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Ep 19 Answering Questions with Candace
440 Plays1 month ago
This episode is extra special because it's all about answering YOUR questions!
From navigating toxic friendships to understanding the depths of divorce, we're diving deep into the subjects you care about. I also chat about my own personal experiences and share insights on topics like shadow work, self-love, and family dynamics.
This is a heart-to-heart that you won't want to miss. Tune in for some real talk and hopefully, some healing. Remember to share this podcast with friends who need a little more understanding in their lives. Love you all!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Misunderstood' Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, beautiful souls. I'm so grateful that you're tuning in. Welcome to my podcast, Misunderstood, guiding highly sensitive people through an emotional dark age. I'm your host, Candice Van Dal, and I'm honored to embark on this transformative journey with you.
00:00:17
Speaker
Have you ever felt like you didn't quite fit into the world around you or even your own family? Like your sensitivity was a burden rather than a gift. If so, you're not alone. And here's the truth. Your sensitivity is not a flaw. It's a superpower. It's what allows you to feel deeply, to connect with others on a profound level, and to access a higher realm of consciousness.
Special Q&A: Relationships and Shadow Work
00:00:38
Speaker
And on this podcast, we're going to explore how to harness that power and use it to create a life of purpose, passion, and true confidence. Here in this sacred space, we honor your sensitivity as the gift it truly is. Get ready to embark on the journey of unapologetic emotional honesty and next level healing. Let's dive in together.
00:00:59
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Misunderstood, Guiding Highly Sensitive People Through an Emotional Dark Age. I am your host, Candice Vandal. And today, we're doing a little something different for episode 19. We're doing a Q and&A. So I decided I would take a lot of your questions. Well, a few of them. Maybe we'll do a part two. um Things you have asked me that you maybe need a deeper deep dive for. so I'm not going to mention names, right? I did say that. But I get a lot of questions about relationships, of course, because when we do the deep dive into healing our core wounds, our emotional wounds, and we become our true self, what we forget is that any and every relationship, whether it be friendship,
00:01:42
Speaker
Parental relationship intimate relationship is a reflection. It's a mirror of the parts of ourselves That we are in denial of that we have not healed yet that we have not empowered These are the relationship issues And so I always like to say When you do a deep dive into shadow work and a lot of people have asked me about shadow work I have an amazing course called shadow work if you really want to do this to heal the mother wound father wound and generational trauma um you gotta do the shadow work and when you do the shadow work on yourself and you are face to face with every part of yourself your shine i called the golden shadow your dark shadow your shame shadow all parts of yourself when you come face to face with it.
Letting Go of Toxic Friendships
00:02:23
Speaker
You are no longer afraid to see what might be there my mission in life is always been truth what is the truth of me.
00:02:31
Speaker
If you go back into my story, you'll see why that is. The book that I started writing, what, 12, 13 years ago, I am actually editing right now and adding to. And there was a big chapter last night called My Story that I was really looking into. And I got i was like, gosh, it's so funny how I always say we're born perfect for our purpose.
00:02:52
Speaker
And this chapter highlights that about how we are born perfect for our purpose, but society doesn't allow us to understand that. So it's really, you know, raising our perception up to something higher, not societal authority, but God's authority. So with that said, the first question that I noticed that I have not fully answered on a on a YouTube video or a podcast before is how to let go of a toxic friendship.
00:03:23
Speaker
We have to normalize friendships ending or transforming just like we do intimate relationships because sometimes our friendships are our deepest connection. They're the family we never had. They're the sisters and the brothers that we adopted as soul mates, really.
00:03:39
Speaker
and on this journey. And so the first thing I want to say is we have to understand that friendships like relationships, like intimate relationships, are for a reason a season or a lifetime. I feel blessed in my life. Two of my best friends, one of them I've had since kindergarten, so 40 years, my other best friend I've had since middle school. Well, we knew each other in middle school. We came really close in high school.
00:04:04
Speaker
So Megan and Donnie have been my ride or dies my entire life. They've been the family I never had. They've been my sounding board, my mirror. I was just on the phone with Megan the other day and she was like, just telling me how amazing she thinks I am. And I'm like, it's so nice to have someone you've known the majority of your life.
00:04:21
Speaker
see that you've never truly changed and see that you've evolved and who you truly are at the core is who they really love. And so sometimes we have friends that come into seasons of our lives where we need help. And by the way, here's what you have to understand is when we have a friendship breakup, it's because you're breaking up with the old version of yourself. Hear that.
00:04:43
Speaker
A lot of times friends evolve together. I had a couple friends of mine in the last few years that did not want to evolve. And I could not keep pulling them along. And it's not like you break up with friends because you don't like them and you hate them and and you're attracted to another friend like a relationship is not that it's this is not serving a mutual respect anymore. This is not serving a boundary anymore. This is not serving a new vision anymore of how you go through your life and what your values are.
00:05:15
Speaker
As my career, it's to coach people. but I don't need to be coaching 24 hours a day, a friend, right? You need to be mutual. The friend has to be there as much as you are for them. And at different times, things shift. But breaking up with a friendship is not a bad thing. And when I've broken up with friendships, it hasn't been, I hate you. Goodbye. It's been, this isn't right for right now.
00:05:40
Speaker
Let's take a pause or we're not meeting eye to eye and you've broken so many boundaries or you're not respecting my space and my time and my advice. You're not respecting yourself. That has been a main thing for me is when someone has a very self-sabotaging pattern.
00:05:58
Speaker
I am there as long as I can be there and then I say what I need to say and if they don't like The fact that I want to help them help themselves. There's nothing else I can do so breaking up with friendships is a big Topic this last year. I had another coach friend reach out to me and say she's had some very traumatic friendship breakups this year because there was not respect or alignment or it just got to a point where it became toxic. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or the friendship. It means the friendship is no longer what it needs to be.
00:06:31
Speaker
So I'm sure I have more to say about that. If you guys have more questions on that, just make sure to email me or DM me on Instagram and I will put it in the next podcast. But friendship breakups, especially when they become toxic, is a positive thing because you both can leave each other and grow and maybe come back together.
Lessons from Divorce
00:06:46
Speaker
I've had that. This year I had two friendships from 20 years ago resurface, right? And the two women that I was friends with in my 20s, who I'm now friends with again in my 40s, have all gone through divorce like me. and We're in another healing time that is aligned. And so it's really about what you're going through. I'm going to mention later in another question, one of the vows I had in my marriage, I would actually apply to my friendships, which was I will always be loyal to my soul and I want you to always be loyal to you to yours. And what that means is really honoring the path
00:07:24
Speaker
over the friendship sometimes, right? So question two, a lot of people ask me is about my divorce and divorce in general. Um, I gotta be real. It was the hardest thing I've ever been through in my life for many reasons. It brought me back to the trauma of my parents being divorced. It also happened during a time that my parents divorce went through. So it brought me back to my original trauma, which was at the time of my parents divorce, when I was 11, a couple of years earlier, we had a flood. So a natural disaster that took our.
00:07:58
Speaker
Me didn't take our house away but took away everything in our house all of our belongings and things and at the time also my childhood cat died at the time of my divorce two years earlier we had a natural disaster the Woolsey fire our house in Malibu is in the fire we had to move to another city then my dog like my cat when i was younger passed away at the same age as that cat from a very insane intense traumatic experience.
00:08:25
Speaker
And then after that, I got a divorce. So it brought up all the same wounds that I got to relive and redefine and hold differently in my body and release decades of trauma. One of the things I did during my divorce that I do not regret, but I do not also fully recommend, is I tried to hold onto my identity in that in that marriage. And what I mean is,
00:08:52
Speaker
i had I had dated someone after my divorce that was very opposite of my husband and that opened up new things in me. It was adventurous. It was passionate. It was crazy. It was so fun. All the things I was missing near the end of my marriage and near the end of that relationship, I realized that I was missing the parts of me that he wasn't.
00:09:16
Speaker
And so, I was trying to hold on to my identity in my marriage. Now, I don't think that that was a negative thing, but what I do realize is there's always a transition person. And the transition person for me woke up so many parts of me that had been maybe dormant. It was so beautiful and so amazing, but so many people are looking to just find the next person and make that it.
00:09:38
Speaker
I think it needs to really be about your paradigm shift your shifting a paradigm and again people come into our life for a reason a season or a lifetime. This very special person and time in my life came in for a very big reason in a very nice season but perhaps not a lifetime it was a reason and a season for me to reclaim parts of myself and when i did i then had to go off on my own and explore who do i wanna be now.
00:10:05
Speaker
Letting go of attachment is a big part of divorce and a big part of relationship that I learned is, it's not about attaching to a relationship, it's about securely attaching to the parts of yourself, ah right?
00:10:19
Speaker
um The biggest lesson I learned from my divorce is how very capable I am. I became incredibly empowered in ways that I could only become empowered when I was free from attachments, ah free from safety nets, trusting in God and universe. And what that brings me to, that surrender, the theme in my divorce was surrendering.
00:10:44
Speaker
and really choosing God first. Marrying God, really, and my purpose and my mission and my own soul before I'm able to become really whole for anyone else. When I met my husband all those years ago, I wasn't whole. I was becoming whole. So that's what I mean by reason, season, lifetime. Now I feel very whole in my life, very fulfilled on my own. And that'll bring me to another question. But first, before I move on, I want to mention um How I also believe my marriage wasn't a mistake, even though it ended in divorce, I feel like it was one of the most most biggest growth periods, most um important periods of my life, more sacred times of my life, the work I did on myself during that 10 year relationship.
00:11:31
Speaker
Is my boy i'm so proud of it i don't see it at all as a failure i see it as karma has ended and it's now a transition cuz we grow differently and me and my ex has been grew apart. He was in a very different place in his life when we divorced and i was in a very different place in my life than when we got married.
00:11:49
Speaker
um And people ask me if you ever get married again. I will get married again. I do love the construct of marriage. I love being someone's family and me being someone else's family. I actually am one of those people that like sharing a last name, even though I will keep my business name. I will keep my name for my business. I like sharing that. I like knowing that this is the person that I grow with. I make decisions with. I build a life with. I,
00:12:21
Speaker
feel safe with at home with and share my deepest love and insights with i do feel i do believe in marriage and it will be different because now it's two whole people not two people becoming whole and we're whole but we will continue to heal and become even more whole but now if i got married again i would start from a foundation of a a true purposeful identity.
00:12:44
Speaker
uh... when i got married before i was coming back into my truth now i'm in my truth so it will be attracted differently so part two coming soon on that uh... we have to get rid of our old conditioning and shift that paradigm we have to align with valleys morris morals and integrity Like I said, I grew into my authentic self in my marriage. Now I am her. So life is ultimately always going to be uncertain and changing, but but what I think is important is being certain of who you are, your identity and your mission and your purpose before getting married. And if not, then having that as one of your values of doing that together and hoping that sticks. um Embracing the flow. What did I write down?
00:13:30
Speaker
i don't know it I don't even know what I just wrote. One
Healing Family Relationships
00:13:35
Speaker
of the things I will say about life in general and marriage is a lot of times people are trying to replace their bad family with the family they create and a lot of times, toxic family, a lot of times that works. People have children, they treat their children differently than they were treated. That's very healing and beautiful. I feel like I do that in my work.
00:13:51
Speaker
I help people heal their inner children. I feel like I have so many inner children that I coach. I didn't feel that a strong desire to have children in this lifetime. Maybe because I was so fulfilled, maybe because I was busy healing my own inner child and those inner children of so many people, but I really felt most purposeful in my work and in my friendships in my life and in my who's my family that I create. But what that ultimately did is it brought me back to my own family.
00:14:18
Speaker
The healing I did during my marriage ultimately pushed me back into the the family I came from that is now healing. And that'll be an episode on its own. It's kind of just a beautiful thing that's been transpiring over the last five years. um But oftentimes in life, we band-aid the pain from our original wound with our new family that we create. And what you have to understand is you can't band-aid anything. It will resurface. And mine did. And I'm so excited and lucky and grateful that I get to heal I did my last episode on changing my role in my family I changed it I was away from my family for a long time I became who I truly am sometimes we have to leave the dysfunctional family to become who we truly are but by the grace of god I've re-entered my family with a new identity in a new role and it fits me and it's right.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I love it, to be honest. I don't feel like I'm escaping anything in my life. And when we do that deep shadow work, we come face to face with ourselves. And ultimately when we change our role, our whole entire family has to shift around us. It's like a puzzle piece missing. It
Rekindling Past Relationships
00:15:26
Speaker
has to shift to become whole. And I feel like I am the cycle breaker in that way. And you can be too. You must love yourself first before you truly can have an unconditionally loving relationship in the world and in your family. Sounds backwards, but that's what's happening these days.
00:15:46
Speaker
um
00:15:49
Speaker
People ask me a lot about my new relationship, and this is what I'm gonna say. The question that came in after they asked me about my relationship I think goes together, and the question was,
00:16:02
Speaker
Can I mess up my path? Can I miss it? My answer is absolutely not. You can delay it while you go through a long lesson. But I'm going to bring it into probably episode 20. But for episode 19, I'm going to talk about the fact that I am in a relationship with the person I was in a relationship with 14 years ago before I met my husband. And I think it's fun to talk about this fact is when this relationship ended in 2010.
00:16:30
Speaker
um
00:16:33
Speaker
the The thing was, i i didn't know how I had not done a lot of trauma healing yet. right That's what pushed me into this path. That's what made me go back to school, the ending of this relationship.
00:16:44
Speaker
The self-sabotage that I was engaging in in this relationship 14 years ago is what made me go back and become the healer that I am after I healed myself. What's funny is all these years later, this relationship resurfaced. And the thing he said to me before we broke up in 2010 was, you need to learn to love yourself first. I was not going to let someone truly love the parts of me I had not even faced yet.
00:17:09
Speaker
I was also not gonna allow myself to love someone more than I loved my own inner child. So what's funny is after I did a deep dive of, I don't know, 12 years, 14 years of inner child work, of trauma healing, of family dynamics, all the things, shadow work, and built all my courses, emotional rehab, shadow work, I am worthy, soul lab, self-love masterclass, boundaries with boot camp, inner work, all of these things that I had done,
00:17:36
Speaker
had made me the vibration that I wanted to attract.
Non-Toxic Relationship Dynamics
00:17:40
Speaker
And this man comes back into my life at a very random time, no contact, by the way, in over a decade, zero. He didn't know I was separated.
00:17:50
Speaker
And it became an alignment in a match 14 years later because I became the thing that probably attracted us in the first place before all the patterns played out, that soul connection, that pure connection. And it's interesting. I look back at it and how meaningful and deep this is, is I realigned with my most authentic, innocent self. and the relationship came back because it was based on soul, innocence, authentic connection, and harmony. It almost makes me a little emotional to think about it because I had fought this relationship when we came back together. I was almost fighting to keep some of my addictions in relationship and um ways of coping that were not going to work in a pure union.
00:18:41
Speaker
And I did the hard work. And he did the hard work. And here we are. And so what I will say is, again, relationships are a mirror. And the mirror I look at right now in our current relationship, we've been back together for a while. It's difficult. But ultimately, what I realize the most difficulty is in my current relationship is a perception difference. We say the same things, but in a different way. We actually had a fight last night.
00:19:08
Speaker
ah about argument so I didn't really fight but we had a disagreement we had an argument about politics but What's so funny is ultimately we're saying the same damn thing in a different way. and What I've learned is you know one of the biggest toxic traits in a relationship is needing someone to be a certain way. One of the toxic traits in a relationship is not allowing someone to be who they truly are because it doesn't suit you. and In this relationship, it's not about needing anyone to be any other way. It's understanding the differences and having tolerance.
00:19:41
Speaker
and acceptance and honor and respect for people's differences and their different way of communicating. What's interesting is I've been in those relationships in the past, we say the same thing at the same time, we're exactly alike and it's so intense and it's so passionate, it's all that. And there's also a lot of intensity in the negative way. And in this relationship, it's not intense. It's more calm. Some people might call healthy relationships boring. I have lots of reels on that.
00:20:09
Speaker
Stop worrying. It's intriguing. It's also very consistent in a lot of ways, and it's also consistently growth-provoking. So is it easy? No. Is it difficult? Yeah. Is it worth it? Yeah. So I always say when you have a difficulty in a relationship, what are you denying yourself? Or what are you not communicating most clearly? Or what are you not understanding from a different perspective?
00:20:37
Speaker
The relationship I'm in right now is very growth provoking, very triggering at times, also deeply loving. And you want to be in something that you can continue to grow and be challenged. Sorry, you do. And you don't want the challenge to be toxic fights. You don't want the challenge to be this passionate, crazy thing of reacting from inner child wounds. You don't want the relationship to be two sides of trauma, which will be my next question. But what you want a relationship to be is a safe space to be understood, to explore, to grow, to see things a different way that you can even shift and understand yourself even deeper. You want a relationship to have fun and adventure, but not have your fun and adventure be your toxic intoxication. You know what I mean?
00:21:32
Speaker
What I realized is there were relationships in my life that I thought were true love because it was so intense and so passionate and um it was basically two sides of a trauma coin.
00:21:46
Speaker
both of us feeling whole around each other because we were filling the parts
Understanding Narcissism and Codependency
00:21:51
Speaker
of ourselves. In this relationship, I am asked to look at every damn thing in myself to become whole on my own and vice versa. And that's what I sign up for. Which brings me to this last question for this podcast. Somebody asked me, what is the difference between a narcissist and a codependent? How do people become that? The wound is the same. You were in a childhood where you had to deny your true self, okay? And the one who becomes the narcissist is the one who denied the true self and became what the parents needed, what society need, became an idealized version, became a false self. And the codependent becomes the one that denies the self and highlights the other, is there for other. These are two coping mechanisms. Can't beat it, join it, or lose yourself to be what the other needs.
00:22:36
Speaker
Healing from codependency and narcisism narcissism is the same thing as well. It's just done differently. Healing from being a narcissist is looking at the things that are in your shadow, facing your shame, facing the things you're afraid you're not enough about.
00:22:53
Speaker
Facing the fact that you might not be enough and learning to love what your truth is instead of your ideal that you adopted and when you're looking at healing codependency it's not being afraid of your power in your light shadow work golden shadow the narcissist has to do the shame shadow work and the codependent has to do both but also mainly the golden shadow work. If you really want to do a deep dive look at my shadow work course.
00:23:19
Speaker
It's shadowwork.candicevandal.com. It's everywhere on my website. It's all over my Instagram and lately this has come up a lot. A lot of people recently have been signing up for emotional rehab. I have to mention it too because I always say you might want to do emotional rehab before you do shadow work if you haven't done a ton of inner child work.
00:23:36
Speaker
because it shows you where your true identity is and that is very helpful before you do shadow work because a lot of people jump into shadow work, they don't know who the hell they really are and they're afraid to find out. If you do my emotional rehab course, it's 12 weeks on demand right now, you will find out your identity according to God and universe, not society and not according to your family system. So if you want that deep dive, it's emotional rehab. If you want to dive into shadow work, it's that. If you've done a ton of shadow work and you're looking for the next level, which a lot of people find me when they're looking for the next level,
00:24:05
Speaker
I am worthy course will freaking blow your mind.
Courses and Community for Healing
00:24:09
Speaker
So a lot of people ask me, you have a lot of work, what should I do? You can coach with me, you can do these courses, you can join my um you can join my membership program, Truth Room, which we're doing very exciting changes in this next month. We're adding three levels.
00:24:25
Speaker
um So you should know, truth room is changing. Level one will not be any live classes with me. Level two will be four live classes made per week, per month, sorry, and um and a whole bunch of other things. And level three is everything I've ever mentioned included.
00:24:43
Speaker
all of my online courses, coaching, all the things. So if you're interested in that, just send me a note. Check out the Truth Room. Right now, it's just level there's one level and I am live every week. um And it is a collective group I built over six years of highly sensitive people, people doing the deep dive who are awakening. It's called the Truth Room because I mirror your truth. And that's what people say about my coaching is I will mirror your truth because I know my own.
00:25:10
Speaker
And you'll come into your full power and you'll come into your purpose. And that's what this work is about you guys. I wanted to just thank you for your questions. I know there's a million more. So I might do a part to let me know if you like this.
00:25:21
Speaker
um Go check out all the things that are coming up this year. It's exciting. All on my website. Make sure you're on my newsletter because I um do special sales and things and special announcements and special blogs there every week as well. I love you guys. I appreciate you being here. Please try to send send this or share this podcast with anyone you think that will like it and who wants to feel more understood. um Have a fabulous week and I will see you next week.