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Dr. Margaret Paul, PhD: Empower Yourself To Heal Within
464 Plays4 years ago
DR. MARGARET PAUL is a bestselling author, popular MindBodyGreen writer and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® self-healing process, and the related SelfQuest® self-healing online program - recommended by author Marci Shimoff, actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette. Margaret has worked with thousands of people to help them heal through her inner bonding system, and she has even appeared on Oprah. I have practiced the inner bonding system and found it to be a game-changer in my life. If you struggle with quieting those internal dialogs, repeating patterns that don't result in the life you wish for, or find you have a lot of anxieties or depression that therapy and other modalities haven't solved then check out this episode.
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Transcript
Introduction: Dr. Margaret Paul's Expertise
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Ko, your host, and thank you guys once again for tuning in today. I'm so excited because I have Dr. Margaret Paul here. She holds a PhD in psychology and she is a relationship expert. She's also a public speaker, a workshop leader and educator, and she's been on many, many radio shows and TV shows
00:00:50
Speaker
She's also the author of several books from Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Love? The Interbonding Healing Your Aloneness to her latest book, Divine Connection Beyond Junk Food and Junk Thoughts to At Will Spiritual Connection.
Laura's Transformation with Interbonding
00:01:06
Speaker
If you guys haven't checked her out, it came across my life over and over until I knew this was something I needed to explore. I was Google searching and there she was repeatedly. So I looked into it and I realized
00:01:20
Speaker
This was one of the few systems I have found that simplifies very complicated concepts into a very digestible six-step program, which typically I find six-step programs are superficial. This one is really deep and really, really effective. It has changed my life, and I think it could do the same for you. Today we just break it down.
00:01:44
Speaker
that voice in your head, that part of you that derails you, right? Where you're pissed or you're blaming or you're sad or you're frustrated and you can't get past it. You're just not feeling good. You don't know why you want to escape the feeling.
The Power of Interbonding
00:02:00
Speaker
So maybe
00:02:01
Speaker
Maybe you have a lot of friends that you talk to and you go through it a million times or you have an addiction that you turn to, you just numb out with television or you turn towards internal abuse systems, whatever it is that keeps you from getting past it and this repetitious pattern is plaguing you. This really is one of the best systems I've ever found. So we're going to break this down.
Origins of Interbonding
00:02:28
Speaker
jump into as many steps as possible. But if you want to check it out, it's at innerbonding.com. All the information will be on my website. As always, Dr. Margaret Paul. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoy today's show.
00:02:42
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of the art of authenticity i'm laurico your host and today I have margaret paul joining us the author public speaker Workshop leader and even been on the obra show. I sort of a little jealous on that one That's amazing working with couples businesses individuals on um connecting to yourself finding the love within yourself we're going to go into it today I am excited because
00:03:06
Speaker
As you know, Margaret, I have been a huge fan of your work, so thank you so much for showing up today. You're welcome. I'm excited about this. Yeah. For those of you listening, I didn't stumble into... It's like the universe kept placing you in my path. I was searching up different things I was interested in, and there'd be an article that you'd written.
00:03:27
Speaker
And then there's another article and another article and i thought okay clearly i need to follow up on this all these hands are leading to the same place and i have been studying this inner bonding system that we're gonna share today with the listeners and it's made it a tremendous impact on my life so i'm excited for. For people to share in that so.
00:03:47
Speaker
Margaret, if you wouldn't mind taking us back, bringing the listeners a little bit into your journey.
Understanding the Wounded Self
00:03:55
Speaker
I've heard it, but such a great story, the frustrations you had with therapy and why you ultimately felt as a PhD who'd studied this, who'd been through therapy, who had seen patients for a long, long time, what was lacking? And what did you feel the inner bonding system came out of? And for what reason?
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, so like so many people who go into this work, I came from a dysfunctional family and I knew since I was five that this is what I wanted to do. But I went into all kinds of different therapy myself because I was not a happy camper as a young woman.
Interbonding Process Explained
00:04:35
Speaker
They all help a little bit, but it did not actually touch the level of anxiety and self-judgment and all that was going on for me. So I practiced traditional psychotherapy for 17 years and I wasn't happy with it. I wasn't happy with what had happened with me, with what was happening with my clients. And at that point, I was on a spiritual path.
00:05:00
Speaker
And I started to pray for a process that would go deep and fast that people could learn to do themselves.
Intentions in Relationships
00:05:13
Speaker
And that's when I met Dr. Erica Chopin. She's the co-creator of Interbonding. And we had to meet because she had half the process. I had half the process. And we put it together with our higher help.
00:05:26
Speaker
And inter bonding emerged and I started to practice it. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I could start to feel huge changes in me. And that was like 36 years ago. It's evolved into an amazing process that hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are using now.
The Importance of Self-Love
00:05:50
Speaker
And I'm just so grateful.
00:05:53
Speaker
That that it came in and that it helped so many people and that it's changed my life completely So, you know, I just I know personally how much it works. Yeah. Yeah, and it's changed mine. I mean i'm
00:06:06
Speaker
very grateful that you've taken the time to do it and that you're willing to share it. And I've been sharing it with people as much as I can because it's transformative in that it's very on the face of it. It feels very straightforward, but there's a lot of depth to what you're doing, right? You're saying things like higher self I want to come back to real quick, but like
00:06:25
Speaker
There's a lot of components that I know have come from a lot of very, very meaningful places. But before we go deep, maybe you could give everybody a general sense about this inner bonding, the six step program. I'm just going to be honest with you. I practiced authenticity for a long time. I've been doing this for a decade.
00:06:48
Speaker
I don't know. I was in a relationship. Things were going not so well at the end. There was cancer. There was a lot going on in our home. And I was doing okay. I was like, wow. I think I kind of worked out this life thing. I'm feeling kind of good. Everything is going pretty well despite the challenges I was facing.
00:07:10
Speaker
But I left the relationship and I met somebody that I fell deeply in love with and all of a sudden there was this whole new set of narratives, all this complexity that was going on with me and that ultimately led me to your work. But this internal dialogue, these false beliefs, the way your brain gets hijacked, right? That's what I'm so excited about.
00:07:36
Speaker
this system How could you describe that in in the most basic terms for people so they can follow? Yeah, so all of us as we're growing up absorb false beliefs from other people from things that we conclude from experiences we have And these false beliefs get housed in the lower part of our brain called the amygdala and this is um in the limbic system of the brain it's not a part of the brain where we
00:08:04
Speaker
where we're thinking real consciously and where we're operating from a lot of understanding or logic. But this part of the brain takes over when we have fear. And in relationships, of course, our fear got triggered in our primary relationships as we were growing up, and so it gets triggered again.
00:08:26
Speaker
in relationships as adults. So what happens with inner bonding is that inner bonding, as you said, it's a six-step process. It teaches us how to use our feelings, which you can call an inner child or your soul or your essence or your true self, whatever works for you. But our feelings are a source of information.
00:08:50
Speaker
And unfortunately, in our society, so many people have been taught to avoid their feelings, take medication, don't feel, you can't handle your feelings, it's too big, you're gonna go crazy, all these beliefs that we can't handle pain. And so we learn to avoid our feelings, and we don't learn, and in fact, we're creating many of them by the ways we've learned to avoid them.
00:09:15
Speaker
And so, inner bonding is a way of learning to get present with our feelings and learn to learn from them. In inner bonding, there's only two intentions. One is the intention to protect against pain with various forms of controlling behavior. And the other is the intention to learn about loving yourself and sharing your love with others.
00:09:39
Speaker
for us to be able to love ourselves and then share our love with others. And so many people get into relationships, not knowing how to love themselves and not being filled up with love. And then they're trying to get love. And then once they're trying to get love, they're trying to have control over getting love. And that creates a lot of problems.
00:09:59
Speaker
In our bonding, we're learning to be present in our body rather than in our head, which is an avoidance of feelings. We're learning to open to learning, being in our heart, open to learning about our feelings. We're learning to access a higher source of love and wisdom and compassion to help us with this. We're learning to go inside and see how we're treating ourselves because
00:10:24
Speaker
This is what it's all about. Like if you have an actual child who's upset, if you want to be a loving parent, you sit with the child. You want to understand what's going on. I mean, it's natural for a loving parent to do that. We don't think about doing that for ourselves as the problem.
00:10:40
Speaker
And so inner bonding is a process of learning to do that for yourself, learning to get present, learning to learn from your feelings, and then going deeper into why are you judging yourself? Why are you avoiding yourself? What's your beliefs? And that's where we get down to the more subconscious, unconscious belief systems.
00:11:00
Speaker
And then we go to, we learn to tap into, we teach people how to tap into their higher source of love and truth. And we go to access what's the truth and what would be loving to us. And then we take that loving action and then we see how we feel after doing that. And so
00:11:20
Speaker
Those are basically the six steps which I could go through more clearly if you want but but when people practice that Everything changes for them. Yeah, no, it's like it's like if you adopt a child who'd been who'd been in foster homes and completely abandoned and you start to Pay attention and give love to the child everything changes and that happens on the inner level
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah, and this is why I'm so excited to share this and I want to break it down so people can get as much value. But of course, they can come to your site. There's all sorts of free source all the way through to workshops or working with you individually. But the thing I love is the empowerment because I feel and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I feel
00:12:05
Speaker
Many of us disempower ourselves by placing whatever's going on within us out to the world. We say, Oh my God, that person is making me feel or like, right, I'm not deserving of this because and
00:12:22
Speaker
You know, but it's out there. It's out in the world, right? Right. There's somebody who's the object of it or something that's the object of it and and we we narrate we keep going and going and going in our heads about this but then we're powerless because it's not in our in our hands and what I love about your system is
00:12:42
Speaker
Nope, that's going on within you. There are sometimes external limitations and sometimes there are real things that are happening that are problematic, but a lot of it is happening within us. So that's what you call this wounded self. So if you could break down, what is the wounded self? How does it come into an existence and how do we manage this craziness in our head?
00:13:06
Speaker
So the wound itself, another word is ego. When we were putting together inner bonding, ego kind of had a negative connotation and we don't really want people to see it as negative because we all develop this part as part of our survival. But the wound itself is the part of us that we created and usually when we're very young, we started it and it's based on the false belief that there's something wrong with me.
00:13:32
Speaker
And most of us, when we were growing up, experienced some rejection, pain. And when we're not getting the love that we need, we only have two ways of seeing that. Either we get that our parents or caregivers are incapable of loving us. And if we really get that, we think, oh my God, I'm stuck here for 18 years. I can't handle this. And I think some kids just check out or they go attached to an animal or a neighbor or a relative.
00:14:02
Speaker
But what most of us did is say the reason i'm not getting love is because there's something wrong with me And what this does is it gives us a sense of control? Because if it's my fault that i'm not getting the love I need
00:14:17
Speaker
then I can change. I can be different. I can give myself up. I can get mad. I can do all kinds of things to try and control. If it's me, well, that's the beginning of the wound itself. And this wound itself develops all the way through childhood, adolescence, young adulthood. We learn different addictions, different
00:14:39
Speaker
defenses, different ways of reacting when we're scared, and different false beliefs. And so, at any given time, that wounded self might be 2, or 5, or 10, or 15. If you start smoking when you were 15 to handle your feelings, when you're smoking, you're operating out of a 15-year-old wounded self who's learned that way of avoiding your feelings.
00:15:01
Speaker
We all did this, but the bottom line is that we drew a false conclusion and that is we're not good enough because the truth is that we all have this incredible soul who is a spark of the divine, who is perfect, who has all of our gifts,
00:15:18
Speaker
But when we're not getting love we're not getting seen for who we are The wounded self says oh i'm i'm bad i'm not good enough and we hide who we are away And we start to develop this persona this way of being in the world To have control to try and control getting love and avoiding pain and feeling safe And so that's the intention of the wounded self get love avoid pain feel safe
00:15:47
Speaker
But based on that bottom line core shame false belief I'm not good enough. I'm flawed. There's something wrong with me. I'm not important things like that and it comes The the way that you know, it's happening at this point in your life and the way it was created right as it comes in these sentences like oh
00:16:09
Speaker
For example, somebody's a pleaser because when they were younger, their wounded self got developed to say, oh, my parents have all these extreme expectations. So if I just try to keep doing what they need me to do, at some point, they're going to be happy. So then you have these overachieving pleasing types.
00:16:29
Speaker
I can't win so I'm just going to take myself out of this one. So you have people who withdraw and they tell themselves it's not even worth trying because I can't win. Right. But you start to tell yourself things and you take action. Is that right? Right. Wounded self and that becomes who you think you are. That's right. You think that's who you are because you've lost touch with who you are. Yeah. And that's one of the major problems is people don't know who they are. And so a tell sign that I'm coming from my wounded self.
00:16:59
Speaker
anxiety anxiety depression guilt shame anger aloneness emptiness jealousy resentment I mean, these are the feelings that we cause By what I call self abandonment that that we're we're abandoning responsibility for ourselves for our own feelings We're seeing ourselves as victims. Like you said we're victims of something going on outside we're victims of our parents or our partner or
00:17:27
Speaker
The system or god or whatever it is, but it's it's external And so that is basic to the wounded self. I'm a victim. Um, I can't take care of myself I'm not good enough and we feel these very painful Feelings that then people take medication for anxiety depression all that That are alerting us because those feelings are actually alerting us
00:17:52
Speaker
to the fact that we're abandoning ourselves. That's why they're so important. The minute I get a flicker of tension, I know that my wounded self has just said something that's not true because first of all, the wounded self has no access to truth. It makes everything up. Everything it says is a lie. It may have been true when you were young, but it's certainly not true now.
00:18:16
Speaker
And so when I get some flicker or something other than peace inside i'm alert to it because I learned to stay inside with my feelings What did I just tell myself? That's got to be a lie And then I go to my source for the truth and then the that that tightness retention goes away Because i'm no longer operating from the lie that I just told myself
00:18:39
Speaker
And I just had an aha moment, but yes, like so when i'm i'm young say you you think to yourself I can't win so i'm not going to try or Um, let me try harder because if I could just get around this i'm going to that's my favorite i'm going to try harder if I can get around this
00:18:56
Speaker
then I will receive the love that I desire. Oh, and I can have control over it. You can get control, yeah. But that's the lie. And we said that when we were younger because it was helpful to our survival. But now saying it, the anxiety that's coming up, it's not truly happening anymore. You're creating this in the relationships you're in.
00:19:20
Speaker
Yes, and so that's one of the reasons it's so important to be aware of those feelings We teach that there's two different kinds of feelings There's the feelings that we cause which we call the wounded feelings because they're being caused by the wounded self By the lies and the self abandonment and then there's the core feelings of life
00:19:36
Speaker
feelings like the loneliness that we all feel at times or the heartbreak, the grief of loss or the helplessness over others, the sorrow over seeing people hurt. So these are natural existential feelings of life. But when we were little,
00:19:54
Speaker
We couldn't handle them. They're very big feelings. And if we didn't have parents who knew how to handle the pain of life, then they couldn't show us how to do it. And in fact, they were often the cause of that pain.
00:20:10
Speaker
So we couldn't handle that pain. We had to find ways to avoid it and that's part of what the wound itself is about is to avoid the Existential pain of life so that we could survive now We need to learn to manage that pain because if we're not going to open To the pain of life and learn to manage it with love and compassion
00:20:30
Speaker
and acceptance, we're still going to do all the controlling and avoiding behaviors of the wounded self that cause the wounded feelings, which in many ways are as bad or worse than the existential pain applied.
00:20:47
Speaker
So here's a question, right? People are sitting there up in the middle of the night, ruminating, stressed, work deadlines, kids, relationships, right? If or somebody did something to you, it feels real. So how do people distinguish between this wounded emotional state and the core feelings of life?
00:21:12
Speaker
Well, so when you learn to go inside, like if I have a painful feeling, I'm going to go inside and I'm going to ask, is this a feeling that I'm causing? Am I abandoning myself? Am I judging myself? Am I ruminating as a form of control?
00:21:31
Speaker
Am I not accepting something in life that's reality or is there something in life that I really need to attend to? It's actually not that hard to distinguish because the feelings are very different. There's only so many existential painful feelings of life. There's maybe half a dozen. It's not like a huge number of feelings.
00:21:54
Speaker
But there's many many many feelings that we cause many painful feelings That we cause, you know the anxiety depression, you know that whole list that that I just said and so um, I mean I know immediately if i'm feeling anxious that my wounded self is telling me a lie But if i'm feeling heartache If i'm feeling sorrow if i'm feeling grief If i'm feeling helpless over another person or a situation
00:22:22
Speaker
That's that's an existential feeling of life and we also teach people how to manage that because that's so important To learn to lovingly compassionately Manage the pain of life. One of the problems is is when people don't know how to do that Those feelings get stuck in the body. We just keep shoving them down
00:22:44
Speaker
And they can cause illness. It's like an open wound inside that never gets healed, never gets opened and released. And so it's so important to learn to manage the existential pain of life. But with the inner bonding process, people can go in and ask, is this a feeling from life that I need to attend to, or am I causing this feeling?
00:23:10
Speaker
And so I know you do this all day long, but I know there's people out there that are thinking, baby, walk me through this, right? Like the five or six emotions that are true existential life, like grief or pain, like somebody truly died, somebody left. We have heartbreak because of a relationship that came to a close.
00:23:34
Speaker
There's actually something tangible versus somebody's in a bad mood And i've decided to make that about me and i'm having a really bad day because of it, right? Somebody is uh temperamental somebody right? I can't uh, I I want to be in a relationship with somebody who isn't Reciprocating whatever it is How to it's harder in the moment, right? So is is there are there a couple little tricks people could use to Differentiate really quickly like things they could ask themselves
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah. So when I go inside, the feeling, the wounded feelings are usually somewhere in my gut. Like my gut gets tight when, you know, if there's any lie or self abandonment. But when it's an existential life pain, I can feel it in my heart. My heart hurts.
00:24:24
Speaker
And there's a lot of times in life that our heart hurts. My heart actually hurts anytime I'm around somebody who's being mean, who's being unloving, even if I don't know them, because I feel a sense of oneness with people. And so when somebody is mean, it's like,
00:24:45
Speaker
And so what I do when that happens is I acknowledge it. It's like I'm talking to my inner child, like I have an actual child. And I say, Oh honey, I know that that angry or mean energy hurts your heart. And I'm right here with you. I totally understand how, you know, why that hurts your heart and you can cry and I'm here. I'm going to hold you. You're not alone.
00:25:13
Speaker
And and then of course I help them understand that they're never alone that spirits here and and I say, you know I'm here holding you and and and we're being held and by our source of love and I'm going to stay with you While you feel this feeling and I stay with it Sometimes I cry a lot sometimes I don't but I stay with it Until it's ready to move through and when it's ready to move through I can feel that
00:25:40
Speaker
and it's ready to be released and I say I release it to the universe and I ask for peace and acceptance in return. It's really no different than if you have a hurting child.
00:25:54
Speaker
And you're a loving parent and you hold that child on your lap and honey i'm here I love you. You can cry i'll kiss it make it better You're you're there, you know, the child is not alone with the feeling you're not saying oh Don't be a baby or big girls or big boys. Don't cry or don't cry over spilt milk or what's the big deal or it's your fault We're not doing any of those things. We're just acknowledging
00:26:19
Speaker
And so it's the same thing that we would do with a child, we do with ourselves. That's what we do with the core pain of life. And sometimes it's very deep and sometimes like if you lose a loved one,
00:26:32
Speaker
You're going to have to do it over and over because grief comes in waves. And every time it comes, you do what I just said, you hold it with compassion. Now, and compassion is not a feeling we generate. Compassion is a feeling we open to. It's a gift of spirit. And that's why it's so important to learn to open
00:26:52
Speaker
to our our higher source whatever that is for a person god spirit higher self higher power whatever it is but it's very very important to learn to connect with that and bring that comfort and that compassion in so if it's something like grief over the loss of a loved one you may do it and then maybe an hour later you have to do it again and again
00:27:16
Speaker
but that's what releases it and doesn't let it get trapped in your body because I work with people who lost a loved one 20 years ago and never grieved and now they're sick. Now they have cancer or something like that. And then when I help them go in and start to grieve that,
00:27:36
Speaker
They're they're on their road. They're on the road for healing. That's not the only thing of course, but it's certainly a contributor To to ill health because it's stress. Yeah stress causes um the immune system to not function well Yeah, and this was I think this is really where you caught me in the time that I met you but I understood false beliefs the narrations in our head the things we're saying
00:28:01
Speaker
But I didn't really take the time to acknowledge that, say, somebody is angry in my presence that I adore. And it's not fun, right? That's not a fun experience. And so while I'm not going to get caught up that it's personal and things like that, I didn't take the time to value my experience and say, whew, that was hard to be around. And oh my goodness, what can I do to take care of myself
00:28:31
Speaker
can be a numbing experience, right? Like, let me shut it down and go for a walk. That's not the same, right? So that differentiation is really subtle and I'm not sure too many people, I haven't really heard very many places, but to take the time, my son, I mean, if he falls and hurts himself or if he's upset about something, we take the time to sit with that feeling before we move on, right? But I, I,
00:28:57
Speaker
shut down the narrations i would go off and do some yoga or something but i didn't take the time to sit with like that just was so depressing or hard or difficult it hurts right yeah yeah and i'm not blaming them but i'm still having because it's energetic right so when when all that comes in your direction and you're receiving all that energy it's like it's in you or something you've got to like sit with that and let it move through you
00:29:26
Speaker
Well, and especially if you're a sensitive person and you're an empathic person you are going to take on The energy of somebody that you love or somebody that you're close to but even if it's somebody like I said that I don't know Yeah, i'm very sensitive to energy and so I can feel that negativity and and i've learned not to take too much of it on because
00:29:50
Speaker
Years past I could I would take it all on. Yeah now I've learned. Yes I feel it and I acknowledge it and I spend a moment with it and then I Release it if it's you know, if it's not somebody that I know like clerk in the market It was mean or something. But if it's somebody I'm close to it's gonna take a bit of time so the wound itself we covered the second part we're now talking about this this inner child sitting with the actual emotion you
00:30:16
Speaker
You call it the inner child, the soul, the inner self, and feelings. I've always thought of those as somewhat separate. The wound itself is these messages we tell ourselves.
00:30:32
Speaker
It's more of in our minds. Um, this is Yeah, it's a thought process the wound itself or in the lower part of the brain. It's a thought process But the inner child is in our body Um, this is where our soul is see so we have a a true authentic part of us um people who who have done any study of spirituality know that our soul is really really really really big
00:30:58
Speaker
And not all of it can fit in our body. So a part of our soul fits in And that's that part communicates mostly through feelings can also speak to us But mostly through feelings the rest of our soul the add energy is all around and we can call that our our higher self so the part of us that's in our body the reason we like to call it an inner child is because Most people don't think about taking responsibility for their feelings, but they know they're responsible for a child
00:31:28
Speaker
I see. So it's not really a child. It's the immortal part of us. So it's not a child. It's ancient. It's very wise. But if we think of it as an inner child, it might help us want to take responsibility for it. So it is our soul, our true self, our essence that often communicates through feelings.
00:31:53
Speaker
I see. Interesting. And so if I'm at home and I'm interested in practicing this, because then there's the higher self that's connected to the universe, spirit, however you want to think about that, how can I visualize these separate components
00:32:11
Speaker
effectively because it's all me in the end. So I have to create some kind of cueing so my brain doesn't pull these all together. What are some techniques people could use?
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, so so at the beginning of practicing inner bonding it is important to separate out eventually There's a flow inside and we don't have to separate out as much but but when people start step one of inner bonding is Just getting present in your body with your feelings So it's like getting present like your son is crying and you're getting present with them
00:32:47
Speaker
So that's the first step is you just get present. And so you're getting present with your feeling self, your inner child, whatever you want to call that, your soul, you're getting present and you make a decision. You want responsibility for those feelings. That's really important that you want responsibility for those feelings. And so, so to recognize that that part is in our body, it's our feeling self.
00:33:14
Speaker
Um, the other aspect so there's the wound itself that's in the lower part of the brain with all the false beliefs But the other aspect that we need to develop and most people who come to inner body don't have this at all Is what we call the loving adult? And the loving adult is like who you are when your son is hurting You're showing up
00:33:35
Speaker
With love you want to be there You you're you're the mom you're the dad you're whatever and you want to be there Well, that's what we have to learn to do for ourselves. What most people do is they make somebody else Um, they're loving a dog or they make somebody else their higher power and that creates a disaster in relationships And so in the inner bonding process when we say I want responsibility for my feelings That's the beginning
00:34:05
Speaker
Of creating a loving adult and so that's step one and step two Um, we breathe into our heart And we consciously say I want to learn I want to learn what's loving to me. I want to learn about my false beliefs I want to learn the truth. I want to learn how i'm abandoning myself. I want to learn these things we make that decision and then
00:34:27
Speaker
We open and we invite the love and compassion of spirit. It's very simple We just say I invite love and compassion into my heart. It's just a choice even if people Don't have a spiritual belief system if they just say that they're going to be inviting that in and that's what the loving adult is The loving adult is who we are when we're open to learning About loving ourselves and about our false beliefs and we have love and compassion in our hearts
00:34:54
Speaker
So there's those parts. And then in step three, we're asking ourselves, okay, what am I telling you? If we're anxious, we're depressed, guilty, shamed, angry, empty, alone, jealous, whatever. We're saying, what am I telling you? How am I treating you?
00:35:12
Speaker
That's causing these feelings and that's when we start to tap into the false beliefs of the wound itself because let's say we're feeling anxious And i'm asking what am I telling you? so my Inner child might say well you're you're judging me as as as not being good enough and you're telling me I have to be perfect and I better do everything right and What did I do wrong and everything's my fault or whatever? See, these are the kinds of things
00:35:40
Speaker
What is my wounded self? My mind? What are the things I'm saying that that my feelings are reacting to? Right. Right. That's right. So then once let's say you're telling yourself that you've got to be perfect.
00:35:54
Speaker
You know, you're maybe you're going to do a presentation. You better be perfect. You better not make a mistake. Nobody's going to like you. Yeah. Oh, you're in trouble. Oh my God. You know, I got to get out of here. Bad things are about to happen. Right. Right. So that's a lot of stress. See, and you think it's the outside situation that's causing the stress, but it's really what you're telling yourself about. So then you go a little deeper in step three and you ask that wounded self.
00:36:20
Speaker
What's the point of saying that you have to be perfect? What are you trying to control? What are you trying to avoid and what are you trying to protect against? This is what we ask that wounded part who's saying you got to be perfect and then you can control how people feel about you. Okay. Well, where did you get that? How old were you when you learned that? What made you conclude that you could control how people feel about you by doing everything right and being perfect?
00:36:49
Speaker
Which of course is is not true. It's a lie It's a false belief But it's one of the things that almost everybody learned to tell themselves as part of their survival If I can do everything right and be perfect then I can have control over people liking me or loving Yeah, so we're going deeper to understand what we're telling ourselves and why we're telling it to ourselves What's the point and where we learn that? That's harder step three
00:37:17
Speaker
Okay. And before we go on to the next step, um, I'm just going to bring it home to like the, these moments, right? Like people are triggered. They're overwhelmed. They're fighting with their spouse. They're arguing with their kids, right? They're just in it and they can't, they can't find the differentiation, right? They're, they're, they're trying to ask that part, but they're not understanding how to locate it. How do you,
00:37:45
Speaker
How do you ask a part of yourself when it's all you? What could somebody do just in that? So one of the things to understand is that if you're in turmoil with somebody, if you're in conflict with somebody, you're in your wounded self. Right. And so you can't get there while you're in the conflict.
00:38:05
Speaker
You you have to take some time out and this is one of the things I tell couples all the time is that You know, don't don't continue to fight from your wounded self. You're going to explain you're going to defend You're going to give yourself up. You're going to threaten you're going to do all these things that you're going to hurt each other with mostly
00:38:24
Speaker
Right. So you have to take some space. You have to take a time out. What I call lovingly disengaging is to get out of the energy of that. And so one of the things that people can do is just get themselves a dollar stuffed animal and pick it up and hold it like you would a child. Breathe.
00:38:43
Speaker
I'm here you're not alone, you know and just or go outside in nature That's what I do. And if i'm stirred up i'll go outside in nature and hug a tree I mean nature is is very comforting and has has a high frequency is very helpful so or listen to music or call a friend or Meditate or pray or do something to bring your energy down Because you you want to be moving out of your wounded self. You can't
00:39:12
Speaker
You can't learn in that state because it's not a state of learning. So you want to do something to deescalate and then go through the steps and then move into your loving adult. And like pleasure seeking activities, that's the problem, right? Like you don't want to just replace that wounded sense with shopping or drinking or something that eating that just
00:39:39
Speaker
flips it from pain to pleasure, right? That's where people get stuck. You've got to... Well, yeah, because then they're using an addiction to numb out. I don't want to feel my feelings and I'm going to eat or I'm going to drink or I'm going to shop or I'm going to take a drug or whatever to numb out rather than taking responsibility for my feelings. Well, that's just another form of abandonment. Let's say your child comes to you upset and you just go graze in front of the refrigerator or you turn on the TV or you grab a cigarette or you grab a drink.
00:40:09
Speaker
that child now feels worse because they're being abandoned by you. And that's what happens on the inner level. When we turn to an addiction to numb out, we're further abandoning our own feelings rather than taking responsibility.
00:40:27
Speaker
So I go out into nature. I totally get that. That's such an important distinction. So I go out into nature or I go for a walk or I call a friend, but I can't quiet it. A lot of people get to a place where it's like the volume gets so loud. They're so uncomfortable. They've taken their space, but that's not enough. What else could they do to
00:40:49
Speaker
They have to want to understand what they're trying to control Okay, because that that You know what's going around around and ruminating and thinking is a form of control. It's an addiction actually An addiction to ruminating an addiction to judgment an addiction to obsessive thinking
00:41:10
Speaker
You see and so they have to want to find a place in them that wants to understand their beliefs about What do they think they can control if they ruminate enough? See I used to do this used to ruminate all the time and worry all the time and and I finally once I learned in her bunny I said, what do I believe about that? What do I believe is gonna happen if I worry and ruminate enough?
00:41:34
Speaker
And the answer was i'll somehow find a way to control Well, that was a big false belief Yeah, you know my my my mother and my grandmother were huge warriors and ruminators And and of course I picked it up and my mother firmly believed see nothing bad ever happened to her But she firmly believed that the reason it didn't is because she worried so much
00:41:58
Speaker
And my father never worried and nothing bad ever happened to him either. And uh, but my mother firmly believed that it didn't happen bad for him because she worried about him too. See, so it was all about control. And when I got that, Oh, I think worrying and ruminating will give me control. Well, it didn't, it just made me stressed. Then I was able to start to move beyond that.
00:42:24
Speaker
beautiful. Thank you for that distinction because this is why I like your work because it
00:42:32
Speaker
quiet your mind, meditate, but sometimes it doesn't work, right? And so the motivation, I think I'm going to get control over it, right? And I'm not. How many times have people stayed up all night thinking about something and you did not help, right? You wake up in the morning, you're like, what did I do? I'm still in the same place. I've expended all this energy. In fact, I'm further from a solution because I'm so stressed out and I'm so deeply in my thoughts.
00:42:59
Speaker
my ego itself and i'm exhausted i'm exhausted and i'm and i haven't sat with my truth so Okay. So then let's talk about this piece of our truth, right? Because that's that's also a challenge like when you say the higher self um Yeah, um, I i've worked really hard to find this elusive authentic higher self I work in the akashic record now which connects me to it, but
00:43:27
Speaker
How does that's a hard one for a lot of people yeah, so first of all It's very important to understand that as we start to do this work see the wound itself thinks it knows truth Right, but it actually has no access to truth. It's like a program
00:43:44
Speaker
That goes round and round and round. It's programmed with all these beliefs, but it has no access to truth But it's got a loud voice and it can it'll tell you like I I tell people the wound itself is like a little kid with a big megaphone I know the truth. I will tell you what to do. And yet it's just a child or an adolescent That really doesn't know anything it comes off as a voice of of of knowledge, but it's a voice of ignorance Yes, so we have to understand that
00:44:11
Speaker
but it wants control. So when we start to get on this path of letting go of listening to that voice and getting that it doesn't know anything, it'll get louder and louder because it wants to maintain control. However, we do have a source of truth and this is this our higher soul, whatever you want to call it. And we can access that directly.
00:44:36
Speaker
And it took me a long time to understand because I really wanted to learn to do this. I knew it was possible, but I was brought up in an atheist family. I had no idea how to do this. And sometimes I would have an experience of it, but I couldn't do it at will.
00:44:52
Speaker
And it took me a long time to understand what was necessary to access that higher guidance. So higher guidance operates at a higher vibration, a higher frequency than we do. We operate at a denser frequency so we can see each other. Like if we operated like a hummingbird's wings, for example, really, really, really fast, we wouldn't see each other.
00:45:15
Speaker
Mm-hmm. We we have to be denser and spirit most people can't see spirit a few people can raise their frequency high enough Operates at a higher frequency and that's why we can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. So in order to access The love and the truth and the wisdom the comfort and all that of spirit we have to be able to raise our frequency
00:45:39
Speaker
So early in my life, I was a very sickly kid. And in my early 20s, I was sick of being sick. And I started to read everything about health. And at that time, I switched everything over to organic food. So I've been doing that for a long time. And so when inner bonding came in 36 years ago, and I understood about the intention to learn, I realized, oh, the intention to learn about loving myself
00:46:09
Speaker
Raised as my frequency that's very powerful that intention because that's what spirit is here for it's to It's to support you in learning to love yourself so that you can share your love with other people and with the planet
00:46:22
Speaker
And so when I started to practice the intention to learn to love myself, suddenly after all these years of trying to have this connection, it was there really easily. I was just shocked. So I thought, okay, all I have to do is teach my clients to open to learning about loving themselves and they'll have that access, except it didn't happen that way.
00:46:46
Speaker
And then I finally discovered that a frequency is also about your body. It's not just about your mind. You can raise the frequency of your mind by moving into the intention to learn about loving yourself, but your body has a frequency. And if you're eating junk food, you're eating sugar, you're eating foods with pesticides and GMOs and factory farm foods and all this stuff, your body is operating out of too low a frequency.
00:47:15
Speaker
And the reason it was easy for me is because I'd been eating Organic for so many years. Yeah, and so bam it just happened But then it took me a while to connect the dots Now when I teach it I say if you're having trouble connecting with your guidance you have to not only look at your intention But you have to look at how you're treating your body. Yeah, what are you putting in your body? That's keeping your frequency too low Yeah, and
00:47:44
Speaker
This part in the middle that you spoke to, I've been eating healthy since I was 18 too. It's a game changer. If you can honor your body, it's the vessel we're living. It's such a critical part of life.
00:47:59
Speaker
The journey that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that led me to you was I decided that I needed to learn about self-love. And I had gone out into the world and I was looking at this stuff and it was kind of like sappy and nothing was really appealing to me. Love myself and say weird mantras.
00:48:20
Speaker
Um this idea right like filling myself up with love from this idea of connecting to the bigger sense of who I am that I am connected to the universe to write others that were all in this interconnected fabric of love and and That to me was what finally resonated that this was within me. I am not
00:48:43
Speaker
I'm not my mind. I am not my experiences. I'm this this else this essence, right? And we we know this because when we talk about the people we love we we love their essence we love this But that's the part you can't touch you can't find it's not a piece of them It's a sense of them. And so then that's true for myself. So how do I fill myself up? with loving that right and and connecting to that and then share that with others and so if you wouldn't mind
00:49:13
Speaker
talking a little bit about that because that's such a different way to think about love, right? We think about love as getting it or filling up with it or holding it because we don't want to get hurt, right? Those are the main false beliefs, I believe, around love, but connecting to your essence and then just being in
00:49:33
Speaker
That frequency and sharing it with the people in your life right and with yourself now so one of the things that we realized when we were creating in her bonding is that We don't have role models for loving ourselves You know my parents had no idea how to love themselves and I looked around and I didn't see role models So you realize that we need to be able to turn to a higher source for that
00:49:54
Speaker
And really it's something we need to learn to do in any given situation. People say, well, what do I do in this situation? Well, what do I do? How do I love myself? Well, it depends on the situation. And so this is one of the reasons it's so important to be able to open to that source at will and say, what's loving to me right now? And that's one of the things that I encourage people to start to do all day long. What's loving to me right now? I ask it all day about everything. What's in my highest good right now? And I get information all day long.
00:50:24
Speaker
So, in the inner bonding process, once you've done step three, you understand how you're treating yourselves, what your false beliefs are. Then step four is you're opening to learning with that higher source and whatever that is for you. Very often, I say to people, just imagine an older, wiser part of yourself. A lot of people, they had spiritual abuse. They have a concept of God as this judgmental man in the sky and they don't want to open to that.
00:50:50
Speaker
And so just imagine an older, wiser part of you or a relative who loved you or you know, whatever works. It doesn't really matter. It's the intention to learn about loving yourself that opens you to love and truth, which is here. It's what we live in. And so when we open to that, when we say, well, what's the truth about this belief that that if I'm perfect, I can control how people feel about me, we're going to start to access information about that.
00:51:18
Speaker
And then what would be loving to myself in this situation? We're going to access information about that. And it takes time. It takes practice. It's not going to be instant. But as people really raise their frequency, open to learning about loving themselves and eat well, they're going to be able to access that information. And then the next step, step five, is they act on it.
00:51:42
Speaker
Like if your son comes in and he's upset and the loving action is to sit with him, you don't just say, oh, well, I should sit with him. And then you go take a walk. You go and sit with him. So you take the action. You take the action.
00:51:59
Speaker
And then in step six you tune in to see how you feel as a result of that action So the actions the loving actions can be so many different things depending on what the situation is But as you learn to connect with that source of guidance and learn to stay open to it You start getting filled up with love and the more you take action for yourself The more love you feel inside you know people think that
00:52:29
Speaker
that love from somebody else is going to feel better than doing it for themselves. But actually, the most wonderful feeling in life is the sharing of love, not the getting of love. And we can't share love if we don't have love inside. And so I was shocked when I started because I thought the best feeling came from outside.
00:52:46
Speaker
When I started really loving myself taking loving actions Speaking up for myself, which I had never done before no longer giving myself up and caretaking which was a whole challenge in itself Taking time for myself, but tuning into what would be fun Balancing work and play. I mean, there's so many different loving actions we can take but as I started to do that
00:53:14
Speaker
I started to feel fuller and fuller inside, and I started to discover through the eyes of my higher guidance who I am inside. We don't know that from our wounded self. We cannot see it, but we can learn to see it through the eyes of love, through the eyes of our higher self, and the more we have this connection.
00:53:40
Speaker
The more we see how incredible we each are, but I mean we are each divine Unique sparks and we each have our own gifts and we're each absolutely incredible and so over time With practicing and urban day and connecting to that source of love and truth and wisdom We take more and more loving action. We see ourselves more and more we get more filled up with love and
00:54:06
Speaker
And then we have love to share and then we get to experience the most wonderful Glorious experience in life, which is the sharing of love I love it and uh, I love it because what you're saying in essence right is that the more
00:54:26
Speaker
We tune in to where we are take care of ourselves. We learn about ourselves. We honor what that is, right? Authentic authenticity. It's it's being true to who we are. Only we know that we take care of that part of ourselves and then we share it in the world. So on that note, this is I ask everybody who comes on the show, what does an authentic life mean to you?
00:54:50
Speaker
For me, it means living from my heart and soul, not from my head, not from my programmed mind. It's not that the mind isn't important, but it has to be in service of the heart and soul. So for me, being authentic is coming from who I really am, not from who I think I'm supposed to be in order to have control over how people feel about me.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yep. And I would say, what are your practices? But since we spent the whole show on them, then I think we covered it. Thank you so much for showing up. For people who are interested in learning more about the inter bonding system, learning about you, where can they find you? They go to interbonding.com. There's a phone number on there. If they want to call my assistant, they can set up phone, Skype, Zoom sessions. I have many trained facilitators that they can work with. We have
00:55:43
Speaker
many free resources on the side of free course to help people start to learn inter bonding and many many many thousands of free articles and free help Plus we have paid courses I just got finished doing a five-day virtual intensive, which is amazing that I can do it virtually workshops We have an amazing facilitator training program
00:56:09
Speaker
for people who are interested in learning to facilitate this. There's just an awful lot on the website. So I hope people go to interbonding.com. Thank you. And all that information will be on our website as well. Thank you so much for your time and coming on our show today. And one more thing, there's a whole lot of books on interbonding. So, yeah, learn it from a book. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity, Laura. I really appreciate this time with you. Thank you.