Vienna Pharaon is a licensed marriage and family therapist, author of The Origins of You, and one of the most followed therapists on Instagram. She also played violin at Whitney Houston's wedding!
If you've ever wondered why you keep choosing the same relationships, reacting the same way, or feeling stuck no matter how much work you've done, this episode is the answer. May is Mental Health Awareness month, and all month we’ll focus on helping you understand why you feel what you feel, and what to do about it.
TRY THIS: Think about a pattern in your life you're tired of repeating. Now ask yourself – what is that pattern trying to protect you from? That's where your origin wound lives. Take Vienna's quiz at theoriginsofyou.com to find out which one is yours.
🎵 May Playlist - Songs That Hold the Feeling For You
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/60acajddWy8eNcAX2GOzl6?si=4287c83a40a54ead
**And if you want something more specific, email me, tell me what you’re dealing with, and I’ll send you a song
Free workshop Sun May 17: https://mct.hestaprynn.com/may17
📖 The Origins of You by Vienna Pharaon · Vienna on Instagram
What's Your Origin Wound FREE quiz: https://1wsm6geg69z.typeform.com/to/d981R7Cl?typeform-source=viennapharaon.com
www.newyorkcouplescounseling.com
https://courses.viennapharaon.com/the-origin-healing-method
Find the show: Substack · Instagram · musicistherapypod@gmail.com
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm hester prinn DJ and licensed therapist. This is music
is therapy. Your session starts now. Can a song hold
a feeling for you? I think it can. Let me
explain this morning, I was djaing at conference in New
York and all these people were coming in for the
breakfast part. So I was doing like a chill classic
(00:24):
rock kind of vibe for the first hour, and I
wanted to play Fleetwood Mac and I decided to play
silver Spring. So the end of that song, if you
know it, which you should know it, Stevie turns in
one of the most emotionally evocative vocal performances in the
history of rock and roll. Email me if you want
to debate this. So I played the song and I
(00:45):
could see people walking around at breakfast who were connected
to it, like I could see them come alive in
the face, like in the chest, in the body. And
this is because people who've been wronged in love, they
deeply connect to the feeling in this song like they're
living it in this very moment. Here's the science. When
something emotional happens, your brain does two things. One part,
(01:07):
the thinking part, the prefrontal cortex makes a story about it,
like you feel the pain, and then it's like, oh,
we broke up, it wasn't right. I'll be okay, And
that's how you move on, that's how you function in life.
But the actual emotion, like the sadness, the longing, the hurt,
it doesn't live in that part of the brain. It
lives deeper in the back, the older part of the brain,
and in your body.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
And if you.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Don't actually grieve the pain, which none of us fucking
want to do, it doesn't just disappear. Most of us
like explain it away, make a story about it, and
then keep going. And then maybe we make the same
mistake again, or we get sick, or we do destructive behaviors,
whatever it is. At some point you have to go
(01:50):
back and feel the pain. You have to grieve it,
and you can't do that by thinking about it. But
music does this for you by passes the thinking part
of your brain and goes right to the back, to
the emotional part. And that's why when you hear a
song that matches something you've been through, you're not like
analyzing it, you're feeling it. When you hear Stevie Nicks
(02:13):
sing that line I'm Gonna do it, You'll never get
away from the sound of the woman that loves you.
I mean, listen, your body just knows what that feeling
is and it matches it and so it activates you
like maybe you cry, maybe you feel the anger and
the indignation, just like Stevie felt. So when I say
(02:36):
a song can hold a feeling for you, what I
mean is the song is doing the emotional access part
that you skipped. It's giving you a way to feel
something without having to sit there and think your way
into it. It's like a shortcut. It holds the feeling
for you. If you are new here, welcome, I'm so
happy you're here. And you got to hear me singing too.
(02:57):
This is what this show is about. I'm a DJ
and I'm a licensed therapist. I love reminding people that
I'm licensed and I use music to help people actually
feel things and change. And welcome especially to everyone to
the month of May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month.
This month's playlist is built around this idea. Songs that
hold something anger, grief, loneliness, not belonging. I want you
(03:20):
to find yours. I want you to find a song
on the playlist. It's linked in the show notes, and
you can even email me actually at music is therapypod
at gmail dot com and tell me what you're dealing
with and I'll find you a song. I'll pick out
a song specifically for you. I'm also doing a free
live workshop on Zoom on Sunday, May seventeenth at one
pm Eastern, where I'll teach one piece of the Music
(03:42):
Connection therapy method in real time. People still say Eastern
one pm e st DT. But stay with this episode
because at the end I'll give you another way to
actually do this on your own. All of the links
are in the show notes. Now, very very very excited
because my guest today is one of the reasons that
I actually do the work I do. Vienna Feron, also
(04:05):
known as the Mindful MFT, is a licensed therapist. She
has over seven hundred thousand followers on Instagram, including me.
I've been following her for over a decade, and her
book The Origins of You is about this idea. Early on,
something happens and you make a decision about yourself, and
then you spend your life reacting to that moment, even
(04:27):
if you don't remember it. This is one of the
best self help books I've ever read, and I don't
say that lightly. Everyone should read this book. It's amazing.
And she's one of the people also who show me
that you could be a clinician and still have like
a voice in the world, like go be a DJ
beyond Instagram, the esther perela of our generation. Honestly, Okay,
my conversation with Vienna starts now your work, I suppose
(04:52):
about the origin wound? Right, A lot of your work
points to this idea that what happened in tell me,
if I'm getting this right, what happened in your childildhood
is sort of that original wound, which I call on
this show oftentimes like the whole, the emptiness from which
all your sort of angst comes and maybe sometimes what
drives you, certainly what drives me. How did you come
(05:12):
to this work that the origin moon was the thing?
I know you have a great origin story, and I
want to ask you about that first so that people
can get to know kind of who you are. So
how did you come to this idea that the origin
moond was going to be the center of your work
and where you begin in the healing process as a clinician.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So I went to school for what at the time
and still is marriage and family therapy. People also call
it relational therapy too. You don't have to be married
to be in relational therapy or relational counseling. And I
entered into that field, which was systems theory.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It was like, okay, we are looking at the systems
in which all of us grew up. And I entered
in as like up and down, left and right. My
parents divorced and effect me, there ain't no system here
to look at. And I clung to that story for
a really long time, and I went all through grad
(06:10):
school said nope, they're fine. You know, yes, they had
a hard time, but now we're good.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yea.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
And actually that was accurate in that they had become
friends at that point. My parents went through a nine
year divorce process. It was the longest at the time
in the state of New Jersey, and at that point,
when I was twenty two, they had become friends and friendly.
They would come to all of my lacrosse games together
(06:39):
as a pair. They would always drive there, and so
I think it was easier for me to hold on
to the story that they were good and we were good,
and we did holidays together and all of that, everything
was fine because I did not know how to be
in contact with my own pain, and wasn't until my
(07:01):
mid late twenties where this work really started to just
kind of smack me in the face a bit more.
You know, I was a therapist for a period of time,
and I think I was doing a good enough job
in supporting people.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
As a twenty something right year old exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Right, and also like having done some of my work
but still not being able to quite go there yet. Sure,
you know, like that was really present for me. And
it wasn't until my Yeah, I was in a relationship
with someone who I really could see a future with
and his ex came back into the picture a couple
(07:37):
months into us dating and he was like, ooh, I
gotta you know, I've gotta figure this out. And I
stepped into this this space with him where I said, yeah, absolutely,
like take all the time you need, spend time with her,
see what the right decision for you is. And whenever
(07:58):
I tell this story, there is a little part of
me that cringes. I can feel that yeah, right where
you're like, oh, sweet girl, you know, like ooh goodness,
and look, actually that's decent advice that maybe his therapist
could have given him of like, yeah, you really need
to sit with this decision so that you are making
a clear decision about who you want to be with
(08:19):
and why, et cetera. But it probably did not need
to come from the woman you were dating, certainly at
that time, where I'm like, yeah, go spend time with
this woman and see you know, and see like no
and pretending like I was fine. So, if we want
to draw the line going back to their divorce, I
am an only child that that nine year divorce process
(08:39):
was one filled with high conflict, high chaos, manipulation, gaslighting,
you know, psychological abuse, paranoia. There was a lot that
was going on there. And whether it is true or not,
from my perspective as a little human watching these two
kind of crash and burn, was that there wasn't much
room for me to not be okay because the two
(09:00):
adults around me were clearly not okay. And I really
thought that adding mine not okay to the picture would
somehow drown the two of them out. If they were
sitting here, they might challenge that and say, no chance,
we absolutely could have heard what was going on for you,
But doesn't really matter right, And I think that that's
important for us, for anybody listening too. Is that sort
of the truth of that is less important than my
(09:23):
internalized experience and the story that I'm telling myself as
a five six seven year old little girl navigating this space.
And so what I was telling myself was Okay, to
help the system, I need to be okay, I need
to be fine. And then we fast forward back to
this story that I'm telling you about this guy that
I was dating. It kind of clicked in that the
(09:43):
role that I had stepped into in this moment of rupture,
this moment of hardship with the guy I was dating,
was the same role that I had stepped into as
a kiddo. And I, yeah, remember just having this kind
of aha moment as people describe it, of WHOA there.
It is like I am doing the same thing that
(10:06):
I did decades earlier. I did not have capacity or
tolerance to be with my own emotion because I had
never learned how to be with my own emotion. I
had always been pushing my emotion away, pushing my pain away,
because I did not know how to sit next to
it and touch it, be with it, grieve it. Feel
it whatever it is. And so I'd got my whole
(10:27):
life disconnected with a mask of I'm cool and I'm
fine and I'm unbothered. But I had gone through my
entire life pretending like I was unaffected by things because
I didn't know how to touch the pain. It was
one I think it was really the first time where
I intentionally touched the pain.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
How did you get that? How did you make space
for it?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Finally, so right after I had this conversation, I call
the guy that I'm dating and I say, hey, I
am gonna step out of this. I will be very
clear that this was not a mic drop moment. This
wasn't a moment of like wow, I felt so empowered
and like wow, you showed him. This was a moment
where I then was on the bathroom floor crying for
(11:11):
a long time. And let me be really honest, there
were plenty of times where I thought like, maybe.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
He'll come back around. Trama. What woke you up?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I'm sure you and many of your listeners have heard
of inner child work. You know, when we go through
hard moments as children, there's a part of us that fractures,
and there's something really important about getting a chance to
revisit with this younger part of ourselves that has learned
to adapt in some way based on the rupture, right,
(11:44):
if it's significant enough for us. Which is why I
got into this work around wounding and why I call
it wounding as opposed to necessarily only calling it trauma, right,
because I think a lot of people check out of
the conversation when they hear that word because they think
I don't have it so bad?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Or does everyone have a wound? Everyone has a wound? Yes,
everyone in therapy or every person. Like if someone's listening
and they're like, my husband thinks he doesn't have a wound.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I'm sure he'll listen to this and then we'll see
and do you think he has a wund?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
I do, But I think that the wound is more
like you know I I. I think the wound is
probably like a positive like too much love over you know,
over in overcring by the parents, where he has to
like push everyone away. He came on my show and
we talked about that. I'm like I needed more and
he's like, ugh, yes, I don't want to go into
the baby I don't want to do the inner child
work with.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You right, So yes, I would describe that as a wound.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Which wound does he have? Let's see, bring I want
to bring up all my friends and ask you which
ones there? I want to bring up every one of
my favorite musicians and that's right, okay, So which wound
does he have?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So in the book The Origins of You and I
talk about five origin wounds, which are worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust,
and safety. Okay, And what we're looking at is the
first time that there is a rupture in which you
question your sense of worth or value in the world,
your sense of belonging, your sense of being important to
(13:12):
the most important people in your life, chronically right where
trust is disrupted or where safety is disrupted. You know,
I've worked with people for a long time now, I
mentioned it before, almost twenty years. It's over twenty five
thousand hours of direct work with individuals, couples, and families.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
And so.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
These words to me felt like they did encompass where
these painful moments are. And it's not about fitting into
a box. It's not like, oh, here's the thing that
happened to you. Here is where it's going to spit
you out the way that you internalize the wound is personal.
So for example, if a parent abandons the family, one
(13:53):
child might internalize that as a worthiness wound, meaning you
left because I wasn't important enough for you to stick around,
And somebody else might internalize it as a trust wound
because you left, and now the most important people in
my life I can't trust them to stand by right.
So it's not what happened, it's how you make sense
(14:14):
of it.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So there's worthiness, there's a trust wound, which was yours
worthiness and safety. So safety is what that this home
is not going to vanish under my feet.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
That can be a part of it when you feel
like you and your world is not honored, respected, thought of,
cared for, protected right. I was in the mix of
two adults who were chaotic with each other, and I
(14:46):
felt like I was at times an afterthought. In fact,
in the beginning of the book, I talk about this
moment where I'm supposed to be at home with my parents.
My parents get into a fight. My mom says, we're
going to the beach with my grandmother. So we go,
and I remember hearing these words behind closed doors, which
(15:08):
was if you'd leave, don't come back, And so I
at five years old. I remember, you know how deeply
those words penetrate it. Now be clear my dad's love
for me is deep and very clear to me. And
also in that moment, it did rupture something. And a
few minutes later we left. And so you can imagine
(15:29):
as a little kid, what those choices felt like in
my body, which was, okay, I just heard these words.
They felt really strong and scary. They weren't directed at me,
but they were directed at somebody I loved, and somebody
who I thought you loved. And now I heard what
those words, what those words were, which was if you leave,
don't come back. And now we're leaving, so are we
(15:51):
not coming back? Like I don't right, It's like so
automatically this becomes really confusing and disorganized in my experience.
We go to the beach. I'm sure we had a
lovely time, you know, sand castles, ice cream, all the things.
And then on the way back, we don't go back
to my dad's. We go to my grandmother's and then
next thing I know is we are running hand in
(16:13):
hand to the neighbor's house. And then the next thing
that I know is that my mom and I are
hiding in a closet, and then the next thing I
know is that they're police officers at the door. And
the next thing I know right is that I can
hear my dad's voice yelling where are we and dah
dah da dah. And then there's this split that happens
where I'm hand in hand with my mom in a closet,
(16:34):
But then there's this other part that wants to like
peek out of the closet and say, hey, Dad, I'm
right here, like everything's okay, you know, and like uh, oh,
who do I choose? And how do I choose? And
what do I do? And years later I was in
a judge's chambers. I don't know if they still do
something like this, where as a I don't know, nine
ten year old, I'm sitting there and he's My conversation's
(16:54):
recorded with him, and he's asking me questions like you know,
who's home? Do you like being in more? And why?
And he's told me this recording is going to go
to your parents. And so at nine ten years old,
I am crafting responses in such a way to not
hurt or injure anybody's emotions or feelings.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
At that point more music is therapy coming up right
after this, and you can you can see a direct line,
a direct line, not a dotted line, to now your
boyfriend choosing. I have to disclose to you that it's
almost like it's really hard for me to hear this
because which I did not really expect. My origin story
(17:36):
of being a human is so similar to yours in
the details of I left to meet my mom and
we never went back, and the police at the door,
and so many of these things that I don't ever
talk about that I've never shared, certainly not on this
show or Serious XM or anywhere. And this person, this
(17:58):
picture of me, the detail has to print is my
version of like the cool girl, and I never really
thought about it quite that way. I think, you know,
we're about the same age, and I think that was
something in the culture at the time too. But when
I'm hearing you speak about how that you sat with
your inner child, and that sort of came up, and
that's why I asked you that question. I was like,
(18:19):
what was it like when it came up? At twenty
seven or twenty eight, I remember being in high school
and seeing Corney Love on television. I can't believe I'm
like really getting upset talking about this, but I want
to keep it together. I remember seeing Courtney on television
and that was like the moment with Fiona Apple and
Alanis Moore said and like Tori Amos and all the
women of the nineties that I love, and they were
(18:40):
so angry, and that was the they made it cute,
you know, Riot Gurley and all the things. That's what
they used to call, you know her, but Kathleen and
Gwen and all this those watching them be angry on
my behalf is how I was. My moment like that.
And then I remember they re released The Exorcists when
I was like twenty three, and I'd never seen it,
(19:00):
and it's about a little girl who gets really fucking mad,
so mad that it's gruesome. I mean you've seen the actresses. Yeah,
she's in the bed and she's yelling and screaming. And
I watched it. I became like obsessed with this movie
when it came out, and I watched it over and
over and over and over again. And I think that
I had pushed so much of this feelings down to
become like cool and successful and like in the music business,
(19:22):
and then these types of images of girls getting angry
just like always were so healing for me. And it's
like I didn't have to get angry because I could
just watch this movie or like listen to these records
over and over and over again. And so I really
see myself in your story. And I know that people
listening will see this too. So here's the question. Okay,
(19:47):
So when you have these moments where it comes up,
when you do begin to integrate, if that's a word
you use, when you begin to integrate, or you at
least recognize your you know, your origin wound, and maybe
see in places in your life where that's playing out again,
how do you move from like understanding yourself, which is
maybe what I would think of as like psychodynamic therapy. Look,
(20:08):
let's talk it, let's talk it out analysis like understanding yourself,
to actually changing.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah. I think sometimes we think if we have the
aha moment or the light bulb moment that goes off
and you're like, I know why I do what I do?
You know like that that is enough and it's not.
We have to work with our nervous systems in order
them to move the knowing into the showing, as we
would say and part of that is that you know,
(20:33):
we can sit here and I can say, oh, well,
my husband is safe, and so no reason to ever
get activated or ever you know, feel X, Y and
Z because I know that this is a good person.
Doesn't matter. Not until I have enough experiences and data
points with someone, can that start to shift?
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Is there enough data points? But I've been married to
this man for what thirteen years, and I still, like
every time, even on the show, I listen to it,
and it's like when he says, like when I get
any type of a pushback or like a mmm, I
don't want to do this with you or whatever, I'm like,
you don't let me fuck you. I hate you, you know
what I mean? Like I can go. It's so automatic.
I'm still doing it in my own life and I'm
a therapist and been through all the things.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Well, I mean, we're all works in progress, and you know,
I think that there's no point of arrival, like there's
no destination of Okay, it's done. I think it's always
working and that is healing, right. It's not that the
outcome is like that I chose this right in the moment.
Sometimes it's exiting sooner. Sometimes it's not being engulfed by
(21:39):
something that would have been engulfing before, right, And so
when you have when the bar is too high, I
think sometimes we miss those moments of healing along the way.
And so I know it's a strange thing to say
lower the bar for yourself a bit right, to see
where you are choosing differently in these micro moments where
you're exiting too, where you feel less affected by something
(22:02):
that would have affected you more before, et cetera, and
really acknowledge those those moments too. I can give an
example that hopefully demonstrates it, which is that when Connor
and I were first dating, the first conflict that we
got into, I don't know what we were fighting about,
but I remember that I could not stop proving my
(22:22):
point and needing to be right, doubling down, tripling down,
quadrupling down. And I remember sort of having this out
of body experience moment where I'm looking in at myself,
still going while Connor has said I got you, you know,
I hear you, Yes, understood the clothes. Finally it stops
(22:42):
and I enter into a bit of a shame spiral, like,
uh oh, he just saw this part that is so
uncool right, like, this is not the look. And then
I moved into a place of curiosity, like, okay, what
is the function of this behavior? When you think about
a behavior that you engage that you don't like, that
(23:04):
maybe you judge or you feel ashamed of, it's like,
what is the function of this behavior? In other words,
and what ways is this behavior trying to protect me
from something? And so I don't have to go very
far to find that answer, which is that my dad
was somebody who was manipulative gaslight gaslight my mom a lot.
(23:26):
It wasn't so much directed at me, mostly towards her,
but I was observing it constantly. And what I saw
in that dynamic was in his masterful ability to be
right is where he held control and power. It's where
things were safe. Our nervous system is constantly scanning every
single moment, deciding whether things are safe, life threatening or dangerous.
(23:51):
And something set it off that said no. Now, fast forward,
we've been together for about ten years now, and when
we have hard moments, as I said before, sort of
that oh, is he gonna want to be with me
when we have hard moments? There is no part of
(24:12):
me that does not believe that we will get through
it and come out the other side. Okay. And I
know that to be true because we have logged enough
hard moments and enough data points that tells me that
that is true about our dynamic.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Okay, So you have the evidence, and so now what happens?
So when you're triggered? Are you still triggered? You still
get Oh? Sure, we both do.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
And I would say, look, I think the frequency of
it is less, Okay, Okay. Then I think what we
do in loving relationship is that maybe you've heard this before,
like I lend my nervous system to you. Right, It's like,
here's coregulation is like okay, I'm okay, you're not doing
so well over there. How can I help support you.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
When you feel yourself flooding, when you feel yourself being irrational?
Like whatever? So what are you supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
What I taugh about in the book is a process
called your origin healing practice. We must go to a
place of regulation when we can, right when we're disregulated.
And I love this free frame that disregulation is just
active self protection. That beautiful, yes, right, because I think
disregulation has such a negative connotation to it that they're like, oh,
(25:21):
you're disregulated. You need to become regulated as quickly as possible.
And it's like, well, actually, you're in active self protection,
and so we don't need to rush you out of
self protection. We will gradually move you to a place
where you get to where you get to return to
relational care.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
I love that. It's like your armor. You put your
armor on, yes, to protect yourself. Yes, and like that
what hysterical.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We're not going to take that armor off when you're
not ready because that's going to feel way too vulnerable.
So things that we can do. One, we have to
become aware that we're in active self protection. Okay, Right,
it's like, okay, I am alerted to this. I know
my chet, my heart is beating out of my chest,
my palms are sweating. I want to rage. Whatever it
looks like for you, But it's coming back into a
(26:05):
place of regulation, which is maybe listening to music that
grounds you, maybe moving your body, getting out into nature,
doing a visualization, breath work, et cetera. Right, whatever it
is that works for you. Bilateral swaying.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
There's lots of things physical like so madic, like when
you notice that you're in the red zone. You're like,
I'm gonna go walk outside and listen to this Lady
Gaga song and like collect myself.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, you're going to do the thing that works for you.
For some people, it might not be music. I mean,
I know that we like to promote music on this show.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Of course, but for someone like you know, what do
you mean, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Pivot back or I'll pivot back right, But it's like, Okay,
what really works for you? Is it? Is it moving
your body and going for a walk. Is it listening
to the birds chirping outside? Is it swaying back and
forth from left to right?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I think, honestly what you said is that's the most
helpful and the most applicable for all of us, myself
and everyone listening. Right. Is that to recognize that you
are in your armor? Yes, because once you recognize it,
it's like funny, it's disarming. Once you recognize it, it's
like you can say, this is not this this narrative
you fighting him to be right or whatever it was,
(27:10):
and he was like, you're right, I got it, Like
you know, was really you just holding holding the shield
in front, having the armor? And so if you recognize
you're in the armor. You don't have to take the
content right seriously anymore. Right, you don't have to negotiate
about the thing that you think you're fighting, or that
you're debating, or whatever is the content of the fight
(27:30):
or the argument or the moment. Yes, this is a
lesson that I need to learn, because I'll get upset
about something and I will get I will like, I will,
you know, feel in back here in the lizard brain,
and I'll put the prefnial cortex, will put a story
to it, and I'll be like, why am I feeling upset?
And I'll be like, it's because we were supposed to
go to that party and then you left without me
or you know, and I like this reframe that, like
(27:51):
I'm in my armor. Yeah, I feel unsafe, I'm being triggered.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And we're also not in our adult self either. Yes, right,
so when we're an active self protection, we're also not
I'm forty I'm not forty year old Vienna in this moment. Right.
This is not advice. Do not ask your partner this,
but I'm going to ask it here for all of us,
which is, how old do I feel in this moment
(28:18):
right now?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Okay, so no, you're not going to ask your partner
when they are upset, how old do you feel?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Oh my god, imagine.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That's a real good way to cause a little more distance.
But at some point that reflection, A lot of times
I will feel like I am a teenager. Yeah, especially
when that aren't okay, I got to go to battle
with my dad, or I got to go to the right.
It's like, okay, well, I can feel that the adult
has left. The adult isn't in the room anymore. I
say that so lovingly, with so much care. But I
(28:46):
think when we realize, oh, active self protection is here,
armor is on. The adult has left. Okay, I need
to go get the adult at some point before we
re engage. Now, however long that takes twenty minutes, two hours,
twenty hours, I don't care, right, but I need to
go get the adult me back. Now. That's not to
(29:07):
put adults on some hierarchical position. A lot of adults,
so don't do a lot of adults that well, but
it is at least for ourselves. I want to get
my grounded, wise adult back in the room so that
you and I can have a very different conversation than
the one that we had before.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I love it. Here's a question, how do you know?
What can you ask yourself to know who's driving? How
do you How do I know when the adult is back?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, you'll know based on sensation. If you start to
pay attention to your body, there will be signs that
your body gives you when the adult is gone. What.
Well here, so if we were too, Okay, let's do it.
Let's do it. You want to close your eyes for
a moment.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Like anxious attachment, just kidding, yes, okay, closing.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I'll close my eyes with you. Okay, So let's do
a visualization. I want you let's do it. Breath first, actually,
so why don't you breathe them through your nose? Yeah,
if they're not driving and out and in and out,
(30:16):
and then just stay with your normal breath. And I
want you to visualize one of your favorite places in
the world. Just pick one, you might have a few,
And I really want you to try to transport yourself there.
(30:37):
Maybe you feel the sand beneath your toes, the sunshine
on your face, maybe you feel the wind on your skin.
Maybe you hear the waves crashing, where the bird's chirping,
(31:04):
and just let the goodness of whatever it is that
you see and feel just wrap you as if it
was hugging you. Really just let yourself be in the
joy of what this place holds for you, the peacefulness,
(31:28):
the safety, the pleasure, and you might sway from left
to right, just a little bit, from left to right
(31:51):
and right to left, and maybe you let a little
smile come on your face if it's natural. I'll just
stay here for one more breath, and then when you're ready,
(32:16):
I can return here with the mic in front of you,
and you can tell me and us what you notice
in your body.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
First, I just feel really like relaxed and happy. That's
a really nice feeling that you can conjure.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That your adult self is here. You don't need to
protect from anything in this moment right now. What where
do you struggle the most? We don't have to go
deep into it. But what causes you the most kind
(33:02):
of stress or irritation or activation.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
In my life? Yeah, I think feeling like I'm where
I should be, like whether I belong. But I don't
mean with people. I mean if I'm like doing well enough,
if I'm like successfuls, just if I'm in the right place,
doing the right thing that I'm meant for.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And what would be an example of not doing that?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Something tolerable, Like when I'm doing a lot of like
computer work at home, Yeah, I'm like, God, I should
be out, i should be traveling, I should be talking
to people in person, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah. Okay, So we're going to do something tolerable, but
something that's going to agitate you a little bit, okay,
which is you're gonna you don't have to close your
eyes for this, but you're on your computer and you've
got your spreadsheets out, or you're sending emails and another
email just came in and you're having to like make
sure that so and so and so and so is
connected and okay another email and okay, these numbers aren't
(34:02):
adding up, and okay, what's happening over there? And just
notice what happened in your body?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah it feels gross. I'm like, oh, you know, like
in the gross and my shoulders and like, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Just feels bad, Yeah, tightness whatever, like maybe you're sweating
a little bit more. Absolutely, just you notice like slight
shifts in the physiology right of your body. So that's
a real, like in its most basic form that we
can do here together. Those are pretty good ways to
be like, oh, when my body does this versus when
(34:36):
my body does that, I know what state I am in, right,
So when my husband will not mind me sharing this,
there is a twitch that happens in his nose when
he is disregulated. The moment I see that twitch, and
(34:56):
we're not in it together right when I'm regulated, but
I see the tw which happened, I'm like, Okay, I'm
not gonna I will never have the conversation with you
when I see it not going there. I'm not even
going to entertain it because I know where it's headed. Right,
So it's a there's like a tiny little thing that
I see in him right now, we can stay in
(35:17):
our own lanes, which is what do I need to
notice within myself? Right, But I know we are making
zero progress right when the twitch has entered the chat,
right and so I'm not going to engage with you.
I'm going to say I love you at something we
can return to this conversation. I'm not going to have
(35:37):
it with you right now.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right We'll be back with more musicist therapy right after this.
So you're what you just taught me is how to
recognize when I feel like quote the adult, and when
I feel just regulated. And you did that just by
sharing an image. You didn't even share the first image,
(35:59):
and you shared. You let me, you prompted me. And
so when people are think they're doing the work, whatever
it is, people take the quiz on your website, which
I did. Everyone's gonna read the book. We're going to
put it in the show notes. There's worksheets, and it's
an active book. There's actionable strategies. That's why I wanted
to have you on. You're not just like a celebrity.
(36:20):
You're the actuable, actionable strategy master. Does it all. If
they're doing the work, I think they're doing the work
and they're not seeing the change. Is it because they're
missing the somatic piece and it's so hard to do
this part living here in America on your own.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, you're missing. Something is missing, And yes, I would
say that probably the arrows are going to point back
to some type of somatic work around it. Part of
the origin healing practice is about witnessing these younger parts
of ourselves that came face to face with these painful
moments that set a worthiness wound in motion or a safetudeness,
(37:00):
safety wound in motion, bearing witness to them, and then
allowing for grief to present. I often say, when stuck,
grieve more. Maybe you've seen that.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Quote before, quote everywhere.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, when stuck grieve more. And this is not performative grief.
It doesn't look a certain way. I think about. One
of the images that I have of myself is as
a little girl sitting atop perched atop the steps in
my mom's town home and she there was a little
opening down to her little kitchenette area, so I could
(37:34):
hear through these little bars, and I remember being seated
up there by myself. She and my dad would be
on the phone, but I remember sitting up there and
bringing that visual to the forefront from me and sort
of meeting her there as the adult me, like kind
of getting a little bit closer to this nine year
(37:55):
old sitting on those steps, listening in and just bearing
witness to her. What was it like for nine year
old me to consume this material all the time, and
adult me just felt a lot of care and compassion
for her. Grief is the authentic expression of emotion that
(38:17):
comes forward when you bear witness, And so yeah, for me,
tears wouldn't stream down my face because I'd see this
sweet little girl sitting there listening, trying to absorb, trying
to understand, trying to do way more than she needed
to at that age, and yet that was still what
she did. And so essentially pulling up a seat next
(38:39):
to her and just being there with her and letting
that emotion come forward. Right, And so when you talk
about the like the knowing and Okay, I'm aware of this,
but I am still choosing different things. We do need
to feel more.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
If you haven't learn up. Yes, when I was in
therapy in a major way for the first time and
I was I really didn't cry, and my therapist would say, Julie,
you have to cry, just like that, Julie, you have
to cry. And I'd be like, why do I have
to cry? Like I'm gotta go, I gotta go be successful.
You're kidding me, Like I don't have to cry, I
have to go DJ all these parties.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I don't have to I don't have time.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I don't have time for that. And also what's the
point and what does it get you? And she was like,
you have to cry? And I tried, and she told
me about these women, you know, like Cambody or something
who wail and who grieve this culture. And I was like, oh,
she said look that up and I watched a video.
I was like, this is not doing it. And she's like,
what's the saddest thing you can think of? And I
when she said that, I was like, oh, well, it's
(39:35):
both Says Now by Joni Mitchell. You know that song.
And she said you have to go home and listen
to Jonnie Mitchell. And I said, I can't listen to
Joni Mitchell because her voice is too evocative and it's
too painful and I can't hear it. And she's like,
that's your assignment. And I remember this so well. I
went to my apartment on forty first Street and I
listened to Joni Mitchell Blue is that the name of
the album with California on it?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
And I listened to it and her. You know, there's
some voices that are painful to hear. I think people
feel that way about Adele. You know. I love Adele
and she doesn't hit me like that, but there are
some voices that are you know, Amy Winehouse had a
voice like this, and Joni Mitchell has this voice, and
I listened to it and it made me cry, and
I cried, and I cried a lot. And now when
(40:20):
I need to cry, which I have to do after
this fucking interview, because I feel like being in this
space with you is like so intense, there's so much
you come in with, so much, like you're so open,
you're you know. And if you're like an empathic person,
which I've been trained to be, like, it's a lot,
it's beautiful. And so when I need to cry, I
get in my car and I listen to Jonny Mitchell
and I can cry, but I can do it almost
like in a container. That's how I sit with that.
(40:43):
And I said, I had Emily Fletcher on my show
and she asked me about I was doing a party
for my podcast, and I was nervous about it and
I felt unworthy. And she did some work with me
and she said, how old are you? And I recognized
how old I was. And there was a Tory Amos
record that came out at that time. And I will
put on the Tory record and I'll drive around Long
Eye where I grew up, and I'll cry to that
record and it feels helpful. Because it makes me feel
(41:07):
like I'm actually doing the work. That's my question about
what's the work. Okay, well, here's the work. I generally
can't like visit other parts. I don't really know how
to visit other parts of me and go into it.
I just get distracted, or I feel uncomfortable, or I'm
hungry or on bored or tired, I'll fall asleep. But
if I have very specific records that will hold that. Yeah,
(41:31):
And I do think that the songs can hold the
feeling for you, you know, I want to ask you
about music, and I don't know if you like post Malone.
You like post Malone? I love post Malone, and post
Malone has a song called I Fall Apart, which is
a breakup song, and it's the most I've been just
saying it.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I feel it.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
It's such a beautiful, beautiful song, and it's so clearly
about something very real, and I think, when I need
to visit the pain of like rupture, sure, I will
listen to I Fall Apart, And it's like it guides me.
It's like checking the box of the feeling that I
can identify but I can't quite get to. I'm saying,
(42:11):
I'm working this out live because for people who are listening,
who you know, we all want to be better, we
all want to heal. Not everyone can go to therapy,
not everyone has access. But this idea, if if you
could take the quiz on your website which we'll link to,
and you can identify what your origin wound is. And
I think probably people have an idea of what the
bad things that happen to them are sure, and you
(42:33):
can maybe put some words to it. And I use
AI sometimes to help you know, put some words in
this is my origin wound. Put us some words to
this and email me at Music is Therapy potgmail dot com.
I'll give you some songs, but if you can put
some words to it, and then you had a library
of songs that This one holds the abandonment, This one
holds the fear. This one holds the lonely only child.
(42:55):
I have an only child. This this one holds the
teenage girl feeling rejected. This one holds I'm stuck on
in the suburbs and my parents like don't pay attention
to me, and like when will I ever get out
and be where I'm supposed to be? Which is my story?
I think it's so powerful. I think it's no one's
doing it. That's what I'm trying to build and help
(43:15):
people with.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
That's beautiful people's stories and the stories that that singers
and artists share when they're when their lyrics are about something,
but whether it's even about as something that's happening in
their lives, where it's just the ache, where they're covering
somebody else's song, but you can feel like, oh you
lived something right.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yes, I love I love this point and it's almost
I've never heard anyone say this by way. I've been
I was on live music radio for years and no
one has ever said this which you just said, is
that when artists cover another artists song, it's you are
bearing witness to them seeing themselves. I think about when
Johnny Cash covered Hurt you know, the on that Covers album,
(44:00):
and it felt like it was it was his you know,
or one one you know the YouTube song right one.
That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, I've never heard anyone
say it this way, and it's so amazing. It so
ties into like you and your work and what you
bring that you sort of made that connection because that's
really what it is. And that's what we do as listeners, right,
(44:20):
We hear ourselves inside the song and it pulls the emotion,
it does the lifting for us.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
What a tool, right, right, because sometimes it can be hard.
I mean this concept of go home and cry and
you're like, I really know how to do that. Movement
with music also opened some stuff up for me.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
What songs, what can you tell us?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Well? I was actually thinking more about there's a workout
class in the city. The class. I don't know if
what specific songs were playing at that time, but being
like whoa right, like something is happening here or going
for a run listening to music like, but move movement
for me is a big access. I even think about
(45:04):
like when I it's no longer open. But there was
a place called Shadow Box here in the city. It
was a box, a boxing gym with classes, and it
could just be like rage music, you know, but yeah,
you're still processing, like hitting the ship out of the bag,
you know, and you're going through these like jab jab
uppercut this that you know, boom boom boom boom boom,
(45:26):
and you're like you're just processing something. I feel something
deep in this, whether it's a ballad or whether it's like, yeah,
we're going into battle.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
And we'll be right back with more music is therapy.
I saw Lady Gaga last week with my kid, and
I love her deeply and she inspires a lot of
my work. And she sang the song Edge of Glory,
you know this song, and she sang it at the
end of the on the piano a cappella, and we
had amazing seats, Rick and all of these this beautiful
(45:56):
and this drag queen, beautiful young drag queen was here
right in front of her and she sang really to her,
which was amazing to watch. But I was there and
she sings, I'm on the edge of glory, and like
the idea that you know I shared with you, like
my feeling always of like am I going to get there?
Am I going to belong? I don't even know what
it means, but that's the story in my head. And
to hear her sing this I'm on the edge of Glory,
(46:19):
it's like that. That was it. It felt like she
was It felt like she was verbalizing my concern and
attuned to me and holding me all at the same time.
And she's singing to this woman and she's just crying
and it was the most just holy, holy experience. I'm
so grateful glad I got to be there. How do
(46:39):
you sit with grief like this? How do you sit
in people's You know, in your work you're bringing out
these things and helping people. I suppose you're sitting next
to them while you have them sit with the wounded child.
Where does this come from that you could do this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
I mean, I think I have great capacity to sit
with others, and especially now that I know how to
sit with myself health. I look, at the risk of
sounding like cliche or I don't know it, just I
think sometimes you are born with something, and I think
(47:18):
I do have a skill set that. Yeah, sure, maybe
I've like worked on it to some degree. But I
also think I just happen to have a capacity for
this and that that just lives within me. I don't
actually burn out and looks part of this might be
(47:41):
I mean, I love the people I work with, and
I have such incredible clients, and I've always that's always
been true, and it has always felt like an honor
to sit with people and to hold their stories. I
don't the story doesn't live inside of me. It lives
(48:04):
like around me a bit.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
What do you mean? What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I've never shared this story before. Okay, what better time
than now. I So, the only drug I have ever done,
which is might be surprising for Sidon who knows, is
magic mushrooms. Okay, silas cybin. And I did no drugs
(48:34):
as a teenager. As a twenty year old, I was
a d one athlete. I was big into sports before,
and I think I also had like the fear of
God from my parents about it too, but I had
never entered into that space. And in my early thirties,
I did silas cybin for the first time. And the
(48:55):
first time I did it, I was I was in
Vancouver with my husband and it'd only taken a small
dose and you know whatever, an hour and it started
to hit like ever so slightly and my so my
first entry point into this was I look over at
him and prior to this, I was like, it's not working,
(49:16):
nothing's happening. He's like, just wait, just wait, just wait.
And I look over to him and I'm like, babe,
I have antlers and he's like, what kind of antlers?
You know? Like you're just trying to because he's not
He's not on anything at all. He's just there to
(49:37):
like hold me in my first my first foray into this,
and he's like, okay, like tell what kind of antlers?
And I'm like, no, no, these are like significant antlers.
And I'm like touching them and I can feel them,
and I'm holding my hands above my head and I'm like, whoa, whoa, babe,
Like these are huge. I was like, oh my gosh,
(49:58):
this all makes sense. This is where I hold everybody's stories.
And it was this really profound moment for me because
I always wondered kind of how you're asking, like where
does it all go? And why don't why is it?
Why doesn't your head explode? And why like how are
you not burnt out? And how are you not so
heavy with all of the you know, horrible horrific stories
(50:21):
that you hear from people, because of course, like I
hear terrible things and that goes inside of me? Or
does it? Right? And so I think I realized, you know,
in this moment of it is connected to me, but
it is not inside of me. And so these like
huge antlers I just go and go and go and
sprout out in all of these different ways. Is everybody's
(50:45):
story and every detail that they've ever shared. One of
the pieces of feedback I get from people is how
I don't forget the details and not that those details
of like ten years ago when you went to this
specific pizzeria in Brooklyn where you had that conversation is
that important. But I remember it and it means something
(51:09):
to people that these details that could so easily be
forgotten by your therapist or ones that are not forgotten
by me. But where does it go and where does
it live? And so anyway, for whatever it's worth, I
have antlers that is, that's where it lives.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
That's the most amazing story. As you see, I did
not make a sound while you were telling that story,
because I'll be editing the shit out of it. That
was really beautiful. I'm no stranger to a magic mushroom,
but I haven't heard it. But I haven't heard anyone
say that, I think since since nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Five magic mushroom Silace Diamonds.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
I'm not really a huge magic mushroom person, but I
am a very a very big supportive of like MDMA
because I love the dance floor and you know, I
do this sitting with but in a you know, different
type of environment and through pop records. I'm so to
meet you because just to wrap this up right, I'm
so glad to meet you because I remember having my
(52:04):
daughter and sitting in my bathroom on forty first Street
and like scrolling through the phone like when Instagram was like,
you know, not so new but like newer, and seeing
your account and being like, exactly what you said when
you started this, Oh, you can be a therapist, you
can be a clinician, and you can still want to
(52:24):
be somebody and be recognized and make money and build
a brand and all of these things. And it really
inspired me, truthfully, very deeply. You and esther peerrel and
you have the same licensure, you know, we all have
the same licensure, and that's huge. You're like one of
the first, you know, people that these postmodern therapists where
we know you and we know your husband, and we
(52:44):
know your life and we see what you look like,
you know, And so you really like gave me permission
to do that because there was no way I could
have done it any other way. There was no way
for me to go to go to go away. I
had already had too much out in. Is there anything
you'd like to ask me, Vianna, I don't. I need
a way to wrap this up, and I don't have one,
So I'm like, just I do.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
Have a fun music. Fun fact.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Oh I love that.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
So I feel like I came prepared to share that
with your audience. Which is that? Which is that I
played the violin at Whitney Houston's.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Wedding, shut the front door, and that good.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
That's a good fun of that.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
I literally cannot believe that you've waited till the end.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Of the year. Yeah, it had to leave something special
for the end. A client of mine, who it took
her ten years to leave a marriage, was frustrated with
herself because in one session she said, I knew I
should have left six weeks ago. And I looked at
her and I smile, What are you smiling about? And
we had that type of relationship, and I said, because
(53:48):
you're frustrated with yourself for something that took you six
weeks when the last time it took you ten years.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
That's awesome. That's beautiful. All right, Leanna, thank you, thank
you for being here.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
So here's what I want you to take from this.
You don't have to figure your whole life out, you
don't have to go back and unpack every single thing
that ever happened to you, but you do have to
feel something, at least a little. And if sitting in
a room trying to process your emotions feels impossible, well
that is really good because that's not how most people
actually get there. Find the song, the one that feels
(54:24):
a little too accurate, the one that hits something in
your chest. It's emotionally evocative, and instead of turning it off,
just stay. You don't need to understand it, you don't
need to explain it. Just let your body do what
it's going to do. That's the work, right people talk
about doing the work.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
And if you want help with this, I've got you.
The playlist is up songs that hold the feeling for you.
The workshop is Sunday, May seventeenth at one pm EST
and if one pm Eastern whatever, And if you want
something more specific, just email me. Music is therapy pod
at gmail dot com. Tell me what you're dealing with
and I will send you a song. If this episode
helped you, share it with someone who needs and if
you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Rate the show,
(55:03):
leave a review. It actually matters. This has been Music
is Therapy. I am DJ hester Print. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you next week.
DJ hester Print's Music Is Therapy is a production of
iHeart Podcasts. I'm your Host, DJ hester Print. Our executive
producers are Marissa Bramwell and Jonathan Strickland. Our associate producer
(55:24):
is Jonathan Klopp. Our marketing lead is Alison Kanter Grabler.
That's it.
I'm hester prinn DJ and licensed therapist. This is music
is therapy. Your session starts now. Can a song hold
a feeling for you? I think it can. Let me
explain this morning, I was djaing at conference in New
York and all these people were coming in for the
breakfast part. So I was doing like a chill classic
(00:24):
rock kind of vibe for the first hour, and I
wanted to play Fleetwood Mac and I decided to play
silver Spring. So the end of that song, if you
know it, which you should know it, Stevie turns in
one of the most emotionally evocative vocal performances in the
history of rock and roll. Email me if you want
to debate this. So I played the song and I
(00:45):
could see people walking around at breakfast who were connected
to it, like I could see them come alive in
the face, like in the chest, in the body. And
this is because people who've been wronged in love, they
deeply connect to the feeling in this song like they're
living it in this very moment. Here's the science. When
something emotional happens, your brain does two things. One part,
(01:07):
the thinking part, the prefrontal cortex makes a story about it,
like you feel the pain, and then it's like, oh,
we broke up, it wasn't right. I'll be okay, And
that's how you move on, that's how you function in life.
But the actual emotion, like the sadness, the longing, the hurt,
it doesn't live in that part of the brain. It
lives deeper in the back, the older part of the brain,
and in your body.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
And if you.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Don't actually grieve the pain, which none of us fucking
want to do, it doesn't just disappear. Most of us
like explain it away, make a story about it, and
then keep going. And then maybe we make the same
mistake again, or we get sick, or we do destructive behaviors,
whatever it is. At some point you have to go
(01:50):
back and feel the pain. You have to grieve it,
and you can't do that by thinking about it. But
music does this for you by passes the thinking part
of your brain and goes right to the back, to
the emotional part. And that's why when you hear a
song that matches something you've been through, you're not like
analyzing it, you're feeling it. When you hear Stevie Nicks
(02:13):
sing that line I'm Gonna do it, You'll never get
away from the sound of the woman that loves you.
I mean, listen, your body just knows what that feeling
is and it matches it and so it activates you
like maybe you cry, maybe you feel the anger and
the indignation, just like Stevie felt. So when I say
(02:36):
a song can hold a feeling for you, what I
mean is the song is doing the emotional access part
that you skipped. It's giving you a way to feel
something without having to sit there and think your way
into it. It's like a shortcut. It holds the feeling
for you. If you are new here, welcome, I'm so
happy you're here. And you got to hear me singing too.
(02:57):
This is what this show is about. I'm a DJ
and I'm a licensed therapist. I love reminding people that
I'm licensed and I use music to help people actually
feel things and change. And welcome especially to everyone to
the month of May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month.
This month's playlist is built around this idea. Songs that
hold something anger, grief, loneliness, not belonging. I want you
(03:20):
to find yours. I want you to find a song
on the playlist. It's linked in the show notes, and
you can even email me actually at music is therapypod
at gmail dot com and tell me what you're dealing
with and I'll find you a song. I'll pick out
a song specifically for you. I'm also doing a free
live workshop on Zoom on Sunday, May seventeenth at one
pm Eastern, where I'll teach one piece of the Music
(03:42):
Connection therapy method in real time. People still say Eastern
one pm e st DT. But stay with this episode
because at the end I'll give you another way to
actually do this on your own. All of the links
are in the show notes. Now, very very very excited
because my guest today is one of the reasons that
I actually do the work I do. Vienna Feron, also
(04:05):
known as the Mindful MFT, is a licensed therapist. She
has over seven hundred thousand followers on Instagram, including me.
I've been following her for over a decade, and her
book The Origins of You is about this idea. Early on,
something happens and you make a decision about yourself, and
then you spend your life reacting to that moment, even
(04:27):
if you don't remember it. This is one of the
best self help books I've ever read, and I don't
say that lightly. Everyone should read this book. It's amazing.
And she's one of the people also who show me
that you could be a clinician and still have like
a voice in the world, like go be a DJ
beyond Instagram, the esther perela of our generation. Honestly, Okay,
my conversation with Vienna starts now your work, I suppose
(04:52):
about the origin wound? Right, A lot of your work
points to this idea that what happened in tell me,
if I'm getting this right, what happened in your childildhood
is sort of that original wound, which I call on
this show oftentimes like the whole, the emptiness from which
all your sort of angst comes and maybe sometimes what
drives you, certainly what drives me. How did you come
(05:12):
to this work that the origin moon was the thing?
I know you have a great origin story, and I
want to ask you about that first so that people
can get to know kind of who you are. So
how did you come to this idea that the origin
moond was going to be the center of your work
and where you begin in the healing process as a clinician.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So I went to school for what at the time
and still is marriage and family therapy. People also call
it relational therapy too. You don't have to be married
to be in relational therapy or relational counseling. And I
entered into that field, which was systems theory.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It was like, okay, we are looking at the systems
in which all of us grew up. And I entered
in as like up and down, left and right. My
parents divorced and effect me, there ain't no system here
to look at. And I clung to that story for
a really long time, and I went all through grad
(06:10):
school said nope, they're fine. You know, yes, they had
a hard time, but now we're good.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yea.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
And actually that was accurate in that they had become
friends at that point. My parents went through a nine
year divorce process. It was the longest at the time
in the state of New Jersey, and at that point,
when I was twenty two, they had become friends and friendly.
They would come to all of my lacrosse games together
(06:39):
as a pair. They would always drive there, and so
I think it was easier for me to hold on
to the story that they were good and we were good,
and we did holidays together and all of that, everything
was fine because I did not know how to be
in contact with my own pain, and wasn't until my
(07:01):
mid late twenties where this work really started to just
kind of smack me in the face a bit more.
You know, I was a therapist for a period of time,
and I think I was doing a good enough job
in supporting people.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
As a twenty something right year old exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Right, and also like having done some of my work
but still not being able to quite go there yet. Sure,
you know, like that was really present for me. And
it wasn't until my Yeah, I was in a relationship
with someone who I really could see a future with
and his ex came back into the picture a couple
(07:37):
months into us dating and he was like, ooh, I
gotta you know, I've gotta figure this out. And I
stepped into this this space with him where I said, yeah, absolutely,
like take all the time you need, spend time with her,
see what the right decision for you is. And whenever
(07:58):
I tell this story, there is a little part of
me that cringes. I can feel that yeah, right where
you're like, oh, sweet girl, you know, like ooh goodness,
and look, actually that's decent advice that maybe his therapist
could have given him of like, yeah, you really need
to sit with this decision so that you are making
a clear decision about who you want to be with
(08:19):
and why, et cetera. But it probably did not need
to come from the woman you were dating, certainly at
that time, where I'm like, yeah, go spend time with
this woman and see you know, and see like no
and pretending like I was fine. So, if we want
to draw the line going back to their divorce, I
am an only child that that nine year divorce process
(08:39):
was one filled with high conflict, high chaos, manipulation, gaslighting,
you know, psychological abuse, paranoia. There was a lot that
was going on there. And whether it is true or not,
from my perspective as a little human watching these two
kind of crash and burn, was that there wasn't much
room for me to not be okay because the two
(09:00):
adults around me were clearly not okay. And I really
thought that adding mine not okay to the picture would
somehow drown the two of them out. If they were
sitting here, they might challenge that and say, no chance,
we absolutely could have heard what was going on for you,
But doesn't really matter right, And I think that that's
important for us, for anybody listening too. Is that sort
of the truth of that is less important than my
(09:23):
internalized experience and the story that I'm telling myself as
a five six seven year old little girl navigating this space.
And so what I was telling myself was Okay, to
help the system, I need to be okay, I need
to be fine. And then we fast forward back to
this story that I'm telling you about this guy that
I was dating. It kind of clicked in that the
(09:43):
role that I had stepped into in this moment of rupture,
this moment of hardship with the guy I was dating,
was the same role that I had stepped into as
a kiddo. And I, yeah, remember just having this kind
of aha moment as people describe it, of WHOA there.
It is like I am doing the same thing that
(10:06):
I did decades earlier. I did not have capacity or
tolerance to be with my own emotion because I had
never learned how to be with my own emotion. I
had always been pushing my emotion away, pushing my pain away,
because I did not know how to sit next to
it and touch it, be with it, grieve it. Feel
it whatever it is. And so I'd got my whole
(10:27):
life disconnected with a mask of I'm cool and I'm
fine and I'm unbothered. But I had gone through my
entire life pretending like I was unaffected by things because
I didn't know how to touch the pain. It was
one I think it was really the first time where
I intentionally touched the pain.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
How did you get that? How did you make space
for it?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Finally, so right after I had this conversation, I call
the guy that I'm dating and I say, hey, I
am gonna step out of this. I will be very
clear that this was not a mic drop moment. This
wasn't a moment of like wow, I felt so empowered
and like wow, you showed him. This was a moment
where I then was on the bathroom floor crying for
(11:11):
a long time. And let me be really honest, there
were plenty of times where I thought like, maybe.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
He'll come back around. Trama. What woke you up?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I'm sure you and many of your listeners have heard
of inner child work. You know, when we go through
hard moments as children, there's a part of us that fractures,
and there's something really important about getting a chance to
revisit with this younger part of ourselves that has learned
to adapt in some way based on the rupture, right,
(11:44):
if it's significant enough for us. Which is why I
got into this work around wounding and why I call
it wounding as opposed to necessarily only calling it trauma, right,
because I think a lot of people check out of
the conversation when they hear that word because they think
I don't have it so bad?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Or does everyone have a wound? Everyone has a wound? Yes,
everyone in therapy or every person. Like if someone's listening
and they're like, my husband thinks he doesn't have a wound.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I'm sure he'll listen to this and then we'll see
and do you think he has a wund?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
I do, But I think that the wound is more
like you know I I. I think the wound is
probably like a positive like too much love over you know,
over in overcring by the parents, where he has to
like push everyone away. He came on my show and
we talked about that. I'm like I needed more and
he's like, ugh, yes, I don't want to go into
the baby I don't want to do the inner child
work with.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You right, So yes, I would describe that as a wound.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Which wound does he have? Let's see, bring I want
to bring up all my friends and ask you which
ones there? I want to bring up every one of
my favorite musicians and that's right, okay, So which wound
does he have?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So in the book The Origins of You and I
talk about five origin wounds, which are worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust,
and safety. Okay, And what we're looking at is the
first time that there is a rupture in which you
question your sense of worth or value in the world,
your sense of belonging, your sense of being important to
(13:12):
the most important people in your life, chronically right where
trust is disrupted or where safety is disrupted. You know,
I've worked with people for a long time now, I
mentioned it before, almost twenty years. It's over twenty five
thousand hours of direct work with individuals, couples, and families.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
And so.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
These words to me felt like they did encompass where
these painful moments are. And it's not about fitting into
a box. It's not like, oh, here's the thing that
happened to you. Here is where it's going to spit
you out the way that you internalize the wound is personal.
So for example, if a parent abandons the family, one
(13:53):
child might internalize that as a worthiness wound, meaning you
left because I wasn't important enough for you to stick around,
And somebody else might internalize it as a trust wound
because you left, and now the most important people in
my life I can't trust them to stand by right.
So it's not what happened, it's how you make sense
(14:14):
of it.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So there's worthiness, there's a trust wound, which was yours
worthiness and safety. So safety is what that this home
is not going to vanish under my feet.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
That can be a part of it when you feel
like you and your world is not honored, respected, thought of,
cared for, protected right. I was in the mix of
two adults who were chaotic with each other, and I
(14:46):
felt like I was at times an afterthought. In fact,
in the beginning of the book, I talk about this
moment where I'm supposed to be at home with my parents.
My parents get into a fight. My mom says, we're
going to the beach with my grandmother. So we go,
and I remember hearing these words behind closed doors, which
(15:08):
was if you'd leave, don't come back, And so I
at five years old. I remember, you know how deeply
those words penetrate it. Now be clear my dad's love
for me is deep and very clear to me. And
also in that moment, it did rupture something. And a
few minutes later we left. And so you can imagine
(15:29):
as a little kid, what those choices felt like in
my body, which was, okay, I just heard these words.
They felt really strong and scary. They weren't directed at me,
but they were directed at somebody I loved, and somebody
who I thought you loved. And now I heard what
those words, what those words were, which was if you leave,
don't come back. And now we're leaving, so are we
(15:51):
not coming back? Like I don't right, It's like so
automatically this becomes really confusing and disorganized in my experience.
We go to the beach. I'm sure we had a
lovely time, you know, sand castles, ice cream, all the things.
And then on the way back, we don't go back
to my dad's. We go to my grandmother's and then
next thing I know is we are running hand in
(16:13):
hand to the neighbor's house. And then the next thing
that I know is that my mom and I are
hiding in a closet, and then the next thing I
know is that they're police officers at the door. And
the next thing I know right is that I can
hear my dad's voice yelling where are we and dah
dah da dah. And then there's this split that happens
where I'm hand in hand with my mom in a closet,
(16:34):
But then there's this other part that wants to like
peek out of the closet and say, hey, Dad, I'm
right here, like everything's okay, you know, and like uh, oh,
who do I choose? And how do I choose? And
what do I do? And years later I was in
a judge's chambers. I don't know if they still do
something like this, where as a I don't know, nine
ten year old, I'm sitting there and he's My conversation's
(16:54):
recorded with him, and he's asking me questions like you know,
who's home? Do you like being in more? And why?
And he's told me this recording is going to go
to your parents. And so at nine ten years old,
I am crafting responses in such a way to not
hurt or injure anybody's emotions or feelings.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
At that point more music is therapy coming up right
after this, and you can you can see a direct line,
a direct line, not a dotted line, to now your
boyfriend choosing. I have to disclose to you that it's
almost like it's really hard for me to hear this
because which I did not really expect. My origin story
(17:36):
of being a human is so similar to yours in
the details of I left to meet my mom and
we never went back, and the police at the door,
and so many of these things that I don't ever
talk about that I've never shared, certainly not on this
show or Serious XM or anywhere. And this person, this
(17:58):
picture of me, the detail has to print is my
version of like the cool girl, and I never really
thought about it quite that way. I think, you know,
we're about the same age, and I think that was
something in the culture at the time too. But when
I'm hearing you speak about how that you sat with
your inner child, and that sort of came up, and
that's why I asked you that question. I was like,
(18:19):
what was it like when it came up? At twenty
seven or twenty eight, I remember being in high school
and seeing Corney Love on television. I can't believe I'm
like really getting upset talking about this, but I want
to keep it together. I remember seeing Courtney on television
and that was like the moment with Fiona Apple and
Alanis Moore said and like Tori Amos and all the
women of the nineties that I love, and they were
(18:40):
so angry, and that was the they made it cute,
you know, Riot Gurley and all the things. That's what
they used to call, you know her, but Kathleen and
Gwen and all this those watching them be angry on
my behalf is how I was. My moment like that.
And then I remember they re released The Exorcists when
I was like twenty three, and I'd never seen it,
(19:00):
and it's about a little girl who gets really fucking mad,
so mad that it's gruesome. I mean you've seen the actresses. Yeah,
she's in the bed and she's yelling and screaming. And
I watched it. I became like obsessed with this movie
when it came out, and I watched it over and
over and over and over again. And I think that
I had pushed so much of this feelings down to
become like cool and successful and like in the music business,
(19:22):
and then these types of images of girls getting angry
just like always were so healing for me. And it's
like I didn't have to get angry because I could
just watch this movie or like listen to these records
over and over and over again. And so I really
see myself in your story. And I know that people
listening will see this too. So here's the question. Okay,
(19:47):
So when you have these moments where it comes up,
when you do begin to integrate, if that's a word
you use, when you begin to integrate, or you at
least recognize your you know, your origin wound, and maybe
see in places in your life where that's playing out again,
how do you move from like understanding yourself, which is
maybe what I would think of as like psychodynamic therapy. Look,
(20:08):
let's talk it, let's talk it out analysis like understanding yourself,
to actually changing.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah. I think sometimes we think if we have the
aha moment or the light bulb moment that goes off
and you're like, I know why I do what I do?
You know like that that is enough and it's not.
We have to work with our nervous systems in order
them to move the knowing into the showing, as we
would say and part of that is that you know,
(20:33):
we can sit here and I can say, oh, well,
my husband is safe, and so no reason to ever
get activated or ever you know, feel X, Y and
Z because I know that this is a good person.
Doesn't matter. Not until I have enough experiences and data
points with someone, can that start to shift?
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Is there enough data points? But I've been married to
this man for what thirteen years, and I still, like
every time, even on the show, I listen to it,
and it's like when he says, like when I get
any type of a pushback or like a mmm, I
don't want to do this with you or whatever, I'm like,
you don't let me fuck you. I hate you, you know
what I mean? Like I can go. It's so automatic.
I'm still doing it in my own life and I'm
a therapist and been through all the things.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Well, I mean, we're all works in progress, and you know,
I think that there's no point of arrival, like there's
no destination of Okay, it's done. I think it's always
working and that is healing, right. It's not that the
outcome is like that I chose this right in the moment.
Sometimes it's exiting sooner. Sometimes it's not being engulfed by
(21:39):
something that would have been engulfing before, right, And so
when you have when the bar is too high, I
think sometimes we miss those moments of healing along the way.
And so I know it's a strange thing to say
lower the bar for yourself a bit right, to see
where you are choosing differently in these micro moments where
you're exiting too, where you feel less affected by something
(22:02):
that would have affected you more before, et cetera, and
really acknowledge those those moments too. I can give an
example that hopefully demonstrates it, which is that when Connor
and I were first dating, the first conflict that we
got into, I don't know what we were fighting about,
but I remember that I could not stop proving my
(22:22):
point and needing to be right, doubling down, tripling down,
quadrupling down. And I remember sort of having this out
of body experience moment where I'm looking in at myself,
still going while Connor has said I got you, you know,
I hear you, Yes, understood the clothes. Finally it stops
(22:42):
and I enter into a bit of a shame spiral, like,
uh oh, he just saw this part that is so
uncool right, like, this is not the look. And then
I moved into a place of curiosity, like, okay, what
is the function of this behavior? When you think about
a behavior that you engage that you don't like, that
(23:04):
maybe you judge or you feel ashamed of, it's like,
what is the function of this behavior? In other words,
and what ways is this behavior trying to protect me
from something? And so I don't have to go very
far to find that answer, which is that my dad
was somebody who was manipulative gaslight gaslight my mom a lot.
(23:26):
It wasn't so much directed at me, mostly towards her,
but I was observing it constantly. And what I saw
in that dynamic was in his masterful ability to be
right is where he held control and power. It's where
things were safe. Our nervous system is constantly scanning every
single moment, deciding whether things are safe, life threatening or dangerous.
(23:51):
And something set it off that said no. Now, fast forward,
we've been together for about ten years now, and when
we have hard moments, as I said before, sort of
that oh, is he gonna want to be with me
when we have hard moments? There is no part of
(24:12):
me that does not believe that we will get through
it and come out the other side. Okay. And I
know that to be true because we have logged enough
hard moments and enough data points that tells me that
that is true about our dynamic.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Okay, So you have the evidence, and so now what happens?
So when you're triggered? Are you still triggered? You still
get Oh? Sure, we both do.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
And I would say, look, I think the frequency of
it is less, Okay, Okay. Then I think what we
do in loving relationship is that maybe you've heard this before,
like I lend my nervous system to you. Right, It's like,
here's coregulation is like okay, I'm okay, you're not doing
so well over there. How can I help support you.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
When you feel yourself flooding, when you feel yourself being irrational?
Like whatever? So what are you supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
What I taugh about in the book is a process
called your origin healing practice. We must go to a
place of regulation when we can, right when we're disregulated.
And I love this free frame that disregulation is just
active self protection. That beautiful, yes, right, because I think
disregulation has such a negative connotation to it that they're like, oh,
(25:21):
you're disregulated. You need to become regulated as quickly as possible.
And it's like, well, actually, you're in active self protection,
and so we don't need to rush you out of
self protection. We will gradually move you to a place
where you get to where you get to return to
relational care.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
I love that. It's like your armor. You put your
armor on, yes, to protect yourself. Yes, and like that
what hysterical.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We're not going to take that armor off when you're
not ready because that's going to feel way too vulnerable.
So things that we can do. One, we have to
become aware that we're in active self protection. Okay, Right,
it's like, okay, I am alerted to this. I know
my chet, my heart is beating out of my chest,
my palms are sweating. I want to rage. Whatever it
looks like for you, But it's coming back into a
(26:05):
place of regulation, which is maybe listening to music that
grounds you, maybe moving your body, getting out into nature,
doing a visualization, breath work, et cetera. Right, whatever it
is that works for you. Bilateral swaying.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
There's lots of things physical like so madic, like when
you notice that you're in the red zone. You're like,
I'm gonna go walk outside and listen to this Lady
Gaga song and like collect myself.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, you're going to do the thing that works for you.
For some people, it might not be music. I mean,
I know that we like to promote music on this show.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Of course, but for someone like you know, what do
you mean, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Pivot back or I'll pivot back right, But it's like, Okay,
what really works for you? Is it? Is it moving
your body and going for a walk. Is it listening
to the birds chirping outside? Is it swaying back and
forth from left to right?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I think, honestly what you said is that's the most
helpful and the most applicable for all of us, myself
and everyone listening. Right. Is that to recognize that you
are in your armor? Yes, because once you recognize it,
it's like funny, it's disarming. Once you recognize it, it's
like you can say, this is not this this narrative
you fighting him to be right or whatever it was,
(27:10):
and he was like, you're right, I got it, Like
you know, was really you just holding holding the shield
in front, having the armor? And so if you recognize
you're in the armor. You don't have to take the
content right seriously anymore. Right, you don't have to negotiate
about the thing that you think you're fighting, or that
you're debating, or whatever is the content of the fight
(27:30):
or the argument or the moment. Yes, this is a
lesson that I need to learn, because I'll get upset
about something and I will get I will like, I will,
you know, feel in back here in the lizard brain,
and I'll put the prefnial cortex, will put a story
to it, and I'll be like, why am I feeling upset?
And I'll be like, it's because we were supposed to
go to that party and then you left without me
or you know, and I like this reframe that, like
(27:51):
I'm in my armor. Yeah, I feel unsafe, I'm being triggered.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And we're also not in our adult self either. Yes, right,
so when we're an active self protection, we're also not
I'm forty I'm not forty year old Vienna in this moment. Right.
This is not advice. Do not ask your partner this,
but I'm going to ask it here for all of us,
which is, how old do I feel in this moment
(28:18):
right now?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Okay, so no, you're not going to ask your partner
when they are upset, how old do you feel?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Oh my god, imagine.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That's a real good way to cause a little more distance.
But at some point that reflection, A lot of times
I will feel like I am a teenager. Yeah, especially
when that aren't okay, I got to go to battle
with my dad, or I got to go to the right.
It's like, okay, well, I can feel that the adult
has left. The adult isn't in the room anymore. I
say that so lovingly, with so much care. But I
(28:46):
think when we realize, oh, active self protection is here,
armor is on. The adult has left. Okay, I need
to go get the adult at some point before we
re engage. Now, however long that takes twenty minutes, two hours,
twenty hours, I don't care, right, but I need to
go get the adult me back. Now. That's not to
(29:07):
put adults on some hierarchical position. A lot of adults,
so don't do a lot of adults that well, but
it is at least for ourselves. I want to get
my grounded, wise adult back in the room so that
you and I can have a very different conversation than
the one that we had before.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I love it. Here's a question, how do you know?
What can you ask yourself to know who's driving? How
do you How do I know when the adult is back?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, you'll know based on sensation. If you start to
pay attention to your body, there will be signs that
your body gives you when the adult is gone. What.
Well here, so if we were too, Okay, let's do it.
Let's do it. You want to close your eyes for
a moment.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Like anxious attachment, just kidding, yes, okay, closing.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I'll close my eyes with you. Okay, So let's do
a visualization. I want you let's do it. Breath first, actually,
so why don't you breathe them through your nose? Yeah,
if they're not driving and out and in and out,
(30:16):
and then just stay with your normal breath. And I
want you to visualize one of your favorite places in
the world. Just pick one, you might have a few,
And I really want you to try to transport yourself there.
(30:37):
Maybe you feel the sand beneath your toes, the sunshine
on your face, maybe you feel the wind on your skin.
Maybe you hear the waves crashing, where the bird's chirping,
(31:04):
and just let the goodness of whatever it is that
you see and feel just wrap you as if it
was hugging you. Really just let yourself be in the
joy of what this place holds for you, the peacefulness,
(31:28):
the safety, the pleasure, and you might sway from left
to right, just a little bit, from left to right
(31:51):
and right to left, and maybe you let a little
smile come on your face if it's natural. I'll just
stay here for one more breath, and then when you're ready,
(32:16):
I can return here with the mic in front of you,
and you can tell me and us what you notice
in your body.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
First, I just feel really like relaxed and happy. That's
a really nice feeling that you can conjure.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That your adult self is here. You don't need to
protect from anything in this moment right now. What where
do you struggle the most? We don't have to go
deep into it. But what causes you the most kind
(33:02):
of stress or irritation or activation.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
In my life? Yeah, I think feeling like I'm where
I should be, like whether I belong. But I don't
mean with people. I mean if I'm like doing well enough,
if I'm like successfuls, just if I'm in the right place,
doing the right thing that I'm meant for.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And what would be an example of not doing that?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Something tolerable, Like when I'm doing a lot of like
computer work at home, Yeah, I'm like, God, I should
be out, i should be traveling, I should be talking
to people in person, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah. Okay, So we're going to do something tolerable, but
something that's going to agitate you a little bit, okay,
which is you're gonna you don't have to close your
eyes for this, but you're on your computer and you've
got your spreadsheets out, or you're sending emails and another
email just came in and you're having to like make
sure that so and so and so and so is
connected and okay another email and okay, these numbers aren't
(34:02):
adding up, and okay, what's happening over there? And just
notice what happened in your body?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah it feels gross. I'm like, oh, you know, like
in the gross and my shoulders and like, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Just feels bad, Yeah, tightness whatever, like maybe you're sweating
a little bit more. Absolutely, just you notice like slight
shifts in the physiology right of your body. So that's
a real, like in its most basic form that we
can do here together. Those are pretty good ways to
be like, oh, when my body does this versus when
(34:36):
my body does that, I know what state I am in, right,
So when my husband will not mind me sharing this,
there is a twitch that happens in his nose when
he is disregulated. The moment I see that twitch, and
(34:56):
we're not in it together right when I'm regulated, but
I see the tw which happened, I'm like, Okay, I'm
not gonna I will never have the conversation with you
when I see it not going there. I'm not even
going to entertain it because I know where it's headed. Right,
So it's a there's like a tiny little thing that
I see in him right now, we can stay in
(35:17):
our own lanes, which is what do I need to
notice within myself? Right, But I know we are making
zero progress right when the twitch has entered the chat,
right and so I'm not going to engage with you.
I'm going to say I love you at something we
can return to this conversation. I'm not going to have
(35:37):
it with you right now.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right We'll be back with more musicist therapy right after this.
So you're what you just taught me is how to
recognize when I feel like quote the adult, and when
I feel just regulated. And you did that just by
sharing an image. You didn't even share the first image,
(35:59):
and you shared. You let me, you prompted me. And
so when people are think they're doing the work, whatever
it is, people take the quiz on your website, which
I did. Everyone's gonna read the book. We're going to
put it in the show notes. There's worksheets, and it's
an active book. There's actionable strategies. That's why I wanted
to have you on. You're not just like a celebrity.
(36:20):
You're the actuable, actionable strategy master. Does it all. If
they're doing the work, I think they're doing the work
and they're not seeing the change. Is it because they're
missing the somatic piece and it's so hard to do
this part living here in America on your own.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, you're missing. Something is missing, And yes, I would
say that probably the arrows are going to point back
to some type of somatic work around it. Part of
the origin healing practice is about witnessing these younger parts
of ourselves that came face to face with these painful
moments that set a worthiness wound in motion or a safetudeness,
(37:00):
safety wound in motion, bearing witness to them, and then
allowing for grief to present. I often say, when stuck,
grieve more. Maybe you've seen that.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Quote before, quote everywhere.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, when stuck grieve more. And this is not performative grief.
It doesn't look a certain way. I think about. One
of the images that I have of myself is as
a little girl sitting atop perched atop the steps in
my mom's town home and she there was a little
opening down to her little kitchenette area, so I could
(37:34):
hear through these little bars, and I remember being seated
up there by myself. She and my dad would be
on the phone, but I remember sitting up there and
bringing that visual to the forefront from me and sort
of meeting her there as the adult me, like kind
of getting a little bit closer to this nine year
(37:55):
old sitting on those steps, listening in and just bearing
witness to her. What was it like for nine year
old me to consume this material all the time, and
adult me just felt a lot of care and compassion
for her. Grief is the authentic expression of emotion that
(38:17):
comes forward when you bear witness, And so yeah, for me,
tears wouldn't stream down my face because I'd see this
sweet little girl sitting there listening, trying to absorb, trying
to understand, trying to do way more than she needed
to at that age, and yet that was still what
she did. And so essentially pulling up a seat next
(38:39):
to her and just being there with her and letting
that emotion come forward. Right, And so when you talk
about the like the knowing and Okay, I'm aware of this,
but I am still choosing different things. We do need
to feel more.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
If you haven't learn up. Yes, when I was in
therapy in a major way for the first time and
I was I really didn't cry, and my therapist would say, Julie,
you have to cry, just like that, Julie, you have
to cry. And I'd be like, why do I have
to cry? Like I'm gotta go, I gotta go be successful.
You're kidding me, Like I don't have to cry, I
have to go DJ all these parties.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I don't have to I don't have time.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I don't have time for that. And also what's the
point and what does it get you? And she was like,
you have to cry? And I tried, and she told
me about these women, you know, like Cambody or something
who wail and who grieve this culture. And I was like, oh,
she said look that up and I watched a video.
I was like, this is not doing it. And she's like,
what's the saddest thing you can think of? And I
when she said that, I was like, oh, well, it's
(39:35):
both Says Now by Joni Mitchell. You know that song.
And she said you have to go home and listen
to Jonnie Mitchell. And I said, I can't listen to
Joni Mitchell because her voice is too evocative and it's
too painful and I can't hear it. And she's like,
that's your assignment. And I remember this so well. I
went to my apartment on forty first Street and I
listened to Joni Mitchell Blue is that the name of
the album with California on it?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
And I listened to it and her. You know, there's
some voices that are painful to hear. I think people
feel that way about Adele. You know. I love Adele
and she doesn't hit me like that, but there are
some voices that are you know, Amy Winehouse had a
voice like this, and Joni Mitchell has this voice, and
I listened to it and it made me cry, and
I cried, and I cried a lot. And now when
(40:20):
I need to cry, which I have to do after
this fucking interview, because I feel like being in this
space with you is like so intense, there's so much
you come in with, so much, like you're so open,
you're you know. And if you're like an empathic person,
which I've been trained to be, like, it's a lot,
it's beautiful. And so when I need to cry, I
get in my car and I listen to Jonny Mitchell
and I can cry, but I can do it almost
like in a container. That's how I sit with that.
(40:43):
And I said, I had Emily Fletcher on my show
and she asked me about I was doing a party
for my podcast, and I was nervous about it and
I felt unworthy. And she did some work with me
and she said, how old are you? And I recognized
how old I was. And there was a Tory Amos
record that came out at that time. And I will
put on the Tory record and I'll drive around Long
Eye where I grew up, and I'll cry to that
record and it feels helpful. Because it makes me feel
(41:07):
like I'm actually doing the work. That's my question about
what's the work. Okay, well, here's the work. I generally
can't like visit other parts. I don't really know how
to visit other parts of me and go into it.
I just get distracted, or I feel uncomfortable, or I'm
hungry or on bored or tired, I'll fall asleep. But
if I have very specific records that will hold that. Yeah,
(41:31):
And I do think that the songs can hold the
feeling for you, you know, I want to ask you
about music, and I don't know if you like post Malone.
You like post Malone? I love post Malone, and post
Malone has a song called I Fall Apart, which is
a breakup song, and it's the most I've been just
saying it.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I feel it.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
It's such a beautiful, beautiful song, and it's so clearly
about something very real, and I think, when I need
to visit the pain of like rupture, sure, I will
listen to I Fall Apart, And it's like it guides me.
It's like checking the box of the feeling that I
can identify but I can't quite get to. I'm saying,
(42:11):
I'm working this out live because for people who are listening,
who you know, we all want to be better, we
all want to heal. Not everyone can go to therapy,
not everyone has access. But this idea, if if you
could take the quiz on your website which we'll link to,
and you can identify what your origin wound is. And
I think probably people have an idea of what the
bad things that happen to them are sure, and you
(42:33):
can maybe put some words to it. And I use
AI sometimes to help you know, put some words in
this is my origin wound. Put us some words to
this and email me at Music is Therapy potgmail dot com.
I'll give you some songs, but if you can put
some words to it, and then you had a library
of songs that This one holds the abandonment, This one
holds the fear. This one holds the lonely only child.
(42:55):
I have an only child. This this one holds the
teenage girl feeling rejected. This one holds I'm stuck on
in the suburbs and my parents like don't pay attention
to me, and like when will I ever get out
and be where I'm supposed to be? Which is my story?
I think it's so powerful. I think it's no one's
doing it. That's what I'm trying to build and help
(43:15):
people with.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
That's beautiful people's stories and the stories that that singers
and artists share when they're when their lyrics are about something,
but whether it's even about as something that's happening in
their lives, where it's just the ache, where they're covering
somebody else's song, but you can feel like, oh you
lived something right.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yes, I love I love this point and it's almost
I've never heard anyone say this by way. I've been
I was on live music radio for years and no
one has ever said this which you just said, is
that when artists cover another artists song, it's you are
bearing witness to them seeing themselves. I think about when
Johnny Cash covered Hurt you know, the on that Covers album,
(44:00):
and it felt like it was it was his you know,
or one one you know the YouTube song right one.
That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, I've never heard anyone
say it this way, and it's so amazing. It so
ties into like you and your work and what you
bring that you sort of made that connection because that's
really what it is. And that's what we do as listeners, right,
(44:20):
We hear ourselves inside the song and it pulls the emotion,
it does the lifting for us.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
What a tool, right, right, because sometimes it can be hard.
I mean this concept of go home and cry and
you're like, I really know how to do that. Movement
with music also opened some stuff up for me.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
What songs, what can you tell us?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Well? I was actually thinking more about there's a workout
class in the city. The class. I don't know if
what specific songs were playing at that time, but being
like whoa right, like something is happening here or going
for a run listening to music like, but move movement
for me is a big access. I even think about
(45:04):
like when I it's no longer open. But there was
a place called Shadow Box here in the city. It
was a box, a boxing gym with classes, and it
could just be like rage music, you know, but yeah,
you're still processing, like hitting the ship out of the bag,
you know, and you're going through these like jab jab
uppercut this that you know, boom boom boom boom boom,
(45:26):
and you're like you're just processing something. I feel something
deep in this, whether it's a ballad or whether it's like, yeah,
we're going into battle.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
And we'll be right back with more music is therapy.
I saw Lady Gaga last week with my kid, and
I love her deeply and she inspires a lot of
my work. And she sang the song Edge of Glory,
you know this song, and she sang it at the
end of the on the piano a cappella, and we
had amazing seats, Rick and all of these this beautiful
(45:56):
and this drag queen, beautiful young drag queen was here
right in front of her and she sang really to her,
which was amazing to watch. But I was there and
she sings, I'm on the edge of glory, and like
the idea that you know I shared with you, like
my feeling always of like am I going to get there?
Am I going to belong? I don't even know what
it means, but that's the story in my head. And
to hear her sing this I'm on the edge of Glory,
(46:19):
it's like that. That was it. It felt like she
was It felt like she was verbalizing my concern and
attuned to me and holding me all at the same time.
And she's singing to this woman and she's just crying
and it was the most just holy, holy experience. I'm
so grateful glad I got to be there. How do
(46:39):
you sit with grief like this? How do you sit
in people's You know, in your work you're bringing out
these things and helping people. I suppose you're sitting next
to them while you have them sit with the wounded child.
Where does this come from that you could do this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
I mean, I think I have great capacity to sit
with others, and especially now that I know how to
sit with myself health. I look, at the risk of
sounding like cliche or I don't know it, just I
think sometimes you are born with something, and I think
(47:18):
I do have a skill set that. Yeah, sure, maybe
I've like worked on it to some degree. But I
also think I just happen to have a capacity for
this and that that just lives within me. I don't
actually burn out and looks part of this might be
(47:41):
I mean, I love the people I work with, and
I have such incredible clients, and I've always that's always
been true, and it has always felt like an honor
to sit with people and to hold their stories. I
don't the story doesn't live inside of me. It lives
(48:04):
like around me a bit.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
What do you mean? What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I've never shared this story before. Okay, what better time
than now. I So, the only drug I have ever done,
which is might be surprising for Sidon who knows, is
magic mushrooms. Okay, silas cybin. And I did no drugs
(48:34):
as a teenager. As a twenty year old, I was
a d one athlete. I was big into sports before,
and I think I also had like the fear of
God from my parents about it too, but I had
never entered into that space. And in my early thirties,
I did silas cybin for the first time. And the
(48:55):
first time I did it, I was I was in
Vancouver with my husband and it'd only taken a small
dose and you know whatever, an hour and it started
to hit like ever so slightly and my so my
first entry point into this was I look over at
him and prior to this, I was like, it's not working,
(49:16):
nothing's happening. He's like, just wait, just wait, just wait.
And I look over to him and I'm like, babe,
I have antlers and he's like, what kind of antlers?
You know? Like you're just trying to because he's not
He's not on anything at all. He's just there to
(49:37):
like hold me in my first my first foray into this,
and he's like, okay, like tell what kind of antlers?
And I'm like, no, no, these are like significant antlers.
And I'm like touching them and I can feel them,
and I'm holding my hands above my head and I'm like, whoa, whoa, babe,
Like these are huge. I was like, oh my gosh,
(49:58):
this all makes sense. This is where I hold everybody's stories.
And it was this really profound moment for me because
I always wondered kind of how you're asking, like where
does it all go? And why don't why is it?
Why doesn't your head explode? And why like how are
you not burnt out? And how are you not so
heavy with all of the you know, horrible horrific stories
(50:21):
that you hear from people, because of course, like I
hear terrible things and that goes inside of me? Or
does it? Right? And so I think I realized, you know,
in this moment of it is connected to me, but
it is not inside of me. And so these like
huge antlers I just go and go and go and
sprout out in all of these different ways. Is everybody's
(50:45):
story and every detail that they've ever shared. One of
the pieces of feedback I get from people is how
I don't forget the details and not that those details
of like ten years ago when you went to this
specific pizzeria in Brooklyn where you had that conversation is
that important. But I remember it and it means something
(51:09):
to people that these details that could so easily be
forgotten by your therapist or ones that are not forgotten
by me. But where does it go and where does
it live? And so anyway, for whatever it's worth, I
have antlers that is, that's where it lives.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
That's the most amazing story. As you see, I did
not make a sound while you were telling that story,
because I'll be editing the shit out of it. That
was really beautiful. I'm no stranger to a magic mushroom,
but I haven't heard it. But I haven't heard anyone
say that, I think since since nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Five magic mushroom Silace Diamonds.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
I'm not really a huge magic mushroom person, but I
am a very a very big supportive of like MDMA
because I love the dance floor and you know, I
do this sitting with but in a you know, different
type of environment and through pop records. I'm so to
meet you because just to wrap this up right, I'm
so glad to meet you because I remember having my
(52:04):
daughter and sitting in my bathroom on forty first Street
and like scrolling through the phone like when Instagram was like,
you know, not so new but like newer, and seeing
your account and being like, exactly what you said when
you started this, Oh, you can be a therapist, you
can be a clinician, and you can still want to
(52:24):
be somebody and be recognized and make money and build
a brand and all of these things. And it really
inspired me, truthfully, very deeply. You and esther peerrel and
you have the same licensure, you know, we all have
the same licensure, and that's huge. You're like one of
the first, you know, people that these postmodern therapists where
we know you and we know your husband, and we
(52:44):
know your life and we see what you look like,
you know, And so you really like gave me permission
to do that because there was no way I could
have done it any other way. There was no way
for me to go to go to go away. I
had already had too much out in. Is there anything
you'd like to ask me, Vianna, I don't. I need
a way to wrap this up, and I don't have one,
So I'm like, just I do.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
Have a fun music. Fun fact.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Oh I love that.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
So I feel like I came prepared to share that
with your audience. Which is that? Which is that I
played the violin at Whitney Houston's.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Wedding, shut the front door, and that good.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
That's a good fun of that.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
I literally cannot believe that you've waited till the end.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Of the year. Yeah, it had to leave something special
for the end. A client of mine, who it took
her ten years to leave a marriage, was frustrated with
herself because in one session she said, I knew I
should have left six weeks ago. And I looked at
her and I smile, What are you smiling about? And
we had that type of relationship, and I said, because
(53:48):
you're frustrated with yourself for something that took you six
weeks when the last time it took you ten years.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
That's awesome. That's beautiful. All right, Leanna, thank you, thank
you for being here.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
So here's what I want you to take from this.
You don't have to figure your whole life out, you
don't have to go back and unpack every single thing
that ever happened to you, but you do have to
feel something, at least a little. And if sitting in
a room trying to process your emotions feels impossible, well
that is really good because that's not how most people
actually get there. Find the song, the one that feels
(54:24):
a little too accurate, the one that hits something in
your chest. It's emotionally evocative, and instead of turning it off,
just stay. You don't need to understand it, you don't
need to explain it. Just let your body do what
it's going to do. That's the work, right people talk
about doing the work.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
And if you want help with this, I've got you.
The playlist is up songs that hold the feeling for you.
The workshop is Sunday, May seventeenth at one pm EST
and if one pm Eastern whatever, And if you want
something more specific, just email me. Music is therapy pod
at gmail dot com. Tell me what you're dealing with
and I will send you a song. If this episode
helped you, share it with someone who needs and if
you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Rate the show,
(55:03):
leave a review. It actually matters. This has been Music
is Therapy. I am DJ hester Print. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you next week.
DJ hester Print's Music Is Therapy is a production of
iHeart Podcasts. I'm your Host, DJ hester Print. Our executive
producers are Marissa Bramwell and Jonathan Strickland. Our associate producer
(55:24):
is Jonathan Klopp. Our marketing lead is Alison Kanter Grabler.
That's it.
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