October 19, 2023 • 35 mins
Sensitivity Warning: This episode may not be suitable for everyone. It contains a personal story of trauma and alcohol overuse. Skip this one if that feels too heavy for you. Your story is important, your life is important, and if you need help, please reach out to RAINN.ORG.
In this Can We Start Over podcast episode, Lindsey shares her journey with trauma and healing.
Inspired by a friend, she decided to record this vulnerable and sensitive solo episode to lay out her experiences, what happened to her, and the steps she took to heal.
Lindsey discusses the importance of integrating and sharing these experiences to live authentically.
Lindsey expresses her gratitude to those who listen and hopes her story can guide others on their healing journeys.
She shares her childhood trauma, her unhealthy relationship with alcohol in her teenage and early adult years, and the turning point when she realized the need for deep healing.
Lindsey talks about the impact of trauma on her parenting and her decision to make significant changes in her life, including meditation, journaling, therapy, spiritual practice & somatic work.
She also discusses her experience with rapid-resolution therapy & a plant medicine ceremony that helped release the weight and shame.
Lindsey's story is one of resilience, growth, and the power of healing.
Resources
Somatic and PolyVagal Healing
Lindsey's Somatic Healing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lindsey (00:13):
Hi, everyone.
This is another episode of theCan We Start Over podcast.
My name is Lindsay, and what youare hearing today It's a solo
episode with just me.
I realized that we've talked alot about mine and Brit's past
experiences, but I haven'treally shared my personal
(00:35):
journey with trauma and healing.
And I was inspired to recordthis episode kind of last
minute.
I was inspired by a friend.
Leo Max, who's a hypnotherapist.
If you're interested, you shoulddefinitely check him out.
But something that was said in agroup that if I'm not
(00:57):
integrating these experiencesand sharing them, then I'm not
really like living my My fullbody authenticity and that
really hit me, I was like, whatare you not saying?
So I wanted to record an episodethat just kind of lays it all
(01:18):
out, like here's what I'veexperienced, this is what
happened to me and path and thesteps that I took to heal.
So it's a vulnerable one.
It's a sensitive one, and it'sone that if you.
If you don't want to hear aboutsexual trauma or alcohol abuse,
(01:44):
then you should skip this one.
And no worries if that's you.
And if you are ready to listento it, then I thank you so much
for hearing me.
And hopefully this guides evenjust one person on their own
healing journey.
(02:05):
All right, let's do it.
Okay, hi, welcome friends.
I'm glad to be here with youtoday.
This is a bit of a last minuteepisode because I got the hit,
intuitive hit, urge, download,whatever, the call to record
this last night.
And so I wanted to make surethat it was fresh and that it
(02:29):
was real because this is a realone.
I'm going to share my trauma andhealing journey and so this
episode might not be foreveryone, but this episode is
for me, because as much as, asmuch healing work as I have done
(02:51):
in the last five years, and asfar as I am on the path, and
like, honestly, how good I feel,I realized that there's
something that happens when wedon't fully integrate the
painful experiences of our lifeas part of who we are, and then
(03:11):
hold them as.
being that this bad, like badthings can happen and we can
heal around them, but maybe westill keep them at arm's length.
Maybe they're still just likeover there and we don't have to
talk about.
our pain, our trauma all thetime.
(03:33):
I think that like gets us in aloop.
But what I realized what I wasdoing because I have done so
much healing work around mypast, but there, but I still
haven't really told the story.
And so I'm just like keeping itout of arm's length where I'm
like, okay, I've healed that,but it's not really part of who
(03:56):
I am.
And that is true that the thingsthat happened to us, they aren't
who we are.
But if I want to be fullyintegrated, like I'm going to
alchemize every experience andmake it part of my truth, even
the shit that was hard, even theshit that was painful.
(04:16):
And that's what I'm here to doright now.
Because I started as a kidtelling myself that something
wasn't that bad and it wasn't abig deal.
That it wasn't that bad becausesomething worse happened to
(04:39):
someone else.
So I've been, I had told myselfthis story since I was nine
years old.
And what happened to me then isthat a neighbor, an adult
neighbor, touched meinappropriately in a very
obvious and inappropriate way.
way that made me freeze.
(05:01):
I didn't know what to do.
My friend was there, and it wasobvious.
It was horrible.
It was completely inappropriate.
And immediately when I left, myfriend, who was also a child,
said, um, what just happened?
And I, I shut it down.
I was like, nothing happened.
(05:23):
Because in even that poor,sweet, lindsey, child's mind, I
was telling myself two things.
I was telling myself that wasn'treally a big deal because
horrible things happen topeople.
And that wasn't horrible.
That was, you know, that wasnothing that was outside.
That was daytime.
(05:43):
So I was telling myself thatwasn't a big deal while also
telling myself, you can nevertell anyone about this.
And you can imagine being nine,that push pull that is created
inside of me at that time, thatI think happens to so many of
(06:04):
us, this push pull of, it's notthat bad.
And, It's so bad I can't speakit and how we live in this half
truth and for me it just createdthis path forward where I
couldn't be authentic.
(06:26):
You know, I couldn't beauthentic with my friends, with
my family because I was holdingboth of these things thinking,
oh, that wasn't really a bigdeal while still thinking about
it like 15 years later.
So that was like the start ofmy.
trauma journey, if you will.
(06:47):
And sweet little Lindsay didn'ttell anyone.
She tried to forget about it,but it was always there.
And looking back, I think thatcaused a lot of choices that
sweet little Lindsay made as ateen and into early 20s.
(07:10):
You know, I really...
had a reckless, unhealthyrelationship with alcohol from a
young age.
I think because I was trying tolike escape the weight of that
push pull and pull myself out ofthat energy.
Because alcohol was this waythat You're free and you have
(07:33):
fun and you connect with peopleand then you can be the real
you.
Even though the real me onalcohol wasn't really the full
me, of course, it's like somenumbed version.
So I did that for a while.
Teens into 20s, I really justused alcohol in An unhealthy way
(07:57):
in a way that was another pushpull because I regularly would
get blackout drunk, not knowwhat happened.
So I had shame around it, a lotof shame, while also being like,
there's no problem with alcoholbecause one, this is completely
normal for the people I'maround.
(08:21):
There's actual real alcoholicsout there that are like drinking
before work.
So I had compartmentalized, it'sthe way we compartmentalize, I
compartmentalized my childhoodtrauma by being like, it wasn't
even that big of a deal, butalso don't tell anyone about it,
because then they're gonna thinkyou're bad and dirty.
And then drinking.
It's not even that big of adeal.
It's not like you're drinking inthe morning, but also holds an
(08:43):
immense amount of shame aroundit because you can't remember
what happened last night andbecause now you feel like
garbage.
And in my early 20s, anotherthing that happened is one of my
family members experienced a bigtrauma that, that re traumatized
me because it brought up these,this memory of, again, this
(09:08):
thing that I told myself wasn'ta big deal, while also telling
myself, You can never tellanyone about that.
As a young person in their veryearly 20s who recklessly used
alcohol, I also got pregnanttwice and had two abortions with
(09:29):
my long term boyfriend at thetime when I was 20 and 21.
And it's such a simpleexperience, but for some reason,
I don't know if it's being agirl from Texas.
Or being, or just trying toreally live up to that good girl
image.
I felt like I could not tellanyone.
(09:51):
So it's another way that I washolding this push pull where I'm
someone who's so pro choice andlike would take anyone to get
any procedure that they needed.
I like advocate for abortions.
People should have abortionswhen they need to and want to.
(10:13):
And yet I couldn't say that Ihad done it because something in
me said, Oh, but you can't tellanyone because that's shameful.
And it wasn't an easy choice.
And I did have to deal with, youknow, I had to, I had to do some
healing around that.
It was hard, but I carried thatshame by not saying anything, by
(10:39):
not owning it.
It made it 10 times worse.
So, I lived in this state ofhyper achievement, of hyper
release, hyper unhealthyrelease.
So I'm going to drink to excess.
I'm going to like get loud andwild and crazy and be the wild
(11:01):
one.
I'm going to like be reallyreckless.
And then also I'm going to workreally hard.
And it was like these hyperopposites that were.
My only way of release becauseat the time I had no idea about
healing trauma no idea aboutRegulating myself or caring for
myself in any real way, and Iwill say that that hyper
(11:27):
Achievement it did cause a lotof amazing things to happen in
my life, and I and that's howOur bodies are so wise and like
we are so wise that we do thething that will just get us,
keep us going because we don'thave another way and that's what
(11:49):
I learned.
Part of my healing journey hasbeen parts work because I could.
Part, you know, at some point Iwould've been like, oh, that
hyper achievement was horribleand a lot of parts, a lot of it
didn't feel good.
But really, I'm so grateful tothat part of me that decided my
outlet was, okay, I'm gonna likecreate this business and work
(12:11):
really hard and, and push myselfto the edge because that.
was what I knew how to do.
And so all I can do is just lovethat part of me.
Just like I can love the littleLindsey, I can love the 15 year
old Lindsey, I can love the 22year old Lindsey, I can love all
of them.
But as I'm going down this roadof hyper achievement in my now
(12:33):
mid 20s, late 20s, I was stillhaving this really unhealthy
relationship with alcohol.
At that time, then we, me andBritt got married.
We were just kind of like, goingwith the flow, but not really.
We were, we were create, we wereforcing the flow of a lot of
work, a fair amount of partying,and it just continued on in this
(12:58):
life that I honestly thought wasnormal.
Like, I thought that this is theway you release with alcohol,
and you never talk aboutanything bad that's happened.
Unless you're going to like blowup on someone, which I did do
and then smash cut to me at 30years old.
(13:22):
At 30, I've had a business fornow six years.
We own a home.
Me and Brit have been marriedfor six years.
Like things are feeling like,Oh, I've got this while still
partying.
But, you know.
Again, at this rate that I, thatI feel is very normal at that
(13:45):
time, and I was like in greatshape.
It's, it's looking back, I don'twant to downplay it, but there,
I like hit this, Huge upperlimit.
Because at that point,everything in my life on paper
was going right.
(14:05):
But there was this swirlingundercurrent of all this
unresolved stuff from mychildhood, not just the, the.
experience, the sexualexperience with the adult, but
then the other justdysfunctional family
experiences, the experience inmy early 20s with my family
(14:26):
member, the experience withalcohol.
So there's like this swirlingsoup of pain and shame.
And so outwardly, when I'm 30.
Things look good.
And I think I feel great.
I'm very, I like, look great.
I have great clothes.
I have a good job that's abusiness that I own.
(14:48):
I own a home.
And yet, at 30, I got blackoutdrunk, yet again.
But this time, I was in LasVegas.
And this is the part that, thisis a major part of the story
that I haven't fully integratedas part of my story because I
haven't shared it with that manypeople.
(15:10):
So I was in Vegas with friends.
I got blackout drunk and I don'tremember what happened, but I
ended up in some hotel room thatwas not mine.
Again, I, I, I don't thinkanything happened, and it could
be so much worse.
(15:31):
So immediately, I.
But I put it in this box oflike, oh, that wasn't a big deal
because you made it back and youwere safe and, uh, you don't
think anything, you know, youcould have been, you could have
died, but you didn't.
So I put it in this box of notthat big of a deal while also
being like, no one can ever knowabout this.
(15:54):
So what I do remember is I wasat the club with my friends.
I was drinking.
I got extremely drunk.
I completely black out and thenI have a memory, a very vague
memory that I even questioned ifit was real, but I know it was
real of just like coming to inthis hotel room and knowing I
(16:19):
don't know where I am and I gotto get the fuck out of here.
And so I did that.
I vaguely remember going to thefront desk and saying I don't
know where I am, I need a cab.
They told me to go outside, Igot a cab, I vaguely, almost
like a dream, remember making itback to the hotel.
(16:41):
And then I just really rememberwaking up in the hotel, in my,
in my hotel room, like me and myfriends.
And so, part of me was like, didthat happen or did that not
happen?
But that's the thing about whenyou know something happened that
was painful is that you knowbecause the weight of the shame
(17:02):
was crippling.
And I carried that weight.
I carried that weight and shameof.
I should know better.
It's, it's doubled shame becausenot only is there a certain
amount of shame when you justuse alcohol inappropriately, but
now, did I just fuck up mymarriage?
(17:23):
Did I just fuck up myfriendships because I'm so
careless?
I'm old enough to know betterand I'm a business owner and I'm
a married person and that weightof shame doubled with the weight
of not dealing with traumatripled with the weight of now
(17:45):
I'm in a hyper achievement modewas just crushing me and masking
all this old pain.
So then why I call it an upperlimit.
Is that then I created thingswere going really well and
almost to a point of like, Oh,this is better than, than I
could have imagined my lifewould turn out.
(18:07):
So I created a deeper well ofshame.
And I'm not saying that to belike, I created that we create
the bad things that happened tous.
You can take that or leave that.
I, I have no skin in that game.
But.
It feels like an upper limitbecause on the outside things
look so good, and yet on theinside there was this bubbling
(18:29):
pain that then I unconsciouslychose to dive in deeper.
And the thing about thatexperience in Vegas.
It so mirrored what happenedwhen I was a kid because I could
(18:49):
tell myself those two things.
I could tell myself that was nota big deal.
Nothing really happened.
You don't even really know whathappened.
While also telling myself no onecan ever know about this and the
immense pressure that thatcauses.
(19:10):
And I just kind of held on tothat for a while, you know, I, I
did talk to Brit about it.
That was really hard, but it wasa huge weight off.
I needed to tell him I'd neverhad like any kind of anything
I'd never told him before.
And so I did tell him.
(19:31):
And then.
Um, I just kind of workedthrough it in the best way that
I knew how, but that wasn'treally any way, you know, I, I
did go to therapy at that time.
I went to talk therapy, it didhelp and really, really, you
know, I, I did kind of startdoing some healing work there,
(19:53):
but it wasn't until.
A few years after my twins wereborn that I realized that some
actual deep, deep healing wasneeded because at that time I
was getting really triggered bymy kids and that was of course
(20:13):
no fault of theirs.
It is not kid's fault when weget triggered, they are kids,
but I was getting reallytriggered and now this hyper
achievement turned into hyperreactivity towards my kids.
And I was, I could see thetrajectory of me passing down
(20:36):
this hyper reactivity to them ifI didn't do something about it.
So I knew at that time I wasgoing to do everything in my
power.
to not pass that down and that Ididn't want them to live in this
push pull.
I wasn't actually so aware ofit, but I just knew I needed a
(20:59):
massive change and I knew thatthis wasn't the kind of parent I
wanted to be.
That's when I startedmeditating.
That's when I startedjournaling.
I started doing self healingwork.
I Went deeper into therapy,that's when I completely changed
(21:19):
my relationship with alcohol,and in that choice, in those
choices, that felt small, but Icould tell that it was like It
was like a reversing and aredoing of what had been done.
I could finally see my life in adifferent way.
For the first time ever, myworldview was expanding from
(21:42):
this really limited and reactiveand painful experience.
That also had a lot of joybecause I did have a great life,
but it really started to open upto be possibility, to be joyful.
And along that journey, as Icontinued with a great talk
(22:03):
therapist, but I startedlearning more about.
What it feels like to becompassionate to yourself
because all along this line fromnine year old Lindsay fifteen
year old Lindsay 22 28 30 all ofthese times when I was carrying
this shame The thing that wasmissing majorly is I had no
(22:27):
compassion for myself I don'tknow exactly when I learned that
but definitely as a nine yearold I learned if you There's
something deep that you can'tsay to anyone.
You can't have compassion foryourself around it because
there's something about it thatis bad.
For some divine reason, and I'mso grateful, I was awarded this
(22:51):
invitation into exploring selfcompassion through these
modalities, through meditation,through journaling, through
going to talk therapy, through.
listening to spiritual talksthrough Ram Dass.
It was so many different outletsthat I was being exposed to all
at once.
(23:12):
And I continued chipping away atit for a few years.
I was making a lot of progresswith these modalities.
I really was.
And I was feeling really so muchbetter and incredible.
But like, the reactivity wouldstill hit, or just, The lack of
(23:32):
self compassion would still hit.
It wasn't near as much what itwas.
And then somewhere in that time,around 2020, my friend, my
psychic friend wrote down thename and phone number of a
somatic practitioner.
And because she said, Oh, you'resupposed to, you're supposed to
(23:53):
go see this person.
And I think I might've mentionedthis on the podcast.
I can't remember.
But when your psychic friendwrites down the name and phone
number of a practitioner.
you're probably supposed to doit.
I kept that name and phonenumber in my wallet for a few
months before I called.
I don't know why.
I guess I just wasn't ready.
(24:13):
But finally, I called her.
We set up an appointment andthat's when I started my
journey, my, my journey into thebody because I had already been
on this journey into the mindwith meditation and inquiry with
journaling and I'd been on thisjourney of processing through
talk therapy.
(24:34):
So I was These things arealready in motion, but I had
never experienced someone makinga space for me to explore my
inner feelings and to be like,what does sadness feel like?
(24:54):
And then to get to describe itin a way that doesn't need to
make sense.
And that's why I am sopassionate about somatic work
and subconscious work because Iloved my talk therapist.
We did a lot of amazing thingstogether.
I still love her.
But it wasn't really until I gotinto the somatic work and then
(25:18):
doing subconscious work that Icould really.
release the weight and the shameof these things that happened in
my life.
So a year after working with mysomatic therapist, she told me
about rapid resolution therapy.
And she told me how a sessionworks.
(25:39):
And I was like, immediately, Iwas like, Oh, I want to do that
on Specifically on the night inVegas that I still feel shame
around and I still feel trauma.
It's like a still a trauma pointfor me and I want to do it.
So we did one session aroundthat and I, it took me even a
while to tell her.
(26:01):
What happened there, becauseagain, even though I was, I was
working on it, it was stillsomething that I wasn't fully
integrating as part of who Iwas, like, it's, or part of my
story, part of my experience.
So one session of rapidresolution therapy, and then
after that, I was feeling reallytender.
(26:22):
But then two days later, I did apsilocybin ceremony and went
into the ceremony with thistherapy session that had just
happened, so it was fresh, and Iwent into the memory of the
night.
When I was 30 in Vegas and thething was I was so scared for so
(26:44):
long of being like I can't goback to that memory or I can't
remember and I still maybe don'tremember everything but going
having that rapid resolutiontherapy and then being in a
safe.
skilled place to experiencepsilocybin, like with, with like
highly skilled people and a realloving community.
(27:07):
It gave me this place to belike, Oh, that's what I've been
avoiding this whole time.
That has is what has beencausing this major push pull for
me in my whole life.
for the last 10 years, and now Ican just see it for what it is.
And then that charge was gone.
(27:29):
Like the chart, I can thinkabout that night, I can think
about that experience, and thecharge is gone.
And the same thing with Myexperience when I was nine with
the neighbor, like I can thinkabout that experience and I
don't feel That grip inside.
(27:49):
I don't feel that shame.
I don't feel that Fear that thelittle Lindsey felt but it
wasn't Until last night that myfriend and hypnotherapist Leo
Mack said in a group journey, hesaid, what aren't you saying?
(28:11):
And that's when I realized wedid this group hypnotherapy
journey and I was like, Oh, I'mnot really embodying my life's
experiences.
And letting it be a part of whoI am and being proud of who I
am, even in its messiness andeven in the pain, you know, and
(28:35):
even holding the fact that it istrue.
Other people have had it bad.
had it way worse.
Other people have had horribleexperiences and just holding all
of my experience in love.
Like, I wasn't really doing thatbecause I wasn't really telling
the full story of thesetraumatic experiences and how I
(29:01):
alchemized them.
And that I can be proud of that.
And there's something to be saidabout really looking back on
doing big work.
You know, we do it with work.
It's easy, it's easier to dowith work with some kind of
achievement.
But to look back on a healingjourney and be like, damn, like,
look at how far you have come.
(29:23):
Look at how much you have workedthrough.
Look at how much.
You have let go and how free itfeels to let go, how freeing it
feels to not have that pushpull.
But I knew there was anotherlevel because I haven't really
(29:44):
talked about it.
And there's a few conversationsthat I haven't really had, you
know, about it that I kind ofthink still need to have
probably before this episodecomes out.
That's why I'm sharing this,because There might be someone
listening that is feeling theweight of that unspoken thing
(30:10):
that's feeling that push pullenergy.
Or maybe it's not a push pull.
Maybe there's maybe it is theworst thing that could happen,
but maybe there's the shame andso we're not talking about it.
Or maybe you have a story of.
It wasn't that bad, but I'vebeen carrying, carrying it with
me for 20 years.
(30:32):
And so then we really have toask ourselves, was it not that
bad?
Because you're still hanging onto it.
And I'm not saying that to belike, you got to let it go.
But it's like, sweet, sweet,sweet being.
I'm saying this to the nine yearold Lindsay, like, with
tenderness and love, then it wasthat big of a deal.
(30:56):
And you do deserve.
the space to heal it.
And you do deserve the space toreally feel it and to let it be
a big deal.
So if there is somethingunspoken for you, you can speak
it when you're ready.
You can also heal somethingwithout speaking it.
(31:19):
I did that for years and I madeamazing Progress.
You can take those small stepseach day on your healing path.
And then at some point, you'llbe ready to speak it in a
different way, again, withoutthe charge and to say, to lay it
all on the line and say, theseare the things that happened to
(31:41):
me.
This is what made me who I am.
And not that I'm thankful forthose things, but like, I'm
super thankful for exactly who Iam.
Um, so maybe in some.
I am thankful for those.
I'm thankful that I, again, was,I mean, I'll call it divine
(32:01):
guidance or I don't know, justmy karmic path or whatever that
I could choose to heal and thatI could choose to heal in my own
time, in my own way, exactly asI needed because I love who I am
today.
And even that's, you know,that's amazing.
(32:23):
I would have never said thatabout myself 10 years ago or
seven years ago.
To just know that you can lovewho you are is a really
interesting way to, to reframethe way we think about suffering
(32:44):
because suffering sucks.
And we have suffered in largeand small ways.
Every single one of us.
I have.
you have, I know you have.
And my friend and I were talkingabout this a couple weeks ago.
It's like the teaching thatsuffering is grace has always
been a sticky one for me becauseWhen you hear about like the bad
(33:09):
thing the actual really badthings to happen to people not
just like I'm stuck in trafficI'm suffering but like the big
ones.
It's hard to be like that wasgrace And so what I've come to
even in these last weeks andhonestly even in this last 24
hours is that suffering is graceBecause of what we do with it
(33:31):
after It's not that suffering isgrace because God or source or
whatever is giving you sufferingso that you can come out the
other side.
I don't really buy into that.
I think that bad shit happensbecause we're all humans on this
imperfect planet and the gracecomes in after because we have
(33:57):
to decide.
We get to decide.
I'm going to turn this sufferinginto something.
I'm going to turn it in tohealing.
I'm going to alchemize it.
I'm going to make it part of mystory.
I'm not going to be ashamed ofit.
I'm going to turn it into art.
(34:17):
I'm going to turn it intocommunity.
I'm going to turn it intoconnection.
I'm going to go deeper in myrelationship.
I'm going to be a better parent.
I'm going to show up on thespiritual path and just be in
love more.
And most of the time that isbecause of some suffering we
have had.
(34:38):
So, suffering is grace.
I do believe that.
And yet, not in the way thatit's sometimes sold.
And whatever has happened toyou, when you are ready, you can
heal it.
And it really can lose thecharge and it can be just part
(35:01):
of your story that becomes justanother way that you love
yourself.
I hope that you're lovingyourself today.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode and I'll see
Hi, everyone.
This is another episode of theCan We Start Over podcast.
My name is Lindsay, and what youare hearing today It's a solo
episode with just me.
I realized that we've talked alot about mine and Brit's past
experiences, but I haven'treally shared my personal
(00:35):
journey with trauma and healing.
And I was inspired to recordthis episode kind of last
minute.
I was inspired by a friend.
Leo Max, who's a hypnotherapist.
If you're interested, you shoulddefinitely check him out.
But something that was said in agroup that if I'm not
(00:57):
integrating these experiencesand sharing them, then I'm not
really like living my My fullbody authenticity and that
really hit me, I was like, whatare you not saying?
So I wanted to record an episodethat just kind of lays it all
(01:18):
out, like here's what I'veexperienced, this is what
happened to me and path and thesteps that I took to heal.
So it's a vulnerable one.
It's a sensitive one, and it'sone that if you.
If you don't want to hear aboutsexual trauma or alcohol abuse,
(01:44):
then you should skip this one.
And no worries if that's you.
And if you are ready to listento it, then I thank you so much
for hearing me.
And hopefully this guides evenjust one person on their own
healing journey.
(02:05):
All right, let's do it.
Okay, hi, welcome friends.
I'm glad to be here with youtoday.
This is a bit of a last minuteepisode because I got the hit,
intuitive hit, urge, download,whatever, the call to record
this last night.
And so I wanted to make surethat it was fresh and that it
(02:29):
was real because this is a realone.
I'm going to share my trauma andhealing journey and so this
episode might not be foreveryone, but this episode is
for me, because as much as, asmuch healing work as I have done
(02:51):
in the last five years, and asfar as I am on the path, and
like, honestly, how good I feel,I realized that there's
something that happens when wedon't fully integrate the
painful experiences of our lifeas part of who we are, and then
(03:11):
hold them as.
being that this bad, like badthings can happen and we can
heal around them, but maybe westill keep them at arm's length.
Maybe they're still just likeover there and we don't have to
talk about.
our pain, our trauma all thetime.
(03:33):
I think that like gets us in aloop.
But what I realized what I wasdoing because I have done so
much healing work around mypast, but there, but I still
haven't really told the story.
And so I'm just like keeping itout of arm's length where I'm
like, okay, I've healed that,but it's not really part of who
(03:56):
I am.
And that is true that the thingsthat happened to us, they aren't
who we are.
But if I want to be fullyintegrated, like I'm going to
alchemize every experience andmake it part of my truth, even
the shit that was hard, even theshit that was painful.
(04:16):
And that's what I'm here to doright now.
Because I started as a kidtelling myself that something
wasn't that bad and it wasn't abig deal.
That it wasn't that bad becausesomething worse happened to
(04:39):
someone else.
So I've been, I had told myselfthis story since I was nine
years old.
And what happened to me then isthat a neighbor, an adult
neighbor, touched meinappropriately in a very
obvious and inappropriate way.
way that made me freeze.
(05:01):
I didn't know what to do.
My friend was there, and it wasobvious.
It was horrible.
It was completely inappropriate.
And immediately when I left, myfriend, who was also a child,
said, um, what just happened?
And I, I shut it down.
I was like, nothing happened.
(05:23):
Because in even that poor,sweet, lindsey, child's mind, I
was telling myself two things.
I was telling myself that wasn'treally a big deal because
horrible things happen topeople.
And that wasn't horrible.
That was, you know, that wasnothing that was outside.
That was daytime.
(05:43):
So I was telling myself thatwasn't a big deal while also
telling myself, you can nevertell anyone about this.
And you can imagine being nine,that push pull that is created
inside of me at that time, thatI think happens to so many of
(06:04):
us, this push pull of, it's notthat bad.
And, It's so bad I can't speakit and how we live in this half
truth and for me it just createdthis path forward where I
couldn't be authentic.
(06:26):
You know, I couldn't beauthentic with my friends, with
my family because I was holdingboth of these things thinking,
oh, that wasn't really a bigdeal while still thinking about
it like 15 years later.
So that was like the start ofmy.
trauma journey, if you will.
(06:47):
And sweet little Lindsay didn'ttell anyone.
She tried to forget about it,but it was always there.
And looking back, I think thatcaused a lot of choices that
sweet little Lindsay made as ateen and into early 20s.
(07:10):
You know, I really...
had a reckless, unhealthyrelationship with alcohol from a
young age.
I think because I was trying tolike escape the weight of that
push pull and pull myself out ofthat energy.
Because alcohol was this waythat You're free and you have
(07:33):
fun and you connect with peopleand then you can be the real
you.
Even though the real me onalcohol wasn't really the full
me, of course, it's like somenumbed version.
So I did that for a while.
Teens into 20s, I really justused alcohol in An unhealthy way
(07:57):
in a way that was another pushpull because I regularly would
get blackout drunk, not knowwhat happened.
So I had shame around it, a lotof shame, while also being like,
there's no problem with alcoholbecause one, this is completely
normal for the people I'maround.
(08:21):
There's actual real alcoholicsout there that are like drinking
before work.
So I had compartmentalized, it'sthe way we compartmentalize, I
compartmentalized my childhoodtrauma by being like, it wasn't
even that big of a deal, butalso don't tell anyone about it,
because then they're gonna thinkyou're bad and dirty.
And then drinking.
It's not even that big of adeal.
It's not like you're drinking inthe morning, but also holds an
(08:43):
immense amount of shame aroundit because you can't remember
what happened last night andbecause now you feel like
garbage.
And in my early 20s, anotherthing that happened is one of my
family members experienced a bigtrauma that, that re traumatized
me because it brought up these,this memory of, again, this
(09:08):
thing that I told myself wasn'ta big deal, while also telling
myself, You can never tellanyone about that.
As a young person in their veryearly 20s who recklessly used
alcohol, I also got pregnanttwice and had two abortions with
(09:29):
my long term boyfriend at thetime when I was 20 and 21.
And it's such a simpleexperience, but for some reason,
I don't know if it's being agirl from Texas.
Or being, or just trying toreally live up to that good girl
image.
I felt like I could not tellanyone.
(09:51):
So it's another way that I washolding this push pull where I'm
someone who's so pro choice andlike would take anyone to get
any procedure that they needed.
I like advocate for abortions.
People should have abortionswhen they need to and want to.
(10:13):
And yet I couldn't say that Ihad done it because something in
me said, Oh, but you can't tellanyone because that's shameful.
And it wasn't an easy choice.
And I did have to deal with, youknow, I had to, I had to do some
healing around that.
It was hard, but I carried thatshame by not saying anything, by
(10:39):
not owning it.
It made it 10 times worse.
So, I lived in this state ofhyper achievement, of hyper
release, hyper unhealthyrelease.
So I'm going to drink to excess.
I'm going to like get loud andwild and crazy and be the wild
(11:01):
one.
I'm going to like be reallyreckless.
And then also I'm going to workreally hard.
And it was like these hyperopposites that were.
My only way of release becauseat the time I had no idea about
healing trauma no idea aboutRegulating myself or caring for
myself in any real way, and Iwill say that that hyper
(11:27):
Achievement it did cause a lotof amazing things to happen in
my life, and I and that's howOur bodies are so wise and like
we are so wise that we do thething that will just get us,
keep us going because we don'thave another way and that's what
(11:49):
I learned.
Part of my healing journey hasbeen parts work because I could.
Part, you know, at some point Iwould've been like, oh, that
hyper achievement was horribleand a lot of parts, a lot of it
didn't feel good.
But really, I'm so grateful tothat part of me that decided my
outlet was, okay, I'm gonna likecreate this business and work
(12:11):
really hard and, and push myselfto the edge because that.
was what I knew how to do.
And so all I can do is just lovethat part of me.
Just like I can love the littleLindsey, I can love the 15 year
old Lindsey, I can love the 22year old Lindsey, I can love all
of them.
But as I'm going down this roadof hyper achievement in my now
(12:33):
mid 20s, late 20s, I was stillhaving this really unhealthy
relationship with alcohol.
At that time, then we, me andBritt got married.
We were just kind of like, goingwith the flow, but not really.
We were, we were create, we wereforcing the flow of a lot of
work, a fair amount of partying,and it just continued on in this
(12:58):
life that I honestly thought wasnormal.
Like, I thought that this is theway you release with alcohol,
and you never talk aboutanything bad that's happened.
Unless you're going to like blowup on someone, which I did do
and then smash cut to me at 30years old.
(13:22):
At 30, I've had a business fornow six years.
We own a home.
Me and Brit have been marriedfor six years.
Like things are feeling like,Oh, I've got this while still
partying.
But, you know.
Again, at this rate that I, thatI feel is very normal at that
(13:45):
time, and I was like in greatshape.
It's, it's looking back, I don'twant to downplay it, but there,
I like hit this, Huge upperlimit.
Because at that point,everything in my life on paper
was going right.
(14:05):
But there was this swirlingundercurrent of all this
unresolved stuff from mychildhood, not just the, the.
experience, the sexualexperience with the adult, but
then the other justdysfunctional family
experiences, the experience inmy early 20s with my family
(14:26):
member, the experience withalcohol.
So there's like this swirlingsoup of pain and shame.
And so outwardly, when I'm 30.
Things look good.
And I think I feel great.
I'm very, I like, look great.
I have great clothes.
I have a good job that's abusiness that I own.
(14:48):
I own a home.
And yet, at 30, I got blackoutdrunk, yet again.
But this time, I was in LasVegas.
And this is the part that, thisis a major part of the story
that I haven't fully integratedas part of my story because I
haven't shared it with that manypeople.
(15:10):
So I was in Vegas with friends.
I got blackout drunk and I don'tremember what happened, but I
ended up in some hotel room thatwas not mine.
Again, I, I, I don't thinkanything happened, and it could
be so much worse.
(15:31):
So immediately, I.
But I put it in this box oflike, oh, that wasn't a big deal
because you made it back and youwere safe and, uh, you don't
think anything, you know, youcould have been, you could have
died, but you didn't.
So I put it in this box of notthat big of a deal while also
being like, no one can ever knowabout this.
(15:54):
So what I do remember is I wasat the club with my friends.
I was drinking.
I got extremely drunk.
I completely black out and thenI have a memory, a very vague
memory that I even questioned ifit was real, but I know it was
real of just like coming to inthis hotel room and knowing I
(16:19):
don't know where I am and I gotto get the fuck out of here.
And so I did that.
I vaguely remember going to thefront desk and saying I don't
know where I am, I need a cab.
They told me to go outside, Igot a cab, I vaguely, almost
like a dream, remember making itback to the hotel.
(16:41):
And then I just really rememberwaking up in the hotel, in my,
in my hotel room, like me and myfriends.
And so, part of me was like, didthat happen or did that not
happen?
But that's the thing about whenyou know something happened that
was painful is that you knowbecause the weight of the shame
(17:02):
was crippling.
And I carried that weight.
I carried that weight and shameof.
I should know better.
It's, it's doubled shame becausenot only is there a certain
amount of shame when you justuse alcohol inappropriately, but
now, did I just fuck up mymarriage?
(17:23):
Did I just fuck up myfriendships because I'm so
careless?
I'm old enough to know betterand I'm a business owner and I'm
a married person and that weightof shame doubled with the weight
of not dealing with traumatripled with the weight of now
(17:45):
I'm in a hyper achievement modewas just crushing me and masking
all this old pain.
So then why I call it an upperlimit.
Is that then I created thingswere going really well and
almost to a point of like, Oh,this is better than, than I
could have imagined my lifewould turn out.
(18:07):
So I created a deeper well ofshame.
And I'm not saying that to belike, I created that we create
the bad things that happened tous.
You can take that or leave that.
I, I have no skin in that game.
But.
It feels like an upper limitbecause on the outside things
look so good, and yet on theinside there was this bubbling
(18:29):
pain that then I unconsciouslychose to dive in deeper.
And the thing about thatexperience in Vegas.
It so mirrored what happenedwhen I was a kid because I could
(18:49):
tell myself those two things.
I could tell myself that was nota big deal.
Nothing really happened.
You don't even really know whathappened.
While also telling myself no onecan ever know about this and the
immense pressure that thatcauses.
(19:10):
And I just kind of held on tothat for a while, you know, I, I
did talk to Brit about it.
That was really hard, but it wasa huge weight off.
I needed to tell him I'd neverhad like any kind of anything
I'd never told him before.
And so I did tell him.
(19:31):
And then.
Um, I just kind of workedthrough it in the best way that
I knew how, but that wasn'treally any way, you know, I, I
did go to therapy at that time.
I went to talk therapy, it didhelp and really, really, you
know, I, I did kind of startdoing some healing work there,
(19:53):
but it wasn't until.
A few years after my twins wereborn that I realized that some
actual deep, deep healing wasneeded because at that time I
was getting really triggered bymy kids and that was of course
(20:13):
no fault of theirs.
It is not kid's fault when weget triggered, they are kids,
but I was getting reallytriggered and now this hyper
achievement turned into hyperreactivity towards my kids.
And I was, I could see thetrajectory of me passing down
(20:36):
this hyper reactivity to them ifI didn't do something about it.
So I knew at that time I wasgoing to do everything in my
power.
to not pass that down and that Ididn't want them to live in this
push pull.
I wasn't actually so aware ofit, but I just knew I needed a
(20:59):
massive change and I knew thatthis wasn't the kind of parent I
wanted to be.
That's when I startedmeditating.
That's when I startedjournaling.
I started doing self healingwork.
I Went deeper into therapy,that's when I completely changed
(21:19):
my relationship with alcohol,and in that choice, in those
choices, that felt small, but Icould tell that it was like It
was like a reversing and aredoing of what had been done.
I could finally see my life in adifferent way.
For the first time ever, myworldview was expanding from
(21:42):
this really limited and reactiveand painful experience.
That also had a lot of joybecause I did have a great life,
but it really started to open upto be possibility, to be joyful.
And along that journey, as Icontinued with a great talk
(22:03):
therapist, but I startedlearning more about.
What it feels like to becompassionate to yourself
because all along this line fromnine year old Lindsay fifteen
year old Lindsay 22 28 30 all ofthese times when I was carrying
this shame The thing that wasmissing majorly is I had no
(22:27):
compassion for myself I don'tknow exactly when I learned that
but definitely as a nine yearold I learned if you There's
something deep that you can'tsay to anyone.
You can't have compassion foryourself around it because
there's something about it thatis bad.
For some divine reason, and I'mso grateful, I was awarded this
(22:51):
invitation into exploring selfcompassion through these
modalities, through meditation,through journaling, through
going to talk therapy, through.
listening to spiritual talksthrough Ram Dass.
It was so many different outletsthat I was being exposed to all
at once.
(23:12):
And I continued chipping away atit for a few years.
I was making a lot of progresswith these modalities.
I really was.
And I was feeling really so muchbetter and incredible.
But like, the reactivity wouldstill hit, or just, The lack of
(23:32):
self compassion would still hit.
It wasn't near as much what itwas.
And then somewhere in that time,around 2020, my friend, my
psychic friend wrote down thename and phone number of a
somatic practitioner.
And because she said, Oh, you'resupposed to, you're supposed to
(23:53):
go see this person.
And I think I might've mentionedthis on the podcast.
I can't remember.
But when your psychic friendwrites down the name and phone
number of a practitioner.
you're probably supposed to doit.
I kept that name and phonenumber in my wallet for a few
months before I called.
I don't know why.
I guess I just wasn't ready.
(24:13):
But finally, I called her.
We set up an appointment andthat's when I started my
journey, my, my journey into thebody because I had already been
on this journey into the mindwith meditation and inquiry with
journaling and I'd been on thisjourney of processing through
talk therapy.
(24:34):
So I was These things arealready in motion, but I had
never experienced someone makinga space for me to explore my
inner feelings and to be like,what does sadness feel like?
(24:54):
And then to get to describe itin a way that doesn't need to
make sense.
And that's why I am sopassionate about somatic work
and subconscious work because Iloved my talk therapist.
We did a lot of amazing thingstogether.
I still love her.
But it wasn't really until I gotinto the somatic work and then
(25:18):
doing subconscious work that Icould really.
release the weight and the shameof these things that happened in
my life.
So a year after working with mysomatic therapist, she told me
about rapid resolution therapy.
And she told me how a sessionworks.
(25:39):
And I was like, immediately, Iwas like, Oh, I want to do that
on Specifically on the night inVegas that I still feel shame
around and I still feel trauma.
It's like a still a trauma pointfor me and I want to do it.
So we did one session aroundthat and I, it took me even a
while to tell her.
(26:01):
What happened there, becauseagain, even though I was, I was
working on it, it was stillsomething that I wasn't fully
integrating as part of who Iwas, like, it's, or part of my
story, part of my experience.
So one session of rapidresolution therapy, and then
after that, I was feeling reallytender.
(26:22):
But then two days later, I did apsilocybin ceremony and went
into the ceremony with thistherapy session that had just
happened, so it was fresh, and Iwent into the memory of the
night.
When I was 30 in Vegas and thething was I was so scared for so
(26:44):
long of being like I can't goback to that memory or I can't
remember and I still maybe don'tremember everything but going
having that rapid resolutiontherapy and then being in a
safe.
skilled place to experiencepsilocybin, like with, with like
highly skilled people and a realloving community.
(27:07):
It gave me this place to belike, Oh, that's what I've been
avoiding this whole time.
That has is what has beencausing this major push pull for
me in my whole life.
for the last 10 years, and now Ican just see it for what it is.
And then that charge was gone.
(27:29):
Like the chart, I can thinkabout that night, I can think
about that experience, and thecharge is gone.
And the same thing with Myexperience when I was nine with
the neighbor, like I can thinkabout that experience and I
don't feel That grip inside.
(27:49):
I don't feel that shame.
I don't feel that Fear that thelittle Lindsey felt but it
wasn't Until last night that myfriend and hypnotherapist Leo
Mack said in a group journey, hesaid, what aren't you saying?
(28:11):
And that's when I realized wedid this group hypnotherapy
journey and I was like, Oh, I'mnot really embodying my life's
experiences.
And letting it be a part of whoI am and being proud of who I
am, even in its messiness andeven in the pain, you know, and
(28:35):
even holding the fact that it istrue.
Other people have had it bad.
had it way worse.
Other people have had horribleexperiences and just holding all
of my experience in love.
Like, I wasn't really doing thatbecause I wasn't really telling
the full story of thesetraumatic experiences and how I
(29:01):
alchemized them.
And that I can be proud of that.
And there's something to be saidabout really looking back on
doing big work.
You know, we do it with work.
It's easy, it's easier to dowith work with some kind of
achievement.
But to look back on a healingjourney and be like, damn, like,
look at how far you have come.
(29:23):
Look at how much you have workedthrough.
Look at how much.
You have let go and how free itfeels to let go, how freeing it
feels to not have that pushpull.
But I knew there was anotherlevel because I haven't really
(29:44):
talked about it.
And there's a few conversationsthat I haven't really had, you
know, about it that I kind ofthink still need to have
probably before this episodecomes out.
That's why I'm sharing this,because There might be someone
listening that is feeling theweight of that unspoken thing
(30:10):
that's feeling that push pullenergy.
Or maybe it's not a push pull.
Maybe there's maybe it is theworst thing that could happen,
but maybe there's the shame andso we're not talking about it.
Or maybe you have a story of.
It wasn't that bad, but I'vebeen carrying, carrying it with
me for 20 years.
(30:32):
And so then we really have toask ourselves, was it not that
bad?
Because you're still hanging onto it.
And I'm not saying that to belike, you got to let it go.
But it's like, sweet, sweet,sweet being.
I'm saying this to the nine yearold Lindsay, like, with
tenderness and love, then it wasthat big of a deal.
(30:56):
And you do deserve.
the space to heal it.
And you do deserve the space toreally feel it and to let it be
a big deal.
So if there is somethingunspoken for you, you can speak
it when you're ready.
You can also heal somethingwithout speaking it.
(31:19):
I did that for years and I madeamazing Progress.
You can take those small stepseach day on your healing path.
And then at some point, you'llbe ready to speak it in a
different way, again, withoutthe charge and to say, to lay it
all on the line and say, theseare the things that happened to
(31:41):
me.
This is what made me who I am.
And not that I'm thankful forthose things, but like, I'm
super thankful for exactly who Iam.
Um, so maybe in some.
I am thankful for those.
I'm thankful that I, again, was,I mean, I'll call it divine
(32:01):
guidance or I don't know, justmy karmic path or whatever that
I could choose to heal and thatI could choose to heal in my own
time, in my own way, exactly asI needed because I love who I am
today.
And even that's, you know,that's amazing.
(32:23):
I would have never said thatabout myself 10 years ago or
seven years ago.
To just know that you can lovewho you are is a really
interesting way to, to reframethe way we think about suffering
(32:44):
because suffering sucks.
And we have suffered in largeand small ways.
Every single one of us.
I have.
you have, I know you have.
And my friend and I were talkingabout this a couple weeks ago.
It's like the teaching thatsuffering is grace has always
been a sticky one for me becauseWhen you hear about like the bad
(33:09):
thing the actual really badthings to happen to people not
just like I'm stuck in trafficI'm suffering but like the big
ones.
It's hard to be like that wasgrace And so what I've come to
even in these last weeks andhonestly even in this last 24
hours is that suffering is graceBecause of what we do with it
(33:31):
after It's not that suffering isgrace because God or source or
whatever is giving you sufferingso that you can come out the
other side.
I don't really buy into that.
I think that bad shit happensbecause we're all humans on this
imperfect planet and the gracecomes in after because we have
(33:57):
to decide.
We get to decide.
I'm going to turn this sufferinginto something.
I'm going to turn it in tohealing.
I'm going to alchemize it.
I'm going to make it part of mystory.
I'm not going to be ashamed ofit.
I'm going to turn it into art.
(34:17):
I'm going to turn it intocommunity.
I'm going to turn it intoconnection.
I'm going to go deeper in myrelationship.
I'm going to be a better parent.
I'm going to show up on thespiritual path and just be in
love more.
And most of the time that isbecause of some suffering we
have had.
(34:38):
So, suffering is grace.
I do believe that.
And yet, not in the way thatit's sometimes sold.
And whatever has happened toyou, when you are ready, you can
heal it.
And it really can lose thecharge and it can be just part
(35:01):
of your story that becomes justanother way that you love
yourself.
I hope that you're lovingyourself today.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode and I'll see
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