Hello everyone and welcome to the Awaken Together podcast.
I am Jen and today we have another incredible guest joining us to help us deep dive into
a subject that I know is going to so deeply relate with our listeners and I know I'm going
to learn a ton from this.
Taylor will be coming on, she is a podcast host, has her own podcast, she is an occupational
therapist with her doctorate degree, she's trauma sensitive, she has personal experience
in the world of trauma and has brought all of that onto social media to create trauma
sensitive content and she's a course creator to help people along on their journey on coming
back to themselves.
So hello Taylor, welcome.
Hi, oh my goodness, I could not have said that better myself.
That was spectacular, Jen, totally.
Thank you, Taylor.
It's so wild.
I found Taylor on social media, honestly I really don't even remember how but the second,
I think TikTok was first.
Yeah, TikTok first.
And then I stopped you on a live and I was like, um, we need to do a podcast together,
like what?
So then you came on mine, like totally blind, like oh this brand new podcast you're doing?
Sure.
So freaking loved it.
Crust in the universe.
You handled it like you have been doing podcasts for forever.
It was, and we had such a good conversation there.
It flowed so good, so easily.
And yeah, you, since I was on your podcast and I first found you, both your Instagram
and your TikTok have like really gotten a huge amount of following.
I've been so proud of you along.
I'm like, yes, Taylor, yes.
Very different spots than we were at last time, but I love it though.
It's all the energy.
It's very interesting.
So yes, absolutely.
And yeah, we, we first really bonded over the fact that we both have experience in the
kind of physical rehab world, occupational therapy and physical therapy, um, which it's,
it's so fascinating when you start delving into other sectors of kind of the mind and
body connection and the world of healing and spiritual healing.
And you have that experience just in that setting.
There's just, you need someone to like talk it out.
Cause there's just a lot.
When you're a woo woo therapist, we're going to be friends.
Like, sorry.
That's a, that's a given whether you like it or not, we're best friends now.
So thank you.
Yes.
And I love it.
And Taylor is also so into all the little side sectors of spirituality.
And I love that you bring that to the forefront with all of your work because yeah, for the
minds that can connect all these things, it's incredible.
But today we're going to like delve in a lot more into trauma, which, um, we've had one
episode on this called the body keeps the score where we kind of went over some of the
generals around it.
But Taylor, I would love to hear since you have had your own personal experience with
all of this, just to give us a little bit of your story.
Yeah.
So I'm going to try and keep this brief because I feel like this could go on forever because
I've been through a lot.
So, um, I'll get this down one day.
Right?
All right.
So, um, yeah.
So like Jen said, I am Taylor.
Um, I am a trauma survivor and an occupational therapist.
Um, and later got super, super into figuring out trauma in the world and, and that kind
of thing in my doctorate.
So I focused on that.
And then later in my career, I became a certified trauma professional.
So I gained a lot more awareness of trauma.
And since then, it just like, it really helped me connect the dots in my childhood thinking
that I grew up where, you know, I was the oldest child and you know, like I just, I
took care of my brothers a little bit.
My dad was kind of a jerk, like, you know, looking back, I was like, well, you know,
it was kind of stressful and everything was okay until I was about 16 and things got bad
in the divorce.
That's what I thought originally as I've been diving into my own healing work.
Um, I do EMDR therapy for myself with my therapist and that has changed my life.
Also after doing it for almost two years helped me uncover some repressed memories, realizing
how far back my childhood trauma does go and different abuse of like physical, emotional,
psychological manipulation was the huge one for me.
And so I essentially grew up where I was in these survival responses, which we can go
into in a little bit, but basically there's fight, flight, freeze, and fun.
And fun is the one that isn't as talked about.
And basically it's like the people pleasing, the one who's like, you're trying to make
sure that there is no actual threat.
Like you know that the person's a threat.
It's the camouflage, right?
It's the yes, man.
It's making yourself as small as possible to stay out of trouble.
And that's what I did my entire life.
And so while like basically making myself as small as I could, but then fiercely fighting
and protecting my brothers.
So it was like, it was abandoning self when I look back a little bit, but little me was
just doing what she could to get by and to be okay.
Because based on, you know, if I was safe or not really dependent on my biological father's
mood that day, or if there was a trigger or whatever it is, it could be the smallest little
thing.
And so I grew up walking on eggshells and suppressed a lot of who I was.
And it took a long time into my adulthood, figuring out who that was and hating myself
and all of the things that they used to tell me every single day that I was fat, that I
was ugly, that I was never going to be worth it in the world, that I was mentally unstable,
wouldn't be able to work with special needs kids like I wanted.
Like all of that stuff got so deeply ingrained that I started believing that and had like
no self-worth.
So I really, I just turned it around at one point.
I was like, I'm not going to live in this victim mode.
And I started fighting for myself and thank goodness I did.
But you know, that's what led me to here and my page survivors overcoming silence.
You know, for that, it's about the silence that I endured because I was threatened into
silence for years of abuse under wraps and half of the family was enabling and the other
half was in on it.
And it was a generational pattern.
And so I'm really the only one in my family, aside from one in my like extended family,
who's breaking the cycle and even admits there's anything wrong.
And I'm labeled as the problem and the scapegoat and the crazy one basically.
And the only one who's ever gone to therapy or done anything.
And I have since gone no contact with all of them and I feel more free and I have been
healing so deeply that I just connect so deeply with my inner child now.
And it's led me to all the work that I do here and being really real and honest about
all of the stuff that I've been through and those like harder decisions and nuances that
a lot of people don't talk about publicly.
And so that's what I do.
And it's because my story was silenced for so long.
So yeah.
Taylor, thank you for sharing and thank you for your vulnerability and speaking up about
it and going into that place just so others can see that they're not alone in their place.
I think that is so, so important.
And so thank you for what you are doing.
It's huge.
Yeah, I would love to hear when was the first time you were like, it really clicked like,
oh, I'm going to need some help with all of this.
Like this is, when did you first start realizing like the, I guess, realizing the signs in
your body and knowing that there was something kind of off?
So it's interesting because I kind of recognized around when I was 16 that there was trauma
without being able to label it.
My parents went through a messy divorce.
I was triangulated, basically put in the middle of it.
My biological father told me about how he was going to secretly move out when my mom
was gone on a business trip for six weeks.
But I wasn't allowed to tell her long story short, I told her he was my abuser and she
wasn't.
And so it got messy and then they threatened to make my life a living hell.
And that's kind of when my like thing started, because I really was seen as like the enemy
actively by my bio father.
And so I noticed it then and I recognized that like my biological father is absolutely
an overt narcissist.
And so knew exactly what buttons to push in order to make me react.
And I remember there are so many times where like when they would hit a button or a trigger
or something, like at my body would just go out of control, like just screaming.
And it was protective, but like it took me a while to come down.
I remember like logically trying to control everything and I couldn't.
And meanwhile, they were just saying like they would poke, poke, poke until I would
fight back and then just smile and have that like really gross, evil looking smirk, like
ha, gotcha.
You are the crazy one.
So that's when I really realized that I feel like in my adulthood and my very first relationship
was when I recognized how deeply my relational wounds went in trauma and I was super codependent
and super anxiously attached.
And that's really when I was like, oh, this impacted me a whole lot more than I thought
it did.
Like I just thought I worked through my emotions.
And like by this point, when I was in a relationship with this guy, like my first relationship
serious one was like when I was 20 turning 21 and I had worked through so many of my
emotions and I learned how to gain emotional regulation and gain control of my emotions
and my triggers through beginning therapy, but also just it's what I had to do to survive.
Otherwise things would be pinned against me.
So I had to learn real quick growing up how to keep myself as calm as possible to not
give them any leverage.
So when I recognized in that relationship that there was more, that's when I was like,
oh, this goes really, really deep.
Yeah.
It comes in.
It literally comes in layers as you start trying to build the bridge of where the disconnect
started and yeah, starts and ends or doesn't even end like where it just begins.
So I know I used to think there was a beginning point or like, you know, it was like, oh,
it started right here.
And now as I'm getting more memories back younger, like I'm all the way back to seven
years old now and I still think there's more.
So I'm like, oh, okay, that's interesting.
So that's, you know, that's a new thing.
I'm glad you said the relationship thing, because I feel like when you first start trying
to interact in your own form of relationships, when you're out of the household or you're
a little bit stepped on, I think you start to like realize how much you're bringing old
patterns in and it's like very confusing to watch, like watch yourself and you're like,
okay, well, clearly it can't go exactly how I envisioned it in my mind because I'm not
quite functioning.
Like I want to be noticing like how easily you can get set off by people and what's still
lingering even when you're away.
Because I think when, at least when I was young, I think I just, I think I realized
my family was the problem and if I could just get away from it, then I would be fine.
Not knowing anything about how, yeah, my body's presets at this point were not quite correct
and that I was going to have a lot to unwind from that.
And the other interesting experience on my journey has been, yeah, so much religion trauma.
I've talked about that several times on this podcast, but yeah, I have that too.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
You peel back the layers and you just realize how much that led to kind of a compliance
and people pleasing and heavy masking and heavy repression and, and anti-spirituality, like
anti-self spirituality.
Oh my God, Taylor.
Absolutely.
So while to get there, same.
And yeah, every single thing that's kind of come on my path, I've, you know, I've had
so much skepticism and fear around it.
And it took so long to kind of pinpoint what was going to work for me and what, you know,
what I, what I didn't need it as a part of my life.
And it to erase the labels that had been put into my head on what equals what by my family,
it takes so much longer.
It's so much easier said than done.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit, I'd love to hear about EMDR and just some of the, some of the
stuff that you've explored personally.
And then we can kind of do another overview on yeah, what trauma looks like for the average
person.
Sure.
So EMDR therapy, I always say the right, if I remember correctly, it's eye movement, desensitization
and reprocessing.
Yep.
We'll check that.
Okay.
I was going to say double check that.
I always just say EMDR.
I just always mess up one of the words, but so basically what happens is there with every
trauma memory, there is some kind of belief within there that is adding to the trigger
either I'm not good enough.
I'm unsafe.
It's the message that we assign to the memory that allows it to be stored as trauma.
Okay.
And so what we do at first is when you're tapping into the memories before you even
get into basically like when you have EMDR, it's like you go back into your mind and you
watch this trauma memory, like a movie and you work to reprocess it.
Okay.
It's not as scary as it sounds.
Trust me.
I used to be terrified of this and it has changed my life.
And I'm so glad that I took a couple of years and eventually made the courage to do it.
So basically you start off with EMDR and the way my process goes is that you come up with
how intense the feeling in your body is, like, where do you feel it?
So I usually feel it in my stomach or my heart.
And how intense does it feel when you bring up this or there's an image attached to it?
Like, for instance, let's talk about my most recent thing.
I was recently triggered by my haircut.
It's interesting.
I had a little bit more of a blunt bang and my hair, I had it toned down a little bit
darker and it just happened to be almost the exact shade of my little brother who had a
bowl cut when he was younger.
And that image kept popping in my head and I felt out of control and I really didn't
understand what was happening.
And so then what I really ended up doing, luckily I was on the way to therapy and she's
like, okay, how intense is this?
And I was like, honestly, this is the most intense this is one has ever been.
And it's like a nine out of 10 and trying to feel like what the negative cognition was
with that.
And it was just, I am overwhelmed and unsafe.
Just completely overwhelmed and unsafe.
And then my therapist would ask me, okay, so what do you want to believe differently
about that once we work through this?
It's like, oh, I did the best I could and I had control of what I did.
Like trying to reframe a little bit, like not changing reality, but trying to see how
I can see it a little bit differently.
And so then like, okay, so then basically there's a bilateral stimulation of the brain.
So I use buzzers in my hand.
Some people do tapping that kind of thing, but basically it's to get both parts of the
brain online and to bring up this memory in order to be processed.
So the first thing that my therapist does is I hold each of the buzzers in each hand
and basically the idea is for bilateral stimulation of the brain.
It's going to go back and forth alternating.
Okay.
So I have one in each palm and it's just like a vibration when they go off.
So she starts it at first, when I go into the memory, like the intense trauma that I'm
feeling, she starts off with like a higher vibration and it's like, it's harder in my
palm and it's faster back and forth.
And so then we go in for short bursts and just be like, okay, just follow wherever your
brain takes you.
And so I take my deep breaths, I do all my grounding stuff.
I already have my coping strategies and my escape strategies if I need them at any point
because I've been doing this for a while and that's about safety.
So I go in and she goes, okay, I'll tell you when to stop.
I'm like, okay.
And I can always stop before if I need to, if it gets too intense.
So again, going in, like watching a movie, following the original image that comes up
in my head, and then I'm just trusting my brain to lead me where it needs to lead.
And sometimes it'll make sense and it'll like play like a movie.
And sometimes membranes will start connecting from all over my childhood that I recognize
later has to do with the same kind of core belief that's wounded.
So like I'm not enough or, you know, one time I talked about having issues with friends
and I was worried more about my current relationships.
And then it went back to me as a teenager, me as a child, me always being bullied.
And so it just like bopped around and I was like, oh, so it was like connecting triggers
for me to help me unwind it, which is another thing was super cool.
Yeah.
So I'm going back and forth, whatever.
And so I see my little brother and then basically it just brought me to this memory of abuse
when I was little, that I'd never had before.
There was just an overwhelming at first.
I didn't see anything.
I just heard a bunch of things being screamed at me.
And then I did see things and then I saw more things.
And then every single time my therapist would be like, okay, stop.
What did you notice?
And like it's when she's saying, what did you notice?
She wants me to talk about sensory details.
She wants me to talk about, you know, what's actually happening.
How am I actually feeling in this situation?
Who's there?
What kind of control do I have?
What are my escapes?
How is my body reacting?
All of that stuff.
And again, it's just trusting your brain where it's led.
So then we get through it and she'll either say, okay, keep going or she'll sit there
and she'll process it with me and she'd be like, okay, well, could you see it this way?
Do you see how you were doing the best you could here?
Do you know, like she's basically giving me an objective viewpoint to help me recognize
that maybe it wasn't all my fault.
You know what I mean?
So, and then we kind of go back in and work through the memory.
And then once I get back to my stage of safety and I feel like a process quite a bit and
I've gotten all that I can out of the actual memory, then she does the buzzers again, but
it's very calm vibration and it goes back and forth super slow.
So instead of like half a second or faster back and forth, now when I'm doing my breathing
and I'm going to store it again and I go to my safe place in my head to put this memory
back in my chest where it needs to go so it doesn't come up for me later, all a visualization
thing, tons of that in there.
And then I breathe through it and kind of close out what I need to.
And then the buzzers are like every two to three seconds they switch, super calm.
And then I tell her when I'm ready to stop.
And then we kind of talk about more, how are you feeling now?
How intense is it now?
Is there a change from what it was before?
And what's really, really strange, I still don't understand how it works and it works
so well, at least for me, is that I can go in with an out of control feeling.
And then after I've processed through it and like watch it back like a movie, so much less
intense sometimes it's non-existent after the fact.
And if I'm triggered later on something similar, it's not as intense.
It's powerful.
We have powerful stuff that has become like, yeah, such a huge outlet for people.
EMDR has like such substantial research on its benefits.
And honestly, you brought up a really good point that I think is very important to emphasize
for those who know that they have stuff to work through from their upbringing or something
that occurred that has definitely been a traumatic point in their life is that when we get triggered
it can be like the strangest things.
And then there you are fighting for your life.
Like, I mean, that, yeah, you got your hair, you had your hair cut.
And it sounds like, I think people, I think until you kind of learn about trauma and you
learn about the lens and you learn that your body is taking you to a completely different
place than the current situation, but that is not something that you can control.
I think there's so much guilt and shame around how you acted and why you went so, yeah, you
took it so far.
And there's all this guilt and shame on your outlashes for certain things when in reality
that's so out of your control in the moment.
It's something you can definitely work on and get like to the, yeah, to the point where
you are, yeah, the triggering gets so much less and so much less often.
And so, so much less deep, but I think the important step one is knowing that it is not
your fault that your body is taking you there in those moments.
No.
And, you know, I would say that the fact that your body did react that way is even more
validation that something is wrong.
Yeah.
Because your body is not just going to jump to that.
Like as a child, you're not automatically going to always go into fight or flight unless
there is something consistently unsafe in your environment.
Like we're, you know, there are always going to be some instances.
Yes.
But if you're recognizing that as a kid, you were chronically like this, there may be more
to it.
And, you know, I was always told that I was overdramatic.
I was making it up like all of this stuff that is absolutely not true and saying that
I don't experience trauma.
And it's interesting because it's like trauma is such an individual thing.
It's based on someone's context internally and their skills and their environment.
And you know, the past experiences and relationships and like the, I'm sure genes and generational
patterns as well, that like your body stores it as trauma.
If your body determines it's trauma, what your body determines is trauma may not be
with someone else's body determines his trauma because they have different resiliency factors.
Absolutely.
And it's, oh yeah.
You can't tell people they didn't experience trauma because you're not in their body.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Say it again.
Yeah, no, like I'm sorry.
That's not, that's not a thing.
People try so hard on the internet.
I can't even tell you how many trolls I get with that stuff.
But you know, like you, especially when someone's body is reacting in a trauma response, that
is because they have experienced trauma period, mic drop, send it home.
You know, it's like, so when you're ashamed of your own responses like that, it's because
something is leading you there or has in the past and your body is stuck there.
So like, it is not your fault.
And so when you go back into those memories, like for me later in life, I was more into
the fight or flight.
But like I said earlier on, I was in the people pleasing because I was chronically in a traumatic
environment just trying to survive.
These people were in complete control of my life.
I didn't have any autonomy.
I was a child.
Obviously they had control over me legally, physically, emotionally, like everything.
Right?
So there would be points where I used to have a really hard relationship with my inner child
because I was mad at her.
I was like, why didn't you fight back?
Why didn't you do more?
Why did you just let this happen?
Quote unquote.
And it took me a while to recognize that like I was doing what I needed to, to survive.
So it wasn't worse that I stopped fighting at some point and I started people pleasing
and I tried to be best friends with these people because otherwise it was going to get
me thrown into a wall again.
You know what I mean?
So it's like my little me was so fricking strong.
And one of the memories that I uncovered was the after every fight or everything were like
this memory where I was thrown into a wall.
And my youngest brother was instructed to also like hit me or get hit.
So you know, a huge manipulation there.
And my brother was probably like four or five at the time.
So it's just heartbreaking.
Wow.
But I remember I just endured all of this.
Kay stopped fighting back, whatever, until it was done.
And then I went into my room and you know, on the way out, my bio father said, you made
me do that.
And my way of coping was convincing myself that was true.
And so little seven, eight year old me went into my room, sobbing, staring in the mirror,
hitting myself in the face saying, why did you make him do that again?
And just like that's, I had to convince myself that I was the problem because otherwise why
would these people who are supposed to care for me allow this to happen consistently?
I must be the weak link here.
And it took a lot of time to recognize, but she was just so hurt and just trying the best
she could and thought she was the villain in this story, which is what manipulation
does and gaslighting does to be able to continue abuse.
And like, as an adult, I see that now and I fight for her so fricking hard now.
That's why we don't talk to any of them.
You know, but at the same time, it's like, that was all trauma.
And I had to really unwind that narrative that it was not my fault.
I am not the bad person.
I'm not the crazy person.
I don't provoke people.
I don't just being a goofy kid, like the stupidest little things that have looked back or triggers
laughing too loud, sitting in the wrong chair.
None of that is worth getting beat at all.
Like I, you know, so, and I know that as an adult, like thinking now I would never even
do like anything that my bio father did to me.
I would never even think of speaking to a child like that, let alone anything physical.
So you know, I see differently now, but I also recognize it like that's the mindset
that they had from their own parents.
And they thought they were maybe being a little bit better, but never got help.
And so continued the cycle without even recognizing how severely they were.
And that's what generational trauma is.
Absolutely.
And yeah, I like what you, like what you said, cause that's definitely a part of the journey,
especially when, um, yeah, you're, you're first starting off as you really have to figure
out what those underlying messages are that you possibly had started to believe about
yourself that were playing, that you were building, that became your foundations to
build like this whole lie against yourself.
Like, yeah, I'm not as smart as everyone else, or I'm not this, or just these little lies.
Like, yeah, I'm the problem.
I'm the issue.
And so many of your protective responses are to prove that you're not a problem, to prove
you're not an issue too.
You have to look at those like base stories that you started to believe.
And then, yeah, looking through with a therapist or someone that can coach and help and guide,
you have to see that where the root of that story is somewhat from.
I don't think you have to necessarily trace everyone back, but knowing that you've created
these stories and that they're probably the reason you're acting through on some things
is a very important, like first step.
And I think we in the spiritual world, it's kind of all chalked up shadow work.
Yeah.
Looking at the why behind, but let's shift into inner child healing because that is,
yeah, I think there's really two parts to it.
I think there is looking at the inner child wounds that are present, which is still, yeah,
pretty much the same.
Like what messages did you receive as a child and what actions did that end up leading to
that you followed through on?
I know for a lot of mine, it was, I have to be a good girl.
Like I have to be good.
Like I was so scared of being bad.
And it was so, I got the message so many times as being what would have been kind of the
more outspoken questioning.
I never really took things fully for what they were.
I was always a very curious kid, but I got definitely pushed down for being so vocal
and so wanting to push past what my rules and guidelines were.
So I was always seen as like, don't talk back, like stop, yeah, stop challenging what I am
saying.
Like these, these constant limits on, yeah, almost feeling like I was bad for wanting
to know things.
So I had all these wounds around that, that took so long to unwind from of like, God,
am I doing something bad?
Is this bad?
Is that like every single thing that I ever entered had that same monologue and story
of like, am I bad on like a very deep level?
Like, oh my gosh, so much unwinding for that.
So inner child work for me was first of all, learning that I was playing out the program
of these old stories and really having to find ways to release that baggage that I was
holding onto.
And then reflecting back on little Jen and the stuff she so deeply wanted to do that
was being completely put out of her control.
So now like inner child healing for me is letting myself explore and study concepts
that I would have never been able to even have a friend that believes in some of those
things as a kid, letting myself like openly explore, letting myself ask questions, letting
myself be more inconsistent and messy.
And yeah, yeah, act out, be loud.
I had so much wounds about being loud and using my voice and like no one wants to hear
what I have to say.
Like, oh my gosh, I thought all of it was crazy.
You're like, if you're ever silly or goofy, like you're too much, you're crazy.
Like, no one acts like that as a child.
Like yeah, I definitely resonate with that.
So, you know, I just made myself smaller and smaller and smaller.
So I feel you there.
That was definitely one of mine.
Yeah.
Tell me more.
Go, go, go.
Yeah.
Let's see.
What else was there?
I think the main was that the big thing was that who I was, the real me was never to
be accepted or loved.
And my abuser made it seem like they were just tolerating me and no one else would actually
be able to.
Like they would be like, it's awful for me to have to tolerate you.
I can't imagine how anyone else can.
Like, so it was just every part of who I was authentically was just completely just degraded.
Anything that made me smile, anything that gave me light that, you know, I was this goofy,
spunky little kid and the only thing they cared about were my grades and how that reflected
on their perception of their parenting.
So what happened from that is I made myself a chameleon.
I didn't show who I was.
I studied people and friends and even if you can, as a little kid, I remember doing this
studying people's likes, their patterns of behavior and making myself into something
that I thought they would like and only showing up that way.
So I didn't really have much of an identity because I was absorbing things all the time
to be liked.
I became teacher's pets.
I, you know, and when I wasn't liked for even when I was trying super hard, I took that
a lot harder because I was like, well, if they don't like the mask, they're not even
going to like the real me.
Like I would take that so much harder.
Again, as an adult recognizing now that was more a mask, but I just took it super personally.
Like, oh, they don't even like this little persona that I'm creating.
You know, and so the moment that I didn't get along with someone or, you know, I was
bullied, I was, I was a little weird nerd.
I'm not going to lie.
You know, so like I didn't fit in all the time and I took that super personally and
I was incredibly emotional and I was mocked for being emotional and at home too.
So I learned to suppress the emotions really quickly.
So what does the healing side look for you?
What have you given to little Taylor to help her?
So I let her be whoever the hell she wants to be.
Like when she's goofy, when I like seriously, Oh, and spirituality was a huge thing in that
that is like, you're crazy.
Like no.
And like I was a gifted little kid.
I'm going to tell you right now.
I look back and I'm like, Oh yeah, those were definitely spiritual gifts that were labeled
as no one's going to accept you.
You're crazy.
Like all of this stuff, right?
Yeah.
And so getting into my spirituality was like me being a rebel.
Like as an adult, I'm like, I'm going to follow this thing that I've always been drawn towards
and I don't care.
I'm going to look into these crystals.
I'm going to go back.
What are these cards?
Like just random, you know, stuff like that, things that were shunned.
But it also allowed me to start showing up as myself and recognizing when I was people
pleasing or being chameleon, you know, a big part of the people pleasing and stuff is that
I also felt like I needed to be perfect at all times.
So allowing myself nowadays to make mistakes, to go slow, to take rest, to not immediately
attack myself when I don't get perfect anything or perfect feedback, say on like a work review
or, you know, like a real didn't do as well as I wanted to.
I don't really care as much about that stuff anymore.
That used to be a huge thing for me that like I would take it all as a sense of my self
worth was the validation that I received from others.
So now it's been validating myself and a huge part of the healing has been setting boundaries
around the people who actually don't like me and being like, okay, you don't have to
be in my life then.
Like if you don't like me, if you're going to criticize me all the time, we can either
try and work together and I'm going to be me.
And if you don't like it too bad and you know, we're going to have our differences and that's
okay.
But if you're going to continue, mock me and put me down and make me feel bad for existing,
I'm not going to be around you because I like me now.
So boundaries and relationships, allowing myself to show up as who I am fully and exploring
different interests.
Like I was kind of like you in that way too, that it was just like, you know, I really
liked writing.
I was put more into theater as a kid and choir later on, but I was more into the singing
part.
So I did more of the singing as an adult, you know, it's like taking back the control
that had always been put on me in my life and allowing independence.
So well said.
And yes, that is, that is something that I think, yeah, it's going to look very different
for each person, but those little things that we are drawn to as kids just so effortlessly,
the second they get boundaries on them that are to keep you small and to keep you less
interested in those things because they do not fall into the interest of your caretakers
and you had caretakers that very much did not let you express and go in the direction
of your instincts, which so deeply had that growing up.
You start to be disconnected to what was naturally there even beforehand.
And it gets, it gets very tricky to even know what your natural instincts are and where
they started.
So I've really tried to go back and think of the stuff that I used to like daydream
about, you know, in my head, like the stuff that I just was like, gosh, I just wish this
could happen.
I wish I could do this.
I wish.
I wish I could have all these secret wishes that over time I even started disconnecting
from those cause nothing felt realistic.
And the, obviously the more you get into your teenage years, the more it becomes almost
self hatred because at that point you haven't honored your instincts so much that like there
is no foundation of who you are.
And so you're just a reflection of the people around you and you lose, you lose the child
in that completely.
And I think in reality for more healthy family upbringings or people that were encouraged
more, I think you really see them very easily live out kind of the balance of that childhood.
You know, they just follow their instincts a lot more.
You can definitely see the difference between people that don't have it.
It takes a lot of time and there's a lot of pushback in every, even if you get years,
like I feel like I've drawn trauma work now for lots and lots and lots of years.
And then every now and then something will still happen.
And I'm like, what is this?
Like, what is this?
And you know, it's been a decade for me and things are still popping up and I'm like,
whoo.
Yeah.
And except the difference is I can become like almost a witness to it more and say like,
what is needed here?
Let me slow down with this.
Let me figure out like what is coming from this one before I would have been like, no,
no, no, no.
Like, I don't like, why are you?
Yeah.
Why are you being like that?
Like almost, yeah.
Trying to sell for like attacking yourself.
Yeah.
Attacking yourself for being the way you are.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And not like full distrust of my emotions.
Like we are not going to be sad right now.
Like we are not about to be angry.
Like, and just, yeah, just full, full repression of the instincts that come up when now I honor
the things that surface so much and try to very much get curious about them.
I don't see it as a limitation.
I see it as a gift to unpack something else that, yeah, it could be influencing my current
behavior and that for me has looked, yeah, it's definitely delved more into a spiritual
practice now of mindfulness and yeah, looking, looking beneath the surface and not feeling
as attached to that story because I think the whole point is to continue to be unattached
to, you know, all of it.
You want to see yourself be able to move through things without these holdups and you want
to get to the point where you can look at people and yeah, not see them with so much
emotional charge.
Like I used to have so much resistance towards so many, like a very harsh critic to others
and a very judgmental mind to other people.
Absolutely.
Seeing that get better and the softness that I now can extend love and compassion, but
also yeah, pull boundaries out a lot quicker if I need to and feel safe in boundaries.
Like, oh my God, boundaries used to feel like the most unsafe thing though.
Like I felt like, oh yeah, like the person was going to kill me or something.
I had this deep wound.
Like if I, if I cut them off and can't control like watching their behavior, they're going
to come back and like hurt me.
Like I realized-
Or the guilt tripping.
Like, oh, oh yeah.
Absolutely.
And so it's, it is a very tricky thing to realize.
Yeah.
The, the hidden story and wound behind the behaviors.
But you said all of that so incredibly and yeah, put it really into, into a digestible
thing to realize like, yeah, it's, this is a journey that we're all on.
I also think I remind my community a lot that we are kind of writing a new script.
We have more ability to know what the mind is actually doing more the studies and being
able to brain scan and just do the things that we've been able to do in more recent
times has led to just so much more profound resources being available for people that
are suffering.
And I think, yeah, trauma is, is probably a part of almost every single person's journey
in one way, shape or form, but we're writing a new script because we have new research
than what we've ever had.
And we're writing a new script because there is, we're dismantling so many of the previous
structures that were in place.
And so in some of the chaos of all of it and the uncertainty, it's also because we are
writing like a completely new chapter as a collective, there's a huge chunk of us doing
this work and we're, for a lot of us, we're the first generation to ever go to therapy
and unpack this.
We're aware, we're aware, we're healing.
Like this is really like the awakening generation, right?
Absolutely.
It's like where we are right now.
And like the thing that like gives me peace is like, I was put on this earth at this time
for a purpose.
It is to help raise the vibration and awaken people to understanding trauma.
Like I know that that's my purpose, right?
And like help people in their overcoming journeys.
Like that's my thing.
And it's just so interesting because like there are different levels of awakening all
across the board in the last even two years, you know?
And you can see it that it's not just individual anymore, that like you said, it is collective.
And you know, it's interesting because looking back, I think everything used to be a lot
more individualistic.
Absolutely.
And now we're kind of coming together and it's kind of beautiful.
Like obviously the stuff, but it's beautiful.
I am endlessly, if I ever kind of, yeah.
You know, it's a more intentional way of living.
It's a more conscious way of living and the unconscious can feel, I mean, I don't crave
it anymore now, but I definitely remember at the beginning of my journey, like thinking,
oh, it would just be so much easier to check out than to have to go through all these intentional
steps.
I do not think that way anymore.
Like I'm so grateful now for my ability to hack myself and just like figure out how Jen
works and then extend love to all those parts and my uniqueness and my little soul that's
inside of this body and extending love to that.
But at the beginning it comes off intense because it is, yeah, the unconscious people
have a lot less, it appears that there's like less thinking involved and less action steps
that are needed.
And it just seems easier.
But in reality that, yeah, we used to be so individual thinking and also we, I don't think
half the generations that came before us even knew each other like at all.
Like there was just no, there was nothing.
You didn't get to see under the hood for anybody.
And it was so isolating and lonely.
And I know that that runs deep in our, deep in our bodies, the stories of the generations
that came before us and that we are unpacking so much.
But this is the first group that I think is doing, in a long time doing very, yeah, collective
thinking like you said.
And that is what it's all about.
And I think trauma is a very important conversation in all of this because I've definitely seen,
this can be our final thought on it, but I've definitely seen people go the spiritual route
without kind of maybe adding in the layer of some of the psychology and mental health
stuff that we know.
And you can definitely get to a point where you almost gaslight yourself with spirituality
if you're not careful.
And I think that is so important that it's not just spirituality alone, that it's looking
at the resources that we now have to connect mind and body.
In any of the previous systems, I think we're, as we get into all these different spiritual
modalities, a lot of them have deep roots in history and culture, but at the same time,
in respecting the origins of a lot of these things, we now have to add in the layer of
what we now know with the mind and body and what that looks like and the newer tools we
have.
So yeah, we truly are writing a completely new story than ever before, but it is, I use
that as my inspiration all the time.
Absolutely.
I mean, everything, you just said that so beautifully.
There's one thing I do want to touch on when you were saying that like, past generations
that they were kind of left alone.
I think the thing that let me understand, like empathize a little bit and still have
to protect myself and move forward and do what I need to do, however, be more informed
is that some of the older generations, like, yes, they were left alone.
And so what did they do to be able to cope with that?
A lot of people shut down.
Okay.
So now if you have this kid who comes out, who is super light, bright, wants to talk
about these things, wants to ask why, wants to bring awareness and you want to shut that
down because they're eventually going to lead you to have to go deeper into yourself.
And if that's uncomfortable, you are going to go after that.
And if your body is eventually going to see that as a threat, right?
So like, I think of like the older generations, like they were trying to like keep us down
and keep us silenced and like dim that light because they weren't ready to look at what
was hurt inside them.
Yeah, we weren't ready to look.
We were provoking.
We were like living triggers.
Exactly.
And so instead of dealing with their own stuff, doing the work, because they were never taught
even close to how to do that.
When all of us little conscious kids come out and we're like, Oh my gosh, feelings,
let's talk about this.
Let's, you know, why this, why that?
And as we grew up into teenagers and adults who still want to have more of these conversations
on mental health and collective awakening and taking accountability and boundaries and
all of these things that they weren't familiar with, it makes sense that they shut us down.
However, it is still their responsibility to do their own work.
And when you don't do your own work, you can project your work and your wounds onto other
people and that continues a cycle.
Even if you think, well, I'm not like them, I'm not going to whatever.
Like if you are not having that self-awareness, if something happened to you, there are parts
of me, like when I said that relationship, it wasn't even just what I experienced and
what they, how they were reacting and how I shut down and was fearful from them.
It was also the parts of me that were toxic, the behaviors in me that I picked up that
were not okay.
And if I hadn't ever looked at that and I hadn't done the work, I would actually be
a miserable person right now.
Yeah.
Truly would.
Thank you for saying that.
Like really, you know, like you have to be able to look at your own stuff and some people
aren't.
And that's when people are like, Oh, you're so strong.
It's like, that's part of the spiritual journey is looking at your own stuff and recognizing
what you do need to amplify and what you need to work on so that you can be better for the
collective and for yourself.
Oh my gosh.
That was such a good, such a good line.
And thank you for saying that.
Yeah.
We, we don't realize that we also picked up some toxicity along the way.
And that is also needed to be looked through.
And that is the part that I think that those that go on to like a self love journey, I
mean, usually tend to understand that there is a lot of things that they also need to
release and let go of.
But I also think people have kind of used the self love to justify somewhat of toxic
behaviors.
So I get a little worried about that.
Sometimes when I see, you know, some of the self love being pushed is also glorifying
like what very much seems like, um, toxic trauma responses.
Um, and probably from the way they were raised.
And so you want to look at the behavior that's putting other people down in a very negative
light and maybe what the root of some of that is because we can't just be all the good at
all.
Oh no.
Self love, self love isn't that I'm better than you.
Self love is that I'm enough and I'm enough with or without you.
It's not that, you know, and I feel like that's such a perception that like as you're growing
and you're healing, there are people who I don't have contact with anymore because as
I'm growing and I'm healing and loving myself, they look at me like, well, you think you're
better than me.
No, that's your, that's your projection.
That's not how I operate.
Now.
There are some people who do look down on others, but those of us who have been doing
the deep work and recognize like, I don't think I'm better than any human on this earth.
I think we all have stuff.
I think I've been healing a lot more possibly than some of these people that I'm talking
to that I might be a lot more self-aware, but I also recognize the things in myself
that I don't always love quote unquote, but the self love journey is sitting in that stuff
and loving yourself even when there are things that you don't like about yourself.
Yeah.
I still love it.
And yeah.
I think I've been learning to correct when I think the biggest thing I saw is I was able
to humble myself when I did something out of instinct versus out of intentional, like,
Oh, I'm sorry.
My wording of that, like that just was, yeah, that came as like a quick, fast instinct.
I did not like me not being able to humble myself enough, like humbling myself and correcting
any of my behavior beforehand would have been the biggest trigger in the world.
Like I would have hid from that so hard.
Like I don't want to look stupid.
I don't want them to think that I'm dumb.
Like I was so terrified to correct anything I did.
Yeah.
Such loud shame.
Yes.
And like, that's the thing too is like with self love, like the more that I've grown to
love myself, no matter what, I no longer feel ashamed of little things like little mistakes
or things that I say things wrong.
I will be the first one to go up to you and be like, I messed up.
I am sorry, because I know now that that mistake is not a blow to my self-worth where I used
to take it as that again, everyone's feedback was determined on myself for it.
So if someone was upset, that meant that I was a horrible person.
And I know now that deep down, that is not the case.
I know I am a brilliant, strong, beautiful person inside and out.
I recognize that about myself.
I also am a human who makes mistakes.
I also slip into patterns sometimes that are toxic and I can recognize it and I can correct
it and also know that I'm not perfect.
However, you know, I also, when I, depending on intimate relationships, I'm someone who
believes in accountability in both parties.
Yeah.
I will tell you when I messed up, but I also expect you to be looking the same kind of
way and be self-aware in order to connect because I'm not going to have things projected
on me consistently.
And that's part of my self-love thing too, is recognizing when someone is able to meet
me at a level I'm at or not.
And it's not that I'm better than them.
It's that in order to be at this level of relationship with me, we need to have this
level of self-awareness individually and together.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
And that's what the boundaries have been for me is that when people can't get there, instead
of seeing their potential or helping them or sacrificing myself to help other people,
which is what I used to do.
Yeah.
I say codependency, man.
Oh yeah.
So bad.
I say, you know, I see you have some stuff to do, I send you love and light and it's
just not for me right now.
Yeah.
So good for you.
Oh my gosh.
Such good advice.
Take that in.
So good.
Taylor, tell everyone who's listening how they can connect with you and yeah, what you
offer.
So right now my offerings, I like, I don't have anything like super out right now.
So you can connect with me is S O S. So it's survivors of overcoming silence.
So S O S with a Dr. Taylor.
So T A E L O R that's on Instagram and tick tock.
I do not do Facebook.
I do not like the vibe over there.
So if there is someone who is trying to be me on Facebook, please let me know because
I it's generational thing.
You know, I don't vibe with those kinds of comments.
I know man.
It's rough.
There.
When you talk about trauma, I get a few of them on Instagram.
When you talk about trauma and then I want to anyways, sorry, which I'm pretty sure I'm
not, not tested, but definitely have anyways.
So that's also linked to trauma.
We can go on and on.
I can't, I can't.
Okay.
So S S O S with Dr. Taylor T A E L O R. And that's where I am on Instagram and tick tock.
And then I also, I do monthly master classes where I have like different topics.
Like I've done self-regulation before I've talked about trauma brain.
And also going to be working on them one about executive functioning, which is like the higher
level brain function and like how to work through that stuff.
So if you do resonate with like the ADHD comment, then maybe that'll be something you want to
look into.
Just saying makes life a little bit easier when you know about it and how to kind of
work through it.
That's, that's my occupational therapy mind right there.
So I do stuff like that, but I'm also working on a giant core series that it's coming out
and really helping people get through trauma and like understanding like different levels
of self-awareness.
It's going to be holistic wellness is my focus all about, you know, mind, body, spirit, but
we're looking at like the physical body, your emotions, your mental health, your spiritual
health, social, like everything.
That is kind of like my focus.
It's a very OT, but also spiritual in nature.
So really helping you figure out those aspects of yourself.
And I do courses and stuff on that and growth and all the stuff.
If you're a professional and you want me to come speak and do stuff like that, you can
reach out to me on Instagram and I do that kind of stuff too.
So yeah, amazing.
You make the greatest content.
Definitely.
We will share on the, we will share you on our page when this episode comes out and yeah,
thank you so much, Taylor.
Our souls were meant to find each other.
We knew that right away.
And yes, vibing, vibing high.
Thank you for coming.
We will talk soon.
All right, bye.