12. Showing Up For All Parts of Yourself & Your Body
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Welcome to the Body Breaking Free Podcast! Today’s episode #12, we talk about trauma and how it offers us a new way to look at our body - and how with this new perspective, we can change our approach to diet and exercise. We can start to lift that heaviness living in our bodies. We can break free - and make real change. To feel good. To feel good about how we feel in our body and how we look in our body. I am going to show you when you bring all parts of yourselves - good, bad, weird- that is when you can understand yourself & your struggles, and discover how to best to treat it. In this episode, I will share how we can actually see the trauma (see the parts of ourselves that feel heavy) - and use it as a way to empower ourselves. Empowerment = Choice.
Your Body Struggles are REAL: So you might be feeling that the pain, the uncomfortable trying to lose weight and not feeling good in your body, all that you're dealing with is superficial. And I'm here to tell you it's 100% not superficial, it's real. It hurts, it's there. And we need to have some way to approach it that feels better that feels and more alignment than what we're being thrown out what we're told to do. I opened up my email the other day, and I'm following this lady online. And she talks a lot about weight loss. And again, over and over again. I see it's like cut calories and stop drinking alcohol and the exercise 20 minutes a day. It's like, when does it stop? Like? When do we realize like, this is not the way to look at things. And when people say it's just easy, like nutrition is easy exercise is easy. I would question like, how is that easy? You know, we're sure it's calories, we're eating food. But we have a relationship with food, we have a relationship with our body. And whenever we have something that intertwined in our life in all components, I can't possibly see how it would be easy to approach weight loss in that way, we have to look at it through that point of complexity of Yeah, it's really hard to lose weight. And it's really hard to change your relationship to food. It's social, it's emotional. It's your environment. It's how you relate to yourself. It's all in our mix. And it's not a bad thing, right? Like none of this complexity is a bad thing. If life was not complex, it would be really boring and easy. And the joy comes from the complexity and the more that we can just bring that awareness in, the more that we can really start to make real change. If you want to approach weight loss, if you want to approach your body in that external way cutting calories, you might get short term results. Definitely I think a lot of people get a lot of short term results, which can actually lead to trying to do it over and over again. And then you're in that repeat cycle.
And I just I don't want that for you. And you probably don't want that for you, either. That's probably why you're here. So this episode, first and foremost, I want you to understand it is a big deal, what you're feeling. It's not small. It's not just an inconvenience. It's not superficial. If you're feeling like you don't feel good in your body, if you're dealing with cravings and foods you feel out of control. If you just want to feel lighter and freer in your body, about your body, how you look. If you want to feel confident, if you're struggling with not having enough energy, if you're struggling with not being active, like all of these things really do matter. It's your body, it's your life. And the approach the external approach, looking to answers outside of ourselves. It's just not working anymore, which might feel like a big sigh of relief to because it's an internal game. It's 100% an internal game that we need to start approaching first and foremost, and look at it and look at yourself and be with all parts of yourself coming just as you are the good, the bad, the weird, and so that we can move forward with compassion and with ease and with peace and alignment feeling centered. Like that's what we want. And I know I talked about
This in the last episode, a solo show episode about the motivation and looking at it differently. And it doesn't have to be so hard. We don't want it to be so hard. We don't want to have to have all the control and get up early every day. And it feels forced and hard. Like we want it to be enjoyment. And we want the journey to feel with ease and centered. So that's my goal for you, and your 100% deserve it. So let's talk about how you're feeling in your body today. That's really what I want to focus on, and then also bring in trauma and what does what does that even mean? And how are you specifically dealing with trauma, because I know for myself, relating to the word trauma, I wanted to be really sensitive when using that word, because I know that rape and PTSD and people are dealing with these really
traumatic events that I don't want to not be sensitive to. But the more that I've learned about trauma, and the more I've talked to Jen Solomon, I have also had her on the podcast, if you haven't listened to her episode, it's amazing. She has so much knowledge on yoga, trauma and nervous system. 100% need to listen to that. And then get to number nine, create authenticity and your wellness. But so trauma, the more that I've talked to her and understood trauma, it's not this, it doesn't have to be this scary big word. And maybe we need to open a conversation around that word a little bit more. Because she said, you know, if you stub your toe, that's trauma, if you fall on your wrist, that's trauma, trauma can show up differently for different people and in different environments. So it's really subjective to how you relate to it and how you relate to your body. And what does that mean? And how can trauma really show up. So the more that we can understand trauma, the more that we can understand where your pain is originating, and what you're dealing with, and bring it to the surface, the more that we can start to make a real difference in your life and start to bring that transformation into your body. And one of my sessions with my therapist, we were talking, and she said, Katie, it sounds like you're dealing with trauma.
And a lot of emotions hit me that was, again, like a word that I felt a lot of intensity and pain with I associated it with. It's a big word. But it was like this huge sigh of relief for me. And I never had really thought of it as trauma. But when she brought that understanding, and this word that carried a lot of weight, it felt really good for it to be acknowledged. And finally, finally I had a word I had finally I had somebody that could understand, like, what I was feeling in my body, what I was struggling with
the control around my food and exercise, things that I thought were just normal things that I thought a lot of people are doing, doing to lose weight and it was carrying a lot for me and I was really struggling. And I was feeling that heaviness and anxiety and emotions literally living in my body it. It didn't matter what weight I was at. I felt that I felt that all the time. And to me it felt like the superficial thing. Like we all deal with it. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I was thinking about was what I ate the day before. And then how could I keep improving? How could I eat better snack less, exercise more keep everything on track. And like I've said in the past, it's not that my intentions were wrong, like I had a good heart. Like I just wanted to feel good in my body. I wanted to be at the way I wanted to be. I wanted to wake up and feel confident, feel good. But my approach was literally tearing me apart those small things over and over again. And so when my therapist brought up the word trauma, like that was trauma. That was what trauma was like in my body and what I was dealing with and the sense of relief
I felt after somebody acknowledging like, this is a big deal, this is really affecting your life. It was like, okay, like, I can see it for what it is now. And I can start to approach it with maybe a little bit more compassion, a little bit more sensitivity. But also really understand like, this is painful, like this is real pain. And so in this episode, we talk about
trauma and how it offers us a new way to look at our body. And how would this new perspective, we can start to really change our approach to our body, to diet to exercise, and start to lift the heaviness that we feel living in our body, we can begin to break free, body breaking free of that stuckness of just not feeling like we're making change, we're not feeling good, it's not positive, and make real transformation, real change, to feel good to feel good about how we feel in our body and how we look at our body. I'm going to show you when we bring all parts of yourself, the good, the bad, the weird, unsure, whatever that is, when you can and how you can best treat yourself how we can start to look at your body differently, and look at how to best treat it. And yourself, we want to move forward with ease, we want to move forward with empowerment, alignment positivity. And in order to do that, we have to approach our bodies this way, by looking at the internal world to make the external difference. And really understanding yourself showing up all parts of yourself, all of those parts, and come just as you are to the table with everything, and being able to look at everything with a new light, new perspective. So you can start to change your approach. Do you see how it starts to transform? Do you see how we start to look at our body differently, look at what we're dealing with, and really bring everything to the forefront, even the scary parts, even the discomfort. Because sometimes when we look at those things, most often are not we're gonna bring some relief once we can really understand what we're dealing with.
Later in the episode, I'll share how we can actually see the trauma and use that as a way to empower ourselves, but more of that later. So right now I know what you might be thinking, you're saying this episode isn't for me, because I don't have trauma.
This is just for really sensitive people. And it This really isn't actually going to get new results, I want to lose weight. And this isn't gonna help me get there. And I totally get it. But I'm here to tell you, all of that is false. We have to be open, we have to dig in deeper if you really want change. And this is an opportunity to start to look at things differently. It's a relationship, like I said, your body food, everything surrounding that it's a relationship. It's not just an external object. It's not just something that we can control a coin that we can flip and heads or tails is not just something that's external, from who we are and what we believe and our emotions and our thoughts. So when someone is saying it's easy, and someone is telling you, you can just approach food by cutting calories, I'm going to tell you sure, if you want short term goals, if you want short term weight loss, if you want short term health, whatever it is, then yeah, go ahead, approach it that way. But if you want something a little bit deeper, if you really want to understand yourself and your body, then Nope, that ain't gonna work. So I'm really glad that you're here showing up for yourself. Because even though it's more complicated, we don't want to simplify it. That's the joy. That's the fun, that's the good thing. And complicated doesn't necessarily have to mean harder, doesn't have to mean that this process is harder. It just means that we can understand that the complicated is a good thing. And our relationship with our body or food. That is a good thing, right? We want to have a relationship with all of these things, but it's we really need to look at it as more complicated so that we can approach it in the right way. Alright, so let's get into it. And I feel like we just went through the icing on the cake, the overview and so let's dig into the actual cake, vanilla, chocolate, whatever it is that you like.
And we're going to talk about trauma, we're going to talk about your body and how we can lift that heaviness and use it as empowerment, opening up to all parts of yourself. So you can create real change in your body.
Okay, so let's look at the problem solution for a second here. So the problem is struggling with your body struggling with loving your, how you feel in your body, how you look in your body, maybe you're struggling with ups and downs with like, some days feeling really good feeling really on top of it, getting your exercise done, and then crash and burn, you go on vacation and you get back, you feel sluggish, you don't want to keep going the motivations well, and maybe you feel like you struggle with food and cravings. And you always want dessert after dinner, you wake up and you feel bloated, you don't feel good in your body, you feel exhausted all of these things, right? All of these things that I feel like we do all struggle with at some point in our lives. And they may seem frivolous, superficial, silly. And so like I said at the beginning, the problem here that we're looking at today is like really looking at these things and seeing, like if these things keep happening over and over again. Is this really impacting my life? And how is this impacting my life? And how can my relationship to my body change in a more positive way? And what is that going to do to help me and help me move forward in my life. So it's a bigger deal, right? Like, this is something that isn't silly. It's not something that is frivolous, like feeling bloated in your body, I'm sorry, like, that's really painful, that doesn't feel good, you feel heaviness, you don't feel good in your body. And if that happens over and over again, that's affecting your day, like that's affecting the quality of your life. So I get that it's really hard. And that feeling of over and over again, you can feel stuck, you can feel stuck in that energy, you can feel anxiety, stress control, all of those emotions feel really heavy. Like that's something that we want to lift out of, we want to release that. So the solution, all of these traumatic feelings, all of these big or small experiences, they all leave traces on our minds, on our body, on our emotions, and to really understand it and face the reality of it, then we can understand how best to treat it. So inviting all parts of yourself that same Come as you are come just as you are with the good, the bad. And then we can look at everything together. And so that's why it's so important, right? All of these things leave an imprint on our bodies, minds, emotions. And it's necessary to understand them and to look at them and so that we can lift that imprint, we can move past it.
And then also understanding what trauma is and how does trauma live in the body. And maybe you can start to understand, maybe there's something that you're dealing with that does feel like trauma that doesn't feel like that's felt like it's left an imprint on yourself. And maybe you don't have all the answers right now. And that's perfectly fine as well. It doesn't have to be trauma. I'm not trying to push this word trauma on you. But I want to just open the conversation to it and start to have you think about
like, how is this really affecting your life and we don't have to use the word trauma if that doesn't feel good to you. But we can open that up that to that word, because it doesn't have to be a big thing, right? Just like Jen said, to me, it can just be stubbing your toe or a small thing that's happened that might have left an imprint on yourself like I might not have gone away like that pain might be sticking with you. Especially I feel like for me something that's happening over and over and over again. It kind of feels like it's stuck to me now. It's sticking to me like glue, and I need to find ways to release that trauma so that I can be left
Spread out of my body and my mind and my emotions and feel free of that trauma.
So let's understand trauma a little bit more. And in the book, The Body Keeps the Score, I will, I will put that reference in the show notes. But in this book found a few quotes of trauma showing up in a big way. So, one in five Americans were sexually molested as children, one in four beaten by a parent, one in three couples engage in physical violence, a quarter of us grew up with alcoholic, alcoholic relatives. So you can see a lot of us, a lot of us live with parts of ourselves that are very uncomfortable, they're scary fear. And that's okay. Like it's okay to have those parts of ourselves. And there's a lot of people you can see from these quotes a lot of people dealing with some big stuff. For me, if I'm being honest, nothing traumatic really stands out from my past. But like I told you guys, at the beginning, something was still really disconnected with me, I really struggle with not feeling good in my body. I struggled with always wanting to change my body. I didn't like how I felt I didn't like how I looked. And it wasn't until my therapist told me I was dealing with trauma. When I didn't even realize that what it was it what it was, was a big sigh of relief. Finally, I had that word that brought lifted up the impact of what I was dealing with, and what I thought like everybody was dealing with. And I do think a lot of us are dealing with these kind of things, always trying to lose weight, not feeling good in our body.
But realizing like all of those little things that had added up and had such a profound influence on how I treated my body, how I approach my exercise and my diet. And so opening the conversation around trauma, opening up the conversation about not feeling good in your body, and what kind of impact that has on your life, and what kind of impact it has on your mental state and your body, how you feel how you move through the day, and then your emotions as well.
And we can have trauma from what we witness what the environments we grew up in the environments that we're in now, we can have trauma from the norms, or the ideals or the status quo and all of the messages that we're receiving on a daily basis, the messages that we receive from our parents that came from their parents, from their parents, right, you can see how it's like this trend of all of these influences that we have. And we can look at all of these things. And then we can start to understand Oh, yeah, like, I believe that thing, because my mom told me, that was the way to approach it. And her mom told her to approach it that way. And so now I'm living in this warped kind of reality that isn't serving me. And this is really just creating some trauma in my life and my body. And so is it time to release that? Like what what is what are these things that are influencing me, and looking at them with a new light and being able to work through them and move past them if that's what serving you if that what is what feels good to you. And like I always say it's that opening the empowerment is for, like having choice. empowerment is choice. And we can't have choice if we don't really know what the hell's going on.
We can't have choice if we're just following some sort of pattern that we don't really even realize what's happening. That's not empowerment, right? empowerment is bringing to light all of these parts of yourself. So then you can choose what direction you want to take.
So like I said, the effects of trauma, trauma can weave those traces, in our minds, body emotions, on our life, on our beliefs on our patterns, and our habits. Like all of these things are inter linked or intertwined. It's that relationship, right? In the book, The Four Agreements, Miguel talks about all of these agreements that we've made, and he talks about at the beginning of the book, if you haven't read it, it's fabulous. You should definitely check it out. But it's like we've made all of these agreements.
It's kind of this like, subconscious reality, like, we didn't actually choose our name, right? Like, that's just one simple example. But that's an agreement that we made. So Katie Kay, like, that's the agreement, I've made an example of like, all of these multiple agreements that we have chosen, or we haven't chosen, but it adds up in our life to create this, like, dreamlike reality we're living in, and all of these beliefs that influence our patterns that create our habits. Can we step back from those? And can we really understand like, what are these agreements that I've made? And do I actually want to hold on to these? Or is there a new direction. And so Miguel, in the book, he offers four agreements, he's kind of saying, like, let's backtrack, let's move past all of these agreements that you've subconsciously made, that might not be agreeing with who you are, and your life and your choices, because it is pretty powerful, and you start looking at things and then you backtrack, you're like, oh, there's four agreements that could better serve me, I can look at things a lot better and be a lot happier with this intention.
Feeling Stuck So I want to go back to that stuckness, like that feeling of being stuck when it happens that we're on the same habit pattern, and something happens over and over and over again. So like, for me, counting calories, and approaching my food in that way, like over and over and over again, I start to create this darkness with that with my food. So I started looking at food through a view of numbers and calorie counting. And so I felt really stuck in that place of like, Well, how do I move past that this obviously isn't serving me in a positive way. So now I want to approach my food differently. But I feel really stuck in this pattern. And so I want to go back to the book, the body keeps the score, and talks about veterans and the trauma that they deal with. And they said, some of the veterans felt, felt dead inside. And they went through the motions of living a normal life, but feeling like disconnected from life from their loved ones. And in one part of the book, talk about the loyalty to the dead, and stopping them from trying to get better and moving on because they didn't want to abandon the memory of their friends. And so the brain was keeping them stuck, they wanted to escape. But at the same time, they didn't want to escape because they felt like they were abandoning their friends, if they got better. Being able to reflect on this and the veterans and their trauma that they're dealing with. I think that in a lot of ways, we all can get into that stuckness. And in some ways, we can have a relationship to our trauma, and the pain and our habit, and our habits, feeling stuck, and not wanting to move on wanting to escape, and our prefrontal cortex on the front of our brain, but deeper. And there's a reasoning or a deeper relationship that we have to the pain that we don't want to give up. And so it sounds right, it sounds counterintuitive. Like, if we want to get better, we should get better. But I think a lot of the time the brain especially wants to stay in a comfortable. And that's where it lives in the most efficient place. And that's where it's happiest. And so if we're comfortable and whatever life we have created, even if it's painful, in certain ways, we might try and hold on to that because at least we know what we're getting. And so this is a big thing to work through and to look at because we can't start to really make true change without understanding. Like what's happening now and why do I want to stay here?
Stuck in Weight Loss & Purpose: And so for example, for me, my weight loss, that was my purpose for a really long time, like losing weight was something that I thought about every single day. And then it started to become this like purpose of my life. And it wasn't until I realized that I didn't want this to be my purpose. Like, I didn't want to spend so much time and energy on this. The scary part was for me, okay, now what like now what is my purpose, if I stop trying to lose weight, then I'll have nothing. And I'm going to have to sit with that. And I'm going to have to be without purpose. And now with so much scarier to me, than just staying in that cycle of trying to lose weight. So you can see how it's like, we do want to keep ourselves in that pain to some degree, sometimes, right? I don't want to blanket statement for all of us. But it's good to have that conversation. And so when we say, open up to all parts of ourselves, that really allows us to have an open conversation, even if you don't know exists deep down, right? Most of us don't like I certainly didn't know that was going on. But once you start to train your mind, to allow opening for the scary parts, for the painful parts for what's not working, what you're struggling with, and just open up to it, just see it just being an observer, that was really helpful for me, like being an observer without needing to change anything. And then I could really start to look at these things differently and open up to the pain and then it you know, it takes a while to then start to make the changes that you want. But if you go at it full force, wanting to change everything, looking at everything and be like, Hey, this is happening this, this, there's this, I'm going to change it all, then it's like the brain don't want that the brain gonna stay right where it is. And so let's step back and give yourself a little breath. Like Give yourself a break. And like maybe you don't need to change anything right now. Maybe you just need to observe what is happening.
In Madeline Hackett's episode, (Episode 2 Body Breaking Free Podcast) she started doing breath work. And she didn't really understand when she first started doing it, what like, why she kept doing it, what it was going to help with. But then as she continued it, as she kept going back to it, feeling her intuition guiding her to keep trying it, because there was something there, she started to understand that her eating disorder was really connected to her emotions to having breathwork as a channel to connect to those deeper emotions, and it was okay to be with your emotions. And so it's like, yeah, like, it can look very superficial on the outside. But there's a deeper aspect that if once we can tap into that, once we can really open up to those parts, those scary parts, those emotions, that purpose, the pain that whatever it is, that is a little bit deeper, then it's like yeah, like real change can start to happen. But it's not needing to push for that it's not needing to try to change anything, it's just understanding it. And so I'm offering the word trauma as a way to just look at it through a new lens, like maybe there's a little bit deeper pain there, maybe what you're struggling with really does need to get acknowledged. And that's the, that's the first step. That's it, that's all you need to do. acknowledge it. And like once it's there, once it's in the open, like it's already it's there, and you don't need to do anything, you don't need to change anything. Maybe the first step is just to see it and really learning to invite all parts of yourself the brain's like, muscle, right? Like if we go to the gym, and we try to pick up the heaviest weight, like we were going to be sore the next day, we ain't going back. But if we go to the gym, and we pick up small, three pound, five pound, whatever, I don't know what muscle you're working on. But let's say five pounds and you start doing bicep curls. Next day, you do seven pounds next day you do 10 pounds, you start to build up. It's like that's where transformation happens. The same thing with the brain, the brain is the same way it's a muscle. And it just needs to have those steps to start to make that true transformation. And so learning to invite all parts of yourself like this is something that you can do that like your whole life. And just showing up and coming just as you are with the good with the bad with the everything with the weird with unsure with the trauma
And, and just be with yourself because you really are a beautiful blend of all of those things. And none of those things, we need to approach with control none of those things that we need to approach with change, we need to send some love to that anger to that pain to that struggle, we need to send some compassion. And the only way to do that is by Oh, really opening up and letting go. So hopefully, this is helping you to start to think of some things that you're struggling with just looking at them. Like I said, like, you don't need to do anything right now. Let's just like look at them for now.
Tool of Empowerment I wanted to offer this as a tool of empowerment. So having this deeper layer, maybe realizing there's some deeper pain, there are some things that you're struggling with, that just aren't working for you any any more. This isn't a thing that we need to like, feel bad about yourself, like 100% No way. Like this is a thing that we can really show up as a way to empower you. Like that's so cool. Being able to show up for yourself in that way that like look at the things that aren't working, look at the pain, look at it a little bit deeper. Like that's huge empowerment. Like that takes a ton of courage. Like it might sound silly, or like, Oh, yeah, I just like Niva look at this thing. Like No, no, no, like, not a lot of people do that, like a lot, the majority of people are not doing that they're not looking deeper, they're not looking at these parts, they're not looking to make that true transformation right there. It's, it's a lot, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of work, a lot of internal reflection. So I want you just to leave here really empowered, and taking this as a tool of empowerment for your body, for your life, for your behaviors for your habits. You guys get on his rants, and I just start spitting out words. But it's, it's a way that's gonna really help you for true change. And I want you to acknowledge that takes a lot of courage. And you're doing it right, you're making the choice to do it. That choice. It's that empowerment, you're choosing how you want to approach your body.
You had the courage to be here, you're doing it and that choice, and that's gonna lead to the empowerment that you want to feel in your body. And I know, I know, you can make the change. And we're making the change together here on the podcast and just starting to shift your mindset and look at things differently. Like you guys are gonna believe me once. Once it starts happening. Listening to a few episodes, you'll start to notice how your mindset is shifting. Like it'll start to change. It's just having the patience having that compassion for yourself. That's the best thing that you can do for yourself. So thank you for spending the time being with me. I know your time is precious. So I am so grateful for you. Please send that message to me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. If you're listening to the episode, take a screenshot and put it on Instagram. I would also love that I get so excited when people send me messages and send that they're listening to the episode you guys have no idea I get too excited. Please rate and review the podcast. Click the “Follow” button so that you don't miss any new episodes. Sending love to you and your body. My name is Katie Kay, I will see you next episode!
