school my mom heard that I had told somebody something that had been happening to me in the house, and she came to pick me up from my high school one day and drive me home and was like, you're my favorite.

And I laughed in her face, flat out, laughed in her face. Because no, I was not mad. No. Not even close. So my older sister could do no wrong in my mom's [00:13:00] eyes even. Even after getting pregnant at age 15. So there's that. My youngest sister, who I love dearly, and if she watches this, she knows that I love her because like we still communicate, we're fine, right?

But she had my stepdad, who is her full dad. And my dad did have a, he did treat us differently because he was her. She was his, and me and my other sisters were not type deal. And then my third sister is, she at one point in school was said that she was daydreaming the whole time through all her classes.

And so they went, that's probably a problem. Like why would she do that? Come to find out she was having petite mal seizures. Where she was just sitting there staring off into space because she was seizing. Seizing,

Speaker: yeah.

Speaker 2: And so they put her on [00:14:00] a medication and her brain, her IQ dropped like 50 points or something, I don't remember.

It was huge difference. And she started telling stories. Or she might have already been telling stories. I don't know. It's fuzzy on timeline with me. But she started telling stories at one school. She made the office believe that my stepdad had been sent to prison for killing my mom. So imagine their surprise when he came to pick us up from school one day, like epic surprise, like po.

Or call Surprise. And that's what they, my mom and hi my stepdad called them her stories. Nobody ever told her to her face. She was lying because that's what she was doing. They were just her stories. Oh. Amber's telling her stories again. Which is whatever. And I was the one who was considered to be normal [00:15:00] and.

I wasn't special enough to be a golden child on either end of that spectrum. And I wasn't going around telling stories. What it did have was health problems, and my mom was medically neglectful because she didn't like doctors. So it created a thing where if I woke up in the middle of the night crying saying my ears hurt really bad and this was awful.

My stepdad would have to fight with my mom, or in this case, did fight with my mom to, to get me to the emergency room.

And then while my mom's telling the doctor that she already knows I'm faking it and he can just tell her already that I'm faking it, which was absolutely my favorite night in the world because while that doctor said that I had inner and outer ear infection in both ears, which.

I don't know if you know this. It's [00:16:00] extremely painful. He went off on my mom. And I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Speaker: I bet you did. You had somebody advocating for you.

Speaker 2: The point of all that is when you're in that position in the family doing anything because something somebody else wants you to do, it becomes very difficult.

Caring about the fact that anybody else wants you to do anything becomes very difficult. Sure. Oh, you want me to get straight A's? I have a learning disability.

How am I supposed to do that? I did good, once I could read I did really good for myself.

I left high school on the honor roll. I got Dean's list when I went to college and got my associates. So I did fine once I got to a certain point with my reading, like I had to be able to read first, but nothing was ever good enough. If I came home with a b why didn't you try harder?

[00:17:00] My sister who told stories, if she came home with a D nobody cared.

Speaker 4: No.

Speaker 2: Oh, you did good. You actually, didn't fail that class. That's what she got. I finding a reason within yourself to get better and to be better and to do better. It's hard at first. Because you do have all that trauma stacked up on everything and it's hard, but do it anyway.

Because once you are better and you know you're better. The fact that somebody thinks you're still in that spot you were in a year ago, six months ago, 10 years ago, doesn't bother you as much as they think it does. I could give a crap less than what my stepfather thinks of me now. I don't talk to him.

I don't have a reason to, so why would I care? [00:18:00] It's a preservation

Speaker: to not talk to him, I think.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And why would I care what he has to say? Because he's still living in 2010 and not in 2025 with me. Where I have been different for years now. You will always have people who think of you as you were whenever you, in your timeline.

As the victim, as the problem as. The addict or whatever, you'll always have people who think of you in those places. But if you are doing the work, if you're actually doing the work and you're actually getting better, and you can see it yourself and remember to look and say, oh yeah, six months ago I couldn't have done that a year ago, no, a year and a half ago, I could not be, I could not have done this podcast.

There's just no way. There's a season and once you're doing better for yourself and you're using those skills that you learned to talk it out I will rant and [00:19:00] rave, right? Not to people who don't know me, but to people who know me so that when I say certain things, they know I'm not actually saying anything bad about anybody.

I'm talking about, I just need to word vomit. So that it's not still in here and they're fine with it. They laugh at me so bad.

Speaker: And that alone is a huge aspect of self care, is just to be able to have safe people around you.

Have safe people. Safe space. Safe space to be able to express yourself when you're not at your best. And when you're trying to process big, heavy emotions, whether it is rage and anger, or whether it is intense grief and sorrow or jubilation even, but having safe people who can hold space for that and be like, okay. And not trying to fix you and not trying to talk you out of your anger or take it away from you in some way. Which is powerful. I love that you have that. Have you ever been to a rage room? [00:20:00]

Speaker 2: No, but I have seen some people like taking a bat to stuff in a rage room, and I so want to do that.

That is like the ultimate, like instead of just punching them all, I can take a bat to everything in the room. Oh, heck yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. I think it's brilliant that there are rage rooms out there right now because, and I recommend them to my clients all the time because we're not allowed to express anger in this society.

And that's why there's so much dis displaced, misplaced misdirected anger out there, the road rage and the people going off in stores or, flying off the handle, abuses all of that is because we don't know how to handle anger. We don't have a safe place for it. I don't know about you, but when I was angry as a kid, I was told I was punished.

I was actually grounded for it. I wasn't allowed to leave my room for a week if I got angry if I cried, then I was told, don't cry or we're gonna give you something to cry about. I wasn't allowed to have emotions.

Speaker 2: Everybody from the eighties [00:21:00] and backwards heard that one. If you don't shut up, I'm going to shut you up.

Or if you don't stop crying, I'm gonna give you something to cry about. Dude, I already have something to cry about.

Speaker: They didn't think I did. So yeah, like those emotions just weren't allowed. And so we never learned how to deal with them. And you wonder why people are walking around so angry all the time.

And I love that they have these spaces because you can go in and you can hurl a pile of dishes at the wall and you don't have to clean it up. You do that in your home, you have to clean up after yourself eventually, and that just takes the fun out of it, and then you have to buy more dishes, which also takes the fun out of it, or if you punch the wall, then break your fingers and you gotta patch the wall and do all those things. So if you have a rage room around you and you really have some pent up anger to deal with, and go and find a safe way to move that energy because it is so important.

Because it's cleansing, it literally moves that energy that's trapped in our body out [00:22:00] so that we're free to actually invite in energy and emotions that are calming and soothing and more pleasant.

Speaker 2: I've also heard that boxing, or learning how to do like karate or any of the variations thereof help in the same way. I can't do any of that because if you punch me, my body. Will be pissed off at me for the next six months in a day. So there's that.

Speaker: Yeah. But there is physical activity certainly is a great way to move anger, whether it is kickboxing or boxing or martial arts and things like that.

But even, just playing sports can be a way to

to focus your energy kicking a ball or, hitting a ball with a bat or something like that. Even just getting out and walking. But one of the things that I also recommend is, you can, you, if like physical activity is not accessible for you or not always accessible for you, you can rage [00:23:00] journal.

You can rage. I've done that. Yeah. I love, like that's, there's so much power in raging on paper and not having to filter, not having to. Even be legible. You just, you just allow that energy to move out of your body and it's very cleansing. You can scream into, you can scream at the sky, you can scream into a pillow if have people around that you don't wanna hear, scream or, have close neighbors in an apartment complex or something.

When people call 'em cops like scream into a pillow, you can punch pillows, you can,

Speaker 2: oh my God. One of those, one of those counselors that I went to way back in the day sometime in the nineties, dude, one of 'em was like, you really shouldn't punch walls. You should punch a teddy bear.

Do you know how bad I felt about punching the teddy bear?

Speaker: Yeah, I can get that.

Speaker 2: I felt. So bad it's just staring at me and [00:24:00] I am just like, I am so sorry. I will never do that again. And I went right back to punching the walls because wait a minute, I don't need a heaping. I have enough guilt. I don't teddy bear you all the time.

This teddy bear is not guilt tripping me. This is bad. Never punching again

Speaker: so bad. So pillows don't look back at you. So they're a little better probably. Or punching bagger. I remember like they used, I don't even know if they still have them. They probably do, but they were called the tacos. They were like foam bats.

So you could like, just use those to hit the walls or you could actually have a bot fight with somebody else to just I'd still

Speaker 2: probably hurt them. What's

Speaker: that?

Speaker 2: I said I'd still probably hurt somebody in my anger. With some bot thing you mean?

Speaker: They used to have the blow up suit so you could beat up each other without actually making direct contact, there's things out there, there's ways to move anger in a safe, healthy way. And it's so important to be able to do that. I know if [00:25:00] I feel like if I'm under a lot of stress, and I feel myself getting irritable and cranky or starting to snap at people, somebody says something to me and I'm just like, I bite at them.

Not literally, but no finding,

Speaker 2: if I can't punch anybody in this room, no. Yeah. I don't actually

Speaker: bite anybody, but snapping at them, and it's just or being short tempered or, I'm at the grocery store and I just don't even wanna be kind to the for grocer who's checking me out.

And I feel that in myself. It's okay, I need to go do something and I need to go figure out like what's going on, what's happening, what usually I know what my stress levels are, but. Sometimes they build up and they sneak up on me, and I'm like, whew, okay. I'm a little overwhelmed right now, and I didn't realize it, so I have to find a way to go out and move that energy. And like, when it's anger, you can't just sit and meditate, that's

Speaker 2: no, that's doing in the, that's doing and that's gonna, no it's

Speaker: suppressing. And suppressing anger is not a healthy [00:26:00] thing. You don't wanna be flying off a handle and harming yourself or someone else.

But when you have this fiery energy of anger inside of you, you can't just be like,

Speaker 2: Aw,

Speaker: and get all zen. Your body's, I'm not

Speaker 2: kumbaya when your body's boiling,

Speaker: Yeah. You can't do that. Can't ku by

Speaker 2: all. Yeah. When my body feels like it's being lit by electricity, there's no kumbaya anything.

Speaker: So it needs music. And you can, singing can certainly be part of it. Like you get some good angry music or some drums, beat the crap outta some drums and things like that like really move the fiery energy, the anger, it's healthy ways to move that energy.

And then once you move it, then you can come back into yourself and say, okay, what's going on? What do I need? How do I best support myself now given what I am, what's in front of me? Interestingly, because we're having this conversation right now I'm in a time of really heightened stress because my partner's been dealing [00:27:00] with pretty severe chronic illness for the past several months and it's intense and he's struggling to function and he is so a lot of the burden of everything falls on me.

And. I'm trying very hard to be very patient with him and with everything else, and juggle all of these things. And like I finding that I have to be very hypervigilant about my self care and about where I am at with my mood and what my needs are. So when, like little, because like little things, 'cause again, at a heightened stress level, so little things can put me over the edge if I'm not careful.

So making sure like key things for me, getting outside and walking and moving my body every day. But when I'm feeling like I wanna scream at the sky, I need to go scream at the sky in some fashion, and find some way to move the frustration and the anger outta my body. I'm not mad at him.

I'm not really mad at [00:28:00] anybody in particular. I'm just mad at the situation or frustrated with the situation or just feeling overwhelmed and it comes out as being angry. So it's a matter of how do I move that energy And yeah, I could definitely go to a rage room and hurl some dishes at the wall and it would feel really good.

But like the, I try to be very vigilant about my self-care anyway, but when I'm in times like this where I know that my stress is heightened, I have to be really extreme in my boundaries. Even with fun things that, I'm invited to. Like there's an event here at my office coming up next month that I was invited to participate.

Like it's a whole psychic metaphysical healing event which sounds really amazing. And I'm looking at my calendar, I'm going, I can't commit to that right now. It'll be fun. I really enjoy like spending the day talking to people and doing mini sessions with people and all of that great stuff. But right now I've got a ta tune in and say, can I energetically do I have the [00:29:00] capacity for that right now?

Even if it's gonna be fun. It still maybe too much.

Speaker 2: So did you ever see there? I don't know. There was there's been a couple of different college videos of it where the instructor puts a huge jar on the desk, glass usually, and it's empty at first.

And then he pours in tiny little pebbles and he says, can I fit anything else in this?

And everybody's going, no. And you can't because you're too worried about all the little nitty gritty things you done just messed up your whole thing. Because now you still have all this other stuff that's supposed to be in that jar, but it's not gonna fit. So he takes the little, it bitty things out and

he puts a couple of big rocks in there because those are the big things that have to be in your life.

Speaker 4: Like your

Speaker 2: partner, your kids, and that kind of thing. And then you have smaller not. Tiny ones, but smaller rocks that go in there that are like your mortgage, your job, all those kind of things.

And you put those in. And then he asked is this full? And [00:30:00] everybody's yeah, it's full. And then he goes, no, it's not. And so then he puts some kind of fish pebble things in and put some of that in there and ta-da. It's still not full.

And then he pours sand in, which is like really the minuscule little things that happen in your day-to-day life, like breathing apparently or something.

I don't know.

So he pours that in and he goes, is it full? And the students are like, oh yeah, like you can't put anything else in this thing. And then he pours water in. Now really you can't put anything else in. So now it really is full. But at every stage of the game, everybody was like, yeah, it's full.

And yet he was able to fit more in, yeah, it's full, but he was able to fit more in. But here's the problem. Sometimes even if you put them in the correct order, [00:31:00] you don't have, your jars may be a little bit smaller that day. And so you can't fit all of the things in that you did yesterday.

And so that's where I've learned I have to be careful. Yeah. Because I can go for a couple of months and just bang things out and everything's fine. And then my mental health does that wonderful thing called, I don't know, screw up. And you. Take a nose dive and you're like, oh, wait a minute, what just happened?

I don't have the energy to do this thing anymore. I don't have the energy to do that thing at the moment. It'll have to wait or I have to like, okay, I can do this, but I can't do this today. To try to balance out and stay okay throughout the day. Yeah. Some days your jar is smaller than you were expecting, and all you can do is put the big things back in.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 2: And you have to carry the big things [00:32:00] because you know you have to.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But other days your jar seems to be a little bit bigger and you have room to make up for the days when you had less. Does that mean you have to? No. Does that mean you should? Maybe. It depends on what that thing is as it's waiting to be done.

How much you want it to be done at any given moment. Your life is made up of all the choices you make.

Other people's choices can and will affect us sometimes. And while that is absolutely 100% not fair and not right, we are only in control of our choices. We are only responsible for our choices. Yes. And so telling, if you cheat on somebody, [00:33:00] that's your choice. You can't then turn around and say I didn't mean to hurt you like that.

Yes you did, because that was the choice you made when you cheated on the person. Cheating on somebody is not gonna make them happy. It's gonna hurt them. I don't even care if you're 12. If you cheat on somebody, it's going to upset them. Absolutely. So we make choices every single day and the consequences come when we make the wrong choice, but we still have to make them and stand by them.

So if you made the choice to cheat, saying I didn't mean to hurt you, it's grossly unfair to the person you cheated on. I'm sorry I cheated on you. I understand that, you might not want anything to do with me. Sometimes people will forgive cheaters. I personally wouldn't, but that's their choice.

And so you might be able to fix [00:34:00] things until the next time. But the whole point I'm trying to make is we have choices. We have choices to get better. We have choices to stay stagnant and where we are, no matter where we are, is even if we're in a good place, we have the choice to stay there or we can have the chance choice to slack off and get worse.

Or we can work hard and go better. Like we have choices. And so our self-help, our self-care is a choice we make every day. At least for me that says I am staying true to what I know works for me. Like I will vent because I am like of furnace that doesn't get vented and all of a sudden it's melted and that is never a good thing.

But I know those things. I make my choices every single day [00:35:00] to do the work I need to do. To play the games I play, to read whatever I read, to get out of my own head and to be decent to the people I live, with and not take their help or kindness for granted. That is all choices. If your self-care stomps on anybody else, then it's not self-care, it's selfishness.

Speaker: I think it's important to note that like you're responsible for your choices. You also need to be accountable to your choices. And choosing to do your self-care, you need to be accountable to that and the consequences of that. Choosing not to do your self-care and setting things aside, you need to be accountable to the consequences of that because that is gonna have an impact on your life.

In just as much as, and sometimes exponentially worse than, [00:36:00] more than, and therefore worse than not doing your self-care.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker: So if you're not taking care of yourself, you're not doing your inner work, you are not taking time to give yourself a break to stop and breathe, to get out and move and get some fresh air to make sure that you're eating in a way that's good for you that's supporting you or asking for help when you need it, or whatever those self-care things are that you need, then I, if you're not choosing not to do that.

And it is a choice. And that's what we have to be aware of. How are you prioritizing things? If you're choosing not to do that, there are going to be consequences.

And when those consequences happen, whether it is physical health consequences, mental health consequences, or relational consequences, or career consequences, they're still your responsibility.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker: Just as much as you making the conscious choice to say, Hey, I need to take a break. I need to stop. I need to set boundaries. I need to move my [00:37:00] body. I need to breathe. I need to ground, I need to move some anger. I need to allow my emotions, I need to get help and support. Whatever those things are, there are consequences to that too.

And generally those consequences are very positive because they help you move through life.

Going back to, they help you build resilience when you're doing those things day in and day out every single day. Then when life gets messy, when stressors get more intense, you already have a baseline to work with so that you can actually move through those with greater ease.

And you have resources that you can draw on that you already have some muscle memory around. So you can remember, if you're doing breath work practices, for example, on a regular basis then when you're feeling overwhelmed, you can draw on that because you remember how to do it, your body knows how to do it, and you remember that.

That's a practice that even exists. Whereas if you never do this and then suddenly your life is overwhelmed [00:38:00] and you're going to just be reactive.

And not be able to tap into those resources as effectively as if you make them part of your life every day. And when we make excuses that, like everything else has to be first, this goes back to what you were talking about with the jar.

One, you're not doing anybody a service by putting your mask on last. But you have to be prioritizing how you're managing your life every day. Everybody else cannot be your priority. You have to be the priority because you're the bottom line. You are the center of your universe and you are no good anybody else if you're not taking care of you.

So if you take time every day, even if it's just, it doesn't have to be big things. You don't have to spend two hours at the gym for self-care. Take five minutes to stop and take a break and breathe. Sit down and have a cup of tea and just let your body unwind. Pick up the phone and call a friend who's supportive.

Do something fun. Fun is a huge part of self-care. So do something fun that helps your body to relax.

But prioritize that. [00:39:00] 'cause if you don't, then it's going to have devastating impacts on your life as a whole.

We always put ourselves last. We, not everybody, but most of us, we put ourselves last and we have excuse after excuse of why we can't do this and why we don't have time for it.

Until it gets to a critical point where something breaks down and then we have no choice.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: But now you have choice. If you have choice, then take advantage of it.

I think just really emphasizing that it's so important for us to make ourselves a priority. As I just said, we have to make ourselves a priority, and I know we're well conditioned women, especially women, are conditioned to not be selfish.

Speaker 3: To make everybody else a priority in front of themselves.

Speaker: And we have to break through that pattern. And recognize that we are important and we deserve to take care of ourselves. We deserve to be a priority in our world, [00:40:00] and it's not selfish to do

it is essential for our own health and wellbeing. We cannot be of use to anybody else without that. And for men commonly the conditioning is more around, you have to be tough, you have to be strong, you have to push through, and that is equally toxic.

Yeah. Men need to have, make sure that they're taking care of themselves as well, stressing your body by eating horrible things and overworking and pushing yourself beyond your capacity all the time. Is detrimental to your health and wellbeing, and again, isn't helping anybody.

It's not being manly and masculine to do things to harm yourself or to just simply neglect yourself, but that's what men are generally conditioned towards.

Like [00:41:00] being shamed for eating healthy or doing yoga and things like that, or meditating, that's a girly thing to do. It's not, it's self-care and it's essential. So again, we have to push back past oftentimes our own conditioning and our own ingrained practices, and this is where the inner work comes in.

What's stopping me from doing this? What was I told throughout my life, or what experiences did I have or what was modeled to me throughout my life that is keeping me from doing this? If this is something that you struggle with. And then how do I move through that? How do I shift my beliefs and my patterns so that I start to learn how to love myself first and foremost?

Speaker 5: Hey everyone. Thanks for sticking with us. Before we dive into our next topic, I just wanna take a quick moment to remind you two who like this video, subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell. That way you'll always be the first to know when a new episode drops [00:42:00] and we want to hear from you.

What topics are you most excited about? Drop your thoughts in. The comments below. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. We've got some exciting stuff coming your way, so don't miss out. Now let's switch gears and jump into our next discussion. I.

Speaker 2: we're gonna talk about do it yourself, done for you and done with you. And when you should do it yourself and when you should hire somebody to do it for you, or whether you should hire somebody to just go through it with you to say, Hey, if you do it this way, it's a little bit easier type deal.

Do it yourself. Most people go into anything in the, oh, I can do it myself. I don't need no help. I can do it myself. Especially the IKEA furniture. Everybody starts by saying I can do it. [00:43:00] Some of us end it at the put screw B into happy which is helpful. That the China instructions that have been translated into English and back out and end maybe 20 times because I don't know how that was a straight translation. We should be able to do better. But in those cases it might be time to just be like, Ikea, put it together, yourself and I will come pick it up.

I think they can do that. I'm pretty sure that they have the ability to make it for you. I don't know. I don't shop at ikea.

I've gotten like bookshelves at Walmart and those were fine to put together, there I do it yourself usually is less expensive than any of the other options, right? You have full control over what's happening. [00:44:00] Technically, you also have full blame for whatever is happening. So you either are doing it really well or you're not, that's why some places have the door that's, got a cutout in it because the toilet is stopping the door from being able to open.

Things happen there. Choices were.

Wouldn't call them correct choices, especially with cutting the door, but, choices were made. It allows you to develop the skills because a lot of the times, if you're doing it yourself, you didn't have the skills when you started. You're reading a book, you're watching YouTube videos, and you're piecemealing the knowledge that you need because they go, oh, okay, so to take this off, I just do this sledgehammer to the toilet. Got it. Probably not the best way to uninstall a toilet. [00:45:00] I don't know how to do that, but there are ways to learn. There's books and YouTube videos and stuff, so you can learn it now.

Your time is valuable no matter what it is you do, right? Time is money folks, right? So you are going to take up to a hundred percent more time than if you gave it to somebody else or you worked with somebody else. You are going to take quality risks because again, the toilet with the door, that's not good quality stuff right there, right?

We all can look at that and go, that's a choice. And that one I would've made, any same person anyway, but you made them and now you've got to live with them. So maybe your [00:46:00] desk has a drawer that's cockeyed or something and now you have to live with that choice. It's fine. It works fine, but you have to deal with that.

So there's benefit, there's pros and cons and you should look at the pros and cons before you do any of it. Pro I'm gonna be able to do this in the future after the first time because I'll know what I'm doing. Con maybe don't use those materials next time.

Then we have done for you. So now you're pulling in an expert and you're saying, Hey, do this. I don't want to. So basically you go to, let's use the IKEA thing again. So you paid 30 bucks for the bookshelf. I think you need to pay 30 bucks for them to put it together. Worth it [00:47:00] in a lot of people's eyes because directions are not clear ever, right?

But, so it saves you time. Your stress is gone until you're paying the bill, right? 'cause you're gonna have stress once the bill comes because you've just been double, right? So you have higher cost done for you. Services can involve more, can be more expensive due to the expertise and labor involved. And that changes with the expertise.

So ikea, it might be 30 bucks to put that together and they're gonna use whatever's in that box, right? Or you can call on a specialty furniture maker. And so instead of paying 60 bucks for that bookshelf, you can get one that looks maybe a lot cooler, but it's gonna cost you 300 bucks and it's already coming to you put together.

Because that's how that works. So [00:48:00] you have your options, but you have less control over anything too. You can say, I want this put together. I want to pretty bookshelf, I want to have wizards and wolves and dragons. Just all over the edge piece of it. But you don't get to tell him where that dragon goes or what that dragon looks like because he has to do it based on his ability to do those things.

And you wouldn't go to a therapist to do woodwork because I don't know any therapist who can do woodwork.

I don't really think so. So you would, you have to go to the right person for the job. Then there's done with you. So it combines the professional with the, person. So business owner, any of these examples could be business owner with a [00:49:00] task or homeowner with a task or just person with a task educational.

So the client learns from the process directly from somebody who's already done it. As somebody who I use Xactimate for my roofers to be, it's insurance paperwork basically that tells insurance line by line exactly what a roof is gonna cost or anything else. I learned how to do that from books.

I know that there is a gap in my knowledge that I have not been able to fill yet because I don't know somebody who actually knows Xactimate to go over those things with. I will find somebody eventually. But you get more insight into it when you're doing that. So your education bar fills faster if we're in the Sims, right?

Because you're talking to that [00:50:00] person. You're asking those questions. 'cause sometimes when you watch a YouTube video, you go, wait a minute, he just jumped over. Step seven. How do I do step seven? No, go back to step seven. That's not gonna do you any good. You can yell at your screen all you want. It's not gonna change the fact that he skipped step seven and now you have watched 20 minutes of a video that is now not gonna do you any good.

There's a balance of control. So your professional has the control of what he's teaching you but the business or the person can be like, wait, but what about step seven? And they usually, the expert will go back to step seven and re, go over that with them. So you get the chance to ask questions and go over things.

And it's more balanced in the control because, the homeowner's not doing it by themselves so they're not pulling in a [00:51:00] contractor to do it for them. But if you work with somebody who, let's say your great uncle Bob knows how to build bookshelves, and you take your bookshelf over to him and he teaches you how to read the directions and how to put the bookshelf together.

You might learn better, right? It's less confusing that way. 'cause you're not looking at anything slide B into A, but A is a screw. How do I slide B into A? Doesn't make any sense. So again, you can get help that way. There is a potential for conflict when you're doing done with you. Because if the client makes a decision that the professional doesn't agree with, there might be contention and a splitting of the ways.

Because everybody has pride in what they do. And if they're telling you in order to get a quality product, you do it this way [00:52:00] and you go, yeah, but I think I can do it faster this way. There might be, some breakage there. Okay. So DIY is ideal for task when you have the necessary skills and time or when your budget is saying you can't afford anything else.

And if you don't necessarily have to have the necessary skills, you have to be willing to learn the necessary skills to get where you're going done for you is best for tasks requiring specialized expertise or when time is a critical factor. So you don't wanna put that bookshelf together. You have, cousins, aunts and uncles coming over in two weeks and that needs to be put together and you get it put together

and down for you works pretty good for social media as well. [00:53:00] And then done with you. It's suitable when you need guidance, but also want to maintain some control and learn the process. So if you wanna learn how to do it, 'cause you don't wanna pay somebody else forever. Although in my idea, you should be going to, paying other people to do stuff that you don't necessarily have the skills to do anyway.

But then in the done with you situation, you get to learn from the professional and grow your skillset usually better and faster than you would on your own with DIY because we all have those directions are very unclear on anything that there are directions on, except for the do not put the toaster in the bathtub.

Like, why do we have that? It's a duh. What do you [00:54:00] think?

Speaker: I think that I think you're right. It definitely really varies a lot based on what your goals are. I know as I'm a solopreneur, so as a business owner, there are a lot of things that I do myself. And I've learned a lot in that process. I'd learned how to build my website and manage at that and all sorts of other things, social media, marketing and all sorts of stuff.

And I also know that there are things that I do myself that would definitely benefit from having an expert.

My background is in social work and my background is in holistic healing and coaching. I actually have a strong technical background, which has been an asset.

It's also been a hindrance because it do get into that mindset of oh I'm pretty good with technical things so I can just do this myself. Whereas if I didn't have that, I would be much more inclined to say, I'm gonna hire somebody to do that. So that's where I trip over myself.

But as far as some of the business things I recognize that's not my strength, so I have somebody that I work with that helps me with business strategy and [00:55:00] things like that helps to keep me in line, to guide me in things that I should be paying attention to or how to plan things or be, strategize in how I wanna build and grow my business.

Because. Otherwise for me, I'm just doing the day-to-day stuff and throwing spaghetti at the wall and see what happens. And that's not an effective way to run a business. So I know I need somebody to do that because I know that's not my strength.

And it's really easy as a solopreneur because I know a lot of us that do this where we really get caught up in the, I'll just do it myself.

I'll just do it myself. Mindset because we feel like we're in it by ourselves 'cause we're a solopreneur. That we get very bogged down in the day-to-day mundane things that we have to do that really we don't have to own. We can find somebody else to do that either as you said, to do something with, so like my business strategy where we work together on that, she's my [00:56:00] guide, she's teaching me.

And. Helping me keep track of things, but we're doing this process together. Or just simply hiring somebody to do I guess that would be still a, with the social media marketing and the other marketing things and the website stuff that would still be done with to some degree, but it would be more like you do most of it and I'll give you guidance.

And that would save a ton of time.

Speaker 2: So by the time this podcast comes out, my new service will be out. I am going to be helping people with their tech, either as a. Done with you or done for you so that they can go do other stuff. I know that a lot of people who are not good with tech in any way, shape or form, and I know that it doesn't take me long to learn a new program.

So it doesn't matter what somebody already is using. I can probably jump in because I've either already used it before for somebody [00:57:00] else or things are usually in the same place no matter the program. It's just a matter of looking at it and figuring it out for a minute.

So I'm going to be offering packages so that I either help set up a program or lot of programs. I either with the done with you.

I have a lot of different things that I do not because I don't want to go into one niche and I want to be different.

It's because if I don't be different I'm gonna pull all my hair out and I have way too much hair to be pulling out. Now it's going to be something that is like a purpose and there's going to be a purpose behind it.

Speaker: That's a great offer.

I know plenty of people who struggle with technology and they get stymied by it and are overwhelmed by it, and then they just freeze and don't do anything versus finding the resources to help them do it. So I think that's [00:58:00] great.

Speaker 2: Most of the service will start as of today. The 7th of March? Yes. Yeah. It'll go up on Monday.

Speaker 4: Very cool.

Speaker 2: Okay, so do you have anything you want to plug today?

Speaker: I'd love to talk about the the Empowered Goddess Tribe, speaking of communities which is an online community that I've created outside of social media to bring women together to learn together, to grow together, support each other and to uplift each other.

And within that community we have sisterhood circles, empowerment circles. We just have some daily interactions and opportunities to connect as well as opportunities to come together in person from time to time. So we get the online connection but we also have that in-person connection, which is so vital.

And also within that community we have what's called the Sacred [00:59:00] Healer Circle, which is a space for. Either aspiring practitioners who are looking to move into energy healing and coaching work, or existing practitioners who are looking to expand their practice to learn trauma informed energy healing and coaching, which I feel is such a vital aspect.

Because when we come into coming into healing, we're coming into any type of work where you're supporting people is a really sacred duty. And trauma is such an important aspect. And if we are not educated about it, if we don't understand it and we don't know how to navigate it or how to direct people and hold space for people through that, we can do a tremendous amount of damage.

Which, you even indicated in some of your story.

So that is a year long four-part program that is within the empowered Goddess Tribe. So if that's something that anybody's interested in, checking out the website for the Empowered Goddess Tribe is empowered gods tribe.com. And you can always reach out through there to ask me questions and learn more about [01:00:00] it.

Speaker 2: That will be down in the comments