00:00

Speaker 1
Coming home. Coming home inside. I remember who I am. I don't have to hide. Welcome to SOS For The Soul: Coming Home. I'm Jennifer Elizabeth Masters, your host for this next hour. I'm a transformational teacher, a narcissistic trauma recovery guide, Kundalini yoga teacher, and author, and my new book is Unbecoming. This is where emotional healing meets embodied awakening. Each week we explore what it really takes to dissolve narcissistic trauma, emotional trauma, reclaim your inner authority, and remember who you are beneath survival patterns so that you can live with clarity, confidence, and deep self-trust. And when you do, life becomes so much better. If you're ready for real transformation, you're in the right place. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I am really excited about tonight's topic because it is something that is near and dear to my heart, uh, being a (laughs) person with five planets in Scorpio. Lots of emotion here and, uh, I've processed a lot.

01:41

Speaker 1
Emotions are the topic of tonight. We're talking about emotional unwinding. We're talking about what happens when emotions are not processed, when pain is pushed down, grief is swallowed, and anger is suppressed. Ever done that? Um, I know I used to. And when the body is never allowed to complete what it needed to complete, we are processing, or rather unprocessing and suppressing, stuffing, I call it stuffing. We are stuffing our heart, stuffing our body, and these emotions have to go somewhere. We're talking about what happens when a person has lived through heartbreak, criticism, dismissal, neglect, narcissistic trauma, emotional abandonment, fear, humiliation, chronic stress, and instead of being able to feel their emotions, they've had to survive them. And so what that can do for you is cause illness in the body, believe it or not. If we don't process our emotions, they've gotta go somewhere, and often in the jaw, TMJ, uh, in the body, fibromyalgia.

02:59

Speaker 1
There's lots of different things that are caused by emotions that are stuffed. They can shape our nervous systems, shape our reactions, even our relationships, our health, our ability to trust, soften, relax, to even be able to cry. I know lots of people come to me, "Jennifer, I haven't been able to cry in 20 years," and moving these emotions has helped them to emote and be able to, to cry. So, sometimes we don't even know what we're feeling, and so we're gonna be talking about that. If that's you, you're in the right place. If you feel a lot but you don't know how to move through it, we're gonna talk about that. And please stay till the end. There will be three, count them, I like to do three processes on, on these live events because it helps you to understand some of the things that I do in session with my clients. I help people clear their emotions, whether it is anxiety, grief, sadness, sorrow.

04:07

Speaker 1
Um, earlier today I was holding my own and did a clearing for myself, and I feel like a different person after that clearing, so. Um, so many people walk around going, "I don't know why I'm like this. I don't know why I can't relax. I don't know why I'm so easily triggered. I don't know why I feel numb. I don't know why I overreact." Are you one of those? I sure used to overreact. And sometimes we even shut down. Now, what does that feel like? Well, it could be like emotional numbness, closed off, almost isolated, and here's what I'm going to tell you. If you have loneliness even when you're surrounded by family and friends, this is for you because when we suppress our emotions, what it does is cause us to close down our heart and then we feel isolated, and so we're gonna be shifting some of that today. So, what I want to suggest tonight is that often what we call our personality is really not personality at all.

05:21

Speaker 1
It is a lot of the nervous system holding unresolved pain, and when people go off and say, "Well, well, this is just who I am. I'm just an impatient person. I, I just get angered easily," that's not personality. That is stuffed emotions. When we stuff emotions, then they tend to come to the surface very easily and quickly because we haven't processed them. So we'll talk about, as I said, three, how many? Three different ways to move through emotions. So please do stay till the end. If you're watching this on YouTube, please like and subscribe. It helps the algorithm. It will help me grow and help more people. That's the whole idea here.So, the heart metaphor, I-I have had this metaphor for years, that, um, w-when we stuff emotions, when... And this used to be me. My heart was closed. I couldn't cry. I, I really had difficulty feeling, although I was quite reactive.

06:31

Speaker 1
Um, I had many people tell me, "Why are you so reactive?" That is when you respond quickly, you get angered quickly, you might walk out of a restaurant because somebody looks at you the wrong way or says the wrong word. That's reactivity. So, that is what happens when we stuff our emotions. We get highly reactive. So, this metaphor that I like to, to use is this barrier over the heart, that the more we stuff our emotions, pushing them down, we can push them down with alcohol, with sex, with food. Um, and you may be saying, "Well, what's wrong with that?" Well, what happens is when we stuff our emotions, we stop being able to feel, and you may have numbness in your heart. And so even when somebody loves you deeply, and you work to love them back, you may not feel a thing. So, moving through emotions, processing emotions, helps you to feel more deeply, connect with your heart. So we're working on removing the barriers, the walls. I call them w- heart walls.

07:41

Speaker 1
And, and so having a, a father that used to do a lot of carpentry, I was married to a builder who did lots of carpentry and worked with concrete and et cetera. So I like to think about the first painful emotion closes the door. Let's say it's a wooden door. Maybe it's grief. Um, could be loss, could be shame, could be disappointment, maybe the feeling of being unwanted, not being chosen or not being seen. So that first thing closes the door, and then the next suppressed emotion that we're not able to process, it, it's another layer of wood, and then another layer, maybe betrayal, dismissal, criticism, heartbreak, a divorce, and another time w- when you needed love and didn't get it, you closed your heart further. And so another layer, it could be bricks, it could be rock, it could be concrete, a garage door shuts, a metal door on top of that, and next thing you know, you've got several layers of heart wall that need to be eliminated before you can actually feel deeply.

08:55

Speaker 1
And so, um, I recently had somebody mention to me that they went to a meetup, and in this meetup, they sat down with a group of people and something was mentioned, and not five minutes into the meetup, they had to leave because they were so triggered. So triggers c- come from stuffed emotions, emotions we're not allowed to process, and they could go all the way back through time to a place where you were maybe still in diapers, with a bottle. Um, you may have even been breastfed at the time. It- there's layer upon layer when it was dangerous for you to feel. I know in my generation, I heard, "Shut up, or I'll give you something to cry about." So when you were told you can't cry, what does it do? You- the emotion has to go somewhere. It doesn't dissolve. It doesn't go away. It creates a burden on the body, on the nervous system. So people saying, "I can't cry, I don't feel much, I don't know what I feel," this numbness is not the absence of emotion.

10:15

Speaker 1
It's that you've got layers upon layers upon layers stuffed into your body, into the cells, that have created a barrier to feeling. Now, I will say I used to be that person, and I have systematically cleared that process that we're gonna talk about. Remember, three ways to move through emotion. So the fear didn't go away, the anger didn't go away, the shame didn't go away. So why emotions don't disappear? So one of the most damaging misunderstandings in our culture is the belief that if you ignore them, they'll go- go away, they'll disappear. It's not true. It's just like trauma. You think, "I'll put it on the back burner, I'll ignore it, I won't think about it, and it'll go away." No, it doesn't. Trauma, like emotions, needs to be healed. And when we do, then we can live in joy, peace, harmony. This is what your birthright is. You were meant to live in joy. And if you're not feeling that now, well, stick with me. You will soon.

11:28

Speaker 1
Okay, so yes, I work privately, and I do have groups as well. I also have courses if you're on a budget, so that could be a way for you to work with me as well. So every time that you experience rage or, um, you say, "I'm fine", when... (laughs) Women are histor- historically famous for saying, "I'm fine," when they're not fine. So you're suppressing tears, anger, feeling unsafe, feeling dismissed, suppressing that, forcing yourself to move on before the body has had an opportunity to process what has happened. What you are doing is you're leaving..... breadcrumbs, you're leaving emotions that are unprocessed, unfinished, and you need to finish that because these unfinished emotions do not just evaporate. They become stored in the body, in the nervous system, in the muscles, in the breath. Have you ever felt a lump in your throat, like you've got a big tennis ball sitting there? You... And you can't cry, but you feel this lump. That's unprocessed grief stuck in the throat.

12:43

Speaker 1
All right, so we're gonna give you a couple different ways to move through this. So, it could be in the jaw, it could be in the gut. You may have difficulty digesting food. You may be constipated, unable to let go. It could be stored in the chest. I've had clients come to me with a pain in their sternum. And so moving through those emotions, you know, whether it's I help them to process or I clear them for them will help that pain go away. So, without learning how to process emotions or having your energy cleared, they stay. Okay, could be, um, jaw, could be a locked neck. It could be in the shoulders, tightness in the shoulders. Or maybe you, you breathe in but you can't fully exhale. And if you can't fully exhale, then when you breathe in, your inhalation is small. And so this could be one of the things that, you know, just notice, just notice how deeply can you inhale and how deeply can you exhale? Just raise your awareness. Just notice that without judgment.

13:54

Speaker 1
I don't want you to be bashing yourself. Enough of that. Let the bashing stop, okay? Soften your gaze when you look at yourself. We are here to stop criticizing and love ourselves more. That's the whole idea here. All right, so lots of people are walking around carrying unprocessed emotions. Um, I've noticed it when people have body language, you know, that they, they get upset and they're, you know, they move their whole body when, when they're upset, and you can see the way they move. Um, so it isn't a matter of just getting over it. Um, you can't tell somebody, "Oh, just move on. Oh, just feel your feelings," because that could certainly trigger somebody. So, what I'm asking you to do is raise your awareness. Just notice, notice, what am I feeling? Does, does my body hold tension? Where am I holding tension? Is it in my neck? Is it in my chest? Is it in my shoulders? Am I feeling completely numb, not able to feel anything? When was the last time you cried? Just notice.

15:12

Speaker 1
I'll tell you when the last time I was... I cried this morning and yesterday. So, uh, w- now, there was a time when I wasn't able to. So, I don't want you to give up hope and think, "Oh, I'll never heal." Not true. Be careful what you say, okay? So, we're all about manifesting a wonderful reality with you completely healed. So, trauma is not just simply a bad thing that happened. It's, it's what happens inside the body and the nervous system when something overwhelming occurs. Now, it could be as simple as you're walking your dog, and another dog attacks your dog. That could be the trauma. That is trauma. It is the ev- not the event. It's what happens in the body. (clears throat) Excuse me. Green tea, yum. Okay. So, when, um, your body's not able to get rid of the response, maybe, uh, you, you, you s- you stopped and you were scared and you, you were frightened. So, you're in this fright, fight, flight, and freeze. There's also fawn. Now, what is fawning?

16:36

Speaker 1
Fawning is when, uh, it's not my favorite word. Fawning is when you may have a strange reaction. Somebody maybe grabs your, your butt or, or, uh, touches you inappropriately, and, and you sort of laugh it off, uh, but you're not happy about it. Fawning is that response that is inappropriate for the moment, um, and it has to do with trauma. So, these are, this fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, are biological survival responses. Your body is trying to protect you. And if the body gets to complete its response, there's gonna be resolution. So, um, something happened in my day yesterday. I was upset. I felt it. Some music played, and I was able to cry and let it go. So, that's completion. When, uh, something maybe angers you, um, maybe you, you sit down or you do some exercise or, you know, the anger, the Kundalini Anger Release, the... (inhales) Move through the anger. So, what is that? You make fists. Okay, this is the fourth one. This is an extra.

17:55

Speaker 1
And you're doing the backstroke, backstroke with the breath of fire, same inhalation as exhalation. (inhales) Now, that will help you release anger. So let's say something angers you. You do ... you ... you're able to walk off somewhere and be able to do that, to process the anger. You can come to completion and move the emotion, and that's what you want. You want to come to completion with the emotion so that you have a complete release. That's resolution, and that's the goal here. So you can shake. Have you ever seen a dog? They shake. They shake to relieve stress, so shaking your body. There, there was a, um, a guru, um, Osho, who used to do a shaking meditation. You play music and you just shake your whole body. That's another way to process emotion. So there's lots of different ways that you can process emotions, not just one. You can breathe into them, breathing into whatever it is you're feeling. Take a step back, count to 10, exhale completely.

19:10

Speaker 1
I'm getting ahead of myself here. I'm giving you lots of different ways be- cause I'm sensing that some people may be feeling emotion coming up before I'm ready to really give you the exercise. So, I wanted to give you some tools early so that you could be breathing deeply, exhaling completely, breathing into the emotion, exhaling completely. But if the response is interrupted, the system remains incomplete and so then you are stuffing emotion. So this is what we want to not do anymore. You know, so if you can't run when you're trapped, the response remains incomplete. If you freeze because it's the only way to survive, the response remains incomplete. You know, I talked about your dog gets attacked and maybe you, you scream and you freeze, and you're terrified, but you're holding your breath. You're not completing that emotional response. You have to breathe into it and exhale and release. That incomplete survival response doesn't just vanish.

20:20

Speaker 1
You have to breathe in, count to 10, exhale. Otherwise, it gets stored in the nervous system. So that's what we're working on here. So, this is why trauma is often stored as a narrative or a memory, not ... n- uh, a narrative rather than a memory. So it's ... Let me go back. It's, it's more a state as opposed to the memory. So, our memories are not detailed correctly, but usually it's a state rather than actual memory. So, when emotions start to come up, you get triggered with one emotion and it takes you back to an emotion from childhood, you may not have a memory come up, but the state that you were in comes up. Does that make sense? Okay. So the mind may not consciously remember every detail, but it remembers the danger, the bracing, the holding, the shutting down of the heart. That's what I'm talking about. That's the state that you remember as opposed to the memory.

21:28

Speaker 1
And so when we get triggered, somebody says something, it could be a word, it could be a look, and we're gonna talk about triggers later on, but that's like a button being pressed within the nervous system, a triggering of an old wound, an old event. Okay. So, when trauma is triggered, uh, people are not really remembering the past and this is why emotions can seem disproportionate. It's like, "Why did I have such a big response? That was such a small thing." You know? "Wh- why did I feel that way?" Because it's, it's going back to a state that you held previously. So, when someone criticizes you and your whole system collapses, when someone withdraws affection and panic arises, or someone ignores you with a text, you text them and hours go by, days go by, a- and you are ... You know, you're feeling that withholding, right? Um, or someone dismisses your truth and you feel like you're six again.

22:47

Speaker 1
So logically, you know you're not six years old, but your emotional response is six years old. So, you know you're not a child, but your nervous system is responding from the six-year-old child place. It's responding biologically from an old unfinished wound, an old unfinished pain. And so it's, it's from behind those layers, that concrete slab, that, that garage door, that rock wall that you've put up in front of your heart because you've been hurt so many times. So this reaction is not stupidity. It's not a lack of insight. So yeah, let go of the judgment. Be kind to yourself. It's the nervous system carrying old material that just hasn't been fully metabolized or processed. Okay. So now, triggers, one of my favorite subjects. So what are triggers? They're buttons. They're typically installed ... (laughs) I lovingly like to tell this story. I, I s- I see the cartoon of, um, you know, the Family Guy, "Don't press the button.

24:05

Speaker 1
Don't press the button." Um, triggers are s- s- installed lovingly by our parents usually between the ages of zero and seven years old.... and it could be a phrase, a tone, a look. I know my mother used to be able to look at me, she'd ... I could be across the room, and she would give me that look, and, uh, oh, (laughs) it would trigger me. (laughs) Or, or, "You're late." (laughs) It could be a phrase like that, a moment of criticism, or, or somebody telling you that you're wrong. You, you made a mistake with your writing, or you missed an edit. It could be a moment of rejection. It could be a dismissal, being interrupted. It could be being excluded. There's so many different ways we could be triggered. Or this is one of my favorites, being ignored. Somebody pretends they don't know you, they are ignoring you. That could trigger you. It's coming from old abandonment wounds. And so, um, it could be being excluded, somebody talking over you. That's ...

25:14

Speaker 1
can be a big one if you've had narcissistic abuse. Um, being misunderstood or somebody controlling you, being told you're too much, being told you're too sensitive, or left waiting. Have you ever made plans with somebody ... Mm, I remember this, a train station in England, waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to pick me up, and that ride never came. So you feel abandoned, right? Being left uncertain, getting mixed messages. There's so many different ways. Okay. This red lipstick, don't you love it? (laughs) Okay. Look like clown mouth here. I can hear my friend Becky going, "Jennifer, stop it." Okay. So what seems small in the present moment can feel like an enormous thing if it touches an old letter- layer, like, you're late. That's a big one. Because the current event is not the whole reaction. It is going back and the fingers pressing on the old bruise, the old hurt, the old pain, and now you're feeling ashamed because you overreacted.

26:31

Speaker 1
And, and you may be thinking, why did I get so upset? Why did I shut down? Why did I get so angry? Why am I crying over this? Because it's not just this. It's the thing that came before. That's what a trigger is. I'll give you an example. Growing up with a narcissistic mom, I played the piano. My mom wanted to play the piano, so she had me take piano lessons, and she tried first with my brother, but he wouldn't have it, but ... and s- I was easier to control. (laughs) So I was taking piano lessons, and the piano eventually got moved into the basement. So I'm downstairs practicing my scales, my exercises and up and down, and practicing up and down, and every time I hit a wrong note, my mother would take the broom and banging on the floor, "Wrong, wrong, wrong." And so it, it became such an event for me to practice. I mean, eight years with the Conservatory of Music, with University of Toronto.

27:42

Speaker 1
Nope, not doing this anymore, because you're constantly being told you're not enough, you're not good enough. Now this could happen to you in many different ways, maybe not playing the piano. It could be, you know, maybe you were writing letters, and your mother circled your mistakes on your letters that you wrote to her and send them back. That happened too. So what is happening here? We're gonna talk about the biology of unprocessed emotion. Um, when the nervous system lives for years with unresolved emotion, emotional activation, so the consequences become deeper and greater than emotional. And I kinda sketched this out earlier. They become biological, and the amygdala becomes more sensitive. It ... The threshold for alarm, this is why we become hypersensitive.

28:42

Speaker 1
So, so maybe the alarm was set down here in years ago, but because of the years gone by and more and more emotions stuffed, the alarm rises, rises, rises, rises to the point where all somebody has to do is look at you, and you're triggered, or say the wrong word, and you're triggered. It takes less and less to act- activate you, and your system becomes more vigilant, more reactive, more watchful, and this is where ... Um, the HPA axis becomes dysregulated, stress horm- hormone state elevated, cortisol remains high, belly fat. You know, that belly that you can't get rid of. If you're living in stress all the time, if you're living in stress all the time because of your environment or unprocessed trauma, uh, constant preparedness for danger, uh, preparedness for criticism or betrayal or the next emotional hit. Yeah, when the body stays in a chronic state of hypervigilance over time, many other systems begin to be affected. Sleep can be d- become disturbed.

30:10

Speaker 1
Um, your immune system can weaken, and this is where autoimmune system issues arise.... fibromyalgia, lupus, that sort of thing. Hormones can shift, the memory can be affected, uh, patience can be affected. You know, maybe you used to be able to be patient and now you can't, and you think it's just 'cause you're getting older. No, it's because of unprocessed emotion. Have you ever noticed, when you're under e- increased stress, how something small, something trivial can really ... a text comes in at a, an inopportune time when you're very highly activated with stress, and you just, you just ... you're in emotional turbulence. Maybe you, you, you go into a rage, you can't think clearly, you're always on edge, you're exhausted. So, take a deep breath everybody. (inhales) Exhale completely, because calm on the outside does not create calm on the inside if the nervous system has not learned safety.

31:21

Speaker 1
So, a person can be in a quiet room and still at war internally, and this is why when you try to sit in silence, maybe to meditate, you can't sit still. You feel uncomfortable. While, why peace can feel foreign, while sci- silence can feel threatening. The body is still braced. Take a deep breath with me. (inhales) Exhale completely. So, before we can process an emotion, we have to be regulated enough to witness it, and we can't heal when we're completely flooded. So, we need to be able to get grounded, you know, put those roots down through our legs, through our feet into the earth, like tree roots down into the earth, walking barefoot, um, on the grass, standing in the morning. I love to stand barefoot on the grass. That's where I, I do my prayers of gratitude to the sunrise, "Thank you, God, for this day. Thank you for another day of life. Thank you for all the good in my life.

32:41

Speaker 1
Thank you for aligning me with the highest and best for myself in this world, and all my clients." So you be, you're able to notice what is happening without being consumed by it, being able to breathe into (inhales) and being calm with what's going on. So, if CNN is on all day long, or you've got the news on all day long, it's going to keep you in hypervigilance, constantly dysregulated. All right, so we're gonna take a moment here, I'm gonna take my glasses off to do this. All right, so we're gonna do alternate nostril breathing, and we did this last week. If you watched the session last week about trauma, um, this is a really good way to, to do several things. It connects the right and left hemisphere of the brain, so if you're highly, uh, illogical (laughs) and more intuitive, you wanna connect l- left brain with right brain. So, this is the way we do it.

33:49

Speaker 1
We're gonna put our thumb on the right nostril, the index finger we're gonna toggle back and forth like this, toggle with the indi- index finger going to the left nostril, right nostril. So, we breathe in through the left, sitting upright, you don't wanna do this laying down, out through the right, breathe in through the left, breathe out through the right. Again, in through the left, breathe out through the right, breathe in through the left, breathe out through the right. So, you may be wondering, okay, what's that feeling that's coming over me, that sense of calm and inner peace? Wow. So, what we wanna do, this, I have a, a video on YouTube of the alternate nostril breathing, it is actually called change of perspective. Yes, I'm a Kundalini yoga teacher. I, I use this with my clients to help stabilize their emotional state, their nervous system.

35:18

Speaker 1
Alternate nostril breathing, um, is something that we can do, uh, right before bed, sitting upright, before you fall asleep, and doing that alternate nostril breathing, set your timer on your, on your phone, for, you know, just 11 minutes to start with. And you may say, "11 minutes?" But you'll be surprised at what that will do for the quality of sleep that you have and the way you wake up in the morning. It's really powerful for changing your perspective, and one of the things you need to process emotions is a different perspective. So, what is that? Perspective is the way we look at things. You know, two people can see the same event and have two totally different perspectives, viewpoints. So that alternate nostril breathing shifts perspective, that's what it does. So, take your time, slow it down, you're coming back into your body, into a state of calm.

36:27

Speaker 1
So, one of the things that I have noticed with clients is that they often think that they have anxiety.Maybe they do, but what they may have is unprocessed emotional material. If you cannot sit in silence, that tells you something. It's information. If you need noise, that tells you something. If you need to constantly be doing something, that tells you something. If you need a show on in the background, that tells you something. If you need music on all the time, that tells you something. If you need to make noise all the time, that tells you something. If you have to reach for your phone ... like that, the minute you sit down you have to reach for your phone, that tells you something. It means that you cannot be alone with yourself without feeling agitated. All right, take a deep breath. (inhales) Doesn't have to be permanent. I want you to know that was me, used to be me. I had to constantly be in motion, constant music on, constant doing, doing, doing.

37:55

Speaker 1
Couldn't rest, couldn't sit in silence, couldn't meditate. All right. So, we will be working on meditation. I've got some tricks for meditating. All right. So, some people are afraid of what silence is going to reveal, maybe to themselves, but also to others, because when there's no distraction, no noise, no performance, no task, no one to manage, no one to fix, no deadline to chase, no show to binge, no scrolling to do, oh, what arises? What comes up? The buried, the buried, the buried material, the grief, the sadness, the sorrow. One of the things that happens when you have a lot of trapped suppressed emotions, I'm using the words interchangeably, same thing, stuffed, trapped, suppressed, all the same, stuffing emotions down, loneliness. If you feel alone and lonely even when you're surrounded by a host of people, in church, for example, with your family, with your children, it's a lot of buried material, emotional material. The ache rises.

39:23

Speaker 1
The old ache that hasn't been processed, and many people learn very early, I was one of those, not there now, so I'm gonna tell you, it's possible. You can get beyond it. I wasn't anything special. I didn't even have the education to know how to do it, but I learned gradually, okay? So, I don't want you to think that it's impossible. It's, it's definitely possible. If I can do it, you can do it. So, a lot of people built a life around avoiding what they felt. Numbing can be a behavior. It, it's ... People numb in certain ways. I mean, it could be alcohol, scrolling, working, addictions, eating, drinking, smoking, medicating yourself, exercising, being in the gym (laughs) all day every day, talking constantly, overthinking, obsessed with achievement, not able to sit still and in silence. So, some are always, you know, planning the next vacation, but they're not even able to enjoy it because they don't know how to sit still and rest.

40:42

Speaker 1
Some will wait all week to have the weekend and then can't have stillness when the weekend arrives, arrives. Why? Because numbing works in the short term. It creates relief, temporary relief. It's not healing, but it's relief. And when someone is carrying years of buried pain, temporary relief can feel seductive and so this endless scrolling, right? There also could be performance as a means of survival. Maybe, you know, (laughs) looking back, clown in the classroom, avoiding being alone, um, numbing through performance, being the agreeable one, the people pleaser, the pace, the p- peacekeeper, the caretaker, or maybe the clown, the achiever, the high performer, always cooking for your family, baking, maybe baking for relatives and neighbors, and everybody says, "Oh, look, she's so strong." The one that holds it all together, the one everyone can count on, the one who never asks for much, the one who makes themselves indispensable. Is this you?

41:59

Speaker 1
Because if I can be useful enough, maybe I'll be loved, maybe I'll be worthy. Maybe if I'm good enough, I'll be safe. Maybe if I take care of everyone else, maybe I won't have to feel my own pain. Take a breath. Take a deep breath. (inhales) Exhale. Caretaking is not random. Over giving isn't random. Chronic healthiness (laughs) isn't random. So, they are g- great qualities, beautiful qualities, but they can also be defenses, defenses against being abandoned, being unseen.And this is especially important if you grew up with emotionally unavailable caregivers or narcissistic parents. If love is conditional, you learn to adapt. If love, if love must be earned as a child, if love was con- un- not unconditional. If love was conditional, you learned to adapt. If you were only praised when you were perfect or for being useful, you learned to adapt, right? And then as a, as adults we say, "Well, this is just who I am." Sometimes it's who you had to become.

43:22

Speaker 1
So I want to talk to you just for a moment about relationships and the closed heart. And this is where relationships become so painful. If your heart has layer upon layer in front of it and your nervous system learned that love is inconsistent, conditional, withheld, unsafe, or painful, then adult relationships become a place where all of this becomes activated and you may be highly reactive. You may run away from these relationships. You may have decided relationships are not for me. Or maybe you chase emotionally unavailable people 'cause that's what you're used to, that's what's familiar. Or maybe you over- over-give, you wait, you hope, tolerate crumbs, mistake anxiety for chemistry or chaos for chemistry or uncertainty for passion. Maybe you think being chosen by someone withholding will finally heal what is never given the chance to heal. But if childhood taught you that you had to earn love, then that kind of love will make you anxious.

44:41

Speaker 1
Familiarity can feel more believable than health, and calm can feel foreign when your body was shaped by chaos. So safety can feel boring when your body was constantly in unpredictable environments where the ground was constantly moving b- beneath your feet or the carpet was always pulled out from under you. And so people repeat patterns they do not understand because their nervous system is seeking what is familiar rather than what is healthy. So... Why feeling your feelings is just not enough? It's simplistic. It's too simplistic, especially if you've been stuffing or disassociating and panic arises when you try to feel. So take a deep breath. So what does it mean to someone whose body goes into panic when they get close to emotion? It's they're afraid to process emotion because they haven't been able to, or they've been made to feel fearful of doing so because love was taken away when they did. You cannot just command a frozen system to thaw instantly. It takes some time.

46:05

Speaker 1
You can't force a concrete slab from your heart in one afternoon. Healing is gentler than that. Awareness is the first doorway. Awareness shines the light on what needs to heal, and you can start to see the pattern. You begin to notice the numbness. You can breathe into it. You notice the busyness the restlessness, and the moment you're about to o- override your body's signal, uh, s- eat something sweet when you start to feel that emotion rise. The moment awareness matters because the moment you can observe something, you're no, no longer fully fused with it. You're slightly above it. You have perspective. All right. So what I want to do with you is two different things. When we disassociate, that means that we have a tendency to daydream, be off in the clouds, um, living in a fantasy. It is because historically, the present moment wasn't safe. And, um, that was something that I used to do, disassociate. Um, no longer. It's much more joyful to be present.

47:31

Speaker 1
So breathing and exhaling completely can bring you into the present moment. Doing this, doing this a couple more times, and exhale. So what I'm going to do is give you a ten-second practice where you take a deep breath and breathe into the emotion for 10 seconds. Just notice what you're feeling. Notice it, notice it, just notice it. Don't have to do anything, just notice it before you drink, before you suppress, before you scroll, before you abandon yourself, just notice it. What's happening in my body? Where do I feel it? What is the sensation? Is it tightness? Is it heaviness? Is it heat? Is it pressure? Is it constriction? So these are questions you can ask. Is it a lump in the throat, in the chest? Is it a severe pain? Is it an ache? Just notice. Noticing is okay. It's safe to notice. We're teaching the nervous system something new. Feeling is not danger. It's not drowning. It's survivable.It's a powerful reeducation of the body. So many emotions are just unfinished moments.

48:51

Speaker 1
That lump, lump in your throat is just feelings that haven't been processed through crying. Maybe you say to yourself, "I look ugly when I cry," or, "I feel worse when I cry," or, "I get a headache when I cry, so I don't ..." Just drink water. Crying, you know, tears, we need water. Rehydrate. It could be the pressure in your chest from grief that never had a witness, or a contraction in the stomach that had fear held in it, in the gut for years. Intense stress and anxiety from childhood. This is ... Trembling can be healing. Shaking can be healing. Sighing. (sighs) Voo. Remember that one last week? Ooo, that deep voou, activating the vagus nerve. Breathing deeply. (inhales) Exhaling completely. What is it that I feel in my throat? Just notice. Just notice. Feel your shoulders. Feel your stomach. Breathe into that place. Don't demand it to disappear. (inhales) Just notice. Be present with it. Allow. Feel what you feel. You don't have to name it. If you can't, that's great. Just feel.

50:13

Speaker 1
(inhales) Notice, hm, what is that? Hm, tight. Can I move it? Is it heavy? Is it dark? No fixing. No analyzing. Just give it presence. Witness. Wit- witnessing an awareness is the first step. Okay? We're not adding more layers, right? We're not adding more layers. Just notice. Give yourself 10 seconds. Not dramatic, just be with yourself. Not reckless. It could be this scared me, this angered me, this made me sad, this brought up grief, this touched an old wound. So much of that trauma is not just what happened; it's when somebody didn't see you, when no one sat with you, no one stayed. You may have been alone with your pain. That must have hurt. It's okay to feel that. I'm here. I'm here. All right, so I'm gonna give you a process. Remember I told you, this one. I love this. It's a heart/mind coherence. It's one of my favorite exercises. It's bringing the mind and heart together.

51:36

Speaker 1
The mind is a magnet, but the heart is over 100 times more magnetic than the brain, and so we're going to bring the two of them together. So, what I want you to do is think, think of the feeling. What would the feeling of gratitude be? That sometimes is the easiest thing. Just be thankful. Maybe be thankful. What's the feeling of gratitude? And, and touch your heart, middle of your chest, feeling the feeling of gratitude. We're just gonna feel the feeling of gratitude, bringing the mind and the heart into gratitude. What does that feel like, feeling gratitude? You have the conscious awareness of gratitude, but the feeling of it in your heart. Breathing, exhaling. Breathing in- into gratitude, exhaling gratitude. And then appreciation. Appreciation is sort of like gratitude, but not quite. Oh, appreciating nature. You know how nice it is to be appreciated? Somebody says, "Wow. Thank you for doing that for me. Wow.

52:52

Speaker 1
I appreciate you." It feels so good to be appreciated, feeling that feeling. Feeling the feeling. And then the third one ... And you can spend more time on this and redo it after we're done. Compassion. So compassion is kind of like sympathy, but not quite. Having compassion for yourself can be difficult for some people, but it's a wonderful way to start caring for you. Just caring for you. Compassion, caring for you. Caring for you. Feeling that feeling of caring. All right, they're two different feelings, okay? Compassion is one. Caring is another. I'm compressing the two. You can do them separately. Caring. Feeling the feeling. And maybe you care for an animal. Maybe it's easier for you to feel that feeling, caring for an animal. That's okay too. Just feel that feeling. And just be with that for a few moments. How does that feel? That is the heart/mind coherence. So you can do that. Continue that gently, easily, not forcing.

54:28

Speaker 1

Breathing this way, let it move through you in those places that have gotten hardened, the layers of your heart. Say to yourself, "It's safe for me to soften. It's safe for me to feel. It's safe for me to open again."You did great. So healing is not just about releasing pain, it's about remembering safety, feeling safe, teaching the body that feeling is safe. Softness is no longer dangerous. Healing is not about becoming someone new. It's about returning to the who you were before all those layers had been built, softening around what hardened. It's about unwinding what got tightly wound around your heart. It's about letting your system complete, that you can be present without collapsing. You're doing great, breathing, breathing, remembering it's safe to be safe. It's safe to be still. It's safe to be present with yourself. It's safe to be you. It's safe to witness and be aware. You did so great. You really did.

56:22

Speaker 1
So if anything resonated with you today, tonight, this is what we do here. Your nervous system is recogni- recognizing the truth. I work privately with people who are ready to release old emotional patterns and step fully into their next chapter so they can live fully in clarity and joy. It is your birthright. You can learn more about me and what I do on my website, jenniferelizabethmasters.com. And if you're a host, a producer, an event organizer looking for conversations that bridge trauma, healing consciousness, and embodied leadership, I'd love to connect. Until the next time, remember, healing isn't about becoming someone new. It's about unbecoming everything that you were never meant to carry. Much love to you. Until the next time. Coming home. Coming home to me. I don't have to disappear. I don't have to leave. Ah. Ooh.