Becoming Untriggered (with Lavinia Brown and Andrew Lynn)

19:00Janet Lansbury:And the result of that is that those parts of you then integrate with yourself. So you can basically experience life from the present moment in a safe body, yeah, instead of being triggered, instead of being like your present moment being hijacked by repressed emotion, instead of coping mechanisms, sabotaging your life, being inauthentic, it's the opposite of that. And that's the process that I take people through.

19:31Andrew Lynn:When you talk about integration, can you explain a little about what that is, what that process looks like?

19:38Janet Lansbury:The first part of the process is subtraction. So I'm sure you've heard of the book called The Body Holds the Score. Essentially, your body holds the story of your trauma, even if your mind doesn't. So you're carrying around in your body all of the stuck energy from the traumatic experiences you had, and also all the repressed emotion that you couldn't express at that time. And that keeps these traumatic experiences live within you. And it also keeps those parts of you that experience those traumatic experiences live as well. So the process that I go through is connecting to all of those parts of the body.

20:25Janet Lansbury:So that stuck energy and that repressed emotion is physical. And if you can turn inwards and connect to those parts of you, then that emotion and that energy will release. And once it releases, it doesn't come back. And once it releases, you're able to go and inhabit those parts of your body that were disconnected, which makes you feel present and makes you feel connected and makes you feel safe. It's not actually you releasing the emotion. It's the part of you that was traumatized releasing the emotion. So we go through this process, we might be in a session and your five-year-old has just released the emotion, the anger, the sadness, the guilt about being rejected by their parents.

21:14Janet Lansbury:And once they do that, there's an opportunity right then and right there for you as an adult, the part of you that is present to build a connection with that part of you, that inner child, and actually give them a new experience, give them what they needed at that time. And when you do that in the moment, you can feel that part of you, you feel that inner child, release something, relax, feel safe. and that part of you actually integrates into you right then at that moment and it requires a bit of maintenance like children like children do and sometimes there's a lack of trust there and you need to go back but that process allows you to do those two things heal your body and integrate those parts of you that were fragmented by the trauma.

22:11Andrew Lynn:And then you don't actually have to know. You're not necessarily remembering exact things that happened, right? It's just a feeling.

22:19Janet Lansbury:Yeah. So none of my practice is through the brain because the brain is all about the stories of your childhood. So often they are the stories that got you through that moment. So, you know, I had a story in my head for many years that it was really good that my dad left us as a family at five years old yeah it was really good because my stepdad was good at sport and you know he taught me how to play football that was my story about my past about my childhood well that was a coping mechanism that was a lie I was telling myself to get through that moment and get through the subsequent couple of decades afterwards.

23:00Janet Lansbury:But the real story about the rejection that I felt, the pain that I felt, and all of that emotion was stored in my body. So the process of releasing and healing can't be through the brain. But it can be directly into the body and your body will tell you. If you listen, your body will tell you exactly what it's ready to release at that point in time.

23:27Andrew Lynn:Wow, I find all of this really fascinating. And Lavinia, your process is different than that, somewhat? or?

23:36Lavinia Brown:Mine's a bit more structured, I think, in terms of my clients set goals with me. So one goal that's about the kind of thing they've come to me about being a calmer parent, being a more connected partner, releasing their past, understanding themselves better, knowing who they are, and then a more practical ones. It might be something about prioritizing the things that are important to them, or I work quite a lot with the menstrual cycle, because that's another great tool for understanding how you react in any given moment. So it might be something around that, living in alignment with your emotional ups and downs, not against them.

24:14Lavinia Brown:And then from that point, I get them to explore those goals. That's the first task they have to do. Unpack why did they come up with those goals? Why are those goals relevant to their lives? Why did the psyche come up with that and not something else. And then from there, my major tool is the inner child. So I start straight away with teaching them how to reparent their inner child because you touched on it earlier. You said not everyone remembers it. It was not always conscious. A lot of my clients come to me saying, how can I do this work if I don't remember anything? And I say, well, you don't remember it for a reason.

24:55Lavinia Brown:And usually that's because your inner child doesn't feel safe enough to go there. It makes sense biologically. You're not just going to walk down the street divulging your trauma being a complete mess that our bodies don't work like that. We hold a tight rein over what didn't work because we need to function. But when your inner child does feel safe enough and held enough, and that's a process that you have to go through, and obviously you have to be ready to even undertake this process, then the memories start coming back they always do and the psyche presents the the work that it needs to do next so it's very much led by the client and I work with the client with my tools I often liken it to like a road there's a road going towards their goals that road is full of potholes and those potholes represent the fears the self-limiting beliefs everything that they've inherited unconsciously from their parents or through their lifetime.

25:55Lavinia Brown:And our job is to jump into those potholes together, work out which tool we need to fill it up, and then move on. So it's a very dynamic process. I think it's more dynamic, perhaps, than Andrew's, because I set a lot of actions. We come up with a lot of actions every session. So it's very action-orientated, it's very results-orientated. But never dragging your inner child with you, which is what I have a tendency to do. And I think a lot of us do. We're like, yeah, come on. Yeah, let's do this. I want to be healed quicker, the faster. Can I do more sessions in a week? I would just, let's just do this.

26:27Lavinia Brown:Like you want to tick that box and move on. But part of you wants to do that. That's great. That's the achieving part of you, the successful, efficient part. But often your inner child's terrified. She's absolutely terrified. She doesn't want to do this work. So we have to work at her pace and create the safety that she needs and the holding before she can go back because she's the one doing this work. And sometimes the memories don't come back, but that's never happened to me. But if we only have a few memories, then that's fine too, because we work with triggers. Our kids are our biggest teachers.

27:05Lavinia Brown:They will press every single button that you have because unconsciously they want you to be the best version of yourself for them. They want a safe, grounded parent. And they will push the buttons that are in the way. So we'll work with triggers if we can't work with memories. And those triggers are pointers to unprocessed feelings, like we said before.

27:29Andrew Lynn:So sometimes do people come and just say, I just want to stop yelling. I don't know why I'm yelling. You know, just that kind of very practical issue that's getting in their way. And then through that, you uncover all the reasons.

27:43Lavinia Brown:That's the main reason people come to me. I can't stop being mean and shouting at my kid. I don't want to be a shouty mom. Yeah, absolutely. Yelling is probably the biggest reason that people come to me. They're losing it. They feel out of control with their child. Their child is creating reactions in them that is making them act in a way that they hate. And then they hate themselves. And it's a vicious cycle.

28:08Andrew Lynn:Well, I mean, I'm so grateful for people like both of you that you're doing this work and that you're there for parents and for all people to just to find what's holding them back.

28:20Lavinia Brown:And likewise, you, Janet, you do incredible work. I think healing has its own timeline. And for my clients, that timeline consists of working on themselves first. For many women, it doesn't. You know, they don't have the baggage that we're carrying. So, I mean, your work is just as valuable. We're just looking at a different timeline, really.

28:41Andrew Lynn:And what is the timeline in terms of just your coaching? And you as well, Andrew, like how long does it usually take? Or is there a usual?

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31:31Janet Lansbury:For me, I normally work with people over like a 12-week or 12-session program when I do one-on-one work. The reason for that is because it creates a container. So it's not just 12 hours of my time, it's 12 weeks of us working together, like in between sessions, that time in between sessions is also there to create the safety. And to be honest, this healing can happen really quickly. For me, the determiner of how quickly it happens is how quickly can you connect to your body? I'd say like 10 % of the people I work with are really dissociated and disconnected from their body completely. And that's because they had significantly traumatic situations or relationships or environments where they had to do that out of necessity.

32:30Janet Lansbury:And if that's the case, then that takes a bit of time to bridge that gap. between their mind and their body. But if you can connect, like if you can feel a lot of people come and they say, like, I can feel it, I can feel it in my chest, I can feel it in my stomach, I've got this energy inside me, I've got this, this emotion that comes up, and I can feel it. You can feel it, then you can pretty much release it straight away. If that happens, Then we do a lot of subtraction in the first three to six weeks and then building and integrating in the subsequent kind of three to four weeks. And then often I do some coaching towards the end of it, looking at, OK, now you're feeling safe.

33:16Janet Lansbury:Now you've integrated those parts of you. Now you can hear your inspiration a bit more. Now you can hear your truth. Your life feels more purposeful. OK, what are we going to do with that? Yeah, how's that going to impact your career, your business, your habits, your health? How's it going to impact your relationship with your wife or your partner? And how does it affect your parenting? So that's the kind of process that I go through over 12 weeks. So you get into action at the end. Yeah, get into action at the end. And again, it depends how quickly we get into your body, depends on how much time there is to do the action at the end, and whether people want to get into action at the end.

34:04Janet Lansbury:Once you do this work, it's very hard to carry on doing what you are doing. So many of the men I work with, they do this work, they connect to their truth, they heal all this stuff that they thought they were going to have to carry around for the rest of their life. And most of them turn around and they say, okay, I want to do this. I want to help other people. I need to pass this on. So a lot of my clients end up changing what they're doing, changing careers, whatever their passion is, whether it's content or coaching or technology, a lot of people turn around and they start doing this work as well.

34:47Andrew Lynn:There's something so deeply rewarding about giving away something that really helped you which is actually what keeps me motivated. Many of us wait till later in life like I did before we really get into that. Like, how do I really want to spend my time? I want to do something that really helps people somehow or feels really, you know, positive in that way. But also the timeframe that you're talking about, how it's, you know, once per week that the 12 weeks actually matters. And Lavinia, you were talking about that too, that sometimes people want to come and just do a cram session, get it all in.

35:20Andrew Lynn:But it's the way that I learned my work. It's not that, you know, you necessarily need all this training time, but you need all the time to absorb it. You need time on the calendar. You can't rush that process of like absorbing, integrating it, internalizing it. That's what takes time. And that's actually part of the process.

35:44Lavinia Brown:which is why my sessions aren't weekly because I want not only my mums to have enough time to do the actions that we've set which aren't just right of pros and cons or do this with your child they're often very deep actions especially at the beginning we are unpacking the ways in which their mother and then their father or the mother figure they didn't have a mother or the father figure, we're unpacking the effect that that had on their lives and the ways in which their parents weren't there for them. That's a huge task. So they have two weeks in between sessions with me so that they have exactly what you said, not just the time to do the action, but the time to process and integrate what comes up.

36:30Lavinia Brown:So I offer 24 seven online access to me in between sessions, because that's that holding we were talking about. I don't think your inner child would be able to do it by themselves. So they know that I'm there on the end of an email, whatever happens, whatever they want to share with me. And in essence, I'm role modeling that inner parent role for them until they can do it for themselves. So it's very, very powerful.

36:58Andrew Lynn:Oh, that's beautiful. And you both talk about the inner child. That is what we're healing. We're reparenting that. But what does that actually look like? I think you talked about it a little bit, Andrew.

37:10Janet Lansbury:For me, there's a couple of things. So I did inner parenting as part of my own healing. And it was very useful. But I think there's a time and a place for inner parenting. And for me, in my process that I teach people, there's a moment after that part of you releases the emotion of that time. that is the part of you where there is duality within you there's a there's a present adult and there's a vulnerable inner child that's the opportunity that's the timing for me where the inner parenting can be most effective now in terms of what and how now the first part of inner parenting is listening. That part of you, that inner child will tell you in that moment what they needed at that time.

38:07Janet Lansbury:And a lot of this trauma is not necessarily about bad things that happen. It's not necessarily about violence or, you know, abuse and that type of thing. A lot of it is about what didn't happen. Children that feel that they didn't get any attention, that they weren't safe, they weren't encouraged, they weren't seen, they didn't get enough love, they didn't get enough affection. You know, that has a significant impact on children.

38:36Andrew Lynn:And that's all relative to their unique sensitivities, right? So like the same child in the same family wasn't wounded by that, but you were because you needed something more. Yeah.

38:50Janet Lansbury:So at that point in time in the process where you're connected to your inner child, Your inner child might say, oh, I feel rejected. I don't feel you love me. Or it's my fault. Or, you know, I'm no good. And whatever that language that that inner child uses at that point in time, that's your ammunition as the inner parent. So you need to listen to what your inner child has to say. And then once you gather that information, then you can give them a relevant tailored message at that point in time. and that's what makes it effective. But you need to do the connecting and the listening first.

39:29Andrew Lynn:And then do you have people say this out loud, actually?

39:33Janet Lansbury:I do whatever feels comfortable. And again, like Lavinia said, sometimes you need a bit of coaching. If you've never received love or affection, how do you give it? So sometimes people say, I don't know what to say. And then we just try some things. yeah it's a bit of trial and error and feeling and connecting and you say it out loud or say in your head whatever works for you and then finding that thing you can feel both at the same time and again it's my job to hold space for all of this to talk to you into in the present moment to get you to witness your inner child to listen to your inner child to try some things and notice what happens how your inner child reacts and then once you find the words that that hit home you can just use them you can use them for the next day use them 50 times a day if you need to until you that part of you feel safe and seen just to add i find a lot of my clients and i used to do this again back to the listening point they jump into that you're safe you're loved like for

40:40Lavinia Brown:me, it's definitely listening. It's releasing what you feel in that moment. It's learning to understand what you're feeling. Like, what the hell do I feel? Am I anxious? Am I scared? What am I feeling right now? Because we're so used to dismissing our feelings because we're too busy. Or we've got something else to do. Or the kids need something. So it's like, it doesn't matter what I feel. I'm not even going for a pee, even though I've been dying for one for two hours, because the kids need their lunch preparing. So it's learning how to understand what you're feeling saying that and then the validating the reassurance because with my clients and with me that's I never got that I never got any validation and I never felt reassured or safe but often we can take that the wrong way and just go straight into you're safe you're safe it's okay it's okay I've got you you're loved and it's like well hold on are you asking the child how she is because if you're saying to your inner child, you're safe.

41:38Lavinia Brown:And they're like, no, no, no, you're safe. No, I don't feel safe. You're safe and you're loved, but I don't feel safe. Then you're, you're dismissing it, but just in a more subtle way.

41:47Andrew Lynn:Right.

41:48Lavinia Brown:You have to take that step back and go, hold on. Let's just check in. How is she feeling first?

41:54Andrew Lynn:And it's also like, what does that mean to feel safe and loved to that particular person? I mean, And it's got to be listening to, like you said, the child in you saying, when you turn away from me, when you have that expression on your face, it makes me feel scared. It makes me feel rejected. It makes me feel, you know, it's got to be that specific, right? Exactly.

42:19Lavinia Brown:So I get them to, for me, it's, of course, I get them to use it in the moment. But for me, I get them to practice it every single night. It's a nightly practice or a daily practice that takes time to connect. It's a relationship. So we don't expect our children to suddenly be best friends with a random person they've just met. It takes time for your inner child to trust the inner parent and to receive. My clients find it so hard to receive. So my big emphasis, and I don't know if it's different to other people, But for me, inner parenting is about being parented. You are not the inner parent because otherwise it's just another chore.

43:02Lavinia Brown:It's another person that you're responsible for. And that's what's so overwhelming for moms. It's like, oh, my God, I just put my kids to bed and I have to put my inner child to bed. Seriously, I don't have the bandwidth. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You are being put to bed. Someone is saying, how are you? How was your day? hey, I'm here to listen. What do you need? Do you need a back rub? Do you need your hair stroked? You know, what words do you need to hear? So you're not the inner parent. You are learning and practicing how to receive love, how to let go of responsibility to somebody else.

43:40Lavinia Brown:And that for my clients is a really big shift.

43:44Andrew Lynn:Yeah, that makes sense. I love how you said, But Lavinia, you say on your website, I will love, motivate, cheerlead and fight for you while teaching you how to do this for yourself.

43:58Lavinia Brown:I'm quite fierce. I am so passionate about women not feeling the way that they do when they come to me. I mean, it's just not fair and it's not right. And they deserve to feel happier. And I know how it felt to feel like that. Like I said, it was very black for me. And I just, I want to do everything. It's probably a bit of a savior complex, to be honest. I'm sure part of it's wound driven. I want to save them. But yeah, it's very important to me. And I am fierce because part of this work is very difficult to do. you have to be able to acknowledge the ways in which your parents weren't there for you and to do that you're going to come across a lot of resistance there's societal resistance i mean it's still quite taboo right to say i didn't have a great childhood that's not really especially if

44:50Andrew Lynn:it wasn't terrible you know especially if it wasn't just obviously off the charts trauma that's the hard stuff right that that both of you work with is people saying you know i okay i don't even know if I deserve to say I had trauma, but these things don't feel comfortable to me and I'm having a really hard time.

45:10Lavinia Brown:Exactly. The societal resistance, there's cultural resistance, there's religious resistance sometimes. And there's resistance from that part of you, the daughter part, the child part that is wired to see the good in her parents because she had to in order to attach and attune to her family. A child can't survive on its own. It needs the tribe. So psychologically, your inner child part can only see the good or only wants to see the good. That's what keeps them in the family unit, keeps them going back to that relative safety. Part of you also saw the negative, but that fragments off. And my job is to help mothers see their childhood as a parent, not as a child.

46:04Lavinia Brown:So to see the negative and the positive, to see how they suffered, to see how it was difficult, because they don't want to pass it on to their children. And a tool I always say, which is very useful, if you're finding it hard to accept that something wasn't okay that was done to you imagine putting your child in the same experience so your parents are doing the same thing they did to you to your child how do you feel and suddenly it's like oh my god no i'd like deck them or no not okay i'd be i'd be furious and i'm like exactly you're now seeing this the experience through your fierce mama eyes as an adult so this is this is the very this is the hardest bit.

46:49Lavinia Brown:This bit takes the longest amount of time, getting over the resistance towards seeing that your childhood wasn't perfect and that you suffered. And then comes the release work, which Andrew was talking about. But that bit's a big deal. Yeah.

47:04Andrew Lynn:Gosh, I could talk about this all day. I'm fascinated by the work that you two do, all the details of it. I feel like we can all relate to it, really, even if we feel like we We had the best childhood in the world. These are human issues. And we get messages from all kinds of experiences that we take in as flaws in ourselves and hold on to, and they become part of our story. Well, thank you both so much for sharing with us. And is there anything that's coming up for you? I know that, Lavinia, you have a book that's downloadable.

47:42Lavinia Brown:I have a free workbook, yeah. So this work doesn't have to cost anything. You can start straight away. I always say to people, the most important thing you can start with is looking at your triggers. What is it that creates a disproportionate reaction in you? And then they go, oh, but how do I know it's disproportionate? You know, you feel it. You feel out of control. It feels visceral. It feels physical. Notice what that is and see if you can track that back to an earlier experience where you felt this way. And then that's starting at least that process of noticing how you're feeling, tracking it back to your childhood.

48:21Lavinia Brown:And like you said, it's not personal. Your child isn't attacking you. This is your stuff. So, yes, in that workbook, I've got some tools that people can use for absolutely free. So no one needs to feel excluded from this work. I love that. And what about you, Andrew?

48:41Janet Lansbury:I get a lot of people come to me from all over the world, Africa, Indonesia, India, you know, that can't necessarily coach with me. So I've just launched a group that's on my website that's going to be like a weekly group healing experience where I teach people how to go through the process I've discussed. So I teach people how to release the repressed emotion and heal their body and integrate all the parts of themselves.

49:13Andrew Lynn:Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I hope we get to talk again soon. My pleasure.

49:18Lavinia Brown:Thank you, Janet, for what you do.

49:20Andrew Lynn:All right. Take care, you two. Bye bye. You can find Lavinia Brown's work at LaviniaBrown.com. That's L-A-V-I-N-I-A Brown.com. and her Instagram is Lavinia Brown Coaching. And Andrew is at andrewlynn.net or on Instagram, andrew.g.lyn. Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

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