Today's podcast we're covering the magic that can happen when we stop avoiding getting curious about what we're avoiding? Have I confused you? Just listen to this and practice peeking in with gentleness about what gets you digging a hole, falling into it and then using all your energy to crawl out of it. Learn how curiosity can lead you to quick results by titrating just the right exposure of what you're avoiding that you can begin to easily neutralize it.
Today's podcast we're covering the magic that can happen when we stop avoiding getting curious about what we're avoiding?
Have I confused you? Just listen to this and practice peeking in with gentleness about what gets you digging a hole, falling into it and then using all your energy to crawl out of it. Learn how curiosity can lead you to quick results by titrating just the right exposure of what you're avoiding that you can begin to easily neutralize it.
Meet Andrew, a bike guy who recovered from pelvic pain and is sharing his recovery journey with others. So glad he's back on the bike riding and having fun! https://www.instagram.com/andrewmbcyclist/
[00:00:00] Welcome to the curiosity cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker, hypnotist trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder fat human on planet earth here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame, free curiosity.
[00:00:29] So you can feel more better. More of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live. A quick disclaimer. This podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:56] Hello, my feelers and healers. This is Deb, your host of the CuriosityCure podcast. And if you're a new listener to this podcast, I am so happy you're here. If you are a steady listener to this podcast, I am so happy you are here. There's something that's really dawning on me. As I am meeting more people in the mind body space, as I am getting out there and learning more and sharing my work in hypnosis circles, and the more that I am rooted in this knowledge around mind body work, how change happens in our physiological body and in our emotional body, I am feeling just this tremendous sense of honor and privilege that people are listening to this podcast, that you are listening to this podcast and finding it helpful. And I even just had somebody pop into my Instagram who'd listened to my podcast, Andrew. Hello, Andrew. Listen to my podcast about preparing myself in a mind body approach to riding my bicycle.
[00:02:18] And he gave me some tips about, like having a pump on the road, making sure I had tubes for my tires. And I just appreciate that this is not a one way experience. I'm not here to just tell you things and I have all the knowledge. No, we are in this dynamic conversation together.
[00:02:41] And sometimes I think of myself As a translator, as kind of like a supercomputer that takes in all of this data and information, right, because my brain who finds this endlessly interesting, loves to learn more and more and more about mind, body medicine, about how we can use these tools to help us feel better, to change our physiology, to change our emotional state.
[00:03:08] And I also encounter a lot of people who have these radical, um, Shifts and changes and not just people that I work with personally who are my clients. And so for me, like all goes in there into this big, juicy, wet, squishy brain of mine. And what I really love to do is figure out how can I transmit this information in a way that it can go into your brain and it can make sense for you in a way that you can start applying this information, start applying these theories for yourself in your own life because a theory is nice.
[00:03:58] But it, it's not just something that you put it in a picture frame and then hang it up on a wall. This is meant to be a learned, evocative, engaged with experience. It's more like a dance. Like if we were to say mind, body medicine is an art form. It's more like a dance than a painting that you just look at.
[00:04:23] So, it requires you to, to be involved, to show up, to try it on, to play around, because also it's not just about, like, doing it once. This is why, for me, the metacognitive experience, becoming the witness of my own experience and building the understanding and the curiosity about whatever it is that I'm noticing, really, really helps me feel empowered, feel like I have agency, feel like I am not helpless in this moment to, that this moment is not just going to only continue and only get worse. So even in those experiences, when I am having pain, that I know that this is temporary. So my process does have that kind of meta experience where we are becoming more and more aware of what it is that we are experiencing and how we can interact with it. Sometimes it's about bringing the self to the experience and getting into that self compassion, getting into an acceptance space. I do find acceptance to be a little bit tricky because sometimes radical acceptance, depending on your mindset, like depending on your body.
[00:06:00] So like this is one of the ways that I work with people. We have a concept called acceptance and we know there's research that a certain quality of acceptance is really powerful, right? It helps move us out of fight or flight. It helps us change our viewpoint and give us more space inside an experience where we're not just trying to run away or change it or be in a hurry or be triggered and then our whole body is like on high alert, right? So there's a quality that comes with acceptance, but then there's also that experience of acceptance in which we might actually be interpreting acceptance as defeat or as helpless or as unchangeable or as like, well, you know I can't change it, so I have to accept it, which when you feel like you have to do anything. That's not really the actual embodied experience of accepting. And so whatever is there is there. And when we move into becoming curious, instead of just avoiding, then we can actually use language and concepts to give us an idea of where am I at?
[00:07:20] Right? So we're, it's almost like you can take your temperature with these words or these concepts or these ideas, right? Self compassion, take your temperature and be like, what does my body think? What is my subconscious unconscious brain? What is that part of me?
[00:07:38] That's always like judging, evaluating, keeping me safe, trying to make things better, you know, interacting with the world kind of in that embodied way before my brain even decides. What does that me think about these words and ideas? Because that helps, you know, where you are in the process.
[00:08:02] I come from doing body work and restorative exercise and studying the lymphatic system, so my original entry point to this work is from a very body centered place. But then I had a radical overnight experience of absolute change in pain.
[00:08:24] Which I didn't think was possible. So then I was like, okay, the only thing that really explains this is The mind is the brain is the nervous system, right? So that all of a sudden, dramatically, it wasn't like I had to do something to my body for my pain to change. I had to think differently about what I was experiencing and evoke inside me a feeling of safety.
[00:08:52] And it was a process. I, I had a lot of resistance. There was, I had a conversation with myself and you can go back and listen to previous podcasts. So I had a conversation with myself in which my knee told me that it didn't trust me. And so we had a dialogue and that then my pain, which was this alarm, which was a, a signal or communication from the body.
[00:09:24] Because I knew, oh, it's not tissue damage, oh, uh, there's nothing wrong with me, there's just this hyper vigilant, high alert, perfectionist. Um, fearful self that was trying to always like improve, improve, improve, and do all the right things and, and be a, you know, have great posture and do all the alignment stuff correctly.
[00:09:50] Cause that was what I was studying and I really, really, really wanted to help people. I wanted to help people feel better. And so I went down the, I'm going to go learn all this stuff and then I'm going to help people. And I was only feeling more and more and more and more pain, which then created a lot of internal fear and distress because, well, one, I was feeling more and more pain.
[00:10:20] That's never fun. And two, I was doing what my teacher told me was the right thing to do, which then made And because I was unsuccessful at it, that really challenged my belief that I could help people. And also, I had this growing sense that I don't know that I agree with the things that my teacher is telling me.
[00:10:47] So there was a interesting, through line of my relationship with authority, my relationship with trusting myself, my relationship with, being a person in a bigger body, doing these trainings with kind of normative bodies. And so there is always this way in which I had to constantly adjust the work that was being taught for my body, which then continued to increase a sense of that I was different, that I was, that there was something fundamentally wrong with my body, that I wouldn't be able to do this.
[00:11:26] And also the people that I wanted to help had bodies that were more like mine. And then I would also not be successful at helping people. This is all my subconscious thoughts that I wouldn't even let myself explore or see because. I was afraid. I really, really, really wanted to be good at what I was learning, and I wanted to have a way to help people, and I didn't have a process for being curious, for looking at the things that I was avoiding. So I just was avoiding. I was just pushing those fears down, pushing those fears down. I kind of knew I couldn't talk to my teacher about it because there was no space for this mind body relationship.
[00:12:16] There was definitely not a brain first approach. It was a very alignment body centered focus, and I will say for some people, that's all they need. Because it's so empowering, it can be so empowering. The mind body stuff is happening on the inside. But for me, there kept being a sense of defeat, disconnect, and a further, further, further distancing from feeling like my body is strong, is capable, and the internal emotional stuff about being able to help other people.
[00:12:55] I had the intuition that my teacher wasn't the person to talk to about this, but I didn't even know what I needed. I didn't know that what I was doing was suppressing and avoiding these big emotions, that what I really needed was a way of doing self inquiry that felt safe, that increased my sense of safety that allowed me to process emotions and that felt comforting and useful because I mean, I definitely journaled and when I was a kid and I've got some diaries and like, you know, I'd write all this stuff, but then I would like reread it and reread it and there would be these unchallenged narratives, these unchallenged stories and stories are not just ideas.
[00:13:51] We relate to them through our body and they help construct our sense of the world. We kind of become hypnotized by stories. They are part of what our brain uses to help us create and construct a congruent sense of the world. So I certainly grew up with The idea is that being fat was bad, that there was my body was going to only decline and that, you know, knee pain is my fault and there were terrible things happening on the inside of my body because of my weight and, you know, I could go on and on.
[00:14:32] And I'm working on developing a process by which we kind of reveal and release these kinds of unconscious, subconscious, socially constructed triggers. That's coming in my work. I do it with my one on one clients it's a embedded part of the work that we do. One of the things that I'm really coming to know is like what we think and what we feel and what we believe are all a part of what is constructed in how we feel. And if we're thinking about our bodies as separate from our mind and is separate from the Subconscious learnings that we have and the strategies and patterns that we have that have, that have helped us survive to this point, healing will just take longer because we're going to be on this misdirected journey.
[00:15:32] So, whether you're pursuing traditional medical care or traditional physical therapy, I think it really helps to also have this knowledge and a process for looking at avoidance. Looking at what is coming up in our emotions and in our mind and like how we can somatically self reflect on what it is that we're thinking, feeling, and then leaning into that aligned action.
[00:16:05] So if you listened to my podcast last week about a mind body approach to riding my bicycle. I have a little update. I just got back from being in Las Vegas for HypnoThoughts Live. So already I saw people riding their bike and I felt a flush of energy and interest.
[00:16:28] So already that has changed. I don't just see people riding their bike and feel envious and stuck or sad, which there is no wrong feeling. What I'm talking about is noticing what has changed. What has changed already by seeing other people ride their bike, my body is leaning in and giving me much more of a yes.
[00:16:55] And so then I, when I was home, cause this is, I was noticing this on the ride back from the airport. When I got home, I looked at my bicycle and I smiled and that smile really felt, uh, just so lovely to feel. So I really just enjoyed that feeling. And then, Later in the evening, I thought maybe I would meet up with a friend and take a bike ride and, and for a lot of reasons that didn't happen, uh, which is fine, but I had filled up my tires.
[00:17:27] So one of the obstacles, one of the things that was previously an obstacle has now been remedied. And I really do like this process of exploring and understanding and becoming familiar with and aware of what are these speed bumps, these little tiny obstacles, and not just thinking, Oh, I should be able to do it or, Oh, that's, you know, that right.
[00:17:54] Like having a sense of judgment, like that's dumb. And I should just be able to dot, dot, dot. If you ever hear yourself, I should just be able to. I want you to stop, put your hand on your heart and pivot into curiosity, because anytime we shame ourselves, we're actually increasing avoidance. And we're not letting ourselves be like, huh, you know, I'm really noticing that feels like an obstacle.
[00:18:26] So we don't have to even believe it's an obstacle. We don't have to name it as an obstacle. Like we don't have to nominalize it. We can just describe it that it feels like an obstacle. And, okay, so something feels like an obstacle. What has to change for that feeling to change?
[00:18:48] Okay. Because my brain sometimes like goes really fast and I, I'm kind of like go from zero to 60 and then I'm already like overwhelmed and, so I'm trying to kind of slow my brain down to be like, what are the steps? That need to be taken so that doing this activity will be easier.
[00:19:11] So obviously filling up my tires, now they're filled up. I don't have to keep, I mean, eventually I'll have to fill them up again. But now the bike is more ready to just be gotten on and, And go out. Uh, so that's done. And that's such a lovely feeling to have been able to take that action and not made it mean, Oh, all I did was, uh, fill up my tires and I didn't go for a bike ride and like shame myself.
[00:19:38] There's just no reason for shame. So that's about using that metacognitive and somatic awareness to become familiar with things that feel like obstacles. Sometimes even just recognizing that something feels like an obstacle is how you clear the obstacle. Because then you could say, Hey, is that even true?
[00:20:09] What kind of feeling would I like to be having when I think about doing this task? Um, so sometimes an emotion, the state is the obstacle. And then sometimes it's like, Oh, you know what? This project actually has 17 steps and I'm thinking about it just like one step, but actually there's 17 parts to this.
[00:20:32] And instead of being overwhelmed, be like, how can I make it easy to address all of these 17 things? And maybe it doesn't all just happen in this time block that I have made up in my calendar. So it actually requires me to Do one part, two parts. Maybe I can get five done in one day and then I reorganize. It's just about organizing your time in a way that connects you with a feeling of success.
[00:21:03] With a feeling of it's possible, with a feeling of, you know what, this might bring me into contact with some uncomfortable feelings, but I'm really willing to do it because I can see how helpful this will be when I have a process for helping me shift away from just using avoidance as my one and only strategy for staying safe and staying comfortable.
[00:21:32] Here's the open loop from my previous comment about being very body based in my work. I do follow some people who aren't purely in the mind body space. And one of them is stop chasing pain, Dr. Perry. And so he does that. He talks a lot about the lymph system.
[00:21:51] He also talks about emotions. He also talks about the whole environment of the body. I think I stay away from people who are like, you have back pain let's look at your erector spinae. We're a whole system, right? The brain is working hard to help us continue to have an environment in which we can survive. He posts interesting things online. Sometimes we're thinking about what's the environment of the cell and what's the environment of the person and what's the environment of the culture around wellness. There's a lot of narratives around fitness and wellness that you have to work really hard, that you have to be relentless and really focused. You have to basically become a different person to have a different body. So there's a lot of stories in there and sometimes those stories are narratives that are supported by white supremacy or sexism or capitalism.
[00:22:57] And he just posted a beautiful post that says, Effective things don't have to be complicated. When I read that, my whole body just relaxed. Sometimes you'll see me post on Instagram, and if you don't follow me on Instagram, I recommend it. Sometimes I post things on Instagram, studies where they're like one of the most effective things you can do for blood sugar is to take a walk for five minutes after your meal.
[00:23:26] But I get a lot of people who think five minutes isn't enough, right? Where did you learn that? Five minutes of movement isn't enough. So, we want to investigate and get curious about and Bring a little bit of skepticism of like, why is that the narrative? I actually listened to a friend's post on Instagram.
[00:23:52] She is a new friend. I'm very excited. Her name is Stephanie and she uses a mobility aid. She uses a rollator and somebody called it a crutch. And I was like, well, crutches are really helpful. She had a great post. I'll ask her permission to link to it. And so calling something a crutch in a negative connotation, there's a lot of ableism in there.
[00:24:18] And a lot of people feel like they're not allowed to use what they need for support because of narratives like that. So, effective things. Don't have to be complicated. There was another thing I just posted on Instagram where they said, once an hour doing 10 squats, was very effective. I think it was also for blood sugar.
[00:24:48] So they're not sitting is the new smoking. They're not like, don't ever sit at a desk. That's terrible for you. They're like getting up once an hour and doing 10 body weight squats, not 10 perfect squats, not doing a complicated set of routines. They're like, stand up, do 10 body weight squats. And of course, if you can't do 10, just start where you are.
[00:25:13] I have a client who we were working on sit to stands. I sent her a video that I really liked about working on gait, because that's one of the things that we're talking about. And she went from doing four sit to stands to eight sit to stands in one day. I was like, that's amazing. So you start where you are and oftentimes it is your brain that is making the connection between, Oh my God, I can do this.
[00:25:40] Oh, let's do some more, right? When our brain feels like something is possible and safe to do, it will be much more likely to do it. When we're shit talking our brains and we're like, oh, I can only do four and that's not good enough. Well, one, you're just not going to want to do it and your brain is going to feel unsafe.
[00:26:00] So this is why I really lean into celebrating anything that we're doing. If you are moving, if you are walking to the bathroom at night. Let's celebrate that. Let's start there. There's a lot of embedded stories that get in the way of our feeling positive and successful about our bodies, about what they're capable of. And there's a lot of those kinds of transformation narratives that also really mess you up.
[00:26:33] I think it helps to decide what is it that you want to do. When we're working on pain recovery, and mind body work and even on emotional regulation, just saying like, I don't want to feel this is not a great motivation because anytime you feel it, you're just going to trigger yourself and feel like you failed, right? So much of what's happening in our mind and bodies were things that were kind of programmed, don't mean programmed in a nefarious kind of way, but that, that our main sense for some part of our survival and our brain is super efficient and it likes to continue strategies that work.
[00:27:19] So, part of the rewiring process is having the awareness and being like, Oh, you know what? Maybe I don't need that strategy. Maybe I can tell a different story about what is possible for me, what my brain and body are doing. So when we want to rewire our brain away from protection with pain, then we need to move towards safety.
[00:27:45] We need to move towards something. So what is it that you want? If you've solved this problem of whatever this reoccurring pain or symptom is, what then? And you don't have to know everything. I am definitely like the number one failure at envisioning your future you. I'll hear that when somebody tells me that and I just shut down.
[00:28:09] I'm just like, I have no clue. I, there's like 10 billion future me's, right? I, maybe I'm more in that timey wimey Dr. Who sense, which is like very sliding doors. There's like 10 million different timelines of every choice that I've ever made. And they're all me. But There is a version of that that can be really powerful.
[00:28:31] So we can't just be like, I don't want to be feeling what I'm feeling right now. Let's even start with, well, then what you like to feel different? I want to be able to wake up in the morning and maybe not hop out of bed, ready to take on the day, right? We can avoid all of the hyperbolic over hyped stuff.
[00:28:51] I mean, I love a good hype, but sometimes the gap between the hype and the reality is the hole that we fall into. So, I sometimes find too much hype is like terrible for me because my brain is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, and there are little cheerleaders going off and then like, but my actual lived reality is not that.
[00:29:16] So what if we can take that gap, that hole that we fall into and fill it in? So we're not actually over hyping and then making a hole for us that we fall into and then we have to climb out of, right? So even just go on this journey with me right now. Are there holes that you fall into throughout the day?
[00:29:40] Right? So this is a metaphor, but you can imagine what that is like to fall into a hole that then you have to crawl out of just to keep going. So what if that hole got filled in and filled in and filled in so that it's not even a hole anymore so that your path forward. is smooth and easy. And maybe even if you're a fast thinker, and you're like almost ahead of yourself, maybe there are some little speed bumps we actually want to put in so that we can have a sense of timing.
[00:30:19] Right? So that all the parts of us, our brain is not 10 steps ahead of us and our body is not feeling like it's stuck behind so that we put in these little speed bumps, these little check ins, these little places of, I'm going to take a breath here and notice the space around me when I sit and drink my coffee, I'm going to feel that coffee cup, right?
[00:30:41] Right? So having these places in which we check in and check in and check in and be like, Hey, body. Hey, brain. What's going on? Are we on the same journey together? What would be different if you weren't just always trying to climb your way out of a hole? So that if you woke up in the morning and you had a way of just being.
[00:31:03] Spending a few moments orienting, a few moments on reflecting, like, by the end of the day, I would love to feel this. Or even just reflecting and bringing in a sense of safety and starting there. When we stop avoiding bad feelings, we can start to use them to construct our journey.
[00:31:26] And that's what I love to help people with. It's my job to tell you how you can work with me. Sometimes the way to work with me is to listen to this podcast and apply these tools for yourself. Look at the resources that I share and start to think, how will this work for me? And you can also just hire me super easy. I am available to work with some new clients. If you're feeling like that feels aligned or that is tickling your curiosity bone and you even just want to know more, let's talk. Let's connect and meet and see if that next step for you is us working together. So, thank you for listening to today's podcast. It's a synthesis of a lot of things that I have been seeing, experiencing, creating, and changing in my own life, and really loving noticing how easily and quickly things can feel different leading me in the direction towards where I want to go.
[00:32:37] And that is very possible for you. Thank you so much.