Serenity Wellness Podcast E53: Breaking Cycles

Hello,

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast.

My name is Nicole White and I'll be your host.

This podcast is dedicated to helping you tap into your full potential of how you can heal and balance your mental,

Emotional,

And physical well-being.

Together,

Let's explore inner self,

Connect with our strength,

And manifest your true nature.

One full of love,

Purpose,

And passion.

Welcome to episode 53,

Breaking Cycles.

I want to first take a moment to say thank you to all of you who have recently sent me messages sharing that you found these episodes therapeutic,

And also some of you shared that they are valuable tools in terms of current work you're doing in therapy.

I appreciate all the messages and questions that I receive from everyone,

But I just wanted to share a special thank you there as my whole intention and desire in putting this information out there in this platform is to assist individuals in creating their personalized wellness toolbox as you are learning if you've been moving through these episodes.

So thank you.

I really appreciate that feedback.

It means a lot.

In today's episode with Breaking Cycles,

The plan is to help guide you to see that no matter where we're at in life,

What our upbringing was,

Our family lineage,

Our learned patterns and behaviors,

We can change.

We can break cycles.

Our own,

Generational,

Societal.

It's often a lack of awareness,

Understanding,

Tools and support that can keep us stuck.

Stuck on repeat,

Making us feel chaotic and disoriented and leading us to a state of inner confusion.

This can contribute to addiction patterns and remembering that addictions come in many forms.

We can be addicted to substances,

Food,

Materialism,

Gambling,

Sex,

Porn,

Thoughts,

Emotions.

It's endless.

The foundational similarity about addiction is it's all about escaping emotion,

Getting away from the now.

We can rush through life,

Living robotically on autopilot,

Further contributing to our lack of awareness and connection.

We don't slow down and sit with ourselves with curiosity.

Moments that we allow ourselves to sit with us,

We will often be in a place of judgment,

Bullying ourselves with criticism and judgment of we're not good enough,

Or we'll compare ourselves to others,

We'll have shame,

Guilt,

Versus sitting with ourselves in a place of loving kindness,

Unconditional positive regard.

This stuck on repeat can fall into many places.

Our thought cycles,

Those stories and illusions of the mind,

Our emotions with high reaction cycles or avoidance of them all together,

Trying to numb out.

Our communication cycles and patterns,

Remembering those different styles that we went over.

I'm trying to think of the episodes but I'm not sure.

Aggressive and passive aggressive,

Passive and then that assertive style,

Where is the best and most effective place to be in terms of effective communication and connection.

Even our relationship cycles,

What we received,

Didn't receive and was demonstrated or not demonstrated for us in our upbringing and with our caregivers.

Often is how we connect to love later in life.

How we connect and learn about love in that development cycle with caregivers impacts our relationship cycles until we slow down and sit with ourselves to undo patterns.

These patterns can play out on subconscious levels,

Which means that to break them we have to go within.

We have to hang out with ourselves and hear what we have to say.

These conscious and subconscious connections with partners mimic aspects of our early connections with loved ones and caregivers.

And specifically areas that often were not met can create different types of attachment styles.

I talked before about secure versus insecure versus disorganized and even in those patterns of connection in relationship patterns where maybe we notice our partnerships are often with individuals who are emotionally unavailable.

No judgment of the individual,

Just that that's where they're at in their life.

Or often if we were raised in a home that had high levels of alcoholism,

We may notice a pattern in our lives that we get into partnerships with individuals who are struggling with alcoholism.

And so we have to be very careful with individuals who are struggling with alcoholism.

And again,

Sometimes this is often on this subconscious level.

Our body stores information and it can crave and feel comfortable in chaos if chaos is something that we're familiar with.

And this lack of feeling secure connection and love in our upbringing can come in many different ways.

We may have grown up in a home where love was conditional,

Toxic,

Or abusive.

Our home may have had low levels of trust and high levels of manipulation and infidelity.

Perhaps we had a caregiver who was emotionally unavailable and struggled with chronic mental health or addiction cycles,

Which often then leads to early childhood patterns of codependency and the child being the parent.

Later in adult life,

Having those same codependent dynamics,

That drama triangle that I talked about before in codependent cycles,

And that high need to be needed.

We may have grown up in homes that had physical,

Mental,

Emotional,

Sexual abuse.

These cycles and familiar patterns can run deep,

But you can be the change.

All along the way,

Somewhere along the generational line,

An individual makes the change,

And that can be you.

It doesn't mean it will be easy.

Breaking cycles can be difficult.

And again,

They can include many different areas.

We have our individual cycle,

Which is the same as our internal cycle.

We have our internal states,

Those mental patterns with stories and illusions,

The judgments of comparison mind,

Which separates ourself from others,

Disconnecting us from oneness,

Which then decreases our empathy and compassion.

That internal state of our emotion being dysregulated,

Avoided,

Numbing out,

Again,

Often learn patterns of behavior or a lack of tools,

No judgment on caregivers,

They were doing what they were able,

Just awareness.

When we are aware,

Then we can build that cycle of breaking the internal state of ignoring your body,

Ignoring your heart,

Looking at external habits,

Such as robotic living,

This warp speed of life not allowing for an openness of opportunity,

Habits of procrastination,

Time wasters,

Things that we do to disconnect from the now,

And remembering that enormous pocket of benefit from practicing mindful living,

Living your way and living your life in a mindful connection,

Not having to add or do anything different,

Just doing what you're doing mindfully.

Looking at addictive cycles and habits,

Again,

Remembering many different kinds,

Allowing yourself to check out and sit with awareness of relationship patterns,

Those that might be unhealthy,

Who are you surrounding yourself with,

Connect with individuals who are good for your mental health.

Notice if you're letting go of or ignoring your own boundaries,

Getting into people pleasing,

Where you're putting yourself on the back burner,

Those codependent patterns,

Saying yes when you mean no,

Or in relationship patterns you might notice that you avoided connections in social relationships,

An interpersonal connection,

Maybe it's due to social anxiety,

Swallowing you up,

Or making you feel suffocated,

That's often when we'll make plans,

I know we're all at least as I'm airing this,

I know people listen to this at different times,

But most places kind of around the world right now we're still kind of in this place of having to sit home,

But before that and as we emerge from this when we have opportunity to socially get together,

You might notice that you make a plan,

You're excited about the plan,

And then two to three days before the plan you're dreading going,

Not because you dread the friendship and connection,

But it's that internal self-misguiding through illusionary mind of social anxiety.

We might also notice that relationship pattern to break our cycle in our relationship with ourselves,

Our mind and our body,

What you are putting in your body with thought,

Emotion,

Food,

And all that vibrates around you,

Those habits in terms of communication patterns,

And noticing and recognizing,

Paying attention,

But also spending time with yourself,

Exploring with curiosity what it's about for you.

For example,

Individuals who might have higher levels of reaction with anger in communication,

They might notice that they react at a high level,

That high level might end up bringing condescending language,

Judgments,

Or even really hurtful language,

And then after when things calm down a bit,

They feel bad for how they reacted.

Maybe they feel hurt in their heart for allowing themselves to treat someone like that,

And they might even apologize for it,

But then they'll still repeat.

Same thing with anxieties,

We can get into the illusionary connections in the mind,

Those examples,

Some being mind reading,

Catastrophic thinking,

Or perfectionism.

We'll get continual evidence through these cycles that we're not correct,

Or that our assumptions are not correct,

And that we're not going to be able to or that our assumptions were wrong.

There's that whole thing about assume,

When we assume,

We make an ass out of you and me,

You know,

Break down the word assume,

Yet we will continue to repeat.

So in these examples,

And you can kind of see all the different ways this will kind of play out,

Stopping,

Pausing,

And sitting with self,

Asking and listening to self,

Exploring where this is coming from,

How did I form this habit,

And what would lead me to want to repeat cycles of suffering for myself and maybe sometimes others.

Noticing if you ignore evidence in yourself within feedback you get from others,

Paying attention to those mind games that you might be playing with yourself and allowing yourself to take your play playing piece off the board.

Change is not easy.

It's not a linear path,

So it's not like you just start going short up and suddenly things are smooth.

It can be heavy,

Up and down,

Spirals of chaos.

Breaking patterns,

Breaking cycles takes time,

Takes practice and patience.

It takes a connection with yourself,

With loving kindness,

Allowing yourself to listen to you,

Gaining a support system around you of individuals who are good for your mental health,

Connect with support groups,

Therapy,

Meetup groups that get together who have individuals who share your interests and passions.

Start with one thing.

It's like a trickle effect as everything is intertwined.

So start with one thing,

That begins to change your internal state,

Which then starts to change your mind state,

Remembering those highway paths,

Those neural network connections that we've talked about in several,

Several episodes.

And then as the internal state and the mind state,

Those highways change,

Other things change,

And then you can change your mind state.

As the highways change,

Other things also begin to connect.

The image I chose for this episode,

Although it might be different if you're listening on Insight Timer,

They choose their own images often,

But anywhere else,

If you see the image,

It's from a hike I took,

I don't know,

Maybe two months ago or so.

I have no clue.

I don't even in my house.

But it was a few months ago.

And the image there with the ice that's breaking free from the shoreline of where I was hiking is a great representation of what I'm talking about here.

Initially,

That chunk of ice was on the shoreline,

Well,

Beyond the shoreline,

The whole lake was ice.

But at this moment when I was meditating there,

Which if you're interested,

There's a clip of just sitting there in the meditation stillness for you if you want to check it out on my Instagram page.

But when I was there,

And I was meditating,

And hearing these pockets and pieces of ice break away,

And start floating away,

And start melting away,

I was connecting into my internal state of awareness of just this,

How we begin with one thing.

We start there,

And maybe we feel like it's a block of ice.

How will we possibly break this apart?

But we slowly start.

And as we do,

Things shift and change.

And as some pieces break away,

Others also begin to break away,

Over time,

Beginning to dissolve and melt,

Because it's all from the same source.

So it melts back into itself.

With all of this information,

Remembering that the body is that valuable tool.

Sitting within and listening,

Just like that example in my meditation,

Listening to yourself,

Asking yourself questions,

And paying attention to what you have to say.

Supporting your body with movement.

And again,

Our body is a great communication tool,

But also a great supporter tool.

So when we listen to our body,

It communicates in awareness,

You know,

That internal gut feeling,

Paying attention and noticing when the body starts getting that add up of stress or tension,

Or stomach aches,

Or whatever.

Our stomach starts making weird noises,

Our jaw is all clenched up,

Our body indicates and tries to communicate all kinds of stuff with us,

Our relationship with food,

Lots of things.

So paying attention and letting it communicate and guide you,

But also remembering the value of the tool of the body for emotion regulation and movement.

Most of these episodes,

The titles,

You can kind of tell what they're about.

Certainly,

If you look at the short descriptions I include,

You can have a little further information there.

But as you go through this episode,

The things that you heard,

Again,

I know I listed quite a few in terms of areas that we might want to hone in and pay attention to with ourselves.

But you can kind of pluck out what regular information you have,

Kind of pluck out what resonates for you that you might want to pay attention to.

And then maybe you might find an episode in these episode paths here that break that apart further,

As most of them do,

They just take a concept and break it down further.

And I will tell you,

It's quite amazing what we find within ourselves when we pay attention and we listen,

We start recognizing and remembering parts of us we forgot were there.

And sometimes it's a building up of that,

Just like the trickle away that we have.

Our awareness also will build upon the awareness and get us deeper into connection with self.

Without sharing too much detail of my personal information,

I had this experience over the past week,

It was,

Again,

Different situations and experiences that built upon to lead to awareness.

And I had this awesome shift that happened just a few days ago.

I know I've spoke in several episodes about my love for music.

One of my tattoos has to do with music.

It's music has always been a part of me in many different ways.

It's,

You know,

Been a part of my family,

My father plays music,

My brother played music,

Music,

Music is everywhere.

My daughter was a dancer.

She's a breakdancer and an amazing singer and just,

And she was a little wee one singing around the house and she still sings all the time and I love it.

But anyway,

I had this experience of these pockets of awareness that started building.

And I,

Through my life,

Have always stayed connected to music.

But somewhere along my path,

I stopped singing and I love singing,

But I just completely stopped,

Completely stopped.

Like,

Well,

I shouldn't say completely stopped.

I mean,

I still sing ish.

Well,

Was,

But not in the way of really singing and letting myself really connect there.

And I wasn't really kind of sitting with myself in exploration to figure it out or anything,

But these things happen and aligned where I had this then amazing aha moment of connection,

Where I had a deep awareness of what happened and what splintered me away from that part of myself that I loved.

And it was just this beautiful experience in my whole self of awareness.

And it's only happened a few days ago,

But I've been singing a whole lot since.

So,

Pay attention,

Listen to yourself so that you can find yourself.

Feeling is healing.

And it's only when you sit with yourself that you find yourself.

Thank you,

Everyone.

And I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Have a good one.