Ep 466: Are You Telling Yourself a Story That’s Keeping You Stuck in Life? With Alicia Kay

Likely you’ve heard about trauma being stuck in the body and how your thoughts are stories you tell yourself. Perhaps you’ve dabbled a bit in working on changing your thought process but nothing is sticking.  Wherever you are in your health journey – owning your stories & learning to change them can be a key part of achieving optimal health.  Alicia Kay is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and Certified Trauma Counselor who specializes in supporting clients who struggle with childhood wounding, sexual trauma, relationship issues, and more.  Throughout the years she has helped thousands of men and women heal as they let go of their past and focus on their future.  In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause and Alicia Kay dive into the stories that keep us stuck in life and what to do to move forward.

Resources From The Show:

• Free Yourself Simple Strategies to Dismantle The Most Common 3 Unhealthy Beliefs
• Alicia Kay’s Website and Podcast – Alive & Awake
• Alicia’s Breakthrough to Bliss program

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

3:43 – Alicia’s backstory

9:46 – Not enoughness and fear

12:22 – Repeating behavior patterns

17:40 – Safety and security comes from within you

19:51 – Working through the judgement of self – Ego

22:19 – Some questions to ask yourself to bring you into self awareness

26:01 – Do we need to rehash old trauma or can we just acknowledge and move on?

28:39 – Somatic breath work

35:49 – Giving to everyone else but not taking care of yourself can present as anxiety

39:47 – Remembering who you are outside of the roles you are playing

43:13 – Some foundations to start with if you are feeling lost

45:33 – “If I could have it my way and no one would be mad, what would I be doing?”

46:51 – We don’t have to live out our parents life blueprint

53:33 – Alicia’s program

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[Intro] Hey, Health Fix junkies. It’s Theresa Lear-Levine from Becoming More Me, the podcast for busy-minded

entrepreneurs that want to be more and do less.

Blessed to have appeared on not just one but three episodes of The Health Fix.

So I encourage you to check out episode 445,

411 and

322 of the health fix podcast where I talk about breaking up with your old self, self-sabotage,

fears and thriving through life’s changes.

Mm, perimenopause, using EFT tapping and hypnotherapy.

You’re listening to the Health Fix podcast.

Here’s your amazing host, Dr. Jannine Krause.

JANNINE: Hey, health junkies.

Likely you’ve heard about trauma being stuck in the body

and how your thoughts and stories you tell yourself are maybe not quite true.

Perhaps you’ve dabbled in working on changing your thought process,

but let me ask you this.

Do you believe you can change your story to change your life?

For me, it took a lot of convincing that I created some stories that were keeping me

stuck in repetitive patterns that I didn’t quite understand.

And I was keeping myself on those because of things that happened in the past.

Now it’s taken some time that I’m awake and aware of these stories and I’m able to tell

myself a new story when the old ones come up.

So wherever you are in your health journey,

owning your stories and learning to change them

can be a key part in achieving optimal health.

In this episode of the Health Fix podcast,

I’m interviewing Alicia Kay.

She is a licensed mental health counselor

and a certified trauma counselor

who specializes in supporting clients

who struggle with childhood wounding, sexual trauma,

relationship issues and more.

Throughout the years, she has helped thousands

of men and women heal,

as they let go of the past and focus on their future.

Alicia and I go deep into stories that keep us stuck

and how to move forward.

So let’s introduce you to Alicia K.

Hey, health junkies, I have Alicia K on today

and we are going to be talking about this awakeness

that happens as you get older.

You know, it may not be right at like 35,

it may not be at 40, you come on your own time to this,

but there’s this awakeness where that happens,

where you’re like, “Who really am I?

And what’s my purpose?

And what am I doing here?”

And so Alicia and I are gonna talk a little bit

about that today and more.

So Alicia, welcome to the Health Fix podcast.

ALICIA: Thank you.

I am really excited to be here.

JANNINE: Well, when I saw your website, I was like,

All right, the scale has, you know,

you’ve been in the trenches right in the mental health field.

You know what it’s like to see real life folks

in real life situations.

You have the trauma background.

And so for me, when I see that someone has that experience,

I instantly will connect because it’s like,

we know what it’s like on one side of the field.

And then once you get out on the other side,

you know the difference.

So what I love to kind of start podcasts out with

is just kind of something that I gathered from someone

and your motto is what really kind of stood out to me.

You were born enough.

Now let’s clear out what’s in the way of you believing it

because I do believe that part of health and wellness

and us getting to the point where we feel whole again

is, and part of the healing too,

is really understanding this, we are enough

and then believing it.

So tell us a little bit about that motto.

Where did that, how did that download come to you?

Like how did this come about?

ALICIA: Yeah, in so many ways, I, through my own life path

and journey, it really was that self discovery of the, you know, you said the word awakening.

It was like, oh, waking waking up to the truth of, I’ve always been enough.

And I’ve always been in there, the true self, the real self, the authentic self, the free

self has always been a part of me.

But it’s the wounding and the trauma and these things that happened to us that that cover

that up that help us not live from that place because we live in a world where we’re taught

to conform and we have to fit in and we have to appear normal and we have to search for love and

all of these things that happen through our family of origin and society you know the older we get

the more we tend to forget our essence right that child within that’s creative and playful and

and imaginative and free.

And it’s always helping people understand

that it’s not what you believe about yourself, right?

Your beliefs are not your own.

They’re ideas that you created about you

because of what happened to you.

So let’s work with that

and understand why you at some form of your life

or some timeframe in your life,

you created that as a form of survival

to get through the circumstances you needed to get through.

But because you created that belief,

you have the right to change that, right?

So let’s get back to the part of you

that knows that you were enough

and that you essentially came into this life

to work through some things.

And you are on your own journey of discovering yourself

and getting back to the you that you first were

when you took your first breath

before this world started to really change

and shift you into something that you’re actually not.

JANNINE: Yeah.

– Yeah.

I mean, I believe that most illness is because

of not being your true self.

You know, I look back and of course I have my frame

of reference ’cause it’s me, right?

But I had no idea that my beliefs were thoughts

that I’m thought over and over again in my head

and I made up, right?

Why don’t we learn this in kindergarten?

Like, where’s that person?

Where’s that person to tell us?

And this is why I do this podcast.

ALICIA: Yeah.

Well, I mean, we can certainly get on our soapbox

about what we don’t learn in schools, right?

schools come with the motto, we’re supposed to learn this stuff from our parents, but if our

parents are wounded and they don’t know, where are we going to learn it from? And we’re taught,

so many different things, right? We’re taught to be obedient over sovereignty, we’re taught to,

you know, be controlled instead of having our own freedom and following that intuition within.

Like there’s just a lot that, you know, and I think it makes sense to why we forget that and

why we essentially identify with our wounds more than we identify with our innate worth,

right? We’re not taught it.

JANNINE: Yeah. And then, I mean, and this is kind of what you probably noticed in the mental health

field. I worked in a low-income clinic for many years, side by side. I was the acupuncturist

that was kind of helping the mental health counselors and psychotherapists work with a

lot of patients. And all we focused on was wound, wound, wound. There was no positivity.

And I’m like, no wonder people go to years of therapy

and they’re just hashing the wounds.

We’re not talking about those good enoughs,

those things that are blessings, right?

ALICIA: Yeah, and I think it takes a person

that actually knows the blessing and knows who they are

in order to bring it out of other people.

And for the, I would say like the first half of my career,

I was incredibly wounded, but I always,

I think because of my own wounding,

I was also able to relate to people and see them as

innately valuable, where I had just the utmost compassion.

And I didn’t see them the way that, you know, I would say

like society would label them or society would see them.

Like I didn’t see them for their symptoms.

You know, I saw their symptoms as something that was a

disorder or dysregulation that the body was, you know,

communicating like pay attention, pay attention.

This needs to be addressed.

This needs to be cleared out.

this needs to be healed.

And it really was doing that in my own healing work

alongside of helping other people do their healing work

that I started to, you know,

realize the bigger picture of how all of my path

and all of my mess led into my message

and really helped me embody my own feeling of worthiness

and started to embark on a more like spiritual path

and looking at the bigger picture

and other things that just wasn’t available,

when I was younger.

JANNINE: Yeah, obviously we don’t wanna put any blame on parents

that and you said it well, I think in either

the article I was reading of yours or if it was the website,

but like you said, it’s not their fault

and the blame, we can’t put that there.

It’s not, they just didn’t have the tools,

just like when we didn’t have the tools, right?

Now we’re awake, right?

We have this awareness that wait a minute,

there’s something else going on.

And this is where I love to do these podcasts

talking about this particular subject.

So when a lot of people are like,

I know I’m enough.  I value myself.

And that a lot of times I feel like there’s not

that deeper understanding of you are enough.

And you’re freebie, which guys, we’re gonna get to that

and then to the podcast, but her freebie just really outlines

how you can understand this, okay, enoughness.

So I’m gonna turn it over to you

and give us that little bit of a,

if someone’s listening to us right now and they’re like,

yeah, but I feel like I’m enough.

I feel good about myself.

What more do I need to do?

ALICIA: Yeah, I explain to people all the time

is it’s different knowing it on a logical level

and on a mind level versus a full embodied,

like somatic level.

And oftentimes, it’s impossible to be a human being

and not have fear.

And so that not enoughness can show up very different

for each individual person.

Maybe it is in the area of love and relationship

where I essentially don’t communicate how I feel

or I don’t ask for what I want

or I’m afraid to hurt someone’s feelings

or I’m afraid to say no, right?

So it can show up in certain ways

or maybe it’s with money or with business

around I self-sacrifice or I’m afraid to be seen

or I’m afraid to be heard

and I don’t speak my authentic truth

because I’m afraid of rejection, right?

There’s these little micro things

in the ways that it does show up

because it’s, we all have fear within us

And so that not enoughness shows up and, you know,

what am I afraid to do?

What am I afraid to say?

What, where am I sacrificing myself for love and acceptance?

Right? ‘Cause that really means like,

oh, you know, I’m afraid to fully embody my,

my bigness, my boldness, my unis.

And so I will dumb myself down

or did my life for lots of different reasons.

And so it may not be someone saying I’m not enough,

but it does show up.

JANNINE: Thanks for that explanation,

because I see it a lot in my practice,

and I see it a lot myself too,

because I’m like, yeah, I know I’m enough.

And I told myself that for years

when I would listen to other people talk about

embodiment out here, have people talking

about different things, and I’m like, I’m enough of that.

I don’t see the issue.

And now, once I became aware of my little intricacies

that I would do.

And so those of you who are listening,

who maybe you’re thinking like, yeah, I’m totally enough.

I really, I don’t understand this necessarily.

It’s looking at those patterns you repeat, right?

And the things that just keep coming back

and you’re like, why does this keep happening to me?

And I think for a lot of women, this age, right,

in our 40s plus, I think we start cheering this like, okay,

we’ve been repeating the same pattern for a long time.

What, what gives?

So talk a little bit about how we can use the pattern

repetition to help us to kind of figure out our story there

and what we’ve been telling ourselves.

ALICIA: Oh, it’s so powerful.

And it is the patterns that we repeat

that are the, I would invite like the point of curiosity.

All right, it’s the, okay, so this is,

this keeps coming up for me.

Let’s just say, I mean, for an innocent way of like food,

right?

Like women often go to food for comfort.

And that’s a pattern that we have a really hard time breaking.

But generally, when we do something like that,

it is, I’m essentially outsourcing my feeling of happiness

for this substance or this food or even like this person

because I don’t wanna face what’s going on inside of me,

which just means like I can’t handle my emotion.

And so therefore I’m going to turn to food to self-soothe.

Right?

So when we say certain things

when we do a behavior or we have a pattern that we’re not proud of, right?

So it’s something that we don’t like about ourselves or something that we’re not proud

of about ourselves.

There’s always a story that goes along with that, right?

So if it’s, let’s just say, I remember when I was raising my child and he used to get

out of bed all the time.

And I was like, every single time he would get out of bed, I’d be super stressed out

and I’d like, he’s being like my, my frantic state and I would go to the fridge and I would

get a piece of chocolate because I was like, okay, this is going to make me better.

Yeah, I’m chocolate.

But eventually that became a problem.

So I was like, okay, well, really what’s going on?

Right.

So on a deeper level, I’m frustrated.

I feel like I’m a bad mom because I can’t get my kid to go to bed.

I’m feeling inadequate.

There’s always an unacknowledged feeling that goes along with the behavior that we’re telling

ourselves a story about.

So if you can really get down a little bit deeper to what that pattern is trying to show

you, then you can do the inner work to come up with different methods, to heal the feelings.

No, it doesn’t mean I’m an [inaudible] mom because I can’t get my kid to stay in bed.

Like that’s a story that my brain is creating because of a feeling that’s going on in my body

that I haven’t acknowledged or understood.

So once we identify it and once we’re aware of it, then we have the power of choice because

because it’s no longer an unconscious drive.

JANNINE: Yes, this is that part of becoming awake

and really awakening yourself to the subconscious thoughts.

When subconscious becomes conscious,

that is the most fascinating thing.

I just caught myself yesterday.

I’m gonna give an example for folks who are listening

just to kind of just see if you resonate.

So I’m working on some publicity stuff.

And I’m looking at the story that they’re about to pitch

out to a TV station and I’m going, what?

I mean, I did that, but that was a long time ago.

I don’t think that we should talk about that.

And so the fear is like mounting.

Like, no, I don’t think you guys should send it.

No, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

And so thinking about these things, and so, you know.

ALICIA: Yeah, it comes up for us all the time.

I just did this yesterday.

I was boldly saying something online

that was really uncomfortable for me to say.

And I remember being like, ah, you know, immediately

within five seconds, ’cause that’s what our wounding does.

Our ego comes in within five seconds

and tells us a story about something that, you know, we did.

And I was like, ah, that sounded terrible.

I’m gonna delete it.

I don’t even know what I was talking about.

I couldn’t get my point across.

I wasn’t very clear.

Like all the mind drama starts to come in.

And when that happens, that should be like a red checkered flag

to be like, oh, I’m having an attack.

Like my ego’s attacking me.

My wounding is attacking me.

What are some other options that are available?

Okay, well, no, everything is perfect as it is.

You aren’t getting the same perception

that everyone else is.

I took a couple deep breaths, I went back and listened

and I was like, I got myself in a better energetic state,

not a fearful state.

And I was like, oh, that was actually perfect.

(laughs)

But all the fear comes up, it comes,

you know, because we’re so afraid of how we appear

or like, you know, offending someone,

all the things that we do as women,

because we’re such caretakers.

And we, a lot of us have parts of us

that wanna appear perfect or wanna be liked.

It’s just, you know, part of our DNA.

And it’s interesting when you know how to work with it,

the power that’s available to change it.

JANNINE: Oh, it’s huge, it’s huge.

‘Cause I mean, I don’t think I would post on social media,

if.

– At this point, but yeah, I mean, does it come up though?

And I think that’s the important part though,

these things still come up for me.

ALICIA: Yeah, always.

JANNINE: And like you said, you just call it,

you’re like, okay, I’m aware now

that I’m trying to block myself here

and trying to self-sabotage or trying to just block

probably is a better term.

And this is where you’re talking about clearing out

what’s in the way.

So for a lot of women that you see,

what’s even to be some of the other things

that we need to clear out,

just so folks can kind of get a sense of

What’s common?

Maybe they can resonate.

Maybe we can call it to awareness for them.

ALICIA: Yeah, there’s so much.

JANNINE: True.

ALICIA: It can go a lot of different ways.

A lot of it shows up in our feelings of worthiness,

right, around the worthiness wound.

I’m getting treated this way because

or there’s something wrong with me

that this keeps happening to me.

It sometimes it stems from like an abandonment wound

or like unhealed masculine wound or unhealed mother wound

where we tend to attract into our lives,

people in circumstances that show us where we’re not free.

Because the soul wants to be free.

The soul wants to just engage in this world and play

and be creative and have fun.

And so it will always arrange people in circumstances

to show us where we’re stuck and where we are essentially

dumbing ourselves down or like staying in situations

that no longer serve us because we’re afraid of change

or we’re afraid of that next step.

And we’ve been indoctrinated into a system

that makes us believe that our security and safety

comes from our job and comes from our relationships

and comes from what’s in our bank account

and comes, you know, all of the things that we attach to

that can be taken away in any second

if we really were honest about it.

But we feel if we have this going on externally,

then we’re okay.

But what I really like to teach is like safety

and security comes from within you.

Right?

When you are aligned with the call of your soul,

when you’re doing what makes you feel purposeful

and intentional and you’re making a difference

in your family or in your community

or in your life, then the soul comes online and starts to make that feeling of a live

mess come off.

And I really teach that the most toxic thing for the soul is self judgment.

It’s foreign, right?

Fear is foreign to the soul.

And it will always show you in ways out externally, like how that fear is coming up.

And then it’s the judgment of self that we really need to work through.

Right?

So coming at a place from curiosity and from like saying like, “Oh, isn’t it interesting

that I reacted that way or that I evaluated myself in that way?

What’s the truth?”

know, the ego and the inner shamer always wants to feed us lies.

JANNINE: Yeah.

And that’s the thing I think for a lot of people, we don’t see that at first, right?

We, we see the lies and then we repeat them in our head and create these, these

fabricated stories about ourselves.

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So let’s get back to the podcast.

JANNINE: And so I noticed in guys I mentioned it before and we’ll make sure you definitely get access

to it is the simple strategies to dismantle the most common three unhealthy beliefs is

what Alicia has for us for the freebie for this podcast.

But what I noticed in there is you did have some questions just like you were saying a

a minute ago, the different questions to ask yourself.

When you feel like this thought process seems

a little, you know, either cyclical or this is new,

what other questions could folks really ask

to kind of bring themselves into awareness?

ALICIA: Yeah, I always like the question, is it true?

JANNINE: Right.

ALICIA: Is it true?

Because one thought is one thought

out of the infinite possibilities out there

in the quantum field and in the universe.

So if my one thought, right,

and there’s a ton of other potentials,

then is it true that I’m not enough?

For me, one of my core wounds or my beliefs

was I’m invisible and I don’t matter.

And that was a theme that repeated over and over

and over throughout my life until I really started

to look at that and be curious about why that was there.

I had a teenage mother and a teenage father,

and so I literally wasn’t visible to them

because they were living their lives

and I was exposed to so much trauma

and so many things that I shouldn’t have been exposed

to at a young age.

Of course, I felt that way.

And in order to cope with it, in order to make sense of it,

I had to understand it and be very, very curious.

So it’s always being willing to dispute the thought

that you have in your mind.

Is it true that I’m not enough?

Is it true that I screwed up my life?

Is it true that I’m never going to find love again?

Is it true that I am a failure?

Whatever the belief is,

it’s be radically curious about that

and be open to dissecting that

because it is a belief that your brain

chose to hold on to outside of all of the other possibilities that are out there.

Is it true? What are some other potential possibilities? What am I not seeing that someone else might

say about me? Right? So for so long, everybody else would say these positive things about me,

but I couldn’t take that in because I didn’t believe it. Right? So for instance, it could be a question

around, well, a lot of my clients would ask me, well, what would Alicia say?

What would Alicia do?

Right?

So I become their inner voice, which I love.

But for me, it would be like, well, what is my best friend say about me?

Right.

What is someone that I really love that I really trust?

What does this person believe about me?

And why can’t I hold on to that?

What part of me is rejecting that?

Because the outside mirror is the outside world is always

mirror for unhealed, unprocessed wounds within us.

JANNINE: That’s the hard part, I think, is knowing that you’re getting

back what you put out there.

It’s like, ooh, because when things start coming back at you,

you’re like, oh, man, really, I really

need to work on some things.

And I think for some people, we don’t see that.

It’s harder to see that.

How do you help folks with that mirroring kind of thing that’s showing up?

Is it back to awareness, back to questions, back to things of that nature?

ALICIA: Yeah, I always start with the foundation that, you know, you are a, you are a divine, powerful, spiritual being that is squeezed into this human vessel that came here to explore life.

And so if you can hold the premise that you are the creator and that you created this belief somewhere inside of you, what has happened to you that you haven’t yet acknowledged to hold on to that belief so strongly, and it’s always related to old stuff.

Always.

JANNINE: Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you believe we have to have rehash the old stuff?

Can we just acknowledge and then move on?

Do you think that’s kind of the way?

ALICIA: I think yes and I think there’s always, you know, I’m a trauma therapist at heart, right?

So I’m really, I’m very familiar with how the nervous system and how the brain holds

on to undigested, unprocessed, unacknowledged emotion.

And I feel that until we actually release that emotion, then we can’t make room or space

for new ideas and new awareness and new like a new level of expansion to come through.

So I really do feel that we need to at least feel it, we need to acknowledge it, we need

to work through it and not avoid it.

Right?

Because what we resist and what we avoid tends to persist.

But I do think depending on what is going on with someone, it does help to go back to

to clear it out emotionally at least,

so that it can be in your conscious awareness.

I’ve been an EMDR therapist for,

I don’t know if you’re familiar with that,

but it’s an eye movement desensitization processing.

And it’s a really radical way to clear out the memory

that’s a stuck there,

because when it is stuck in the brain and body,

then we tend to keep repeating the patterns and cycles

until that wound does get cleared out.

So I do feel that it benefits somebody to go back.

Now, how deep they go back is very dependent

on the type of trauma and what the person is holding onto

and what’s happened to them.

And some people don’t have that.

They can just acknowledge it.

They can feel it.

They can call it for what it is.

And then they can move on because they

have that interresiliency and strength in already.

but not everybody does.

JANNINE: Yeah.

– No, I think that’s something to acknowledge.

I also think it ties in perfectly

to talk about somatic breath work

because that’s kind of what, as an acupuncturist,

as a person who does a lot of body work on folks

when I’m in my office, I do feel like

that is one of the best ways to clear.

Because if you can acknowledge, feel where it is,

and then let it go, I feel like that can save

a lot of grief just in and of itself.

Will you explain to folks a little bit more about

somatic breathwork and how you use it in your practice?

ALICIA: Yes, it is for me a game changer.

So before breathwork came into my life,

I was one of those professionals and people

that would look for the thing.

That’s gonna do the thing to help my clients heal.

I was constantly going to trainings.

I do internal family systems work, EMDR,

I do all this stuff, mindfulness, and I would say that I had no idea what I was missing

until I came into breath work.

Someone came to me and said, “If you work with trauma, then you actually have to go

get trained in this type of breath work.”

And I was like, “All right, I’ll give anything a try.

I’m a risk taker.”

And I tend to follow my gut and follow what the universe gives me a sign.

So what I started to understand from this modality is that it’s all about our nervous

system and our nervous system is essentially like our energy centers, our aura.

And when our nervous system is not clear and when we’re holding on to pain, trauma, repressed

emotion, like we often it’s suppression, right? It’s depression. And we repress the action,

which is the emotional, what is it? Reaction, right? When we suppress the reaction and we stuff it

down, then the body is constantly sending a signal because the nervous system isn’t clear and it’s

out of alignment. And we are essentially responding to that at a mind level, you know, so we’re the

body is always sending signals to the brain and then the brain is trying to make sense

of what’s going on in the body. And for so long, I’ve been working with people’s thoughts

and people’s like feelings from up here, not from here. And using this type of breath

work, it actually activates the natural innate process to clear out stress. So we’re mammals,

So this is the work of Peter Levine and a lot of other advanced professionals that do somatic

work.

But when an animal actually is getting chased in the woods or they go through a traumatic

experience, when they know that they’re safe, when they know that that action has been completed

and that they are going to live, then they do this really deep, heavy breathing down

into the belly, into the diaphragm.

So you’ll see the animal taking these big deep inhales

and exhales to actually activate the nervous system

to have a stress response,

to clear out the adrenaline and cortisol

and all of the stress hormones that got built up

in the bloodstream so that it can get up and move on

and not hold that experience in the body.

But us human beings never had a process to do that.

And so we’re walking around in a stressed out state

in a survival state and we don’t even know it

because those hormones haven’t been cleared

out of our nervous system yet.

And when you start to clear them out using breathwork,

then you actually become more clear on a mental level.

And I was shocked for my first breathwork session.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

I went in very blind, like I said, I’m a risk taker.

And I just went for it.

I did super deep breaths.

And before I knew it, I was two years old,

frozen against a wall and hearing my mom get severely beaten.

Like it went right back to the place of my trauma

that I was holding in my body since I was two.

And I was, it was intense.

But what really came to me afterwards was I had no idea

how guarded and protected,

protective I was like daily.

Like I didn’t know what it felt like

to actually feel calm and clear and collected

and grounded until after my first breathwork session.

JANNINE: Wow.

Wow.

No, it’s impressive.

They’re powerful.

They’re powerful.

I mean, I’ve had some very interesting ones.

I even had one on the podcast

where like there was like tears coming out of eyes.

It was crazy, right?

And it’s for a lot of people.

And I grew up in the Midwest.

It’s Midwest, you’re like, whoa, that’s weird.

That’s woo-woo, you know, ’cause that’s what I grew up with.

But at the same time, working in the energy field,

when we can release something, I mean,

even just being with someone with acupuncture needles

and watching an emotional release happen

where tears come or giggling or like some, you know what?

You know, different things can happen.

It’s like impressive to see the nervous system at work in this.

ALICIA: And now, I mean, depending on what comes up,

like not every session is the same.

I have incredibly blissful sessions

where I’m like dancing on the mat and I’m having fun

and I’m connecting with my body.

And I was like, oh, this is what it feels like to be a woman

where I didn’t necessarily have access to that

before my nervous system started to become clear.

And now I know when I need a session,

like now I know what my baseline is.

And I’m like, oh, I need to go breathe, right?

Or I need to incorporate that again,

because it just feels so much better

when you’re in your body and you’re experiencing life,

instead of just trying to survive the day.

JANNINE: And unfortunately, I think that is where

a lot of women are at.

And then you add perimenopause and menopause symptoms

on top of that with hot flashes and night sweats

and insomnia and juggling maybe kids and parents.

ALICIA: Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

Yes, women, we carry the weight of the world

on our shoulders because we have such an immense capacity

to love.

And oftentimes when I’m doing a breathwork session,

one of my prompts is just like, you know,

let go of the weight.

Where are you feeling the pressure?

You know, it’s okay to make it about you right now.

It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling right now.

So that we can do those things we love, right?

We don’t do those because we, you know, we’re obligated.

We love our family.

We love our kids.

We love our husbands, our partners.

And sometimes we just need our own space

to be able to do what we do best.

JANNINE: Absolutely.

And that’s probably if anything,

where I do think a lot of women

end up having some chronic health issues.

Is the lack of space giving?

Where you give to everyone else

and not so much to yourself.

Do you have any stories about that from clients

or anyone you can think of?

Or even just yourself in general?

ALICIA: Yeah, usually it presents as anxiety.

When we’re not, when we’re giving and giving and giving

and we’re holding on to all the stress

and we’re running around and managing everything

for everybody else, and it usually presents as feeling anxious.

And my recipe for anxiety is, what are you feeling?

What are you not facing?

What are you not saying?

And really helping people drop into that.

I had a woman just yesterday, and I was like,

you don’t have an anxiety problem.

You have a way to the world on your shoulders problem.

So let’s talk about that.

Let’s create the space where you can just open up

and you can use this as a way for you to purge

so that you can go out there and manage

what you need to do day to day.

And people say, I remember one person one time

gave me a comment that was like,

you publicly say that you love yourself more than your kid.

And I was like, hmm, that’s misconstrued.

However, I will say that I make it an absolute priority

to take care of myself,

whether that’s waking up at five o’clock in the morning

and doing my meditation and my breath work

and my cold plunge before I start my day

so that I can go and be mom, right?

When I take care of myself and I’m listening to my body

and I’m prioritizing my needs,

then I have so much more free love to give

because my heart is in it, right?

I’m not scattered, I’m more present

and I’m available for whatever anybody needs from me

because of that self-care, because of that priority

that I make for me.

JANNINE: Yeah, that’s so huge.

That’s so huge.

And I think a lot of people,

we’ve been, for lack of a better term,

kind of brainwashed to think that,

women give, give, give, we give of ourselves,

we do not complain, you don’t,

you don’t show that you wanna take care.

It’s almost like a guilty pleasure to have self-care,

it’s interesting.

Even though, I think we’re coming around,

I think we’re definitely coming around there,

but I think it is something that folks are very like leery,

or maybe even some of the belief situation

that we have going on in our head.

ALICIA: There’s so much.

I mean, we were, you know,

not to necessarily get into a ton of religious stuff,

but we’re taught that we’re supposed to be selfless.

Like, I think that’s misconstrued, right?

Because when you care about self,

you then have the capacity to care for other.

Instead of it feeling like a stressor or an obligation,

it becomes a choice.

Like I want to take care of you because I love you,

not because I have to, right?

Even the language of that sounds, it’s stressful,

it’s shrinking, it’s like, you know,

the words are so important that we use

because, you know, we forget that we have choice.

And some of us don’t feel like we do.

And I think that that is soul crushing.

JANNINE: Yeah, no, I hear often, especially women over 40,

will say like, I have no choices of what I have to do.

The other one is, is I gave up my dreams for my kids.

I’ll hear that a lot.

And then I’ll also hear like,

as my third one that I commonly hear is like,

I don’t have any dreams anymore.

I don’t feel anymore.

I just do.

And that, oh, pains me.

ALICIA: Yeah, because we walk around numb.

One of my primary things is I always try to identify the point in which someone lost themselves.

JANNINE: Yeah.

ALICIA: Right?

Tell me what it was like before you had kids and before you were running around in a

career and all of the things that we have to do as women.

Like, I truly feel that women, you know, were not supposed to be forced to be in the workplace

and do all that we’re doing.

And here we are and it’s a beautiful thing and we lose ourselves in that process.

And it’s not about getting back to self, but it’s about the remembering of who you are

outside of the roles that you are, you know, it’s a conscious choice to be in them, but

that you’re playing, right?

You think, well, I think that one of the societal lies is that, you know, get married, have

kids, buy a house, do these things, and then you’re successful and you’re happy.

like, no, no, no, no, like really?

Like, I don’t know.

When I had my kid, I was like, you lied to me.

This is not that happy.

It has blissful moments, sure.

But like, this is really hard.

JANNINE: Yeah.

And I think that we feel like we’re somewhat failing

because society portrays it that we’re supposed to be happy

and that we’re supposed to have it all together all the time.

And we’re ashamed to admit that we’re not.

And I think that as the feminine, one of the things

that we can start to do is to not shame ourselves

for not feeling okay and for not being that happy.

Own it, claim it, then let’s figure out

how to work with that instead of wearing the mask

that we’re okay all the time.

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah.

No, I wholeheartedly agree and fully admit

that I lived that for years, years,

until I was like, okay, I can’t do this anymore.

You know, and unfortunately, I think a lot of women end up in that space where they’re like,

I can’t do this anymore. And then the health things happen.

ALICIA: That’s right.

JANNINE: And that’s what I want to stop the cycle.

ALICIA: Yeah, because not to say it’s a choice to manifest disease, but it will show up as a call or a

cry for attention, for change, you know, because we’re not living in alignment with our full complete

intuitive selves. We lost that connection to that inner guidance, to that essence. And it’s a wake

up call a lot of times. 

JANNINE: And definitely, you know, I don’t want, I want to go positive because

definitely you’ve got your program, you know, break through to bliss.

This is where I’m headed towards guys here.

I believe we all can dream again.

I believe we can all, you know, get rid of the anxiety.

We don’t need supplements.

We don’t need pills.

You know, I think that there are ways to do it.

And it goes back to the nervous system and really working on convincing yourself.

You’re safe.

You’re enough.

And so you have a freebie.

And I know I keep referring back to this guy.

It’s because I read it through like eight times because I like this is just so good.

It’s just so good.

And you talk, you talk about the four D’s, you talk about your rain solution.

And you know, I would love for folks to kind of have a little teaser as to, you

know, even with your free B, you have valuable information there to give folks

a next step from right now.

So if someone’s listening to this and they’re like, I am stuck.

Yes, I have anxiety.

Maybe I think I have ADHD because I can’t focus.

I have a lot of brain fog.

You know, any of those things, I would love you to speak to those folks right now and

be like, this is what we, you could do even with just the freebie and then we’ll talk

about your signature program.

ALICIA: First of all, know that there is nothing wrong with you and that you are completely normal.

That is the foundation that we always have to start with because when we live in a fear

base state of, you know, there’s something wrong with me, what’s wrong with me, and we

get into like a panic mode, then we can’t be expansive, we can’t be curious.

So I always invite, you know, the discomfort, the dis-ease, the dysregulation is always

a cry for help, right?

Your body is screaming to you to pay attention and to not shame yourself and to not think

that there’s no hope for you, right?

Like the fact that you’re living and that you’re breathing means that you’re here for

a reason and that your mission and your destiny is not complete yet and it’s never too late

ever.

So start with that foundation first and then be radically curious and if you can take the

higher perspective of if I believe that I’m a soul having this human experience, what

What is my soul trying to communicate to me?

What does it need to change?

Where do I feel like I lost myself?

What don’t I like in my life?

And if I could start to dream again, and if nobody would be mad at me, and society wouldn’t

judge me, what would I want?

What is it that I ultimately want for my life?

Do I want to let go of responsibility?

Do I want to stop playing the roles that I’m playing?

You know, really get curious about the possibility that there is a potential out there where you

can really find happiness and fulfillment and joy again.

But it starts with the recognizing that something’s not that something’s not right.

Maybe you’re not on.

I don’t ever believe that you’re on a wrong path, but I believe that there is always a

a version of a higher path that is meant for you, that only the innate intelligence inside

of you can reveal to you if you choose to tune into that.

You choose to just look within and ask yourself some really deep clarifying questions.

If I could have it my way and no one would be mad, what would I be doing?

would my day look like, start to fantasize and really

imagine that again.

Right. Because I really, I really truly feel that we are the

conscious creators.

You know, we absolutely can.

It’s always available.

Always.

Did that answer your question?

JANNINE: I yes.

You know, it gives us a really good sense of what you, you know,

what you do, what you can unlock, let’s call it that,

and being able to dream again.

Because so many women, myself included,

I remember driving home from work one day

and being like, I haven’t sang to a song

and been happy and I don’t remember,

which is very disturbing.

And then I started thinking more and going,

I never even, I stopped dreaming,

I was like, this is it, this is the rest of my life.

And it’s like, whoa, that’s so much different than me.

And so I really want women to think about what it’s like to,

we think about getting older, right?

And we think about like, is this it?

Is this gonna be?

ALICIA: And we don’t talk to settle for that.

Yeah, the truth is, is we’re not supposed to do it

like our parents or our grandparents or older generations

where they met one person and they stayed with them forever.

They met, they stayed in one job and they worked through to retirement.

Like they, that was their blueprint, right?

We, we don’t have to live that way anymore.

And when we think it’s like, you know, this is the way that it’s going to be.

And this is what’s going to bring me security.

And I’m supposed to be happy here, but I’m not.

Then we’re essentially, we, we, we dim our light, right?

We, we squash, we squeeze our channels so much

that we lose connection to that innate intelligence, that feeling of

aliveness and that of that vibrancy that, you know, if some

some women have, right? I can guarantee for the listeners out

there, if you pick one person your age, and you like say some

model super doesn’t have to be a supermodel, but somebody that

you know, that has that vibrancy and vitality, that means that

it’s possible for you to, right? Because the outer world is

only emanating what we want to cultivate and what we want to eliminate from our lives.

It’s all a possibility and it’s all about you. Right? Because when you are in that

vibration of loving yourself and loving your life, it has a ripple effect on everything around you.

You become magnetic and you become inspired and you become like alive again.

JANNINE: Which is perfect title for your podcast by the way. Guys, you’re going to have a podcast coming out

end of May here. This is 2024 and it’s called Alive and Awake. And the name itself, the title

in and of itself kind of comes from, I hear that in your message. Is that kind of how that came about?

ALICIA: I mean, I was walking, I don’t want to say like I was walking dead, but I was walking. I was

walking, I was suffering, you know, for the first 35 years of my life, I was suffering immensely.

And I was repeating these patterns and I was ashamed of myself and I wasn’t proud of the things that

that I was doing or what I was putting into my body

or all of that stuff.

And I would, you know, in one way,

I felt like it was out of sync with here I am.

I’m this professional, I’m helping women all the time,

but in my personal life,

I feel like I don’t have it all together.

And it wasn’t until I really started to get radically curious

about the bigger picture, about why I was here,

about what I’m supposed to,

why did all this stuff happen to me?

You know, why did my soul choose the mom that it chose?

Why did it choose the dad that it chose?

Why did I go through all this trauma?

What really is the bigger picture of all of that?

And what am I supposed to birth in the world?

Because I refuse to believe that it’s an accident.

So that’s when I started to, through crisis, really,

I got into church.

I started really learning more about spirituality

and the other just became a seeker of all things.

And then I was like, oh.

– Okay, and it slowly just started to get revealed to me

that there’s something else going on

that we’re not even, we don’t even talk about, right?

And we don’t, unless you actually seek it out yourself,

which I think is an important path for everybody

to find their own way.

It’s not something that we’re turning on the TV channel too.

JANNINE: No, that is so in the opposite direction.

ALICIA: Right.  

JANNINE: I believe.

ALICIA: Yeah. And I really feel, you know, that, that joy is our birthright, you know, that feeling fully

alive and awake and free is what we came here to experience. And it’s all the stuff that happened

to us in our early lives that we use, like to identify ourselves, right? That becomes our identity.

And that’s become, that becomes what we attach to. But we always have the power to change that,

if we choose to. 

JANNINE: Like you say somewhere on the website, change your story, change your

life. And it’s how change the story you tell yourself is so, you know, we hear this over

in Elmer again, but I think a lot of people, you know, and this is why I do these podcasts

is really, you can change everything. 

ALICIA: One perception of time. That’s how powerful

we are. We always have the right to make a different choice. Anything that we look at,

There’s always a different choice available.

I used to think one of my stories was,

I have to do this all on my own.

I’m all alone.

It all falls on me.

It’s one of my go-tos when I feel stressed out.

I’m like, oh, okay,

what am I not doing to take care of myself?

But that’s no longer an available choice to me

because I know that that’s just not true.

I have people supporting me and surrounding me all of the time.

And granted, I was raised by a single mom.

I don’t have any siblings.

I don’t have necessarily help from family.

And so my story was, I’m all alone.

I have to do this on my own.

And when you start to look at that story,

it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I also had to look at the ways in which, well, maybe

I wasn’t asking for help.

Maybe I was actually creating my own suffering

because I was too ashamed to let people know

that I needed help.

All of those types of things are available

if we really choose to look at them.

And so now when it pops up,

I’m like, nah, I don’t believe that anymore.

The truth is, is that I’m surrounded by people all the time

and help is always available to me.

I’m so not alone.

I’ve never been alone.

That’s just something that my ego and my wounded self

created out of survival.

JANNINE: Mm hmm. It’s wild. It’s wild. The stories we tell ourselves, the stories we create for ourselves.

And I do think that for for many, just becoming aware and awake to the fact that these things are

there. And so you are doing this, of course, with that podcast coming up, but also with your program

where you work with folks. So let’s talk a little bit about breakthrough to bliss because I’m imagining

you dancing somewhere in this and and inspiring other folks to to find their

bliss whatever that may be.

ALICIA: Yeah, it’s very much a intensive program that I’ve

designed for my years of doing this work and what I really feel people you know

it’s like a it’s like a crash course to like you know let’s just say you’re you

come in for this issue and you want to work with me but we’re gonna condense

six years of therapy into a six month program. So we identify your core wounds, we identify

those beliefs, we do some deep processing work around, clearing them out from your body,

using EMDR, using trauma processing, using somatic breath work, lots and lots of journaling

to get to know the parts of yourself that you created out of survival and changing them.

And so the first half of the program really is about doing that deeper work.

And then once that’s cleared out and you’re in a more positive, energetic state and you’re

starting to feel more like yourself, you’re starting to see things more clearly, then

we bring in the other piece, which is like magic and manifestation of, you know, how

do you want to feel?

How do you want to show up?

What does that feel like in your body?

And we do a lot of that work through breath work still,

through lots of, again, journaling, lots of reading,

lots of meditation, and trying it on as a new outfit, right?

What does bliss feel like to me?

What is being in a state of joy actually feel like in my body?

And then we train the brain to look for how that’s so

available to you all day, every day.

JANNINE: Hmm, that sounds wonderful.

That sounds wonderful.

I’m looking forward to checking things out there.

And definitely for those of you guys who are listening,

we’ll get links to her six month program

that I break through to Bliss.

And then of course the podcast,

because I’m sure you’re gonna give lots of good nuggets

there on Alive and Awake.

Oh my goodness, Alicia.

So many good things here.

I am excited to look at more

and what happens with that podcast.

I’m excited.

I know I’m gonna be listening.

ALICIA: Oh, I appreciate it.

This has been incredible to just dive in

and get to know you and the work that you’re doing out there

in the world for women is incredible.

So thank you for also the way that you serve

and finding your own bliss, and your own purpose.

(laughs)

JANNINE: Oh boy, yes, thank you.

It’s, this is the podcast part of it, you know?

a labor of love here.

Thanks again for coming on, I appreciate it.

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