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Ep 16 The Power of Mirroring In Healing Emotional Wounds
706 Plays2 months ago
We're getting real about mirroring. Yup, that one thing many of us lacked growing up and how it shapes our adult lives. I dive into my own stories, friendships that supported me, and why emotional validation is a game-changer.
We're talking about the heavy stuff - narcissistic parents, trauma, and how to heal those wounds back to our true, authentic selves. You'll hear why so many of us grow up with that nagging self-doubt and how to flip the script. I'll also leave you with a challenge: face your biggest fears and see if they hold any real weight. Spoiler: They probably don't.
Love you all. Can't wait for you to join me. Let's get real together!
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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.
Sensitivity: Flaw or Superpower?
00:00:11
Speaker
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.
Harnessing Sensitivity for a Purposeful Life
00:00:31
Speaker
It's what allows you to feel deeply, to connect with others on a profound level, and to access a higher realm of consciousness.
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.
Podcast Approach and Guest Plans
00:00:51
Speaker
Get ready to embark on the journey of unapologetic emotional honesty and next level healing. Let's dive in together.
00:01:00
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Misunderstood. Guiding highly sensitive people through this emotional dark age. I am your host, Candice Vandell. And as usual, I have nothing planned. I just felt like talking. And I was thinking, I can't wait to have all the guests that are about to be on on the show because me talking about myself, you probably get over it, right? Over it pretty fast. I do. But there are important things that I want
The Role of Female Friendships in Growth
00:01:27
Speaker
to say sometimes. and The feedback has been that you guys need to hear that stuff too so i like this. I like these moments of just me and you and i can't wait to bring other people and i've decided i'm also going to interview a lot of my besties because.
Mirroring and Identity Formation
00:01:42
Speaker
I've had a quite a few let's say over a handful of girlfriends that i've had for a really long time.
00:01:50
Speaker
My bestie bestie, I met the first day of kindergarten. That's a funny story. So 40 years of friendship. One of two of my best friends, I was very close with in my twenties and we reconnected in our forties and our lives are so similar. And there's just some really cool stuff. I think that would be interesting to share about deep long female friendships, but Today, speaking of friendships, I wanna talk about mirroring, the lack of mirroring. One of the things I think is so important in my own personal life that a lot of people say they didn't have is close female friendships because I think because I didn't have mirroring in my own home growing up, and I'm gonna explain all of this, I was lucky to have women in my life
00:02:44
Speaker
to hold up the mirror. So let me dive into this. What does it even mean to have mirroring? I'll explain it. If you guys haven't seen these videos on YouTube of the mom with the baby and the mom looks away and ignores the baby and the baby goes crazy, that's not mirroring. Mirroring is looking at someone, hearing someone, validating someone, acknowledge it acknowledging someone and saying, Oh yeah, I can see that there's a shared emotional reality where you can start to anchor your own feelings and sense of self.
00:03:18
Speaker
So I talk about this a lot, but when we grow up in homes with emotionally immature parents or broken homes from divorce, which I had in my family or narcissistic parents or narcissistic siblings or things like this nature, we are lacking mirroring. If you grow up with a parent that is selfish or not available because of circumstance or because they're narcissistic, what happens is you grow up without an accurate mirror.
00:03:48
Speaker
And it's really painful and it's really scary. And when that happens, you grow up with an uncertain
Healing Emotional Wounds to Rediscover Self
00:03:52
Speaker
identity. So I kind of want to go over this cycle that happens a lot in my coaching classes. Most people that come to me have had a narcissistic parent or have had some difficulty in their upbringing that they need to heal. I always say, I'm here to help you heal emotional wounds. Why is that? Because when we heal our emotional wounds, we heal back to our true authentic self, which has always been perfect for our purpose.
Trauma Cycle and Non-Mirroring Parents
00:04:18
Speaker
And then we fall into our God given calling. That's what happened to me in my life. And I'll probably talk a little bit about that today as well. But it all comes from mirroring. So let's pretend you have a very healthy parent or partner because well, let's start with parent.
00:04:40
Speaker
You're crying. You're not feeling good. The parent that comes up to you and says, honey, what's wrong? And you say, I'm upset. I'm upset. I don't like this. This feels bad. And the parent says, Oh, let's explore that. I understand how that could be. Okay, honey, let's work that out. Resolve. If you come to a narcissistic parent or any of the things that I've already explained, by the way, if you're scratching, that's St. Barry's trying to get in, but he's got to eat right now. So he can't come in.
00:05:04
Speaker
So if you have a narcissistic parent, you come and say the same things. Mommy, I don't feel good. I feel bad. I don't know if something's wrong. And the parent says, what are you talking about? Everything's fine. You're too much. You're too sensitive. I don't agree with you. And you're alone in your experience, which is traumatic.
Inner Child Healing for Authenticity
00:05:22
Speaker
A lot of people have an issue with the word trauma, but we have to understand is what trauma is, what trauma is, is being in an emotionally disturbing experience and feeling alone in it, which is why my coaching groups and stuff are so popular because you're no longer alone in it, which means you start to heal the trauma.
00:05:39
Speaker
I like to teach about emotional validation because when we can start to really validate our truth emotionally, what we feel emotionally, we're no longer traumatizing ourselves by continuing these patterns. So we have a parent that can't mirror us and makes us wrong for our feelings or doesn't, um, makes us feel like misunderstood in our feelings or can't be there to support us in these big feelings when we're younger.
Narcissistic Relationships and Trauma Bonds
00:06:07
Speaker
We do one of two things. We accentuate those feelings to get support, to get help, or we abandon them completely and numb them out. This is scary because if you have one of these parents and you haven't done your work, your inner deep healing work, which by the way, most of us didn't years ago because it wasn't readily available and it didn't really work. So many clients come to me and they say, why does your work work so much? All the therapy that I had in my life isn't doing it. I said, well,
00:06:37
Speaker
Thanks, but there's one real reason. They haven't gotten to the deepest level of healing, which is your inner child. A lot of people don't understand it, because they haven't gone to the depths. I went into the depths by myself, and I used to hate this. I used to feel so frustrated at God, because I'm like, why do I have to go through all this, and there's no one to help me? And what I realized all these years later is, oh, because I had the ability to figure it out myself. Myself, did you hear that? I was like, accent. I had the ability to figure it out myself.
00:07:04
Speaker
and now serve to help others in a way that maybe they haven't come across before. And you that's what I mean when I say you're perfect for your purpose. I had this ability internally that no one would validate, no one would mirror as a child to really deep dive and have some serious insights about things. And it was hard for me. I grew up with a ton of self doubt because nobody could validate the shit that I was talking about. They couldn't understand. And nowadays I'll talk to my mom about it and she's like, I had no idea you were this emotionally intelligent. Nobody understood that. How are we supposed to mirror you if we didn't have that type of understanding, right?
00:07:43
Speaker
So a lot of this is going to be in my book that I wrote almost 12 years ago and never published, but I'm. adamant about doing it now because I think now is the time. People have woken up enough where they're willing to look at things that maybe they were in denial of or afraid of in the past and one of the things to really look at is highly sensitive people in this world have been super invalidated, super unmirrored, super misunderstood. Why is that? Because a lot of people are not sensitive and if they were, they shut it down because they weren't mirrored, right? It makes sense. So I'm here to just empower that part of us to really wake up to our third eye, open that up,
00:08:20
Speaker
and own our gifts. Many of you are afraid to own your gifts in this world because you're like, well, I'm spiritually gifted or i'm emotionally gifted. Me too. And the world, won't I won't be successful in the world with this. How do I know I'll be successful? I said, well, if you still pray to the God of society, you won't be. But if you pray to the God above, you will be, because you were born perfect for your purpose. So I guess I didn't think this was gonna go this way today, but I wanna explain a couple of things. First thing, I'll continue ah the subject that I started with on marrying parents.
00:08:55
Speaker
You will never believe search externally for validation when you did not have a mirroring parent because you never got validated as a self. In fact you had to abandon and deny parts of yourself put them in the shadow. I have a shadow workhorse for that you might want to check out if this is you but you put them in the shadow.
00:09:14
Speaker
to cater to the authority in your household that may not be attuned to you, but you need to survive. And then what happens over time is that's your love imprint. Your imprint is, this is what I have to do to love. So then you start attracting nothing but narcissistic people because again, you're looking to the people to mirror you that cannot.
Healing in Groups and Emotional Validation
00:09:35
Speaker
They will not.
00:09:37
Speaker
The reason many of you get stuck in narcissistic relationships, even though you think you know better is because of that imprint where you feel attracted to it. Why are you attracted to it? Because you know, it's familiar subconsciously, but also you think this one's love bombing me. They're doing the things I never got. You are love deprived. So love bombing is going to work for you and oh, they see me, they get me. They're now parroting you, right? They're now mirroring you.
00:10:02
Speaker
they're studying you. And they do this so that you can feel so obsessed with that serotonin boost and that dopamine hit that's going on in your brain right now when you're getting that love you never got. And then they pull it away when you do something they don't like, and then you think it's your fault because that's what you were born thinking. And then what happens is the chemistry in your brain is now totally aligned to getting that love back. So you will again, self abandon, compromise all the things.
00:10:28
Speaker
Put your needs in denial put your needs in the shadow to line up with the person that you think you need to survive because you think you need that love to survive take that in and you know what i'm talking about. I have a class called abandonment wounds and trauma bonds it starts in december. It is twelve weeks of a deep dive of these withdrawal symptoms that come up the brain chemistry that happens it's not your fault so that you're weak it's not like you're dumb and you fell backwards is that you have a chemical in your brain that now won't allow you to move out of it out of this zone out of this.
00:10:57
Speaker
cycle until you understand what it is and you do the things that are necessary to move out of it and heal the inner child once and for all. I should mention my Oh, it just started my inner work class about healing inner child wounds and codependency. Check that out for next year. Cause we'll be starting that in January. I'm starting one tomorrow on Monday and it's going to be insanely amazing. It always is, but this is what you have to understand. Not only healing in groups is key because you start to see different parts of yourself and different people and you're like, holy shit, we're all the
Critique of Societal Standards of Success
00:11:27
Speaker
same. But also we heal from trauma when we're mirrored guys.
00:11:33
Speaker
So this is one of the cycles you're probably in right now. If you were not married, you're still looking for a mirror in a place that cannot mirror you. And it just looks like it can because of the love bombing. It's not your fault. You're not dumb. You may know about narcissistic abuse and these types of things, but you can't stop it because you're only attracted to these types. You can't get attracted to the healthy type. That's a whole other episode, right? I think I did that one already. But this is the thing that I want to say is for me, people ask me all the time, you don't look like you're traumatized. What would have happened to you? who Right. Who looks traumatized. And I always say my trauma, as y'all know, if you've followed me for a while happened when I was seven years old. The funny thing about it is my trauma was that I couldn't be mirrored. My genius was not mirrored in the school system.
00:12:19
Speaker
I have an ability to understand and see things, clear sentience, spiritually and emotionally and in the school system. If you're like me, if you're somebody who has spiritual gifts and emotional gifts, you ain't going to be mirrored and you won't find your career there, right? So that's stressful when you know you're smart. I sent my mom this.
00:12:34
Speaker
check the other day some in the middle of writing my book and the book story starts when i'm seven and i texted what was my cue again when i was seven. Because she had me iq tested she's like my daughter is really really bright but like she's not performing in school i don't know if she doesn't like it she has all this anxiety.
00:12:51
Speaker
And she said, the words they use were borderline genius. Use it well, sweetie. But at seven, you don't believe that. You don't believe you're smart when in school you're getting seized. Seriously. It wasn't until college when I flushed the ritalin down the toilet, I started getting straight A's where I actually realized, yeah, when I do it my own way, I do it. I get straight A's.
00:13:14
Speaker
When I do it their way because it's boring and it doesn't work with my brain, I ain't going to do it right according to them. But when you grow up feeling like there's something different about you and you don't know what it is and no one's mirroring that, you start to have a lot of doubt. And that was my story. And that doubt led me to God. That doubt led me to seeking truth. What is the truth? I know I'm smart.
00:13:37
Speaker
I know I understand a lot of shit that these teachers and people don't get. Why is that? And why don't I have good grades if I understand all this? Because the system is only recognizing one way of genius, and this is what my book is about as well. And the thing is, when we understand, when we elevate ourselves to not look for a mirror in society, but look for it in God, and what that means is a personal relationship with God, and let me be honest with you, I was pissed at God right after I found God.
00:14:04
Speaker
Right or after I had my spiritual awakening at 16 years old and everything started working for me and then I started having like rejection come in again. I didn't understand jealousy. I didn't understand why anyone would reject me. I was trying to figure out what it could be. But when that happened to me, I was like, I can't handle this. Where's God? Screw God. God sucks. And so many of my clients come to me and say, I don't trust God. Like I kind of abandoned God because I feel abandoned by God. Here's what you have to understand. We are all busy looking for God in the circumstances of our lives. Take that in.
00:14:36
Speaker
Are you looking for proof of God in the circumstance of your life? Well, my life sucks right now, so where's God? Is that what you're doing? That's what I did. Is that what you're doing? What you need to do is say, wow, these circumstances are not great right now, but I know that God is real. And so instead of abandoning that, I'm going to ask for guidance and what it's going to do, friends.
00:14:57
Speaker
is it's going to direct you outside of the societal ideals and norms into something higher that you don't want to do because you think it's weird and nobody mirrors that and then I'll be different.
00:15:09
Speaker
It's following the the the experience inside when you did feel worthy. Even if you don't feel worthy anymore because of your circumstances, pretend that you did. What would someone who's worthy do? How can I mirror myself? How can I feel mirrored by God instead of society? See, we all think society is God. This is the biggest issue in life. Society is God. Money is God. Fame is God. ah Status is God.
00:15:37
Speaker
people who have all the things are God, people who are super successful are God. I went to my boyfriend the other day and I said, I'm kind of pissed because I feel like with the information that I share, where's my book deal? He's like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, well, it should just come to me. I have so many friends that just come and he's like, do you even want a book deal or do you want to just publish it yourself so you don't have to do all these sales things? I was like,
00:16:02
Speaker
think i Do you want to publish it myself? Because then you're right. I don't have to do all these things. But even I get caught in the whole societal book deal, societal thing. Do it yourself. I built my whole following by myself. Do it yourself. And the other thing he said is, do you not think you're successful? I'm like, well, I am very successful. Thank you, God. But I could be. I actually think I said I should be.
00:16:23
Speaker
more, given what I
Rethinking Personal and Societal Success
00:16:25
Speaker
know about things, I should be doing that, right? Pressure. And he goes, well, I think you have to redefine your your idea of six success, because you're extremely successful. And this is one thing I want to show you, too. We don't get that mirrored.
00:16:40
Speaker
We only get mirrored as successful if you have millions of dollars in the bank or you have five mansions. I don't know. I'm just saying this is, or you have your own private jet, right? I have a lot of friends that have these things and they're still not happy. So I'm like, why are we saying this is success? And what I decided that day is my mirror, my success is I can pay all my bills and buy whatever the hell I want. I can.
00:17:02
Speaker
I make my own schedule. I work from wherever the hell I am. I work with those incredible people in the world. My clients are incredible. I have insane friends. I have great family. Um, sure there's struggles with certain people in that family, but I do have a pretty great family given most people, right? Circumstance. Pretty great. I have good relationships and my health is good. And to be honest, like at my age, this is a weird age. I'm going to have a friend on next week talking about age because age is weird. Middle-aged. Oh my God. What?
00:17:32
Speaker
In your mid-40s, what is life? It is so strange, guys. That's another episode. But I'm thinking about all these things, and given everything, I guess I would say I'm successful. What we do is we compare ourselves with the mirrors of social media that, again, aren't real. Societal norms aren't real. This is the problem with mirroring, which keeps us away from our true identity, our true authentic self. My true authentic self is, to be quite honest with you, almost everything in my life is exactly how I would like it. Do you want to know why? Cause it feels really good. It probably looks good too, but the truth is it doesn't look perfect. It doesn't look like, Oh, I'm living in some, but I don't want to know. I'd rather have more money in my bank than in my house or my shit. Like, right.
00:18:20
Speaker
That's how I feel personally. Yes. I love having a big, beautiful home and like the car that I want and like the dogs that I want. I like having it. I like traveling everywhere. I like in the world. That's me though. I love all that need all that want to go shopping whenever I want. Great. But why would I, why do you need more? Like, what is this whole thing of mirror? I need to be worthy. So here's the other thing I wanted to tell you guys. I used to do this. People who don't yet have the mirror internally and don't know their worth.
00:18:47
Speaker
Not only are you still lined up with societal ideals, because society says
Career Choices and Societal Validation
00:18:51
Speaker
this measure. So if I'm this measure, I'm enough. I did that when I was a teenager. What was I doing? Now I look at society and their measures and I'm like, you guys are dumb. Like that's crazy. That's a lot. That's weird. It doesn't make me feel safe. It doesn't make me feel whatever. Sorry. And you got to think about it. The other thing you guys do, if you don't think you're worthy yet is you look to a partner or a career choice. Let me give you an example. I have this beautiful client. I'm obsessed with her. I love her so much.
00:19:17
Speaker
She has a really sick job in New York, makes a ton of money, and literally hates it, literally hates it. And she goes, Candace, I chose this path because in society, if you do this career,
00:19:31
Speaker
You've made it. She goes, but I made it and my life sucks. Like I hate all of my life. So this is my whole point here is like, we look to be identified by our career choice or the amazingly successful, gorgeous partner that we have so that that's worthy and I'm with it. I'm connected to it. So I must be worthy. Guess what? That's conditional. That's going to change.
00:19:55
Speaker
That is not in you. That's out of you. That's you projecting your power outside of you because you still don't quite believe you deserve it. You still don't quite believe that you will be able to be enough on your own. Take that on. You know it's true. You don't want to, but you know it's true, right? So when I finally figured out, holy shit, I could do the things that I am connected to those people that are so, so I could do that thing.
00:20:20
Speaker
If I do those things for me, then I never have to compromise any kind of my truth, right? Because really think about it. You're always compromising. Like my client in New York who has this great job, she's compromising most true things about herself to do this job. She fucking hates this job. She doesn't have community in this job. She doesn't even like where she lives. You're compromising your truth.
00:20:40
Speaker
to ensure your worth outside of you to have a mirror. So this is what I'm going to leave you with, because my little puppy's
Living Courageously from the Heart
00:20:48
Speaker
crying outside. I don't know if you guys can hear it, but this is what I want to leave you with today. Finding that true mirror is daring having the courage to dare, to know, and believe, and see, and receive the messages that you were truly enough outside of society.
00:21:04
Speaker
but really tapping into your heart and having the courage to live according to your heart. I want to give you one last example. For me, it was when I was a kid and unmarried, my dream was to be a model. Would I realize as I was doing that, I loved clothes and I just, you know, I was tiny, so I fit everything. But I also thought if I'm a model, I'll be seen in a positive light, in a good light. So I'll know I'm good. Not lying. That is totally part of it. If you ask any celebrity actress that I coach, they say it's also true. And then I became an actress and I didn't want to be an actress. i My life just brought me to Hollywood and that's what happened.
00:21:40
Speaker
Uh, but that was that. And while I was doing the career, it was really fun. A lot of doors open and I had a ton of amazing experiences. And I got to the point where I was like, wait a minute. I'm playing ah a role. I am performing. I just want to be me in the world. And when I started saying I just want to be me in the world, authentic in the world, I'm done with this perfectionist bullshit wheel. I just want to be me. I just want to know that I'm enough. I just want to know that there was nothing wrong with me. And if I speak my truth,
00:22:14
Speaker
I'll know that and I'll see that and I'll validate that
Candice's Journey to Spiritual Psychology
00:22:16
Speaker
to myself. And so this is when I say to you, I did that. I said, I'm retiring at the height of my game. I retired and I went back to school and I got my degree in spiritual psychology. And I was like, holy fuck.
00:22:26
Speaker
This is what I wanted to do my whole life. It just didn't exist. So I've been waiting all these years to find my perfect career. This is it. And so I said, if I'm born perfect for my purpose, let me just challenge this. Then all the wisdom that I have and the experience that I've had will serve this purpose. yes And guess what? It does.
00:22:46
Speaker
It's not a societal career. I created this out of nothing. But it's very lucrative and it's very helpful and it's healed me as much as it's healed any of you that I've worked with. It's mutually enlightening when you're in your correct career. And so mirroring to me was let me put my true self out there and have it reflected. All of you guys are afraid it'll be reflected is not enough. That's the lie. That's the lie I want you to take from this podcast.
00:23:10
Speaker
I want you to have the courage to face the biggest fears you have in the face and see if they're true or not. Check it out because every single time I did that, guess what I found out?
Self-Validation and Personal Truths
00:23:19
Speaker
Not true. The biggest lie I carried with myself my whole life was that there might possibly be something wrong with me.
00:23:29
Speaker
Uh, no, the only thing that was ever wrong with me was the belief that there might be. And that's the same for you. I promise you, I love you guys. Please check out my Instagram at Candace van Dal. Please comment on this and show, show, share this. Sorry. Share this episode with anyone you think that it could help. This is a pretty new podcast. I haven't done it in any marketing or anything like that. I like things to be organic. So I'm depending on you guys to like it or not.
00:23:52
Speaker
Hopefully you do. I'd love for you guys to send me ideas for future podcasts and guests you'd like to see on. That's always helpful. Just email me at CandiceVandal at gmail dot.com. Please check out any of my offerings. There's only a couple left for the v rest of this year. I'm so excited about 2025. I am doing my first retreat, so think about that. I am publishing my book, so think about that. and um I'm just here to serve you guys, share with you guys, and be as real as possible. I love you so much. Have a great week.