Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Kate Hamilton podcast. In today's episode, I sit down with Susanna Sweeney. So Susanna is a psychotherapist who has been working in the psychotherapy field for over 30 years, 25 of which she has spent exclusively working in the trauma fields.
Speaker: and Over the past few years, she's mainly been helping clients overcome emotional challenges like anxiety, low self-worth, imposter syndrome and specific fears like fear of public speaking and you know things that can be holding us back from reaching our full potential. and She does this by addressing the root cause in a short space of time.
Speaker: It's not about spending years in therapy and her approach with Which includes the senses and really bringing the physical body and the senses into her therapy approach is absolutely fascinating. In this conversation, we really talk a lot about faulty childhood programming, which fascinating.
Speaker: her area of expertise and the root cause of so many issues in our lives that are holding us back. Whether our goals are are to build a business, whether we are just trying to raise our children and survive in our jobs, whether we are trying to lose weight, whether we've health goals, fitness goals, whether... We are dealing with things that are just affecting our day to day life. um A lot of this is stemming in Susanna's opinion. And and i I firmly agree with her from this faulty childhood programming.
Speaker: And this conversation. there's There's something in this for everyone. I cannot wait for you to hear it and to get the benefit and the knowledge that I have gotten from this ah conversation. Also, we're just going to get straight to the episode because I'm not going to give it justice through this introduction.
Speaker: You need to listen to it. You need to listen to what she has to say. And I hope you get as much benefit from it as I have.
Speaker: Susanna, welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you so much for having me, Kate. I'm so excited to talk to you about imposter syndrome and faulty childhood programming and the feeling of not being enough.
Speaker: You have no idea how excited I am to talk about this and with someone with your expertise on this topic, because I really do think this like I know this is something that we all experience. and But before we get into it, you want to just tell everybody a little bit about you, what you do, a little bit about your story that's that's led you to where you are today?
Speaker: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So I am. So I'm Susanna Sweeney, first of all. I'm a psychotherapist and I have been in that field for now 35 years.
Speaker: Hard to believe it. Time flies. And what I do these days is I help professionals overcome emotional blocks that help them back, that hold them back rather in business, but also in life.
Speaker: And so most of my clients that I've worked with over the last six, seven years or so have had struggles with anxiety, with imposter syndrome, which I think is a form of anxiety.
Speaker: with maybe unworthiness or even with shame or specific fears like public speaking and things like that. So I originally came through the world of trauma where I was working for 25 years as a psychotherapist. I'm specifically trained in a method called sensory motor or psychotherapy that I've been practicing for over 25 years now.
Speaker: And that has, even back then, it was very cutting edge. It had very specific processes that we can use, how we can work through the body to help people overcome the effects of trauma much more quickly and effectively.
Speaker: rather than just talking about it and understanding things, but actually on a physical level, I'm feeling different. So I've been doing this work for a long time and I've been refining it, especially over the last few years, because that's when I went into self-employment.
Speaker: And I was then really responding to the market as such, where people wanted a resolution without much talking about it, because most of my clients have already tried talk therapy or maybe CBT or maybe coaching. And they kind of got stuck with that. It might might have been helpful a certain amount, and then it wasn't.
Speaker: And so that's where I come in with these other methods, more body focused. And there's a new thing I've been doing the last six, seven years, which is psychosensory work, where we work through the senses to affect the psyche.
Speaker: And that's based on neuroscience. And it's really exciting work. So I'll be telling you about that. It works very quickly. So the other aspect of that was people want results, they don't want to attend therapy for life, they want to have results fairly quickly. And so that's the market I've been catering to ah delivering results that are felt where people experience a change in their emotional life where they become more resilient.
Speaker: And on the other hand, um to do that quite quickly. So, yeah, so um that's kind of my my professional background.
Speaker: um And, oh, the other side to that I almost forgot is I work with organizations as well. So I help organizations become more resilient.
Speaker: So when I was in my phase of being a resilient course taker, as you described it so well, Kate, I was, um one of the things I did is I did a master's in organizational work and behavior in UL, which was fascinating.
Speaker: And from there on in, I've been working with organizations to strengthen their resilience by strengthening how people manage pressure, how they communicate amongst each other, how they create a healthy work environment, and all of those things. I do that with teams and with leaders as well.
Speaker: And I'm the mom of two lovely teenagers. They're 14 and 19. I live in Galway and I work online and worldwide. That's amazing. That's so interesting. and What you say about your work in relation to, you know, and and I'm hearing so much more of this and obviously I'm not at all qualified in that field, but, you know, the the mind first type of therapies and the Then the body first therapies, I find this really, really interesting because from my own personal experience of therapy. So in my early 20s, I was dealing with panic disorder and chronic anxiety and daily panic attacks. And it took a good few years to really work through that. But CBT was hugely, hugely beneficial to me at that time. It really, really changed my life. And I think it laid the foundations to all of my personal growth that happened before.
Speaker: you know, as as I as I got older from that point in my life, it was such a pivotal point. But interestingly, I think what built on that accidentally was when I started getting into fitness and lifting weights and particularly lifting heavy weights and, you know, learning how how yeah how to lift a barbell and back squat and deadlift. And then, you know, doing more like really pushing myself physically.
Speaker: I feel like without that being the intention, I massively changed my state which led to so many changes in my whole life that I think at that it made me really think as I look back and you know as I'm learning and I talk to a lot of experts like yourself that I'm like wow there's there's a lot to this body first stuff and you know there's a lot of things coming out in relation to you know, somatic therapies and breath work. And there's so many different modalities where really we're trying to help people are trying to help people get results from a physical level first to deal with the traumas and the and the the insecurities and the the things that are inside. It's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And certainly there's more roads to Rome than just one. i's so I mean, I take a very particular one and it suits a certain percentage of people who have issues with anxiety and similar stuff.
Speaker: And, but that's not the only road. So my clients largely they've tried things like talk therapy and CBT and they came to a limit. with that. But for some people it works very well. It it all depends on what you bring and it depends on your receptivity as well.
Speaker: So some people are more cognitively structured than others. And for some people, You know, that can be very helpful. Excuse me. That's OK. And so, you know, it's always trial and error as well. Right. and And yeah. But I think what your work, it's very encouraging that because there could be people listening who I know have family members who have done talk therapy and have found.
Speaker: that it kind of opened a can of worms that didn't make them feel better. And it's, you know, so I think, you know, for some people, they do talk therapy. Oh, and ah that didn't work. Therapy doesn't work for me rather than knowing that. So I think it's really, really empowering to know there are other options. There are other avenues. Yes. Yes. And so this is something I hear quite a lot.
Speaker: This opened a can of worms and did nothing with it and how I felt didn't change. So that would be one of the, um entry points for for people um into working with me so they've they've tried various things and they're now getting stuck and they have the understanding, maybe already of what's there in terms of all the issues underneath, but the understanding didn't help with it.
Speaker: Right. yeah Yeah, if you're feeling something physically or emotionally and you understand where it's coming from and and why it's happening, but it's still happening, you still have a problem. And that actually is something that I've experienced recently now on a minor level, in the sense that with me, I'm 40 now and I've had a stressful few years and really was feeling my anxiety bubbling up a little bit, probably hormonal. And and I knew all the things i like I'm like, I know and i need more sleep. And I, you know, and I put forth all these things in place and i I knew what was happening inside my body. And I went to the doctor and I got my checkups and made sure everything was OK physically. And
Speaker: it didn't stop the fact that it was still happening. But what worked really well for me was, yeah, i working with with the somatic coach. would So it was actually kind of doing some physical work and and around and yeah body first, because it was my body was showing me these symptoms, although that I psychologically felt OK. Hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. And so it sounds like exercise for you was like a really good avenue that worked on a really deep level. Yeah. And again, everybody is s knitted differently. Yeah. Yeah. So for you, you were able to use it to build resilience.
Speaker: So what I often see is that doing all that stuff already, they're doing all the stuff in the here and now where they, yeah you know, look after their stress levels. are very conscious of how much they're scheduling in. They're looking after the nutrition, after the exercise and still still, yeah, they get those disturbing symptoms.
Speaker: So what? So this is a really good point because thankfully that seems to be working for me for now But what happens when someone is ticking those boxes and they're still fit feel they've tried the talk therapy, they're feeling these symptoms.
Speaker: What this next step? Yeah, great question. Love it. And that's where I'm going to start maybe sharing a little bit about my own story, because I think that really helps to yeah illustrate how this works a bit more. Right. Yes. Amazing. so So I grew up in East Germany.
Speaker: Right. I grew up behind the Berlin Wall and I'm from Berlin. So I've just been there. Fabulous place. I've actually just learned a lot about your history as well. and I was only there a few weeks ago.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's the best city in the world. Amazing city. Love it. I highly recommend everybody goes there. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. And so rich in history. I mean, I find new things to look at with my kids every time we're there.
Speaker: Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. So, but so back in the day, right? So going back to when the wall was still there, obviously being on the wrong side of that, being in the East, it was a society that was very...
Speaker: quite repressive, you know. um It was really in its structure. It was a dictatorship. Not that it was unbearable living there, but there were many things that were quite repressive. And you feel that as a kid even. So you have that repressive culture around you.
Speaker: But that repressive culture also plays out in families, right? So you've got... a world where emotions aren't welcome, where being yourself, being an individual is seen as decadent.
Speaker: You're not really, there there is no concept of you as an individual unfolding, but rather you're supposed to fit in with you know socialism and we're building this positive society and you're supposed to submit to all of that.
Speaker: And my parents were kids of the war, right? So my father was born in 1938, my mom in 41. So when they were very young, they experienced the tail end of the war and well actually my my dad you know sat through the whole lot if you like and they had losses when they were very young losing people that were close to them and so on they were on the outskirts of big cities so with the bombing campaigns they kind of witnessed
Speaker: um that from what you witness on the edges of a city, you hear things, you see the planes and so on. And then naturally there was a hunger period after the war and they lived through all of that, the scarcity and so on. And it led to them just not feeling comfortable with emotions because I suppose I was never given to them.
Speaker: Right. So you have adults that are frightened every day. When you think of their parenting that they received, there was nothing left to give to them emotionally. And so they weren't able to pass anything on emotionally.
Speaker: And so what that led to was that by the time I was 18, I was severely anxious. yeah like it was you know I had very bad patches and so then the wall comes down in 89 I was 19 and then you have and tsunami of new impressions coming across the wall and that was quite overwhelming and that was really the impetus then for me to to seek therapy and look to resolve this for myself and I started working on that and then
Speaker: So when then forward into my early twenties, where I started move, where I moved to Ireland, and stayed here. I had a grant originally to go to college and then I ended up staying.
Speaker: And I now felt much better because I'd done some therapy. And I was sort of on a very comfortable plateau at that stage when I started working in the world of trauma and therapy myself.
Speaker: And fast forward again a few more years when I started reaching the limits of that job. And suddenly it was like,
Speaker: Well, the other option is I move out into self-employment, but, and then came all the counter arguments and all the kind of imposter feelings yeah surfaced. And this was something I came up against, kept coming up against for many years.
Speaker: I struggled with that for probably 10 years or so. And the feelings were quite intense. So, um, I wasn't trusting myself. That was the main one.
Speaker: So I had qualifications. I had, you know, I was confident in my job naturally and, but the job had also become a comfort zone and I didn't trust myself enough to step out there and do it on my own to make the income that I needed and to do well under the pressure and all of those things. I just didn't trust myself and I kept coming up against that. And so I think for me, the imposter syndrome, I had the kind of more severe version of that because naturally all of those
Speaker: things occur on a spectrum. You can have the kind of imposter syndrome where really you push through, maybe like you do with a bit of exercise and um mindset work. And then you, you know, you get it together and you take that next step in business because imposter syndrome often comes up when you're growing.
Speaker: And then, you know, you just need that little push over the threshold and then you're doing okay again. Yeah. and that And that would be me now. But me, when I was dealing with my anxiety in my 20s, without those years of CBT, like like there's no way I could have. So I get that. I do get how paralyzing it could be.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you do. I mean, anxiety is a bummer to live with. Absolutely. So you were really feeling stuck here with this, this like paralyzed.
Speaker: Yeah, so I felt very paralyzed and I tried all sorts, um, to break through it. And so I was that serial course taker that you described so well, right? You're doing one course after another and you still don't feel enough and you still see the gaps and you're still improving. And so when I did my master's that was during that time and several other things, I mean, we're talking about a 10 year stretch.
Speaker: always hoping to fill that gap. But how I felt inside didn't change. when i Once I had the qualifications, how I felt inside still had not shifted.
Speaker: yeah And so what i understood in the end of all of that was that it was inner work that needed to happen and that this came from childhood. It was still the tail end of that anxiety that I had felt when I was young.
Speaker: It wasn't disturbing me in the same way now, but it was still basically the same thing from growing up in an environment where there was a lot of criticism, there was a lot of rejection, and just no emotional support available. Right? Right.
Speaker: And so then it was about how to resolve that the understanding didn't do it. And I worked a lot through the body and I tried various things. And then I came across this much, this different approach. So it's been around a bit in EMDR, eye movement, reprocessing and um desensitization.
Speaker: So I'm trained in the MDR and that's a psychotherapy, psycho, excuse me, psychosensory method. So you're using your eyes, you're moving your eyes and the sense of sight or the the nerve endings that are in the eye that are directly connected to your brain become an avenue how we affect the certain changes in the brain.
Speaker: And at the time, really, the neuroscience wasn't even there yet when EMDR came online first, it was trial and error, was a chance discovery. But since then, various psychosensory methods have come along. So tapping is in that field, all the different forms of tapping that you will have come across the EFT and the TFT and what have you.
Speaker: And what's also in that field is Havening techniques. And so Havening techniques is what I personally fell in love with. I'm a trainer of Havening techniques. So I train on mostly on the German market as it happened.
Speaker: I trained doctors and psychotherapists and had a couple of psychiatrists. So there's a lot of openness to that now. And there's a lot more realization now that talking alone just doesn't bring you the results that you need to deliver to your clients, right? If you really want them to be able to change the quality of life, we need to do a little bit more.
Speaker: Yeah. And so, and that was what, that psychosensory approach was what helped me um to get through there. And what released was like a humongous load of fear that had been stored in my system from when I was young.
Speaker: That's fascinating. It was fascinating for me as well to observe that when it released. and released quite quickly. And it was like a cloud of fear around me. It felt like I could sort of, this was very unusual. I could sort of feel what was happening in my aura, so to speak, yeah like around me for that period of time. And it was like the fear came out of me and it lifted up and it was like a cloud lifting up.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And then the fear was gone and just so much changed in the aftermath of that. My whole life changed. Everything became better.
Speaker: And I was then able to do the career change that I had been wanting to do for the longest time. That's so fascinating. and And with that trauma and the fear and um it's true, isn't it, that we root that we hold a lot of it in our body.
Speaker: as well, that we, like, but so if we come back to the physical symptoms of it, am I correct in thinking that you might just feel like, oh, I'm just a tense person? Oh, i I'm, ah you know, someone, you know, that you mightn't even be aware of the trauma or the fear or the, or whatever it is that you're holding onto in your, in your mind, and your subconscious mind, but also in in in your body really, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, completely. um so like in latter years, there's been a lot of new neuroscience coming in. I used to believe too, that it's the body that stores those things and that Adagy is still around, but actually, of course the brain is the computer.
Speaker: Yeah. Right. So the brain manages all that information and then. is linked into the body through the nervous system. And that's where we experience certain things. So it's kind of telling the body what to do really, isn't it? Your brain is, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so it's mostly stored in the brain and there's like very particular mechanisms that are part of that. And that's also because it's stored in parts of the brain that don't speak language, the much older parts of the brain. That's like an ancient system that reptiles would have too in their brains. That's how old it is in terms of evolution.
Speaker: And so when it doesn't speak language, how do you, so, you know, so in true talk therapy, you can activate it. Talking will activate your talking. You're starting to feel these uncomfortable feelings.
Speaker: When you think of the people in your family, right, that said to you, stirred things up, but it didn't resolve them. Yeah. Right. Talking will activate those ancient parts of the brain, but talking can't really do anything else. So so it's kind of step one, really, is it like talking? that one Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. It's step one. Absolutely. and And so the, the processing has to happen through the senses when, you know, there's no other way of communicating with these parts of the brain.
Speaker: And so you are entering into a different world where I work a lot through touch and eye movement. And so the, because I work online, people will naturally, it will be touch you administer to yourself.
Speaker: And then we use. um certain processes that go with that, and they are able to communicate with the brain. um They become, you know, electrochemical impulses. The touch is, um what's the word, is made into an electrochemical impulse as it travels through the nervous system and is able to ultimately communicate to the brain that it's safe now, we no longer need this particular memory,
Speaker: Because those memories are there, they're created to help us, right? Our brain always wants to help us. It wants us to be able to negotiate something similar in future in a better way. That's the intention, but it doesn't always work like that.
Speaker: I have so many questions. so Sorry. i have so many questions. ah And so, so we. What we really need to do is we need to make those parts of the brain feel that the danger is over.
Speaker: Yeah. We're okay. Now this is not happening now. In my case, that was the criticism, the rejection, the fear that came along with that. And then remarkably everything changes because we've made changes on a biological level.
Speaker: This is really working with the human biology. And then it's like, In my experience, the biology is so much at the core of what's happening there. And we've often disregarded it.
Speaker: m And when we are able to make to make those changes, everything changes, how we feel changes, how we think changes, what we perceive as possible for ourselves changes, doors open up where you didn't think there were any.
Speaker: It's really remarkable. wow And so for me, it was like through my own experience, that door was unlocked and I see it all the time now in my work. it's And it's always that same mechanism working through the biology and then everything changes.
Speaker: So hit me with your questions, the many, many questions. First of all, this part of the brain, this ancient part of the brain that you're talking about, is there a specific name for it? Yeah, so the limbic system would be responsible, but also the brainstem.
Speaker: So the brainstem and the limbic system is what we're talking about. Okay. So the limbic system has a lot to do with survival functions and our emotions are part of our survival system too. They're a signaling system. That's what people don't understand.
Speaker: And the emotions or intense emotion is generated in the limbic system for that reason that has to do with survival. So things like fear, things like anger that are closely linked to survival functions, that's where they come from. They're generated in the limbic system. Is this also where we're talking about like the nervous system in the sense of like fight or flight being in, you know, when people talk about being in fight or flight or being in rest and digest, is this is this ah system also, is it?
Speaker: Yeah, you've got it. So the amygdala is about fight or flight. Yeah. And it's constantly, it's constantly active. It's always scanning, especially when you're in a new environment, it will always look around and make sure we're safe and pick up on warning signals or what we perceive as warning signals.
Speaker: Yeah. So if this explains a lot then, doesn't it If someone has experienced trauma when they're younger or lack of like lack of love, for example, or lack of love, lack of affection, even probably like lack of touch or, you know, even like more serious traumas that it's it's it's going to affect that part of the brain. If you're saying that what actually calms that part of the brain is touch and senses. And if you don't receive that as a child.
Speaker: Yeah, that that causes really deep rooted issues that probably spills out everywhere. Am I correct to think of that?
Speaker: I think so. So there's a body of research on that, on touch and child development. Yeah. And it tells us things like that when babies are in the womb, that the touch that they experience against the walls,
Speaker: of the womb has an impact on their brain development. Oh, wow. Okay. And so absolutely. I think there is that direct link and that if there's an absence of touch, I think, especially when you're a baby um and a toddler, when your needs are still so high,
Speaker: you really need that physical reassurance often. Right. So, I mean, look at how, look at the great apes. How do they raise their babies? They carry them around, they cling onto them. Yeah.
Speaker: So they have that physical contact. And I, I believe human babies need that too. Yeah. So we did that with, with our two, we carried them around and slings. Yeah. Until they were too heavy to carry. You can't do it anymore. yet Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And also this, um, this without any kind of judgment around the decisions people make and when they have babies.
Speaker: But I think as a matter of principle, when you have your baby in a different room to where you sleep from a very, very, very young age on, that that's not really a good idea. And I think that's often people don't know that and it's not very well understood. And in fact, there are parenting books that tell you to do that.
Speaker: yeah And I think that for me, for my own story, because part of what came out was about birth and the aftermath of birth, where what they practiced back in the day, it stopped in the early 80s, but like I was born in 1970, so it was still in full swing, was that they had newborn rooms.
Speaker: And as soon as you were born and you had your whatever treatments and your
Speaker: got washed and napped and whatever, they took you away from the mother and they put you in a newborn room and you would only be taken out of there every few hours by the clock for a feed.
Speaker: Yeah. And so that was the only time you had that comfort, that physical closeness, that reassurance from your mom. And I think for me personally, that that was part of what, um,
Speaker: put so much fear into my system. Because when when you think about it, you know, you have that closeness with your mom throughout pregnancy for the nine months. And then all of a sudden there's this dramatic change where you're taken away, you're surrounded by other newborns that are crying, they're in distress.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's like, where is mom where your expectation is to be held and to be close. And so I think definitely that can teach us lessons about parenting, about physical closeness, but it's much more than that, too. It's like the when once kids get a little bit older and say they get to toddler age, right, and they start having their own will and they want to do their own thing. And, you know that's really why they start throwing these temper tantrums.
Speaker: And depending on how you respond to those, they may learn that they're okay, that they're loved, that they're secure in their relationship with you, even if they throw stamper tantrums, or they may learn that they're too much, that they're not okay, that they, you know, that their self-expression isn't welcome.
Speaker: I think all of, all of those things teach you to either trust yourself, accept yourself, feel that you are enough. Feel that you are good exactly as you are or that you're not.
Speaker: This terrifies me as a mother of teenagers. I'm like, you know, my youngest, I feel like with my younger one, my youngest one is nine. And I'm like, I feel like I've probably made better decisions and dealt with things better with him because I'm older and I understand life more. Whereas I had my first child at 23 and he's like, he's new he'll be 17 in February. I'm like, oh, God.
Speaker: I hope I didn't mess them up too much in those early years, you know, and I think sometimes as parents, we can worry about that as well. um And I think as a young parent, I think I've just had to grow up a little bit with my kids and just change my behaviors and communicate with them and learn to apologize when, oh, I shouldn't have dealt with things that way. And for them to learn that, you know, mom is learning too. and And for us not to carry the guilt either, I think is important. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, completely. And to realize that you just described the emotional repair work, right? I mean, we're humans, we're all fallible. You know, I'm not the perfect parent either.
Speaker: um There will always be things that we're getting wrong. We're all limited in some way or another, and we all will pass on a certain amount of this conditioning that I call faulty childhood programming. Yeah. Much less ideally than the previous generation, but still, you know, there will be ways in which we're limited.
Speaker: And that's okay too. And there's always, you can change these things, right? That's the good news about it. You can change that programming in the person that's affected and you, in your relationship, you can do that emotional repair work. You can say, look, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I made a mistake. yeah Simple. yeah And I think that's so healthy for children. They don't need the perfect parent. They need a parent that's good enough. And who really is present to them.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think that makes all the difference. And you know, that change work that can happen no matter what age they are, the emotional repair work or the change work, even when they're in their twenties, we can still go to them and say, or I'm sorry about such and such. And it will have an effect on them.
Speaker: Yeah. And also the other avenue is to change ourselves. And when we change as mothers or fathers, when we do our inner work, They pick up on it immediately.
Speaker: And they will reflect back to you what's just changed in you. So I've often noticed that when my stress levels dropped after that bout of really intense inner work, they started being so much more relaxed as well. I've noticed that, too. And and my teenagers have made comments about my oldest lad has said, you're so much nicer now that you're not a teacher. What a lovely line. Nicer. um I'll take it. You're right. But, you know, I think that, yeah, our actions, they, they take, you know, they say a lot more than what us telling them what to do. And for sure in, okay. So bringing it back anyway, because I do want to talk a little bit about business and high performance, but before we do just in relation to this type of therapy that you're talking about, my last question around this, and then I i really do want to talk about imposter syndrome and and, and, and business owners. And, and but so you're saying that,
Speaker: this therapy involves things like using your eyes and touch. So what do you mean by that? Like, is are is it like following a finger? Is it like a hypnotism? Like with the touch? Is it using a like a machine or the pads on you? Or is it like a massage kind of thing or a tapping? Like what are what are we talking about, for example?
Speaker: So we have three areas for touch. The first one is the palms. Yeah. So we're not interested in the back of the hands. We're interested in this. hard, not so much on the fingers either.
Speaker: And so you can bring your palms together. can stroke over them like this, or you can do this. Yeah. Second area is from the top of the shoulders to the elbows where you can, um, work in that entire area. Oh yeah.
Speaker: And havening techniques it is stroking. And the face, so the entire face now I'm wearing glasses, so I just will work on my glasses here for the sake of the demonstration. And it would be like a stroking on the face.
Speaker: And children love that, don't they? like i I like my youngest loves when I stroke his face. and Touch is very comforting. I mean, it's an ancient form of giving that reassurance and giving that comfort.
Speaker: Yeah. Right. So it's not to be disregarded for children. Yeah. And we hold them when we. stroke them, that gives huge comfort.
Speaker: It lets them know they can relax with us. yeah And then I suppose as adults, that's why we enjoy things like massage and and then, you know, that that practices like reflexology, for example, can be hugely beneficial to people. It's touch, it's different point in the body.
Speaker: um Completely. And so then the eye movement is really just let me see if I can demonstrate it. just going from side to side with your eyes on one plane. You're just going from side to side.
Speaker: And so you can do this with your eyes open or with your eyes closed. That makes no difference. So it's that simple. The touch is that simple. It's quite structured.
Speaker: Oh, you'd have you be given a practice and you need to do it every day, kind of like your workouts, basically. But you'd be doing your your touch and your. Yeah, my clients, my clients get homework for sure.
Speaker: yeah But it they come in for their session and this is what you're doing with them. Yeah. So this is the, the, I've integrated that psychosensory work into what I do.
Speaker: Yeah. And when we do those processes, they will be using the touch. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's fascinating. And these are all. Because it creates a favorable brain environment for making positive changes. That's the whole ah logic about it. And these things have been measured. Yeah. Yeah. So you can measure things like ah brain waves and and what changes when you're applying touch.
Speaker: Yeah, like this is neuroscience we're talking about. And with the with like the the side to side with like moving your eyes from side to side, like from left to right. Is that something to do with using different sides of the brain, like the left, right kind of thing? Or is it just like what's it doing?
Speaker: I don't think so. In EMDR, they still say it's bilateral, meaning you have to have both sides and you're moving from side to side. But I think, but I use blinking too, for example, in my work. So really where you're just doing this.
Speaker: Right. I used to do that as a child. So I think it is the muscular movement of the eyes that feeds back through the nerves. But the science is.
Speaker: On the eye part, I haven't seen it. um On the touch part, we see. Yeah. OK, that's it. So it's so interesting and interesting that you say that with the blinking. i my My mother changed my school, like from junior infants to senior infants. I moved to a different school and my mother just said in passing one day, she's like, yeah, you used to do this weird blinking thing for ages when we when you first moved to as my first memory of really where my anxiety stemmed from, you know. i So you probably intuitively Was trying to regulate glu those things individually. And by the way, I'm lying about the science. There is science.
Speaker: It's the movement. The movement. yes Yeah. Yeah. OK, it helps to calm that area of the brain, is it? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. OK, that makes so much sense. Let's talk a little bit about imposter syndrome, because let's talk about that feeling of not being enough, because i think regardless of who's listening, whether you're on the podcast and you're listening as a business owner, as a mother, as a person who is trying to improve their health or their fitness or their weight loss, or like, I think that regardless of what area you're coming from in in listening to this podcast, we can all
Speaker: relate to that feeling of not being enough. It nearly seems like it's normal. Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah. So absolutely, I think it's it's almost like a cultural backdrop to the whole thing.
Speaker: um And I think it's capitalism. To a large extent, because the implication is always that once you have such and such a product,
Speaker: whatever the product may be, a service or a physical product, you'll be okay then. You'll be accepted then. You'll be loved then. You will love yourself. You'll be great, whatever it is.
Speaker: And I think that colors our experience very much from when we're kids, you watch ads on television. It seeps in. And I think also in Western culture, we don't do enough of what we were talking about, the positive reassurance to children that they are perfect exactly the way they are. And then they are very, very much likely to absorb that cultural conditioning. So they come to an age, I see it now with my daughter, she's 14.
Speaker: And now she would be very resilient, but all around her, there's a lot of peer pressure for different things. Yeah. You know, it has to be particular brands and it has to be particular types of makeup. I have a 13 year old daughter. she is such a little consumer. I just, I don't even know what to do. It's unbelievable. isn't it And they yeah want things like Sephora and. yes you name it, all the expensive stuff, you know? So yeah often that as a parent, you're you're caught between a rock and a hard place.
Speaker: But, and I acknowledge that too, you know, or they want the latest iPhone and, you know, and then you're like, as a parent, what's the best thing for my child? um Do I want her to feel left out or not? And then, you know, you make a decision. And once you make a decision, you have to live with your decision.
Speaker: Yeah. But, So that whole, that's the whole cultural backdrop. And it's there from an early age. And what runs underneath that the entire time is that message that you're not enough as you are. You're not enough as you are.
Speaker: That's the whole marketing. That's the whole business of marketing and advertising, isn't It's capitalism. capitalism my god It thrives on that. And then you have, um and I'm saying that, of course, I grew up in...
Speaker: In East Germany. So, you know, so for me, it's like, um I suppose, crystal clear when I think about it. I have a certain distance to it. I can see it from a bird's eye perspective.
Speaker: Because you experience the opposite of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, i'm I'm at home in the West. Don't get me wrong. I love it. Yeah. I love all the freedom and everything. And. you know, I'm very middle class myself and we build a house and we do. It's nice to have nice things, you know. Yeah, it's nice to have nice things and and all of that.
Speaker: But there is definitely limit for me when it comes to this, where it interferes, where it begins to interfere with self-acceptance. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think in the in the world, like I spent 15 years as a teacher and then I moved into to health and fitness and then I moved into this world of building and scaling my business and learned from a lot of you know business mentors and, you know, from a lot of people who were doing really well. And I learned a lot. But what I learned and I consumed a lot of information around business and growing a business and what I learned so quickly
Speaker: And it's very, very true actually for weight loss if we use that as an example as well. But if we use it as like, you know, with growing a business, I'll be happy when I make this amount of money. I'll be happy when I have this amount of staff. I'll be happy when I get this contract. i'll be And it's always like, I'll be happy when.
Speaker: be happy when. Yeah. And then what I learned very quickly is the more money that you make, the more money you have to end up having to pay out if you're not so careful and intentional with, know,
Speaker: your lifestyle, like your lifestyle creeps up with, with the more you earn. And it's just an endless treadmill. And the thing that you find is that imposter syndrome, that feeling inside, like you said, with all of the quality, the same with qualifications that that feeling inside is still there. And you've just got, it's literally that like that wraps on more money, more problems. It's like, you just have everything. to it magnifies who you are. And I think the same is true when, if you are looking to lose weight,
Speaker: To love yourself. And it's like, I'll be happy when I'll be happy when I'm a size 12. I'll be happy when I'm a size 10. I'll be happy when I'm nine stone. It's never ending. And then you get there and you're like, oh, I'm still me.
Speaker: And I still look in the mirror. and hate myself. And that's a really, really, really scary place to be both ends because you're like, oh everything I thought about the world is not the way it is. So my like I used to do weight loss as well. Right.
Speaker: But I've changed my whole approach on that. And it's really interesting what I see now. So people may come into my program And it's primarily about building emotional resilience and clearing faulty childhood programming, but they may come in one of their points of complaint, maybe the weight loss. Yeah. I'm not happy with the body.
Speaker: Um, there may be, it may be emotional eating that's driving us and that they're just not happy, but what changes then when they accept themselves better,
Speaker: is that they, first of all, they don't perceive the issue as so central anymore. It just becomes one of many things. And secondly, they're just not as self-critical as they were before.
Speaker: They're more accepting of themselves. So it stops being a big deal. and And then it's almost like once it isn't that big deal anymore, the habits and often the habits are fed to by all the stuff, all the chronic stress that's in there and coded. That's that's driving the emotional eating because it's a comfort thing a lot of the time, right? It's a coping mechanism for when you feel very anxious, maybe, or you feel bored or. Yeah. My, from my experience, the weight that struggled to lose weight and the gaining of weight is the symptom of something much deeper.
Speaker: Much, much deeper. And once you remove the deeper thing, I'd like, I don't work with the habit side very much at all. right the habits don't with the habit don workinging The habits don't work if they don't stick, if the deeper stuff isn't dealt with. And that's what I've come to learn over the years. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. and vice versa, when you remove the deeper stuff, suddenly the habit stuff isn't so much of an issue. That all kind of falls into place, which is remarkable when I see that. No, it's just because we score all the time in the program and I can see how much it weighs on them.
Speaker: And that decreases progressively throughout. And we're not working on the habits. They're doing the habits themselves if they want to around the weight. Yeah. And the weight of it comes down, how much it weighs on them comes down progressively.
Speaker: Yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. And weight is such an issue, I think, especially for women as well, where there's a huge cultural component there. Yeah. And there's huge amount of capitalism here as well that we're talking about in relation to weight as well.
Speaker: Completely. So on one hand, we've fed all these ads for food, for very unhealthy food often, you know, and it's associated with enjoyment, with fun in the ads and all of that. And then on the other hand, you are almost vilified as a woman when you're not a size 12 when you're bigger than a size 12, right? And seen as shameful or whatever.
Speaker: And so you're caught between a rock and a hard place and you're then likely to attach to all the weight loss products and programs. And that's capitalism as well. Purchasing all of those and what gets lost in the middle is your emotional experience of yourself.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. So this this imposter syndrome really goes deep. What what do we do to overcome this? Like, where where do we...
Speaker: So if, you know, i I like I talk very much about, you know, stepping into your power, it's normal to feel imposter syndrome. You have to like if you want to grow a business, if you want to build an online brand, you need to very much.
Speaker: Realize that this is part of of of stepping into it and it's a good sign of, you know, means that you're being sensible as well, like you're not being totally delusional. You are a bit, you know, but. that That you kind of need to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Speaker: But talk to me about what we can be doing on a deeper level that might be a little bit more helpful than me saying something like that. Yeah, well, I don't think it's unhelpful what you're saying. I think, I mean, ultimately, that's the reality of business. It's always going to trigger you.
Speaker: Always. i mean, it happens to me regularly. ah So like even going on podcasts, you know, that's a challenge to someone with imposter syndrome. So that took me a long time to build up to that, to doing that.
Speaker: And so every time you expand, you're absolutely correct on that. It's a trigger because you're stepping out of your comfort zone. And you absolutely do have to be prepared for that when you go into business.
Speaker: But where I think where people hit a limit is... when the charge is just too big. So there's like a certain window where you can maybe stretch yourself within. Yeah. Where you can go, okay, I can take that extra step. I can push myself over this little threshold and I can do that.
Speaker: And then, you know, in six months time, it's another little push. I can, I can do that. But when it becomes so uncomfortable, like it was for me, because I had all that fear in there that I didn't even know about.
Speaker: And then when the charge is too big, you just can't, you just can't push beyond that, you know, and you, you remain in that stuck area. And that's where, if you've been a serial course taker for some years, then you kind of know that's very likely, even if you can't remember anything specific, even if you think it's completely you and your personality, it most likely isn't.
Speaker: It's really worth examining. that what I call faulty childhood programming, whether that may be an issue for you and clearing that up. So because it fills your chronic stress bucket over the years and that bucket is finite.
Speaker: You can only have so much in there and still remain functional. The time will come when you do get those symptoms, whatever they are, maybe chronic pain, maybe anxiety, maybe imposter syndrome.
Speaker: They translate like that and make you even more limited um when they enter that sphere. And so once you clear that, you're in totally different territory. It's hard to describe. It's hard to put in words.
Speaker: It's a complete game changer. yeah You're just on. It's like like with what people often have often said to me is it's like I'm coming home to who I was meant to be.
Speaker: ah It's almost like we're peeling away those layers. If you picture it like an onion and you're peeling away all of those layers that were artificially laid on all of that conditioning, cultural, from our parents, from school, all of that.
Speaker: And with that, all the potential trauma that's there as well, right? Because trauma enters the picture when we're looking at adverse childhood experiences, right? um all the abuses are in there, all the forms of neglect are in there as well. And I would would often have people who um are struggling with the effects of those. And when we peel that away, it makes a massive difference. And then often those challenges basically disappear. They're just not so big anymore.
Speaker: They're just a mini step now where beforehand it seemed like and an obstacle that couldn't be overcome. This is so encouraging though, isn't it? That we can all get to this even plane of, of, of really reaching our potential and connecting with who we really are and the avenue of the support that we need to be able to overcome our inner child stuff. If, if, for, but I know you you would use a better phrase probably than that, but you know, that we, that, that we dig into that deep emotional childhood stuff.
Speaker: that The intensity of that will really depend on the modality that that's appropriate, I would presume, for the person that, you know, someone, you know, that doesn't have a lot, you know, that it that there's nothing that they can really pinpoint. There's no serious abuse. There's no, I know, trauma relative.
Speaker: That could be going and doing some work. and breath, work a breathwork class and, you know, doing meditations and god and can really kind of reach a new level that way, whereas some of us will need to a much more professional approach like yourself to to overcome stuff that could probably be quite traumatic to to revisit and to to reveal and to release, i would imagine.
Speaker: No, it's not traumatic. It's it happens very gently and easily, is the beauty of what I now do. Okay. But you see, so where all of this started for me around the when I came up with the term faulty childhood programming, it started with people coming to me with anxiety issues and it was always a mystery, you know, so they would say, okay, two years ago is when I started being anxious and what was going on in your life at the time. Well,
Speaker: um I was in an accident and it started after that. And I was never, never anxious before that in my life. ah And I'm, I mean, I'm a root cause person. I've always been. So I will try and reconstruct what is driving this. What is the actual issue?
Speaker: And what I came up with again and again and again and again, it was childhood where the issues lived. And these weren't necessarily people who had experienced any problems.
Speaker: anything that comes in under the definition of trauma. Because that encoding, it covers an entire spectrum of things. So they can be on one end of the spectrum, there's simply difficult experiences. On the other end, it's high intensity trauma. Yeah. So you can be anywhere there, but the biological mechanism will kick in and you have the same problem.
Speaker: And so also what I found was, and it was predominantly Irish people I was working with at the time, there was a huge reluctance that I think people have when it comes to their parents, you know, family ties are still very, very close here. People don't like to,
Speaker: um you know, maybe criticize their parents or blame their parents or be perceived as complaining about their childhood because they're grateful that mom and dad provided and so on.
Speaker: And so with that, with that reluctance, I wasn't going to call it childhood trauma. even if there was some trauma in there, um because I think it raises the barrier what people are prepared to do. And this is where I came up with the term faulty childhood programming, because it is always the same. It doesn't matter whether it's trauma or a difficult experience. It's the programming.
Speaker: Yes. That it affects and that's there. And once we resolve that, we're in a different world. I love this. Removing the word trauma, because I think sometimes trauma can, there's stigma to it, but also, uh, oh, well, I've never had any trauma. And I remember this when my panic attack started. i was like, what have I got to be? And what if i i genuinely thought initially, physically that I was dying. There was something wrong with me. You know, we did all the physical tests and they just kept happening over and over again and absolutely ruining my life.
Speaker: And then we figured out it was anxiety. was have nothing to be but like, there's nothing stressful in my life. There's nothing, you know, like there was if everything was normal stuff, normal childhood, normal teen years, normal young adulthood. Yeah. So same here. i had a normal childhood. You couldn't say that there was anything in particular that was actually wrong. Yeah. It's the programming of my experiences and how my Yeah, my brain took it, my nervous system and yeah.
Speaker: And what I considered normal, the way I was dealing with things when i Did the work, it was like, oh, I remember having a lot of moments being like, oh.
Speaker: I never thought about things that way. There's another perspective, you know, and learning to have an open mind. And because I very much thought I was weak. Other people were stronger. I wasn't good enough. Other people were better than me.
Speaker: I had that belief, but if that's not something that someone told me. It was something that I took up in all of my experiences somewhere along the way without any reasoning behind us And that needed a lot of, we absorb that we absorb.
Speaker: Yeah. Like my daughter's age now, she absorbs stuff from her friends, from school, from the cultural stuff we were talking about and directly from our parents. I think our parents are the biggest factor in there yeah because that's biology. We're programmed to learn from our caregivers. So we listen to everything they say, we watch everything they model and we copy them.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Completely. And that's something they don't, you know, most parents I think are very well-meaning. They don't mean to harm us or anything.
Speaker: They think they're helping us get set up in life in the right way. And criticism can even be meant in that way. It's maybe meant to be helpful that you shouldn't, you know, get ahead of yourself, that you should keep your humility, that you should keep striving to improve is the intention behind it. And people don't realize that it's actually instilling a lot of fear.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's a real Irish thing as well, isn't it? You know, this, you know, don't be getting the ahead of yourself. And, you know, they'd be like, oh, Jesus, your one has notions of herself, you know, and that this kind of notions, notions, you know. and Whereas like if any American that I've ever spoken to, they don't have notions. They like they they that like that. That conditioning is not the same. it's It's I don't know, is it is it perhaps a British thing as well to a certain degree, but it's definitely an Irish thing. And well, it was an East German thing as well. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I resonate with that as well. I suppose it probably comes from like the poverty of our ancestors, really, doesn't it? Like the that's, you know, generation by generation. It's like, you know, don't be too good for don't be too good for where you came from. and yeah it's but it's learning to release all of that.
Speaker: um Susanna, this has been so, so interesting. Like I've learned so much from you and I really want to thank you so much for coming on. I could ask you so many more questions, but it's just really been interesting learning about this cultural conditioning that I've never thought about it from that kind of capitalism perspective. And the childhood conditioning, the faulty. What did you call it? The faulty childhood? Faulty childhood programming is what I call it. Faulty childhood programming.
Speaker: I love it. I like it's just it it's such a that's the best definition I've heard it before. And I think that makes it really, really, a really, really kind of empowering way of looking at it and a constructive way to to move past it. And thank you so much for anyone who was really like, oh, my God, has had an aha moment, would like to connect with you, find out more about what you do, how they could perhaps work with you. Where is the best place for people to connect with you?
Speaker: Yeah, so my my email, um and I will write it down for you. Yeah. and the way So my the kind of methodology under which I work, I'll give that little explanation because it's important. Yes, please do. So they'll be able to spell the email.
Speaker: um My methodology is called reparenting, and that's it comes it's a word game. I'm inspired by psychotherapy term where you, you you know, you reparent the inner child, you go through another reparenting kind of period, um which I always found too unfocused and I wasn't happy with it. It's, you know, there there's no clear goal setting, no clear outcomes. And it can be, you can get very lost on that journey.
Speaker: But what I do now is repair as in fix. So spelled R-E-P-A-I-P. or ending reparenting in that way.
Speaker: And so my email address is info at reparenting.com. And the reparenting term also says that we're You don't have to talk about childhood for a year or anything like that.
Speaker: um We just fix it in certain key places that are going to make all the difference. So it's that repair work in crucial spots and then everything changes.
Speaker: And so that's my approach and my email address. And also I have a guide that you might want to share with your audience on the faulty childhood programming. So there is a quiz in that. There are two activities in that.
Speaker: And so if people are curious whether faulty childhood programming might be an issue for them, the quiz and those activities are going to be able to give them a good impression of that.
Speaker: And I talk in it about the effects of faulty childhood programming because they're far reaching. So that's maybe fascinating to people as well to see that. Because honestly, Kate, I think that the having worked very specifically in that way now for six years, I think faulty childhood programming is a blind spot.
Speaker: It's something that's not acknowledged properly as to just how huge the effects of it are. I think it's the biggest stressor there is because we all have it.
Speaker: You know, most people have a piece or two of it. Some people have a whole repertoire of faulty childhood programming. And it goes unseen in adult life because we forget we forget about childhood, right?
Speaker: Yeah. And so the most impactful factor and also the most neglected when it comes to emotional resilience That's what I think.
Speaker: Um, and so, yeah, so I'll, I'll provide the guide for your audience, yes which will, when they claim the guide, it will subscribe you to my email list.
Speaker: Um, and it will give you information then also on free workshops that I run regularly. Maybe people would like to attend a free workshop and see how this pans out. Yes. In reality, they get a taster of the work when they come along.
Speaker: and and my email and that's it fantastic yeah and we will link those in the show notes so anyone who's listening and you'll find Susanna's email and you will find um the guide that she's going to share with us all in um linked in the show notes so please do um subscribe and and get this information for yourself and reach out to Susanna if you are interested in learning more about working with her And thank you so much for your time, for your expertise. I really appreciate it. And I really love this conversation. So thank you.
Speaker: I love my time with you, Kate. And thank you for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. And as always, if you enjoyed it, please do share it with your friends and your followers in your WhatsApp groups on your stories. If you do tag me at Kate Hamilton Health and at Kate Hamilton Business and do share the episode with anyone that you think it may help.
Speaker: Also, if you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the podcast. This makes such a difference in growing it. These little things of sharing it with people who need it, subscribing. and And I really, really appreciate and your help and your support as I continue to grow this.
Speaker: If you are looking for support with your health and your fitness goals and you want long term sustainable approach that is realistic and science backed, this is exactly what we do inside my Nourish Her health and fitness coaching.
Speaker: If you're looking for support while you're building your business and you want to do it in a profitable way that doesn't cost you your health and your freedom, this is exactly what I do in my Lead Her business mentorship.
Speaker: I've shared links to both in the show notes. So if you're interested, have a click, have a read, reach out to me. I'm happy to answer any of your questions. And I hope you have a great day and I will see you on the next episode.
